Fostering creativity, managing ADHD and internet celebrity with the “3rd coolest Dad” in America | Aaron Huey (father of 2, National Geographic photographer, serial creative entrepreneur)

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Aaron: I think the lesson that I've taught them is that we, Hueys, can make anything we want out of any material anytime we want. That's just - if they can believe some even tiny piece of that then that'll be really useful in life for them.

Adam-IntroOutro: 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 this episode, I sat down with Aaron Huey. “Fatherly” called Aaron the third coolest dad in America. Ahead of Barack Obama and Childish Gambino, And beat out only by LeBron James and Kelly Slater. Aaron is an award winning National Geographic photographer. A three time Stanford fellow and the founder and chief creative officer of Amplifier.org, a nonprofit that creates visual campaigns for various social movements. Aaron also broke crowdfunding records when he raised $3 million in a few weeks for his projects, We The People and We The Future. Prior to all of this, he was known for his 3,349 mile solo walk across America with his dog Cosmo. It took them 154 days and they walked every step without a support team or a cell phone. In this episode, Aaron talks about life with his wife and two kids, how he's encouraged them to explore and take risks, fostered a love of creativity and expression in them.

He discusses the dynamics of his family, the inspiration behind his children's unique names, and how his wife's steady nature compliments his high speed ADHD personality. Aaron is a multidimensional individual. Balancing a high impact professional life with a grounded family life. He is deeply involved in social issues, tech innovations, and storytelling, and is one of the most unique guests I've ever had on the program.

I hope you enjoy this conversation.

Adam: Welcome to the startup dad podcast, Aaron Huey. It is so great to have you here. I'm super excited for this conversation.

Aaron: Thanks for having me.

Adam: Aaron, I was hoping we could get started and just talk about your professional life. You have a fascinating career in a few different parts. So I was hoping you could just tell me and the listeners a little bit more about you.

Aaron: Sure. I live a lot of lives. Some people only know me from my National Geographic world. That's where a lot of my social and cultural capital is, with the work that I've done as a National Geographic magazine photographer. I've done over 30 stories for National Geographic and I do all kinds of things within the brand, around new media, a lot of AR, VR, spatial web kind of pushing the edges of storytelling in that way, but it started with real legacy, serious, deep photojournalism for print magazines and a history of doing work around news and global events. But then that parlayed into all kinds of things in new tech and new mediums. And I don't really have an allegiance to an individual medium.

So some days I really wonder if I'm really actually, am I a photographer? Not really sure some days because I, I'm working in whatever, you know, in whatever medium is required to tell the story. And some people don't know that I'm a National Geographic photographer and only know me as the founder of Amplifier.org. I have a nonprofit that builds visual campaigns for movement. And I left that mission pretty broad because really anything we care about is a movement. Anything worth putting time into can be a movement. So it means that I can work on the climate crisis, I can work on gun violence, I can work on, shoring up the pillars of democracy in the lead up to an election. I can really pick and choose and my role in that is as a creative director and a campaign builder. And I've got a lot of history with design thinking, I spent a lot of time at Stanford's d. school and the methodology behind design thinking and the kind of media experimentation that I did there weaves throughout all of my work.

My most recent stint with Stanford was as a Starling Lab Fellow working on data integrity for imagery specifically in a world where we now will no longer be able to tell what is real and not real. And the blockchain is a solution for that. I'm, I'm everywhere.

Adam: Wow. That is such super important work. I get very concerned about that border of what is real and not real anymore. So, amazing that you're putting your talents towards that kind of responsibility. You've also had some pretty impressive record setting moments.

You broke some crowdfunding records. Tell me a little bit about that.

Aaron: We the people was the first one. So yeah, the, I think the first time probably Amplifier as an organization hit most people's radars was around Trump's inauguration and the Women's March, because the imagery that we made became the most ubiquitous imagery of that time and was carried into the streets and flooded the Women's Marches around the world, because everything we make at Amplifier is, everything's a free download and everything is it's meant to have infinite distribution. And so a lot of people print it and do things with it - like make clothes and make projections and make their own banners. But we took over full page ads in the Washington Post and the New York Times and USA Today.

And we hacked the inauguration with a series of symbols with that project We the People. And it raised for us, you know, which at the time was a one and a half person organization in this backyard office. Raised, you know, almost $3 million over the course of a few weeks

Adam: Wow

Aaron: Selling those images and giving them away for free - it just was a huge crowdfunding effort on Kickstarter, actually, most of it. And that required then the enlarging of Amplifier into a much larger staff. but then that allowed us to start building bigger and bigger portfolios to work on any movement we wanted to.

Adam: That's amazing. Congrats on all that success. What a huge accomplishment breaking all those records on Kickstarter.

Aaron: I just, I looked at crowdfunding a lot because it's, you don't have any bosses, you don't have anybody, you don't have any strings really attached besides what you offer your audience. So we've done that with many campaigns and I did it after my National Geographic coverage of the Sherpas - I did all our coverage in the Everest region for National Geographic around the time that, that big avalanche killed 16 Sherpas in the ice field at Everest base camp. And that was one of the first big flash sales of imagery as prints that raised money. We raised half a million dollars in, I think, seven days, five, six, seven days.

And so yeah, crowdfunding, we lean on that a lot. I think about it a lot when I think of how to get something going quickly that's got obvious movement and momentum.

Adam: That's really great. So I wanted to ask you, probably you mentioned the most important thing was that you were named the third coolest dad in America by fatherly.com. You beat out Barack Obama, Childish Gambino and only lost to Lebron James and Kelly Slater. How did that come about? How does one identify you as the coolest dad in America?

Aaron: No clue. I mean, these were in like Instagram heydays and I was one of a handful of photographers that had the keys to the National Geographic Instagram account. And so we built that from zero basically into 200 and whatever, 60 million people on it. But at the time I had a large following and I was feeding National Geographic and my son was starting to go on travels with me with a camera and I posted a picture of him on National Geographic's Instagram stream when it didn't have…you know, nobody tried to control what we put on that feed and everybody wanted to see what he was taking pictures of and I couldn't put it on there and I couldn't put it on my own so I started an Instagram account for a four year old that day, which I never let him look at and within like a couple of days there were 30,000 people on it and I think that this group called fatherly.com, one of these father's publications, they were seeing all this Instagram stuff of a father and son interacting and you know, in those stories, fatherhood told through social media in a positive way. And I think they were looking for ways to showcase that kind of a role model using that medium for good because we all know now at the end of the story how much bad social media has done.

