Getting Laid Off On Paternity Leave With Two Sets Of Twins | Aaron Francis (Dad of 4, Try Hard Studios)

[00:00:00] Aaron: I see two opposing sides online often, which is like becoming a parent is wonderful and therefore it's easy and everyone should do it. And then the other side is, becoming a parent is very hard, and you should only do it if you're a thousand percent sure.

And I feel like both of those are a little bit caricatures, and I think the reality is, there are days, there are minutes in a day, where you will go from, this is a wonderful, amazing, and this is incredibly hard, and I don't want to do it. And I think you just need to be prepared to experience all of that in a day.

[00:00:35] 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. One of the scariest things on the planet is being the sole earner for your family and losing your job. But that's exactly what happened to today's Startup Dad guest right after he welcomed a second set of twins into the world.

Today's guest is Aaron Francis. He's the co-founder of TryHard Studios, a company he started with his co-founder, Steve, after they both lost their jobs in a layoff. He's gone from accountant to developer, to making videos for developer education over the span of the last 15 years. In our conversation today, we spoke about how he and his wife navigated the loss of one of their triplets, life with two sets of twins and how they managed after he was laid off while on paternity leave.

We talked about the challenges of starting a business with newborns, how he stays present with all the pings from his online life. And how he's learned to parent each of his four kids differently, while focusing only on what truly matters at this stage of his life. We also covered some fantastic and hilarious stories, like getting caught asleep in a chair at the gym, how he built his non-traditional office space, and celebrating his most recent birthday with a solo staycation.

I hope you enjoyed today's conversation with Aaron Francis.

[00:02:08] Adam: Welcome Aaron Francis to the startup dad podcast, Aaron. I could not be more excited for this conversation. Thank you for joining me.

[00:02:18] Aaron: Of course, it's gonna be a lot of fun, I'm already taking umbrage with your Best Dad Ever sign right over your shoulder because I also have a sign like that, so we might have to duke it out, but I'm excited to be here.

[00:02:29] Adam: It turns out there can in fact be multiple best dads ever. Cause it's in the eye of the beholder, right?

[00:02:34] Aaron: It might be, yeah. So congratulations on yours, I suppose.

[00:02:37] Adam: Yes, congrats to you too um, all right, so I clearly I invited you on the show to talk about PHP frameworks

[00:02:45] Aaron: Yea, probably.

[00:02:46] Adam: Just kidding it's a parenting podcast, God damn it, so we're going to talk about being a dad. And usually I start by asking people to like, go into their professional background and kind of you know, meander around in there. We will get there eventually, but I wanted to start and ask you something slightly different because you had the very unique experience of being laid off while on paternity leave with your second set of twins.

So I just want to say that again, that's not one set of twins. That's a second set of twins. You already had one. So we're talking four kids.

[00:03:23] Aaron: It is hard to do something truly unique in the universe, but being laid off on paternity leave with your second set of twins, I might be the first one. I don't know. I might be the first one.

[00:03:35] Adam: I wouldn't wish that on anyone. So let's hope you are the first and

[00:03:36] Aaron: Nor would I!

[00:03:37] Adam: only one. My question is, how did you not have a mental breakdown when that happened? Because I'm putting myself in your shoes. I would have had a rough time.

[00:03:49] Aaron: Hidden in the question is a supposition, which I might have to challenge. Um, It was rough. It was very rough. So, at the time this is almost a full year ago at this point. So, I have survived, barely. But at the time, My wife and I had two two year olds. So they were two and a half. And we had a second set of twins.

So at that point, we had four kids under the age of three. And I was on paternity leave and got the call. I was supposed to return on a Friday. And I got the call on a Wednesday. Thank you for your service. And it was like, Oh, F. What do I do now? And it was, and continues to be incredibly difficult. It was one of those things where it's like, this is professionally the best time for me to go out on my own.

I have a business partner, but for us to go out on our own and on a personal side, it was the worst time to go out on our own. So I'm the sole breadwinner in our family. My wife works harder than me, but she gets paid nothing for it. So I'm the sole breadwinner. We had at that point four kids. We do have an au pair that lives with us because we had four kids under three.

And now, suddenly, the money, or the income, is gone. And, you know, I have Type 1 Diabetes, so healthcare, kind of an important deal. I also fortunately developed Rheumatoid Arthritis during that process. Probably due to stress and lack of sleep, and so like, the world is closing in upon us. And it was like, let's start a business.

And so it was tough. And, recently I wrote my year in review of 2024. And in there, I just like fully admitted to like putting the big kids down at 7pm And then walking out of their room and sitting at the top of the stairs and just weeping because it was like everything is on me and it is very difficult.

So how did I not have a mental breakdown? I'm not sure I didn't, but I made it through so we can maybe talk about that. Maybe that's a better line of questioning.

[00:05:45] Adam: Yeah. Well, kudos to you. And it now seems like you are, in fact, thriving, probably not crying at the top of the stairs anymore.

[00:05:55] Aaron: Not every night. That's for sure.

[00:05:57] Adam:It's not a daily occurrence anymore. And so now we can talk a bit about your new professional background. You do a lot of cool things on the internet, if I were to generalize and you know, what's funny is what you mentioned.

Most people, when they lose a job in your situation, would be desperate to find some sort of stability, right? Instead, you decided that the logical thing to do was to go start your own business, with four kids under the age of three, as the sole breadwinner of the family. Tell me about that decision process, and that should dovetail into what it is that you do today.

[00:06:39] Aaron: Sure. Yeah. So my now business partner, his name is Steve and we started a company called try hard studios. So there's some proper nouns that will help inform this discussion. So Steve and I both got laid off from the same place. So I was making video at a developer tool company and Steve was my editor.

Turns out Steve is like way overqualified to be an editor. He does literally everything and I found that out later, right? So Steve and I are working together. We've got this great working relationship. We are crushing it on metrics and videos and everything. We're bringing in all of these free users to this tool and then the company decides, oops, we don't want free users anymore.

Actually, our free tier is going away. There's no free tier. Ever at all whatsoever. And the guy that makes YouTube videos that brings in hundreds of free tier users, we maybe don't need him anymore either. And so me and Steve and the marketing team and the sales team, we all got laid off. Everybody got laid off.

Only engineers were left and it was like, shoot, could we, like, could we go play the hits at a different company? Probably. In fact, Steve and I took several joint interviews, which was a first for me because companies saw what we had done at our former company and were like, Hey, we want to keep the band together.

Y'all come play at our venue and, very flattering, very encouraging. Steve and I talked a lot about it and we thought like, Man, I don't want to play the same song again. That's boring. Like, we just crushed that, and by no fault of our own, it ended up not mattering. And I don't want to, like, I don't want to do that again.