Now it's not quite as shiny as it was when we were doing that when Hawkeye was four years old.

Adam: Yeah, certainly not.

Aaron: Post crash of democracy almost, we are in a different social media world.

Adam: Yes, we absolutely are. So If I rewind the clock all the way to childhood, Aaron, how did you get started with this? Where are you from? What was life like growing up?

Aaron: I grew up in a really small town in Wyoming, which is actually, you know, big for Wyoming scale. It was a town of 5, 000, which I think is the seventh biggest town in Wyoming.

Adam: Wow

Aaron: And I grew up in super isolation, right? Like on the edge of a field that grew Coors barley and sugar beets. But in my hometown, there were always, there was a super active rotary club.

And there were always exchange students. We had like six exchange students a year in this tiny high school. And my dad was in Rotary and I always just knew, I was like, I'm going to do that too. I'm going to be one of these people in another country. And I went straight from small town of Wyoming to Slovakia right after the breakup of Czechoslovakia and got a glimpse at how easy it was to travel.

And really out there places, kind of off the map. And I never went back, and it just snowballed. And it became my whole life. Uh, But it started in that small town in…

Adam: So the Rotary Club in your small town is the thing that inspired you to become a world traveler.

Aaron: They facilitated it, yeah. I mean, I guess they inspired it too. I mean, I, they served up all kinds of people speaking in other languages about a world that I got to know about firsthand, you know, by meeting those people. Sure, yeah.

Adam: And you've it sounds like you've lived all over the place you mentioned Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan.

Aaron: I lived in Afghanistan for a time photographing the drug war for the New York Times and the New Yorker. I went back and forth to Pakistan for years and years, living in Lahore and Karachi. And lived in Yemen with Kristen, my wife, before we were married when she was studying Arabic there.

Adam: You also mentioned that the most risky and exotic thing you could do was actually back here at home. And so you did Something similar to what I've seen in Forrest Gump. But you walked across the country in the span of like half a year or so.

Aaron: Yeah, so. I had, by that point, by early 2002 when I did that, I'd been traveling all over the world and had been documenting Sufis and the Taliban and the 20th anniversary of the hostage crisis in Iran and just bouncing all over the world and I think even by then, I mean, I didn't stop doing that, but I realized that there was something close, as close as you can get, that was even more mysterious than, like, an exotic market scene somewhere else on the far side of the earth. And so I, I devised a walk from San Diego to New York City, or from Encinitas more specifically, to New York City. 3,349 miles in 154 days. And there were cell phones, but I did not take a cell phone. And I had no support crew. And... I slept on the side of the roads and in the homes of strangers, and I had with me a gigantic husky malamute wolf dog, husky malamute wolf mix named Cosmo, and she pulled a dog cart on wheels with cutout flames on the sides, and I felt like I could sleep anywhere soundly with a gigantic wolf dog like that.

So,

Adam: Of course.

Aaron: I slept very soundly with that wolf dog watching over me

Adam: Yeah. Your protector.

Aaron: The photographs from that launched my career. I didn't do it to make like a magazine story, but at the end of it I had a lot of portraits of America that I sent in a box to the editor-in-chief of the Smithsonian.

Which is not how you pitch magazine stories at all. That's not how it works. But he handed it to the photo editors and said, we're going to run this. And it became really my first really big piece and really launched my career in a lot of ways. That was it.

Adam: Wow. That's incredible. Would you ever do it again? I mean, you're a little bit older now.

Aaron: No, it was crazy painful. I mean, later I, you know, you, you yearn for like the romantic parts of some journeys. So I of course wanted, like, the isolation and the breakthroughs and like the big moments of that. But. The physicality of it was incredibly painful. I kept trying to think of ways to replicate it. I ultimately would end up doing things like hitchhiking across Siberia, but I wouldn't like walk across Siberia.

Adam: Yeah. I'm not sure the temperature would be in your favor there. From what I understand. So, so you mentioned your wife, Kristen, you mentioned also one of your kids, Hawkeye. Tell me about your family. You have a wife, Kristen. You have two kids. How did you and Kristen meet? How old are your kids?

Aaron: Kristen and I met right after I finished my walk across America when I really thought I was invincible and I was building an art commune 32 miles out of Santa Fe and I met her in the Cowgirl Hall of Fame.

Adam: Oh, wow.

Aaron: Only girl I ever met in a bar. Cowgirl Hall of Fame. And she got sucked into the jet stream of building an art commune and crazy art parties and has somehow stuck with me now for twenty some odd years now.

Adam: Wow. Is she, you know, we'll come back to your kids in a second, but is she like you, an artist like a free spirit? Or is she more of

Aaron: So different. She is an artist in a different kind of way, I think in the spiritual realm, maybe but our minds are very different. This will probably come up in so many different parts of these conversations. Cause I'm like super high speed ADHD guy and Kristen is like just really steady and is never in a tunnel.

I'm like always in some kind of tunnel. It's always a creative tunnel, but. Kristen's never in a tunnel and sees everything, and so that's hard to deal with all of this.

Adam: But in many ways, you know. It's probably somewhat beneficial to have someone who is, you know, I've heard this described that creative people have described themselves to me as like a balloon that's kind of floating in the sky and you need something that balloon is tied to, right? Like, and maybe for you, that's Kristen.

Aaron: Oh, it is for sure. And none of this would work without her. She holds up the entirety of the world here in our home, so. All the great stories I've got, you know, all the travels to all these places , I wouldn't have any of those stories without Kristen.

Adam: Yeah.

Aaron: If I wanted to have a family, and since this is about, this is a dad podcast, you know, this is, like, if I wanted to be a dad, I, you know, Kristen holds it all up.

Adam: Wow. So tell me about your kids. You got to Hawkeye and Juno. Yeah.

Aaron: I have a 13 year old and an 8 year old Hawkeye Huey and Juno Huey.

Adam: All right. And where did those names come from? So those are pretty unique names. So like who was in charge of name picking and how'd you settle that with Kristen?

Aaron: I think it was actually part of, we wrote our own wedding contract in which it was a stated like paragraph in which I chose boy names and Kristen chose girl names.

Adam: That's amazing.

Aaron: And I always knew that I wanted a son named Hawkeye probably since high school, I watched a lot of M. A. S. H.

Adam: Oh, yeah.

Aaron: In high school. Alan Alda, Hawkeye Pierce. But that character of course was named after the character in Robert Louis Stevenson's Last of the Mohicans. So, and that character has a lot of cool names because Hawkeye at different periods in his life had different names like Natty Bumpo and the Long Rifle and there's all these cool names. Deer Slayer. So Hawkeye during different periods of his life can own a different name from...from that literature..

Adam: Very cool

Aaron: He might be coming into the deer slayer period. We'll see.

Adam: 13 right? Yeah, we'll get into that. We'll get into that. I can't wait. And then he's a super interesting middle name, too. How do you pronounce that his middle name?

Aaron:Wakinyan, his middle name was given to him by my adopted Lakota family from, you know, an eight year long project that I did on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation that resulted in a Ted talk and Nat Geo cover story, and then ultimately really led to the creation of Amplifier. This family, when I told them that Kristen was pregnant, like, basically before I could finish the sentence, the mother of the family said that his name would be Wakinyan.

She didn't even ask any questions, or she just said his name will be Wakinyan. And I was like, well, that's pretty interesting. Let's, I will, let's see.

Adam: Yeah.

Aaron: Wrote it down, and I looked it up, and I really liked the definition. It meant the thunder being, and it meant like the shapeless storm clouds that come across the plains and cleanse the earth with lightning and rain. And they also have, kind of, their physical manifestation on the earth are kind of like the Heyokas or the sacred clowns that live in a counterclockwise universe. And so we have a Hawkeye the Thunder being who now will live the embodiment of the sacred clown in the counterclockwise universe. We will get what we asked for, I think.

Adam: It sounds like your kids are decently different from one another. Is that accurate?

Aaron: Yeah, and their middle names hold their powers, so my eight year old is Juno Liana and Juno has got an analog in Hera so there's like all these connections to love and marriage, but also to war, and to birth and all these things, but Juno's middle name is Liana, which is like a climbing vine, and kind of speaks to her, like, like, plant medicinal coolness that is like the opposite of Hawkeye's fire.

Adam: Not unlike maybe you and Kristen

Aaron: Yep, exactly.

Adam: Cool. So speaking of Kristen, tell me about what Kristen does. She's not. She's not a National Geographic photographer. She's something different than that. So tell me a little bit about her and what she does.

Aaron: Kristen is a therapist. She works mostly with young people, a lot of kids in high school, and then just I think she enjoys most working with people in their, you know, teens, to twenties and thirties.

Adam: Did that factor in at all to your decision to have kids? Or is that a hard part of having and raising a family when you're also talking to other children and seeing some pretty horrific things every day?

Aaron: She was definitely not in therapy world yet when we were starting a family. She was doing studies on policy and international affairs, which is why she ended up in Afghanistan and I was there. And, she graduated with that Master's Degree pregnant and the world would not hire her. So it kind of cut off that whole part of life.

It was the inability to get a job as a pregnant woman or as a new mother. I think that like the job of a therapist definitely means you're bringing a ton home because you're, I don't know how you I guess it would probably be like how you have to create the walls like as a war photographer, the kind of traumatic things that we see, we have to compartmentalize trauma and violence and all kinds of things because I know she hears things that are scarier than anything we can imagine.

It's like the truth is, tougher than fiction and stranger and scarier sometimes.

So I think that's kind of always there and probably just compartmentalized in some way, just like my witnessing of death and trauma are compartmentalized.

Adam: You mentioned to me too that when the two of you, there wasn't a really, you know, defined moment where you decided to have kids, there wasn't like you wrote it down and there was a life plan or anything like that. And it happened. It was decided and it happened. But you also mentioned to me that it was not a safe financial moment.

Aaron: Yeah, it was decided, but it wasn't planned in some kind of way where you're like, this is the most ideal time and we're going to be financially okay because we were not, we're not stable at all in those times. And so that was a time when I really doubled down on, in the moment we found out I really doubled down on really like a race to find any form of like a runway that would include some kind of security. Not a job though, because I'm not a person who can have a job. It's not possible. But what would be the analog would be like I started applying to every fellowship, you know, for photographers.

And I ultimately you know, right after that got the fellowship to go to Stanford for a year for the Knight Fellowship that changed my life and changed how I see all media and storytelling. So that was part of it. But then I also was just reaching out into my world to try any safe ground or help.

And one of the people I reached out to that changed my life as a photographer and like our life and our safety as parents was the director and writer Tom Shadyak. He was famous for a lot of the early Jim Carrey movies and things like that. And Tom and I had been friends and known each other, and he'd always offered to help me with things.

And I always said, I don't really want to, I don't want to ask for help until I really need it. And I remember calling Tom and being like, I actually need your help now. Like, I've never needed it before, and I need it now. And we talked about, like, the insecurity of that kind of moment in the upcoming months.

And, I remember him asking, If he could take care of our life for a couple of months, would I be able to create in a new way that could help to, like, start something? And he gave us, like, for him, a really small amount of money, but for us was a massive amount of money for a couple of months. And I started, really, the body of work that became my first National Graphic cover story, that became my TED Talk.

And the work that came out of it then became Amplifier, so that singular investment from someone in that moment of need created a domino effect that created essentially all of my startups and all of my creative projects from there forward, because I had the time to really do that creative work with no fear.

Adam: Yeah, and the stability to start a family too, right. And to feel confident in doing that.

Aaron: Yeah, because at the time I didn't even have a vision for like what like big making looked like and that level of, I wasn't trying to make a startup. I wasn't trying to, I was just trying to be a photographer who could pay for my family's life and a new family's life and the life of a child. It wasn't, I was not envisioning the grandiose possibilities of National Geographic and TED Talks.

I just survived. We were in survival mode.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned too, to me that your first memory of becoming a dad was around stability of income and that, that fear that comes with that.