And so, part of the calculus was, is there something that we can do to ride this momentum coming out of this company? Because I think at that point we had the goodwill of the community. People, I think, correctly, in my opinion, picked up on the fact that we were kind of wronged, because from the outside, we were crushing it.

Like, we were everywhere, our videos were doing great on YouTube, and it was a database company, so it's like the worst subject material, but we're still making it work, and so we came out of this situation. And we get the sympathy of somebody who was wronged, right? And so, we're in this position where Steve and I are taking, the next week after we got laid off, I think I had 30 or 40 calls.

And that's not because I'm like a super genius, that's because I was in a very public position, and I was putting myself out there publicly, and so people are aware of me. And so it's like an unfair advantage. To be able to do work publicly. And so we took all these calls and Steve and I kept having these calls at the end of the day, just me and him.

And we're like, man, everybody wants us to come do the same thing. They just want us to run the same playbook at their company. Do we want to do that? And the answer came back, no, like we don't want to do that. You just can't do that very many times before you become an obvious gun for hire and you lose some of your effectiveness.

But also just internally, it was like. That I don't know. I just did that. I don't want to do that again. I want a new challenge. And so we chose to chew glass and stare into the abyss and like do it on our own. And so we, we partnered up and we set out with these lofty ideas of we will be video consultants for hire.

We're very good at making video. I'm very good on camera. Steve's very good behind the scenes. We're very good together. We walked out to the market and the market said, we don't want that. Will you make videos for us? Like, congratulations on your consulting or whatever. Can you make videos for us? And it was like, Oh, geez, again, you just can't do that for very many people before you lose kind of the magic of like, I believe this thing authentically.

People are like, no, you don't, you do this for every company. And so we quickly pivoted into what our business is now, which is in house educational material. So in the past year that we've been in business, we've published two courses that I have been the instructor for and one course where we've had a guest instructor and that has been our primary source of revenue.

We've also had some YouTube sponsorships and some of the course sponsorships, but the crux of our business is we make high quality educational material and we sell it to people for US dollars. So it is a very basic business model and it has worked pretty well so far.

Adam: Yeah. And that is tech forward, like, code forward content, right?

[00:10:52] Aaron: It is. It is. So the two that I have instructed are both database courses, different flavors of databases. We also, we have a property called screencasting.com, which we're in the process of now Steve and I together revamping that property. And that is how to teach on video, how to make really high quality screencasts very quickly.

And so it's kind of a meta of like, listen, I've done a thousand of these videos, let me teach you like all of the pitfalls and how to avoid them. So we have that property as well.

[00:11:21] Adam: You're kind of like productizing your expertise in a way that can be sold to people. That's pretty cool.

when you were going through this and you're starting to figure out like, Hey, I'm going to hang up my own shingle with my buddy, Steve. What was the conversation like with your wife?

[00:11:37] Aaron: to my wife's tremendous credit she just trusts me. And so I called her that Wednesday that I got laid off and just said, I just found out that I got laid off. It's the conversation that every I am a husband. So I'll say every husband fears. I'm sure every sole bread winner fears that conversation.

But as a husband myself, every husband fears calling the wife and being like. I lost my job like I know you're counting on me and I lost my job and her first response was, it's going to be okay, we'll figure it out and it's like the enormity of relief that washes over you when the person that has entrusted themselves to you says, I believe in you is, it's, it's just impossible to quantify.

And so during this time, of course, she's, you know, helping me think through things and offering like opinions and sound advice, but she's always like, I trust you. You're going to figure this out. We will figure this out. Everything will be fine. Like, without that, there's just no chance I would have made this decision.

[00:12:45] Adam: Well, kudos to your wife for being that supportive rock. Let's talk about your family a little bit. So you have a wife. I think her name is Jen..

[00:12:53] Aaron: Jennifer. Uh huh. Yep.

[00:12:55] Adam: Got it. And you have approximately 500 children. Approximately.

Yeah. How did you and Jennifer meet each other?

[00:13:02] Aaron: So we were the wing people for our friends who did not work out. But I used to be an accountant, oddly enough. I was working at Ernst & Young, and I had a roommate who was working at a law firm. And he emailed me one day and was like, Hey, do you want to go hang out with some younger girls?

And I said, Whoops! Hang on! Back up! What are we talking about here? I said, how old are we talking? He said two years below us at Texas A& M where we all went. And I was like, Oh yeah, sure. That's fine. Two years below us. Totally cool, man. Don't send this to my work email ever again. Um, And so me and my buddy went out and he was crushing on a girl that was interning at the law firm and her roommate was Jennifer. And so we all went to A& M, but we went out together. And so me and my friend and Jennifer and her friend, they didn't work out, but I saw her and I was like, well, that is very cute girl. I think I remember her from A& M barely.

And so we started talking there and it was, you know, it's nice cause we didn't know each other in college, but we all kind of had the same friends, we have the shared past. And so yeah, we met as the wing persons for our friends.

[00:14:03] Adam: Wow. Well, I'm glad that worked out for you because it could have not if you were your friends.

[00:14:08] Aaron: It could have not. Yes, I know. It could have not. So, it worked out great and everyone else in that story is happily married, and Jennifer and I are married to each other now.

[00:14:16] Adam: Lovely. By the way, you mentioned you kind of like snuck something in there that I wanted to come back to, which is you used to be an accountant, which I think I remembered when I was doing some research on your background. So you've gone from CPA like Ernst and Young

[00:14:33] Aaron: Proper licensed CPA.

[00:14:35] Adam: To I make videos on the internet.

[00:14:38] Aaron: Anything's possible, kids.

[00:14:41] Adam: No wonder, no wonder everyone wants to be a YouTuber when they get older.

[00:14:45] Aaron: I know. I mean, I like, so I went to Texas A& M. I, you know, I live in Texas. I went to A& M. I studied accounting while I was there, and it was a delight. It was an absolute delight. The purity of it, the puzzle of it, the logic of it obviously fit into my even then programmer brain.

I was like, this is wonderful. Loved it so much. Graduated, crushed everything, went to Ernst and Young, walked in with bright eyed and bushy tailed and then sat down to do rich people's taxes all day long. And I was like, Oh, this freaking sucks. And so I made it one year, one year. And the only reason I made it one year is because they gave me $5000 for having passed the CPA exam.

And if I quit before a year, they would take it back. And I was like, you're not taking, that's a bunch of money. And so I made it one year and then I walked out the door and became a programmer because it just sucked.

[00:15:36] Adam: Never looked back. 