Aaron: Yeah, because I just think that people that don't have children don't, you know, they might say that they worry about money, but they don't think that they can even possibly remotely understand what it means to know, like, to have a child and to need to create that security for a child.

Adam: Yeah. When you think about some of your earliest moments as a dad or as your kids have gotten older. What are some of the most surprising things that you've discovered about yourself and about fatherhood?

Aaron: I think I'm surprised always at how hard it is and how it's never not hard and how it just is ongoingly hard, but simultaneously, because it's like peaks and valleys that overlap. It's also, I'm always surprised how simultaneously amazing and rewarding it is. So it's quite extreme.

Adam: Yeah

Aaron: So

Adam: What was your role model situation like how did you learn how to be a dad or who did you learn from?

Aaron: I think that's one of the hard parts. I probably learned more from my birth father who I visited probably more as a vacation dad, which is not the best role model for a father. And it's not. But since that's what I had, that's what I had. And so it's, you know, I grew up with a stepfather who was always there, but who just didn't know how to parent somebody like me or to communicate with somebody like me. And we're in a small town in Wyoming. Like there weren't a lot of those connections that are, you know, in the, it just wasn't as much communication and connection and creation in relationships, I think. In the, you know, late seventies and early eighties in a small town in Wyoming. So, you know, my role model is probably for fathering is probably more my birth father, who was like a vacation dad. So I think at my worst, I'm like, probably carry the traits of a vacation father that like, that goes away a lot. So it's hard not having a role model.

Adam: Yeah, I want to come back to that a little bit later, this idea of going away and how that's affected, you know, your life with your kids and stuff like that, because I imagine travel is still part of your life. But I also wanted to ask you about a particular parenting philosophy you mentioned to me, which is no blood, no foul, which I read that and I thought, oh, that's really interesting. What does he mean by that? So tell me what that means. And then how do you kind of live that philosophy? As a dad.

Aaron: I think it kind of just means not to freak out about stuff unless there's like real damage. And I can use that in any kind of situation like... a near miss with a car almost hitting you? I'm not a road rager where I jump out and I start freaking out on somebody. If they didn't hit me I don't really care.

Everybody move on with your day. Like I don't almost even turn my head. I'm just like... That was close. No blood no foul. And with my kids it's literally like... my kids need to, if they're hurt, and don't have to go to the hospital... brush themselves off, because I don't... we don't, we're not doing any babying.

Adam: Is that a philosophy that you and Kristen share, or has that ever come at odds between the two of you?

Aaron: No, I think it definitely is. And I, and we don't mean it in a way that's like small town, Wyoming dad, that's like, doesn't like being close to their kids. And they're like, you know, get over it kid. Cause we're like, we're physically close to our kids. Hawkeyes still like leans on us and hugs and snuggles.

They still get that kind of tenderness, but like, I just, if the kids are looking for sympathy for, you know falling someplace. It's not coming from me unless there's some really serious hospital visit coming into play.

Adam: yeah,

Aaron: Because the world is going to give them a lot of, they're going to get a lot of bumps in the world that, you know, it's going to just get harder.

So, they are going to need to be pretty tough. We already told Hawkeye he's going to have to learn how to use bows and arrows to kill squirrels after the climate collapse…raccoons…

Adam: It could very well be, could very well be true,

Aaron: Juno too, Juno and Hawkeye are both learning that bow and arrow and getting ready for the squirrel hunting days of their future life.

Adam: Wow

Aaron: Whole other dad podcast, it's Children in the Times of Apocalypse.

Adam: This is true I don't know what the audience would be for that. It'd be a very polarizing audience. Let's say that much. So, so I want to talk to you a little bit about - you are obviously quite possibly the most creative person that I've talked to on this show so far all right, just your life and all of the things that you've done and the art and the photography and your work at the d school and everything else.

How have you fostered this love and desire for creativity within your kids? How do you kind of bring that to them every day? How have you gotten them into it?

Aaron: We're making stuff together all the time. I've got, like, stuff all over my office that my children made. Like, I think, like, I've got, like, That's, Hawkeye made that, like, four years ago. And Juno made that when she was three. And there's, like, little Juno sculptures all over the walls. Like, it's, our whole world is filled with the art that we make together.

So we literally physically make art together. And then I think there is always makerdom in our travels because whether it's like, you know, we do rockhounding which has its own maker element. We're finding beauty in the world and we're almost like sculpting it out of like what we find and tumbling it and polishing.

I got like, I got this stuff all over my desk of like the things that we find. Like there's, you know, when you look at everything as art. With your, you know, the kids already kind of could see everything as art because they don't judge through an aesthetic lens like we do, like we measure everything against the aesthetics of what is supposed to be good or what we've been told is like good art or good light or bad light in photography.

So I run experiments like when Hawkeye was four, I bought him a camera and I made it an analog one so that It wasn't like a billion photos that he swiped on a cell phone, cause I hate that. And we started making things together and turned into years and years of self created photo assignments and thousands of Polaroids.

 And I do the same thing with Juno. I look for what they're really in love with. Juno sees differently, like Kristen and I see differently. Juno sees everything she sees and she hears everything. She sees things so tiny. And she was always going around asking for my camera to photograph macro photos of flowers.

And so then I started a project with Juno to look at like macro and microscopic things. Now there's a microscope camera now that's like

Adam: Wow.

Aaron: 400 bucks. It shoots essentially at microscopic level with a point and shoot.

Adam: That’s amazing.

Aaron: And so. I never hesitate, you know, we don't have a lot of money, but I never hesitate to buy and buy things that allow for creative output.

Adam: Yeah.

Aaron: If it's like, if we can make something with it, I'm just like, I don't save anything for birthdays or Christmases. If I have an impulse, any super random impulse of something I want to make with my kids, it gets bought like that second that I think of it. Rock tumblers, like microscope cameras, it could be like every other day.

We're just thinking of new ways to make things in our exploration of the world.

Adam: Yeah. Do you think your kids will grow up to follow a creative pursuit like you, or do you think they'll maybe go do something a bit more traditional like, Kristen?

Aaron: I don't know, because I don't frame it all as like, this is a thing you do for money. This is just like a way of breathing.

Adam: Yeah.

Aaron: Like, it's just a methodology for approaching the world, you know, and I think I said earlier, by any means necessary, any medium necessary at all times in this little room in the backyard, I'm making and making to bring it into the house, and it's just like a living process.

And so I hope they see it as a living process that is just a way that you view the world, not like a way to make money or a title. And I think that will probably be true. I don't know whether they'll take on creative pursuits that mean the selling of artistry, but I hope that influence of artistic vision and making is woven into whatever process of whatever work or life they pursue.

Adam: Yeah, is that something that you feel like you have to talk to them about so that they don't feel this need to pursue art for professional gain?

Aaron: I had to talk to Hawkeye about a little bit just because what we were doing was getting a lot of attention and we like started getting asked to be in commercials and people were filming at our house and all this kind of stuff

Adam: Wow.

Aaron: Like that cause that got really big. And we were, Hawkeye was doing assignments for National Geographic at the age of four and a half. 

Adam: Wow.

Aaron: He did print magazine assignments for National Geographic at the ages of four, five and six. 

Adam: Wow.

Aaron: So, I definitely had to say to him that, you know, we are not doing this because I want you to be a photographer for a job or be like me. I'm trying to show you how this is one tool that opens up the world and opens up a way to meet people and talk to people and see things differently.

I'm not saying this is what I want you to do. I want you to do whatever you love, 

Adam: Yeah.

Aaron: you know, whatever fills you up. So, this is just. Just one tool, just like I teach him how to use a nail gun or whatever, like, and I have taught, I taught him how to use a nail gun, I think, when he was six or seven just another nail gun.

Adam: Yep. Yep. There's a safety on there for a reason right like, you know?

Aaron: yep!

Adam: Yeah, I remember when my kids went to preschool they exposed them to some power tools at preschool and building things and At first I was terrified and then I saw the photos of them using it and like you know, it's quite safe and things like that and the kids loved it, right?

It's just exploring this different aspect of something that we wouldn't necessarily do at home because it's not that's not how I spend my time.

Aaron: Yeah. I think the lesson that I've taught them is that we, Hueys, can make anything we want out of any material anytime we want - that's just - if they can believe some even tiny piece of that then they, that'll be really useful in life for them. 

Adam: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome, tell me a little bit about how you think about exploration and risk taking because you've mentioned You seem like you've been a risk loving or risk seeking person. You've explored the world. You've been in some situations that were probably most people would consider a little riskier.

You know, war and things like that and your journey across the country. So how do you think about that and how does that come into being in your family?

Aaron: This is a hard balance because I'm not very balanced and I think it's especially hard for Kristin because she'll see like if I'm on national on assignment for National Geographic and I'm in Bears Ears National Monument I'm sharing videos of myself on like two foot wide ledges to get to different cultural heritage sites, like it freaks her out and it makes her mad because she's like, well, don't, you know, you have a family?

And I'm like, well, but I'm like, I was, I'm like, I'm a really good rock climber and I climbed 513 and like, that was like just a hike. It wasn't a climb and I'm, I know I'm safe and all this stuff, but we do get into that thing where it's like, well, what are you showing your children because your children are not 513 climbers and your children watch a kind of, you know, like, blasé attitude about, like, doing really dangerous things.

So I think that's kind of an ongoing struggle, is to try to figure out where that line is. And I'm trying to catch myself more of, like, making sure I lay out, like, safety things before I do things. Because I do behave very often as, like, almost like a kid would when I arrive at a place. I run right into a situation and...climb up a thing because I have the physical expertise of a life lived of doing those things and I have to pause and be like, I have a 13 year old behind me and he hasn't done that and I need to explain how to do that right. And maybe not run right up to that cliff and start climbing on it.

Adam: Yeah. Especially because you know, kids model the behavior that they see in their parents. Well, and a lot of adults. But so I imagine that is even more, you know, something that you have to work on with them.

Aaron: Yeah. I worry about it less with Juno because Juno shows none of those tendencies. But Hawkeye shows 150% of them. Not a regular 100%.

Adam: Yeah. Well, he's got that 13 year old brain, like kind of puts that on overdrive, right? 

Aaron: He's the thunder being.

Adam: So yeah, that's right! He's the thunder being, um, so. You know, I wanted, you mentioned you know, when you're on assignment and you're crossing the two foot narrow pass and you're sending Kristen a video and she gets kind of angry -

Aaron: I don't send her videos, she saw it on social media unfortunately.

Adam: Oh! So you're not bragging about it

Aaron: She saw it on my propaganda channel. It's like, it's on my personal propaganda network.

Adam: Got it. Got it.

Aaron: And she unfortunately sees things on there sometimes that the world should see but that she should not.

Adam: Yep. So, so clearly that's an aspect of your life where maybe you don't always see eye to eye. What are some other places where you and your wife don't agree when it comes to parenting?

Aaron: I think it's probably hard for me to really identify those ones consciously because I'm, I just live almost through endless creative impulse.

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Aaron: The life of the ADHD man is, is often I'm not, I just don't see the whole thing. So I mean, there's just a constant struggle in not seeing everything, not seeing maybe a danger that I expose or a risk that I need to pause on, or not seeing a behavior in a child she needs help with, or seeing a behavior in myself as a partner that needs to shift.

Like, I think this, the biggest struggles are. Just that, like, constantly wrestling with that kind of brain and like expanding my field of view,​ to be less tunnel vision.

Adam: Yeah, that is one thing that I you know, I have, my son has ADHD and one thing I've observed for sure is this idea you can have a hard time focusing but then when you get focused on something you have a really hard time as you mentioned the tunnel vision - not letting it go.

Aaron: Yeah, it's always hyper focus. It's always hyper focus, especially with Hawkeye. It's extreme hyper focus and like, super genius brain with hyper focus is like, it's hard sometimes.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah, um…

Aaron: And then when I'm like, oh man, it's so hard, then I pause, I'm like, oh wait, I'm just a big version of that. God, it's really hard for my wife

Adam: She's got two almost adults to deal with!

Aaron: For a long time, I don't think I even saw that. I don't think I even saw what that situation was. So as much as like the ADHD label gets like way, it feels like almost overused. Like everybody overnight got a new ADHD like diagnosis over the last three years. Something about, like, addressing it and reading about it, like, gave us new tools to help me see more clearly, like, my behavioral patterns and what happens outside of the tunnel. And like, what is happening in my own son's tunnel.