Aaron: No, not even once.

Adam: Now, do you do your family's taxes?

[00:15:41] Aaron: Nope. I have an accountant.

[00:15:42] Adam: Okay, good. Somebody else gets to struggle through that.

[00:15:46] Aaron: Exactly.

[00:15:47] Adam: Okay, well tell me about your and Jennifer's decision to start a family. Because your family is not that far along, so this has to have been a relatively recent ish conversation. But what was that like?

[00:16:02] Aaron: We got married relatively young based on the average, but for people coming out of Texas A& M, we got married relatively late. I mean, I was, you know, I was 25 when we got married and she was 23. So, for A& M grads were old at that point, but for the world, we're like, why are you getting married so young?

So we had this nice long period of. We're young, we're married, we actually don't want kids yet. And that was really wonderful for us. And I'm well aware that like some people desire that, but they get married super late and they can't have that. And like that would be difficult. I understand that. But we had this nice long period of, yeah, we don't need to try to have kids.

Like we're just young and we're married and none of our friends had kids yet. And so then it got into the point where I'm like, you know, I think maybe 28, 29, 30, something like that. And it's like, Oh, we should have some kids now. And she's, I think three years younger than me. And we started talking about like, all right, we want to kind of have a bigger family, maybe three, maybe four kids.

And so we were like, let's, you know, let's get started. And it was an abrupt realization that all the stories you hear about if you hold hands when you're 14, you're going to get pregnant. Those don't apply to 30 year olds, right? And so, it was very difficult for us that first time.

Like, we, we went for maybe two years of, like, of struggle. And we did end up getting some hormonal help. We didn't go full IVF, but we did get some help on the first set. And it was like, okay, you know, we can do this to hopefully, boost the odds of getting pregnant and boost it. It did.

And we, in fact, for 26 or 27 weeks, were pregnant with triplets. And so it was one shot. It was like, you know, we had, we struggled with miscarriage and then it was like, you're pregnant. It worked, by the way, there's three of them. And it was like. Oh, what are we going to do? Like we lived in a, you know, a tiny two bedroom house.

We both drove pretty small cars and it was like, well, we just got a full family in one go. And so that whole process was it was, it was, it was a rollercoaster. It was like. I'm laughing, she's crying, she's crying, I'm laughing, I'm crying, she's laughing. It's like, what, what are we gonna, how, what do we even do?

And so, even coming to terms with having triplets was very like, it was a process. Because you go from zero to three, and it's like, I can't do this, man. And then, we had a just a devastating turn where we 26 or so weeks in, we lost one of our baby girls and that is again, like just a devastating, just like you, you just, you cast forward and you dream these dreams of like what the unit is going to look like.

There's going to be three of them. And at that point, we were like, we're done because. Three is a great number and if we had a fourth, are they going to be left out? Like, no, we've got this, we've got this cohesive, incredibly tight, incredibly rare family structure, and that is like a dream that we could not have planned for.

And then it's all taken away. And it's like, guys, I didn't want three in the first place. I got to the point where I was thrilled to death about three. And now it's two? Like, what the hell is going on here? And so, that was like a huge, that was a huge struggle for both of us. Not least of all because Sweet Hannah stayed in there till delivery day. And so it's like, delivery day is incredibly complicated. Cause you're thrilled to meet your twins, but you're also dealing with the reality that it is not what it should be, you know? And so that was really hard. We had a funeral for our little daughter. Um, Because some some of the things that we believe, Jennifer and I are both Christians. Some of the things that we believe are that like the body deserves respect and like, this was a person whom we loved. And so like how do we, as her parents, God, like what are we supposed to do? I've never been a parent before and I'm already burying a child.

Like why me? And how do we like treat that with honor and reverence that it deserves, but also go home and care for babies that need us. It's like, this is not what it's supposed to feel like. And so that was very, very hard. And continues to be obviously, continues to be. And so the process after that was one of, healing from that loss, but also learning how to be parents, but also learning how to be parents to twins. Like there's two of them always. And so there is no like, Oh, mom's going to wake up the first time. Then dad's going to wake up the second time. It's like, no. There's two of them. You both got to wake up.

Somebody has got to do a bottle. Somebody has got to do a breast. There's two mouths. What are we going to do? And so that was like, it felt like we were just absolutely thrown into the deepest of deep ends. And so then the second, like after, like we had kind of gotten a little ways through that, we opened the conversation of we want to have more than two kids and we thought we were going to, what do we do now?

And just like the journey that we had been on I think. We both decided that necessitated a low key approach to future children. And so, we started before we were ready to have more kids, because we thought, we gotta take some of the pressure off. Like, let's just live for a little bit, and go ye with God, and we'll see what happens.

And, so we didn't do a freakin thing the second time. We were just like, we'll find out. Within the first month, we got pregnant and it was twins, naturally. Just like, it took us years the first time and we needed medical intervention and now it's like, right then, right there, and it's twins. And if there is a redemption arc to this, one of the things that I was so thrilled about with regards to triplets was the cohesive unit.

Nobody is left out. Everybody is a triplet or a parent. That's it. There's nobody that's like the forgotten child, right? And so when it became twins, that, that part kind of made me sad. It was like, we're probably going to have a singleton or two singletons and there's going to be the twins and the other two.

And it's like, okay, well we can't have the twins and the other one because then it's like, oh, that kind of sucks. And then just this gift of, one of the things that I, like, really prized was everybody has somebody, and we got that again. Like, we got that. We have a set of boy girl twins, and a set of boy girl twins.

Everyone has a twin, everyone has a brother, everyone has a sister, everyone has an opposite gender sibling. It's like, okay, well now we're definitely done, because I can't script anything better than this, and we've been gifted this, like, redemption of what I really wanted, which was this, like, very strange, tight knit, cohesive family.

And so, now we’re definitely done, shop's closed we've got four kids, we've got two of everything,

[00:23:30] Adam: The arc is full. Everyone's paired off. Everyone's paired off. This is good. I wanted to ask you about with your second set. You know, that's when you also, they had just been born and that's when you just started to start your company or got laid off. What was it like starting a business with brand new second set of twins at home?

[00:23:54] Aaron: Just an absolute slog. So, I have been doing things online for a long time. And so I've always had a thing here or there, like a side project, side business, whatever. But I've never properly, like, gone for it. And so, you know, at this point, the new twins are three months old, maybe, something like that we have an au pair young woman who moved from Germany to live with us, and so, not only am I, like, supporting four kids and a wife, we're also paying for basically what would be like a little sister, or a niece, to, like, live with us, so,

[00:24:26] Adam: We've had an au pair. It's like having a teenager in your house.