Adam: Yeah. 100%. I agree. So, you know, one of the things you mentioned to me was you haven't had to give up a whole lot become a dad. You seem like you've incorporated your kids into your lives pretty well. Right. And it exposed them to a lot of the things That you experience, but I wanted to ask you a bit about how being a photographer who has to travel around the world and be away and things like that , you know, how does that affect family life when you have kids?

Do you bring them along with you? Do you call them from the road? How has that all balanced itself out?

Aaron: They can't go on the road because all projects and all jobs are too...They're too high pressure, too high stakes. All these jobs are really high stakes, even if it doesn't seem on the surface like it's high pressure. The movements behind them, what has to happen in a certain amount of time, they're just always just too much at stake. I can't take kids on those trips unless I invent jobs, essentially, with children, which I was able to do with Hawkeye. And it was one of the reasons I wanted to do that.I was doing, like, 35 day trips into the Himalayas, you know, and I couldn't take my kids, so I think part of that time was inventing assignments with Hawkeye.

But now, I mean, to be honest, like, some of that world's going away. Disney is dismantling National Geographic Magazine. What we know as National Geographic Magazine is not gonna exist anymore. It's done.

Adam: Wow.

Aaron: It goes off of shelves January 1st.

Adam: I did not know that.

Aaron: Yup subscribers will still get it, but, it, beyond, like, the way everybody talks around it, that era is gone.

Like, these big assignments that take us all over the world, they're gonna be, you know, one one hundredth of what there were just a few years ago. So I don't really face the reality of knowing that I'm gonna go for like 30 days at a time. I come up with new things. I'm doing work sometimes for a week or two weeks at a time for a particular client for advocacy like the Grand Canyon Trust or different conservation projects, or I travel a lot for amplifier speaking and meeting with partners and funders and artists.

But I don't face that month-long kind of scenario anymore. But what's interesting is actually, and Kristin and I talk about this, she needs me to be gone 50 percent of the time.

Because our marriage is built on me being gone 50 percent of the time. I'm too much. She needs space. And so actually, when I don't have assignments, I kind of need to make some stuff up to give her some space. And luckily, I mean, there's no shortage of, you know, Aaron Huey startups. They might not be big tech startups, but there is an endless series of Aaron Huey startups with new fellowships and artists in residencies I'm building and like mega projects with different client partners that each is essentially an entire movement in itself that means that you know, I do travel a lot to New York and San Francisco and L.A. like over and over, and we kind of need that cadence, and every once in a while I worry about, you know, is one of the things, is it, do I feel like I'm neglecting the kids every once in a while, I'm like, I'm not around as much, and like, and I do compartmentalize, I don't pine for family when I'm away, I do have a compartmentalization that allows me to keep making…

Adam: Yep.

Aaron: And to come home and be home, but not to be lamenting my, my not being home. So I travel and I miss my family, but I'm not mourning the fact that I'm not there. And I think ultimately, like it's probably healthy because, I remain inspired and my children see what it means to be a movement builder and an artist and a maker. And I think that for all the negatives of when I'm not there, and I can't be there for some important moments where Kristen needs me there, like as a father, and I can't be there for those.

But I think what gets filled in in that gap, like when I come back, is a different kind of filler that we need. Like that, there is an inspiration and a maker-dom and a life perspective that I believe makes up for absence. And where it's actually needed, we need it.

Adam: Yeah. With all of that. Right. And the support that you have from Kristen and you know, the leaning in when you're home…still…what would you say is a mistake that you've made as a father?

Aaron: I mean it's always going to be related to tunnel vision, and I can carry the same thing across to partnership. Father, partner, what's a mistake you've made, or what could, it's always like not seeing them clearly enough, not being present enough. Even when I'm home, like, I'm not going to play the game where I'm like, because I'm on the road, when I'm home I'm so present.

Like, I am making dozens of overlapping megaprojects at all times, and they swallow up my attention. And so, always the regrets, or things I could do better, are finding more and more ways to pop out of the tunnel and see the bigger picture, and see whether it's my children or my wife clearly, and like, with a very present, like, eye and heart. You know, I think if we're talking about like logistics and like things that happen in life, we'll kind of have to wait to see, like, was it a mistake letting something build up like a Hawkeye Huey Instagram account to a quarter of a million people and, you know, filming commercials and things.

I have not seen negative effects of that as Hawkeye as a 13 year old, because he never looked at those things. It was really just a way that we told our story to the exterior world, not to ourselves. So he didn't look at it to seek attention or approval because we just left it out of the picture. But, you know, it is a question, like, is that something that we'll have to wait to see.

Like, was having children on social media, like, a bad idea, even if they don't use it? And I don't know if you've seen, there was a, commercial that was put out this summer, I think out of Germany, that showed, like, it was... It was about children on the internet and it was about AI's ability, you know, the AI tools used to clone children's images and voices to turn them into all kinds of things, whether to trick parents, to hack accounts, to create child pornography, like what is opening up ahead of us with our children's imagery on the internet and the future of AI is mind boggling.

I think very few people, you know, percentage wise in this world are watching that carefully enough. And I, you know, I'm watching it, and so I have to ask a lot of those questions about what needs to be purged from the web. But we've already put all of our lives and our children's lives on there, so I can erase as much as I want.

There's always going to be a story somewhere with those pictures of my kids when they're four and five years old.

Adam: Yeah. The genie is out of the bottle, so to speak on that stuff. And it's almost impossible, but it is impossible.

Aaron: It is impossible. Yeah.

Adam: It does sound though, you know, and I wanted to ask you about, you know, how you have a 13 year old son. And it seems like every kid, teenager, preteen is obsessed with social media, right?

And there's tons of documentaries now about the evils of social media, which can be very scary. And you have a son who's 13 and has an Instagram account with hundreds of thousands of followers and doesn't even really look at it doesn't care about it.

Aaron: He doesn't look at it, and he'll, he is not going to have a cell phone with internet access until he's over 16.

He's got three more years. It's just too dangerous. I don't want my children shaping their lives based on likes and on mimicking, what they're seeing on social media. I think it's, anybody paying attention should not, cave to peer pressure.

Or societal norms of letting their kids have an iPhone at the age of 12 or 13 or even 14 and like, maybe I'm pushing it kind of late, but my particular kind of child should definitely not have a phone till he is 16 years old. There are some other kids that maybe have a kind of impulse control, but even the kids I think with extreme impulse control and really neurotypical, like, are still going to be shaped by social media in a way that we as parents don't want them to be shaped. So.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it sounds like in your family, you have a very healthy relationship with this and like how you think about it and, you know, keep some of those evils from filtering into your life.

Aaron: It's still a struggle though because I want my kids to have like electronic creative tools, like I make everything on computers. I'm building virtual worlds and using photogrammetry and I'm doing animations and I want my son to know what it's like to use Photoshop and to use these tools…but then with every computer that's got Photoshop on it it is impossible to stop him from downloading things. Like, there's always a way around it and we've, you know, for the, our healthy cell phone social media policy, it doesn't mean that we're not in a relentless struggle with any kind of screen. Like, Hawkeye has figured out where we hide all iPads and laptops and has figured out all the codes. Like, he always can find a way. To get to one of them. And it's a, almost a daily like struggle to not have a computer in his hands because it's just what we do. And I guess we probably did that in the eighties and nineties in the parents basement watching TV but something feels very different. Something feels much more dangerous about it in a live connected universe.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's it. It's the connectivity of it. It's the, you know, the distribution of it, you know, it's you're not watching M.A.S.H in the basement, right? Like it's very different.

Aaron: And I'm not anti tech. I'm like, I'm building live spatial web worlds to teach cultural heritage and change how we teach you know, pre colonial American history and live metaverse worlds. I'm like way in this, like I'm making talk show episodes from the metaverse in avatar bodies. My current National Geographic Magazine assignment is photographing with virtual cameras in virtual worlds, using a dozen different avatar bodies.

I am not anti tech, but my kids are not ready for like unlimited live internet access and social media. And I don't think most kids are.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah. I do think that is a growing movement of people realizing that and parents banding together, but it kind of does take either living off the grid or banding together with other parents, because it's really hard when one kid gets a thing in the group and then it's like this domino or snowball effect, you know.

Aaron: I haven't even had a second thought about it with Hawkeye. I don't feel a single percentage of societal or peer pressure for Hawkeye to have a fancier device. It will not happen.

Adam: Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So last question. And then I wanted to ask you a little bit of a rapid fire round, which is always fun. But you started a lot of companies. You're an enterprising guy. You've started Amplifier. You've done tons of different projects.

How do you feel about this idea of startup hustle culture and how that kind of fits in or doesn't fit in with family life?

Aaron: I think that the framing of it got ruined for me because when I think of the word startup, I think of like. The experiences I went through in 2022 and the web three, like, crypto times. I don't regret making what I made because, I learned so much and I'm still building these things on chain in spatial worlds, but boy, maybe I need to like go, like figure out how to get that version of the word startup out of my mind.

Adam: You need a cleanse.

Aaron: I need a cleanse because it's not like, I don't believe I can do startups. Like I want to have access to big chunks of capital to build dreams. And I'm a creative director. I think I just need to stay away from like money pitching in peak moments of hype cycles. But at the end of the day, like it just is so much smoke and mirrors and a lot of good intentions and a lot of just bizarre. It was a bizarre world.

Adam: Yeah. All right. Well, let's cut. No that's a great segue to our rapid fire round.

Aaron: All right, let's do it.

Adam: Which is always fun and funny. But actually, before we get into rapid fire, I wanted to ask - if folks want to follow your work, support you and the projects you're working on, what's the best way for them to kind of follow your journey and get involved?

It seems, I mean, there's a lot of ways, but what would you recommend is the canonical place for them to look?

Aaron: I think I'll probably have a well updated web persona online by the time this comes out. You know, connected to my name, Aaron Huey.com. I also sometimes use the web domain, helloprototype to redirect to it because I, my methodology for making is that everything I do, no matter how big is a prototype for the next and it keeps me loose.

And so I realized that especially because I work with so many mediums that hello prototype might be a better creative director kind of, name than just my name. Um, And amplifier.org is my non profit and where I do a lot of my movement building and then just over the coming, you know, months and years, we're going to be seeing the fellowship roll out and the artists in residency in Southern California roll out, but I should be pretty easy to find on the interwebs.

Adam: Awesome. I will make sure that we link all of that in the show notes when this comes out. Okay. With that, it's rapid fire time. Here's how rapid fire works, also known as the lightning round. I say a question, you tell me the first thing that comes to mind as your answer to that question.

And we'll go through this as quickly as we can. Are you ready, Aaron?

Aaron: I hope so. Let's do it.

Adam: No one is ever ready for rapid fire, but it's always great. Okay, question number one. What is the most indispensable parenting product you have ever purchased?

Aaron: For babies, white noise machines, for my kids at the age they are now, cameras.

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

Aaron: Parenting books.

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

Aaron: Oh, most frustrating thing as a dad. Gosh, kids refusing to do really basic household chores like they're damn little princes and princesses.

Adam: That's a good one. What is your go to dad wardrobe or in your case, just your go to wardrobe? 

Aaron: I try to only wear custom made t-shirts that I make, my nonprofit makes, or that come from independent artists.

Adam: Love that.

Aaron: And a Wyoming, state hat. Or a cowboy hat, I almost always have a cowboy hat on. This is one of those rare days, because I didn't know I was doing a video interview. I usually, and gold shoes, whenever I'm doing anything of consequence, I wear gold shoes.

Adam: Okay. All right. Now I'm probably going to know the answer to this, but because of your earlier answer, but how many parenting books do you have in your house?

Aaron: There are some. I don't know which ones they are, but I know my wife bought some.

Adam: So then I think I know the answer to the next question, which is, how many of those parenting books have you personally read cover to cover?

Aaron: Zero. But, I actually am interested in getting a book to read about super smart ADHD young boys, I'll probably get his book on tape and listen to it while I'm driving on a long trip.

Adam: There you go. What are the favorite ages for your kids so far?

Aaron: If I think about them individually, probably Hawkeye in those times where we get to be literally together so much, four to four or five, six, seven on all those like long trips. Juno just all these last years, you know, six, seven, eight, and this moment right now at eight.