[00:24:29] Aaron: There you go. Yeah. So you pay for car and phone and food and then you pay him a stipend on top. And so it's like basically another adult that you're providing for. Um, it was a tough decision. I think part of what made it easier was this was like the noble path. So I could go out and say, I'm starting a company.

I could announce to the world. I'm starting a company. And then I could come back three months later and say I failed. And people would be like, Hey, good for you for trying. I felt like the opportunity cost actually flowed the other direction if I went into a company. And then three months later said, Hey, I'm actually going to leave and start a company.

Everybody would be like, Oh, kind of jerked around that company. That's kind of icky, isn't it? And so at the moment, it felt like the opportunity cost was very, very small because if even half of the companies that I interviewed with came back and were like, Hey, good job, little guy. Way to try. You can come work here.

I'd be like, Great, that's fine. And so that was a big saving grace was I don't think I'm giving up terribly much if I like give it a go for three to six months and then bomb.

[00:25:33] Adam: Yeah. And you live, you know, you live a fairly online life, right? You make videos, those videos go on the internet, you're all over Twitter. You know, that comes with a lot of pings and notifications and comments, although we know never read the comments, all hours of the day. You also get pings all hours of the day from your kids. How do you figure out how to stay present with your family when there's like this 24/7 sort of online life happening adjacent to you?

[00:26:11] Aaron: Yeah, it's, it's very hard and I'm still not terribly good at it. And had to institute some policies and devices to help me. So I have a device where it's like a physical little, it's just a little shtick, you know, it's this thing. And so it's a NFC device. And if I tap my phone on it, it locks Twitter.

It locks YouTube studio. I don't have a problem with Reddit or Instagram or like YouTube itself. I have a problem with Twitter and probably YouTube studio where I can like respond to comments and stuff. And so until I physically go back to the device and tap my phone again, I cannot access those apps.

And so that's very helpful. Like it's like realizing how much of an addict you are because you're like walking around and you're like, Oh man, I got to open Twitter and you open it. And it's like, you can't. It shows this big, you've been blocked. It's like, oh yeah, I forgot I did that. I did that to myself.

Well, let me open it again in four seconds and see if anything has changed. So that's really helpful. I try to keep pretty strict boundaries around, like, things I miss and things I don't miss. I don't miss putting the kids to bed. Like, I just don't miss it. And so, if I'm in crunch time, which much of last year was crunch time, I'll go home and put the kids to bed and then come back to the office.

Like, there are things I'm willing to sacrifice, which is like my own sleep, sometimes my own health. But like, I'm not willing to have my kids grow up without a dad because dad was busy. And so I try to draw those boundaries pretty tightly. There's also a lot of things that I just don't do, which, like, right now, I don't care about.

Like, I don't watch sports. That part doesn't bother me. That takes up a huge amount of some people's time, and I understand that they like that very much. I don't care about it, but I also don't have time for it. But that also bleeds into things that I, I would like to do. I would love to watch Severance.

I would love that. I just now is not a good time for me to watch a lot of prestige television. Like, it's just not a good time in my life to do that. I would love to play video games. I haven't played a video game in a decade, but like, I would love to have the time to just sit down and play Factorio for six hours, but like right now.

That's just not a good time in my life. And so I'm super willing to sacrifice things. I don't really care about for things that I really do care about. And on the side of things I really do care about, of course, is my family, but it's also my business. So it's not just like well, you know, I'm only going to sacrifice things for my family.

No, there are things I want to do professionally and I'm willing to sacrifice some leisure time. I work too much, but I'm willing to sacrifice some of that leisure time to get to where I think we can get, and where I want to be, and where I want my family to be. I'm willing to sacrifice Severance for that.

[00:28:51] Adam: I mean all these things are important. Like you mentioned, you would love to watch Severance. It's a great show.

Aaron: I’ve heard. It will. It will.

Adam: It will be there in five years for you to stream or 10 years or whenever 15 years, hopefully, unless we're, it's all implanted in our brain and then we just close our eyes and watch it.

Aaron: Exactly.

Adam: But it sounds like you really good about kind of compartmentalizing these things and saying these are important, but I'm going to set them over here and I'm going to not do them. These are the things that are important that I am going to do. And right now it's family and we're building your business.

[00:29:22] Aaron: I, I appreciate that characterization. I am getting better at it. I will take your,  you're very good at it, and will counter with, I am getting there. But I'm trying very hard, which I think is very important.

[00:29:32] Adam: Totally. Totally. If you could rewind the clock three ish years to before your first set of twins was born and you bumped into younger Aaron or perhaps you're commenting on his YouTube

[00:29:49] Aaron: Mm hmm.

[00:29:50] Adam: What advice would you give the younger version of yourself about becoming a dad?

[00:29:56] Aaron: I think my first instinct was like, yourself professionally to become a dad. And I think and this is obviously colored by what I've gone through. And so I would say like, build up your personal assets before you become a dad, because back then I had just an embarrassment of riches when it came to time.

I was just like. Who knows? Maybe I'll play Factorio for six hours. Maybe I'll watch Severance. I can do whatever I want and somehow it's still only 11am on a Saturday. Now, that's just like completely gone. That's just completely gone. So, on the like, prepare to become a dad professional side, I would say like, build up your portfolio of personal brand assets or personal, like, income producing assets, for sure.

On the, like soft side of, like, being a dad I actually have felt like, very prepared and qualified for that. I think some of that is what Jennifer and I went through leading up to it. I think we were very communicative and in tune with each other and on the same page and learned like how each other processes grief and how each other processes hard times.

And like, we learned a lot in that crucible of trying to get pregnant and then trying to you know, deliver these babies. And so I think that was great preparation for us. If we hadn't gone through that, I would say probably spend more time talking to your wife and figuring out like, how are we going to do this together?

How are we going to be? Yes, how are we going to be flirty and romantic and love each other, but how are we going to be teammates? Like, what's the strategy? What are you going to handle, what am I going to handle, how are we going to handle, like Uh, you think you should go to this school, I think you should go to that school, how do we figure out how we're going to, like, come to these agreements?

Because we are equal partners in these decisions, and we have to act like it. Like, I need to hear what you're saying, and you need to hear what I'm saying, and how do we get to this solution? And so I fortunately am just so grateful that Jennifer and I are very good at that, and I think a lot of that came from a lot of the hardships that we went through.

So if we hadn't gone through that, I would have said that. But for just like a just like a naive, everyman advice for somebody about to become a dad, I would say just like, don't be afraid to like, fully experience it. There are going to be times you wish that you weren't experiencing it at all, and that is okay.