Adam: Yeah. Great. What about the opposite? What is your least favorite age for your kids?

Aaron: Anytime Hawkeye's acting like the teenager he probably will become?

Adam: So right now?

Aaron: But it's like really hit or miss, like it's really extreme day to day. So some days are the best day ever. Which is I think the parenting of teenagers.

Adam: Is that better or worse than the three year old screaming age?

Aaron: It's probably better because we're not in territory where I'm scared of him or for him. And I can still go do really cool stuff with him. So, this is, probably the screaming child was harder.

Adam: Yeah. Cool. We talked about your thoughts on screen time. Good, bad, or indifferent. Seems like bad.

Aaron: Bad bad, but we watch a lot of movies together as a family with a big projector just on the wall. You know, we're a big movie family. It's just screen time that's controlled and not connected to the interwebs.

Adam: Okay. What is your take on minivans?

Aaron: I am not opposed, but our go to is a four door truck because I'm always building. I'm doing endless overlapping construction projects. And Kristen has a electric car because we want everything to be electric. We just can't afford electric trucks yet.

Adam: Yeah. Me neither. I do hope those get more affordable because they're very cool. What is the most embarrassing thing you have ever done in front of one of your kids?

Aaron: I'm sure it was some version of my own freakout of yelling where later I was like, I am a, an asshole and a bad dad and I didn't handle that well and I can't believe I didn't keep my cool. I'm supposed to be the one that's keeping my cool. God damn it. Whenever I lose my cool, probably.

Adam: Yep. Now you're an artist so and your kids are very artistic as well very creative But I'd like to know if you've ever secretly thrown away a piece of your kids artwork.

Aaron: A lot.

Adam: Yeah.

Aaron: Probably yesterday, but I also like, I'm a curator all day every day. So we're like I'm like always curating the best stuff at the top. We're like serving up things I know will be home runs. Like we do painting together. We paint on cutouts that I cut out with a jigsaw made out of wood.

Cause I know that I'm going to want to hang them on my walls and they'll last longer. So endless curation.

Adam: That's awesome. What is the most absurd thing that one of your kids or both of them have ever asked you to buy for them?

Aaron: They are pretty tame in that. I think it's all pretty regular. They always want some kind of device or computer. Hawkeye probably wants a gaming computer that I won't give him. They want cats that I don't think we can handle taking care of, that my wife also wants that's probably it.

Adam: All right. Are you a secret fan of any particular Disney or Pixar movie, or do you have a different fandom?

Aaron: I do not want to vote for Disney because they're dismantling National Geographic currently but I will vote for any Miyazaki film. One of our favorites is Howl's Moving Castle, or Ponyo.

Adam: Great. We'll link that in the show notes too. I've never watched either of those, so I got to.

Aaron: Oh, dang, you're gonna get hooked! Every Miyazaki.

Adam: Yeah.

Aaron: Every one of them!

Adam: I have my work cut out for me now. You are a builder, so I imagine that you are very good at assembling toys and assembling other things, but what is your worst experience in either toy assembly or kids furniture assembly or something like that?

Aaron: Only IKEA. I don't like putting together IKEA stuff, and I think when the kids were babies, we had to do a lot more of that kind of junk. And I think we, we had made a pact with ourselves that we would not allow ourselves to buy more IKEA furniture because it's really not fun to put together. We started trying to make Hawkeye put it together from a very early age to learn those skills so we didn't have to do it.

Adam: Okay, two more questions for you. How often do you tell your kids back in my day stories?

Aaron: More and more. All the time. just last week, we did back to back Ferris Bueller and War Games, two Matthew Broderick films from the 80s, and it was full of so many things that made us want to say back in the day to our kids, like, old timey looking pizza huts, and like, pay phones, and we had to explain to kids , what the dials on telephones were, and how in my own childhood, in my hometown, It was like dial, like it was a dial and you only had to dial five numbers in my hometown.

Adam: Wow.

Aaron: Only five numbers. You didn't have to dial like seven. And the, you know, the Maverick country store gas station, you get unlimited sizes of soda pop for 25 cents back in the day.

Adam: Wow. Back in the day.

Aaron: Back in the day.

Adam: You know, we too have started watching a bunch of 80s movies with our kids. We'll do marathons over holidays and things like that. They really like them and then also there's some where you are you look at them and you're like man That is horribly inappropriate by today's standards.

Aaron: Super, super inappropriate. And our kids are really quick at calling that stuff out. And we're just like yeah, you're right. That's how it is. And different time. Good thing you know now.

Adam: Okay, last question for you. This is a big one. How many times in a given week? Maybe this week. Have you said go ask your mother to one of the kids?

Aaron: Mostly I say that to Hawkeye, he is out of town on an adventure camp on kayaks and camping. So this week I've said it zero times, but last week I said it every other day at least.

Adam: What is an example of a reason that you would say go ask your mother?

Aaron: Anything about even screen time that doesn't have to do with social, like, Hawkeye always wants to watch his favorite shows are - have so much inappropriate stuff in them, I love it. It's 30 Rock and The Office are his favorite shows. And he will watch those things on and on, and he wants to watch them every night, and he wants too many episodes, and then, like, it'll be getting too late, and he'll come out, you know, he'll come find me, and he'll be like, can I watch, can I just watch one Office, or can I watch, and I'm like, dude I don't know, you gotta ask your mom every time.

Adam: Yep. Yep. The ultimate equalizer.

Aaron: I hate, I, I hate getting into screen time.

Adam: Yeah.

Aaron: I don't like, it's never a fun conversation. So I want my wife to have that conversation with him today and every day, apparently.

Adam: Well, on that, thank you very much, Aaron, for coming on the startup dad podcast and talking to me about your life, about your family. I learned a ton about you. This was fascinating. So I really appreciate you taking the time. Thank you.

Aaron: Thanks so much, Adam.

Adam-IntroOutro: Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Aaron Huey. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, share, and leave me a review. It'll help other people find this podcast. Startup Dad is a Fishman AF production with editing support from Tommy Heron. You can stay up to date on my other thoughts on growth, product, and parenting by subscribing to the Fishman AF newsletter at www.fishmanafnewsletter.com. Thanks for listening.

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