Like I see two opposing sides online often, which is like becoming a parent is wonderful and therefore it's easy and everyone should do it. And then the other side is, becoming a parent is very hard, and you should only do it if you're a thousand percent sure.

And I feel like both of those are a little bit caricatures, and I think the reality is, there are days, there are minutes in a day, where you will go from, this is a wonderful, amazing, and this is incredibly hard, and I don't want to do it. And I think you just need to be prepared to experience all of that in a day.

And then also realize at the end of the day, you're going to put your kid down and you are that kid's entire world. And like, it is okay to feel a complex amount of emotions about that thing, but just remember that you hung the moon and stars in that kid's eyes. And that's your responsibility. Yes, it's going to suck.

You will sit at the top of the stairs and cry, but in the morning you're going to wake the kid up and you are the hero. And that's worth like continuing on.

[00:33:23] Adam: Can you remember a time in a day where you like went from this is the best thing ever to oh my god this is the worst thing ever.

[00:33:31] Aaron: Yeah, what day is today? Tuesday. So Monday, Sunday, Saturday, it's it's very like, yes, it's it's almost it's almost every day. They're not usually they don't vacillate that much, but every day there is a part where I'm like, this is incredible. And then there's a part usually around dinnertime where it's like, boy, can you guys just like hang on for one second?

Just like…

[00:33:52] Adam: Daddy needs a minute.

[00:33:53] Aaron: Nobody scream at each other. Like there's enough Cheerios for everybody. Just hang on a second. But yeah, there's like, times when my little girl who's three and a half will just be coloring and look up and say, I love you, daddy. And I'm like. What am I supposed to do here?

How could anything ever be better than this? And then there are times when, like, I'm trying to discipline her and we don't spank and so our tools are very few. I'm trying to discipline her and I'm getting in her face and I'm like, Amelia, you need to understand. And she thinks it's the funniest thing in the world!

And it makes me furious! I'm like, I'm trying to be serious, like, intimidating dad and I'm not gonna strike you but like you think it's hysterical and it's like, that makes my blood boil. And so, yeah, it's up and it's up and down every single day. But at the end of, the day, I walk out of that room and they always say, I love you, Daddy.

And it's like, well, can't beat it.

[00:34:46] Adam: Pretty amazing. You've won. So with four kids do you have a different parenting style that you kind of bring to each kid, or do you have to, you know, navigate each kid differently? I don't know if each set of twins is kind of very alike or different or whatever, but how do you think about that?

[00:35:03] Aaron: yeah. So for the younger two , it's more keep aliving and less parenting at this point, you know, because they're one and, you know, they've started to walk and laugh and babble. And so we're getting somewhere. But for them, it's just like, yeah, it's kind of all babies are pretty much the same.

Let's be honest. But for the older two, they're very, very different and they, actually were different the moment they came out of the womb, they were different, discreet people and their personalities have carried through to this day. So they came out of the womb and Amelia, our girl, was head strong and fierce and screamed and our boy came out and he was soft and gentle and he just whimpered and that has carried through to today.

Our girl is very headstrong and powerful and our boy is very gentle and pure and sweet. And so yeah, the parenting style is very different and each child needs encouragement in a different direction and each child needs restraint in a different direction. And so it's a matter of encouraging our boy to be brave and like don't lose your gentleness but you can stand up to your sister.

And encouraging our girl to be gentle and like don't lose your power but you can also like bring people under your wing and protect them. And so it depends on where each of them are on these different vectors. That dictates which way we need to push them, right?

And so we're going to teach our girl different things because she's naturally gifted in certain areas. And we're going to teach our boy different things because he's naturally gifted in certain areas. But we're going to teach them all, like what we believe to be, you know, pure, noble, and right in, like, behaving yourself.

And so there are some things that are common, but given their bent, there are some things that are very different.

[00:36:48] Adam: Yeah. Have you developed anything that you would describe as like a framework or a guardrail that you fall back on as a parent?

[00:36:56] Aaron: I don't know that we have any discrete homegrown frameworks at this point. I think Jennifer and I both have the privilege of being raised very well by parents that we are proud to call parents. And there are of course certain things that we were raised with that we have changed and like that is every generation, but fortunately for us, we can fall back on a lot of the ways that we were raised, which is a privilege because that is not true for everyone.

We also, like I mentioned earlier, we are church attenders, we are Bible believing Christians, and so we fall back on a lot of that, raising children in the way that they should go, and then when they're old, they won't depart from it. And so a lot of our core fundamental beliefs are informed by the way that we were raised.

Which both were raised in Christian households, the church that we attend, the Bible that we read, which is the Bible. Um, So a lot of those things kind of lay the, the bedrock foundation for like, okay directionally, which way should we be going? And then we'll figure out the specifics kind of as we go.

[00:37:55] Adam: I love that. Something to fall back on.

[00:37:57] Aaron: Yes. Very, very helpful.

[00:37:58] Adam: A baseline, a foundation. So I have found that partnership is super important when you have kids and when you have many kids and you are outnumbered, such as yourself and Jennifer but also hard to agree a hundred percent of the time.

What's an area that you and her don't necessarily agree on, or maybe you have slightly different perspectives? 

[00:38:23] Aaron: Yea I mean , we can take discipline, which I mentioned earlier. I was spanked growing up and I hold no grudges. I turned out fine. I was spanked appropriately when I, you know, directly lied to my parents or like did something they explicitly told me not to. And so growing up, I was like, yeah, people get spanked.

It's like not a big deal. Of course we entered this day and age and it's like a big hot topic. And so I go in with kind of a lukewarm. Yeah, I mean, you know, people get spanked and Jennifer comes in with a kind of a lukewarm. I don't think we're going to spank. And so that was a thing where we had to figure out like Alright, well, what do we believe?

Like, the two of us, what do we believe? Because I grew up this way, she grew up that way, they're kind of, they're close, but they're not the same, and we have to make like a binary decision. Are we going to do it, or are we not going to do it? And so, that's illustrative of like, all decisions is, what does Jennifer believe, what do I believe, where are the commonalities and if there are differences, do they matter?

And so that was the thing that came down on the spanking was I believe that I grew up being spanked and it was fine but Jennifer had very good points about like the potential damage that it could cause and the potential rupturing of trust between a parent striking a child and does the child understand that like this is for discipline out of love, not because I'm mad at you… open question.

And so I felt like our differences, she had better points and I, didn't have a lot of good points except for, eh, seems cool to me, which is like classic guy, right? And she had all these well reasoned points, and so I said, your points are better than mine. We will go, we will go with your points.

That one is pretty indicative of how we've handled a lot of it. It's like, okay, is there a disagreement here? Yes. Alright, let me hear your side. And I will say, and this is just the greatest gift. We are good faith arguers. Like, I believe that she is listening to me, and she believes that I am listening to her.

And it doesn't become a us, like against each other. It becomes, alright, we're both on the same side, staring down at a problem, and we have a different approach. Let's talk about it. And so, like, the whole, alright, what is your point of view on spanking? Is fine! I get to hear her entire point of view without like, Well actually, hold on, no, no, I had a friend!

And it's like, okay, I heard you say this. I believe this, I actually don't believe that, here's what I believe, you go now, and it goes back to her, and it's like, hey, we can figure out anything with this, and there have been times where we've like, come to an impasse and been like, I, I don't know yet, I don't know yet, we need to talk about this later.

And there have been times where we're just like totally on the same page. Like we want to send all of our kids to public school. We live in a neighborhood. We want our kids to be a part of the community here. We want to be a part of the community here. We want them to be in the world with the people. And it was like, Oh, we both agree.

Yeah. All right. Cool. Done, next. And so some of the like, those are really nice. But of course you know, even just the other day, I put Simon, our oldest boy in a car seat and he was wearing a puffy vest and Jennifer came out and it was like, he needs to take that off for the car seat. And I was like, no, he doesn't like it's a vest.

Like, who cares? What's the big deal? She said, I'm going to take that off. And I said, Okay, I disagree, but that's totally fine. It was one of those things that doesn't matter. I felt a little bit like a dummy because I was like, Ah, you know, I know I'm supposed to take off coats. I saw the vest and thought, that's not a, that's not a coat.

Whatever, I'll put them in. And then I got, you know, not reprimanded, but I think I was in the wrong and it kind of made me sour. And then I was like, you know what? Doesn't super matter. I forgot that this vest counts as a coat and should have been taken off. She was right. That's okay.

That was on Sunday going to church. I felt kind of like a dummy. And that like put me in a bad mood. And then I realized, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, Aaron, you're the one who's wrong here. Like she didn't do anything. You did the bad thing. And she of course handled it with grace, but it's one of those things where it's like every, every day or every week, there are things where it's like, eh, we don't fully agree.

Let's figure it out.

[00:42:27] Adam: Yeah. Okay. I love that. Good compromise. Okay. I have two questions for you about some stories that I read. About things you did actually maybe three, I have three stories I want you to tell

[00:42:40] Aaron: Let's cut it off at three. Cause I don't know what happens when we get further down the list

[00:42:43] Adam: The first one is, I'm fascinated by, you mentioned going to the office and you work for yourself.

And so I happen to know what you did and created as an office space, but tell me about the approach you took, cause you have a wonderful background right now. I'm sure you're in the office. I'm just curious about the approach you took to deciding it was time to have an office space and what you did to kind of set this up for yourself.

[00:43:12] Aaron: Yeah, so the foreshadowing is this is not an office. This is not a green screen. This is a real place. I'm in a real place, but it is not an office. So we're at this spot in, in history where it's maybe you know, one month into having the second set of twins, I'm still employed and I'm like, I can't work out of the house.

Like if I'm supposed to make videos, I can't do that with four kids under three because I'm either going to record during nap time, should they nap, or I'm going to record after bedtime. And like, that's no way to live. Right. And so I quickly decided, all right, I gotta get an office. Maybe the company will cover it.

And I reached out to my boss while I'm on paternity. I reached out to her and I was like, listen, this isn't gonna work. Can I get a stipend for an office space? And she was like, sure, sounds great. So we're off to a good start. I've got a stipend for an office space. I start looking around Dallas and office space is relatively expensive.

They're very proud of their office space here. But we also build, build, build here in Texas. And so there are apartment complexes everywhere, including three minutes down the road. And so I'm like, well, what the heck? Let's be a crazy guy. And I go tour an apartment and I get the cost for it. And it's like, this is actually not that much more than an office space.

It's got a kitchen. It's got a bathroom. It's got a pool that the family uses. It's got a gym downstairs. So where I am sitting right now would traditionally, traditionally be called a bedroom. However, there's no bed in here. In fact, this wall behind me does not exist. I built a false 2x4 wall that covers up the windows.

So I'm in the bedroom. There are windows that overlook the courtyard where the pool is. And I thought, what do I need windows for? I'm a computer guy. I live in a cave. And so I built a 2x4 wall, and then I built this backdrop behind me. And so this is where I do all of my like, recording. And then in the living room out there I do have a sliding glass door.

So I'll go out there and work. I have a desk out there as well. So if I need to see that the world still exists, I'll go out there and work a little bit. But, like, I have a full bathroom to myself, a full kitchen to myself, and Jennifer and the au pair and the babies, they come and use the pool, and I have a gym downstairs, and it's like, why, why doesn't everyone do this?

And it's, it's just the best thing ever. I love it so much.

[00:45:34] Adam: I think that works marginally better in Dallas than it would work, say in the San Francisco Bay area.

[00:45:39] Aaron: Ah, probably. Yeah, probably. Yeah, a little bit.

[00:45:42] Adam: Um, very cool. Also, you don't want the backlighting when you're on camera, right? Like, you know, you

[00:45:47] Aaron: This was the correct orientation for the shot, and I couldn't have a bunch of lights, especially variable light. A cloud goes by, and the whole room gets dark, and it's like, F, I gotta reshoot that video.

[00:45:57] Adam: Yeah. So the second story is on your Twitter feed, you had this hilarious post about importance of going to the gym and things like that. And then there was a photo of you asleep in a chair at the gym. So tell me how that transpired?

[00:46:16] Aaron: Yeah, so this was, we have a local YMCA that I frequent a lot, and this was maybe like a month or two after the new ones came, and so I'm just like, absolutely wrecked. I'm just devastatingly tired. And so I went to the gym. It was a Saturday. I took the big kids to the gym and dropped them off in child care, which is like, you know, I don't know what we pay for the Y it's it's like 50 a month and you get like an hour and a half of child care.

[00:46:43] Adam: Yeah, it's amazing.

[00:46:44] Aaron: It's like the best thing in the world. So we love the YMCA. So I took the kids to the Y, dropped them off, went and sat in a chair and I was like, I'm going to do, I'm going to do a little bit of work. I'm still on paternity, but I'm like, I'm going to do a little bit of writing. I sat down and I was like, nope.

And I bent over and I put my head down and fully, fully passed out, fell asleep. And so then I wake up, I'm like, Oh, that was awesome. I go get the kids. I go home. And Jennifer shows me this picture on, on her phone. When I get home, it's a picture of me asleep. And I'm like, what, how did you get that? And her sister was at the gym and saw me sleeping in the chair and took a picture and sent it to the whole family. And of course the whole family is just so kind and like, Oh, poor Aaron just really needed his sleep. And so it was just too hysterical to not tweet. So I did this like real thought leadership post about like, Hey, when things are hard, it's still really important to prioritize your health.

That's why I still went to the gym this morning. And the picture is me asleep in a chair.

[00:47:43] Adam: I love that. I love that. Also, can we talk for a second about your sister in law narking on you to the whole family, too?

[00:47:49] Aaron: I know. I know what the heck? There's actually one other time that that same sister in law was at the gym and I was again asleep in the chair and she came up and like tapped me the shoulder and it freaked me out. Like I just like woke up with a start. I'm like listen you got to leave me alone.If you see me at the gym, whether I'm sleeping or running leave me alone. 

Adam: Last story for you. I saw, I don't know if this was your most recent birthday or one recently, but I saw that you gave yourself or asked for your birthday

[00:48:24] Aaron: Yeah, gotta be careful with the who gave it, okay, but I'll get there.

[00:48:28] Adam: Yeah. So I saw that you had a solo staycation.

So two parts of that solo. And also staycation. Tell me how this plan came together.

[00:48:40] Aaron: Husbands of the pod, do not suggest for yourself that you do a solo staycation. First, to your wife. Say, hey, do you want to have a solo staycation at a fancy hotel in our town?

I'll take care of the kids. You go enjoy. That's step one. Now, to step two, my birthday. So, my birthday was, you know, a couple weeks ago, a month ago, something. My wife comes in, you know, maybe a week before that, a week before my birthday. And she's like, hey, I was thinking for your birthday, do you want to go stay at the Jewel?

Which is a fancy hotel here in Dallas. Do you want to go stay at the Jewel? And I was like, yeah, that'd be amazing. And she was like, I was thinking you could do a solo staycation. And I was like, That sounds incredible! So, it was her, it was her idea. And so I left here. So I left, I record a podcast weekly.

I recorded here on Monday morning and then I was like, I'm out of here. I'm going to the hotel. So I left, went down there at like noon, got an early check in. They gave me like, it's Monday in Dallas. There's nobody checking in, right? So it's like, sure, whatever guy. So I checked in. The concierge gave me a coupon for two drinks at the bar.

$15 drinks. I'm like, I'm the king of the world. And so, I start. In the coffee shop, I brought Calvin and Hobbes. I brought an old comic book and I sat there, drank my coffee, read Calvin and Hobbes, went upstairs, took a little nap, came down, sat at the bar, had a few cocktails, pulled out my trusty yellow legal pad and plotted how I'm going to take over the world.

Then I had dinner by myself. The waiter came up and he was like, so where are you in town from? And I was like, brother, I live here.

[00:50:17] Adam: Down the street.

[00:50:18] Aaron: Yeah. From Lake Highlands. And he was like, Oh, what, like, what are you doing here? And I said we have four kids and my wife offered this as a birthday present for me, to come and stay at this hotel.

And so he brought me a glass of whiskey for free. He's like, happy birthday. So I'm having a steak, I'm having whiskey. I've got my AirPods in and then I go up and I plug my computer into their freaking TV, plug in my AirPods. I watched Sicario two on the TV with my AirPods, fall asleep, sleep in, go get breakfast, just like.

If you're, listen, if you're a spouse listening and you've got small kids at home, this is the best thing you could gift your other spouse is just like a day off, and it was awesome.

[00:51:01] Adam: I love that. That sounds so relaxing. I'm glad you got that for yourself and happy birthday, by the way.

[00:51:06] Aaron: Yes. Thank you. I appreciate that.

[00:51:08] Adam: Okay. I have one final question for you before our lightning round, you know, a little bit more of a serious one, which is, we've talked about this.

You live a lot of your life online. Technology is like a cornerstone of your life. Your kids are still really young, maybe in many cases, still too young for technology. What do you envision as the relationship to technology or with technology that you want for your kids? Maybe this is something you and Jennifer have decided together, but as they get older, how do you think about that for them?

[00:51:42] Aaron: A lot is how I think about it. I think about it a whole lot. So as of now, our kids do not watch TV and they do not have iPads or screen time or anything like that. They're three and a half. And so it's still a relatively easy thing, I think. I mean, of course it's hard because it's like, boy, I would love for you to watch Bluey instead of just like me trying to figure out what I'm going to do with you for the next, you know, two hours.

But like, I feel like that is a profitable thing at this age. We will teach you to color, teach you to use your imagination, I will take you to the Y, I'll take you to the park. Like, that's another thing, I'm willing to sacrifice some of my comfort for what I believe is best for them. I don't know that that's objectively true, but I think right now, them not using screens is best for them.

Totally open to debate on that but that's where we've landed. So that is where we're at right now. I think moving forward, a problem, a potential pitfall of that would be becoming Luddites and raising our children in a way that leaves them unprepared for the reality of the world.

And that is not, I feel doing my duty as a parent. I need to raise them to be prepared for the world that they will encounter. Part of the problem is I didn't encounter the world that they encountered. And I'm sure our parents felt the same way about the internet. So we're kind of flying blind and I guess every generation is, but like, how do I teach my kids how to interact with an all knowing intelligence?

How do I teach them? Like. Hey, every piece of homework you ever get, you could take a picture of it and give it to a machine and it will answer it for you. I don't think that is good for them, right? So I don't think that them taking the easy way out is a good thing. I also don't think that them not learning to effectively wield the tools at their disposal is a good thing.

And so I'm gonna have to come down in the middle somewhere and say, Listen, what are the rules of the game? Like, What does your teacher say about this piece of homework? Okay, we're going to explicitly follow those rules because I think it is a good thing for you to recognize authority, understand the rules of the game, and play within the rules of that game.

On the other hand, what is reality? So I'm not going to let you cheat on your homework, but how can we use these tools so that you can come out ahead? Like, so you can like get ahead in life. And that's what, frankly, as a business owner, that's what I'm trying to do right now. I'm in the education space and there's a looming superintelligence. It's like, how much longer is this business going to be viable? I have to, as an adult, figure out how am I going to wield these tools to my advantage without betraying myself? And I think personally, this is an opinion. I think always taking the easy way out is betraying yourself.

I think in some cases it is wrong, like cheating on your homework, I think is like a, morally bankrupt thing to do, but more importantly, maybe you're short shifting yourself. You could have gone through a process where you grew and you learned and you like came out on the other side smarter and more capable and more resilient and in a better human and you decided you were going to take the shortcut.

There's nothing noble about that. And so I'm gonna have to try as they get older, Jennifer and I both, we're gonna have to try to find the balance between, there are some things that are pure and right and noble and they suck and you have to do them. And then there are some ways where you can observe the rules of the game and see what the constraints are and hack your way around it.

And say like, Yep, I understand that that's the rules, but watch this. I'm technically within the rules, but I am going to be high leverage. I am going to be a, a powerful force. And I want to teach them to have that, like, sheer force of will. Because if there's anything that's gotten me to where I am, it's sheer force of will.

It's not winning. And so how do I teach them that I'm not entirely sure yet, but I'm trying to like thread this needle between learn it all yourself and don't ever rely on the technology and also rely on the technology such that you gain an advantage, but you also don't betray your soul.

And it's like, I don't know, man. But that's kind of the balance we're trying to find.

Adam: Yeah it's, it's this balance of how do you leverage these things as tools without robbing yourself of the learning outcome, right? Or the ability to learn. So, I think, we'll check back in, in a few years and find out how you're doing on this journey.

[00:56:11] Aaron: Yeah, we'll see.

[00:56:13] Adam: Okay, well, my last question for you, Aaron, before lightning round.

If people want to follow along with your journey. Learn more about what it's like to be a dad with a hundred kids under the age of four. How can people follow along or be helpful to you?

[00:56:30] Aaron: Yeah, I think like you said, I live a lot of my life online. So Twitter, I'm AaronDFrancis, and I spend a lot of time just tweeting authentically over there. You can also find probably links to everything else at AaronFrancis. com. I have YouTube, podcasts, all that stuff, but Twitter's probably the best if not AaronFrancis.com.

[00:56:49] Adam: Well, I will send it. As many people as possible to your Twitter feed, because I certainly had a wonderful time perusing it. It was fun for me and I got some great stories for this podcast.

[00:56:58] Aaron: Yeah, I'm so glad.

[00:57:00] Adam: All right. Well, let's do lightning round, Aaron. There's only one rule for lightning round.

And that is, I ask you a question and you say the very first thing that comes to mind and we move on. It's a judgment free zone. So here we go. What is the most indispensable parenting product that you have ever purchased?

[00:57:20] Aaron: Uh, Unfortunately and embarrassingly, a minivan. Yeah, hate that for me. Hate that for me.

[00:57:25] Adam: We’ll come back to that one. We'll come back to that one. What is the most useless parenting product you've ever purchased?

[00:57:31] Aaron: Oh uh, probably a PeePee TeePee. Like, it's, you don't stand a chance. Like, come on. Just go faster.

[00:57:38] Adam: Kyle Lacey from the podcast. I had him on, I don't know, maybe 10, 20 guests ago. He would disagree with that assessment. He's a big fan of the Pee Pee Tee Pee.

[00:57:47] Aaron: Sorry, brother. It's not, it's not worth it. Sorry. 

Adam: It’s the title of that episode in fact.

Aaron: Yeah. That's a big miss, Kyle.

[00:57:56] Adam: What is your favorite book to read to your kids?

[00:58:00] Aaron: How to Be a Pirate is a book that I love to read to our girl. It's about a girl who's left out from the boys playing, and she goes to her grandpa, and her grandpa teaches her how to be a pirate. It's like, a pirate is brave! A pirate is strong! And it's just like you know, teaches girls girl power.

So that's my favorite one by far to read to our little girl. Just generally, probably Richard Scarry. There's just a million things to look at.

[00:58:22] Adam: Oh yeah. I've never heard of that pirate book. So I will link to that in the show notes.

[00:58:27] Aaron: It's great. Her grandpa has, he's like an old sailor. And so he's got these big muscles with these cool tattoos. And it's just like, if you ever, Oh man, if you have a girl and you feel like she's going to be left out or the boys are going to pick on her and just teaching her to, it's Okay. 

Adam:All right. This may only be relevant to your three and a half year old, but what is the weirdest thing that you've ever found in your kids pockets or in the washing machine?

Aaron: We haven't had too many. Just like mind blowingly weird things. We've got lots of like. You got chapstick. Like, why, why do you have chapstick all over your face? And then you, she pulls out a thing, a chapstick out of her pocket. And you're like, where did you even get, where did you get chapstick?

Why is there chapstick all over your face? And so it's, it's weird little stuff like that. Rocks, of course. Bugs, sticks, all the normal kid stuff. But the chapstick is just, she's just, I don't know if she sees her mom put it on or something. But she just loves the chapstick.

[00:59:19] Adam: Well, maybe it smells good. Who knows.

[00:59:20] Aaron: I don't know, it's so weird.

[00:59:22] Adam: Okay. True or false. There is only one correct way to load a dishwasher.

[00:59:27] Aaron: True, but we have not found it yet. There's absolutely. You know who has found it? Our au pair who's a German. She knows the correct and the most efficient way to do everything, and we're just like, Oh, how did you do that? Oh, okay. Cool.

So yeah, there's a correct way. Jennifer and I disagree on what is correct, but Jasmine, she's the one. She's got it.

[00:59:50] Adam: Okay, cool. What is your signature dad superpower?

[00:59:56] Aaron: I think I'm very imaginative, and I think my kids really enjoy that. I am not afraid to look stupid, I'm not afraid to be a silly guy, and I make up songs and dances, and I think, I think they just think I'm very, very funny, and I think that's, that's my superpowers. I'm very imaginative.

[01:00:16] Adam: I hope that continues for you well into their teenage years. We'll see.

[01:00:19] Aaron: I know, I'm in this glory phase where everything I do is funny and it's gonna just turn on me so fast.

[01:00:26] Adam: What is the crazier block of time in your house? 6am to 8am or 6pm to 8 pm?

[01:00:33] Aaron: Get real. 6pm, no 5. 30 to 7 is, it is a war zone. Yes, it is just like, everybody's at the end of their rope, everybody's hungry, everybody's tired. Everybody's got these grievances from throughout the day. Well, Simon said, but my favorite color's red. And I'm like, you both can have the same favorite color.

It's okay. There's plenty to go around. So yeah, definitely nighttime.

[01:00:58] Adam: Avoid the Francis household between the hours of 5:30 - 7 pm

[01:01:02] Aaron: Or in reverse, please come help between 5:30 - 7 PM. That would be amazing

[01:01:07] Adam: Okay. Swings or slides?

[01:01:10] Aaron: For me or for the kids?

[01:01:11] Adam: I mean, you pick.

[01:01:13] Aaron: For me swing. I love a swing, the freedom. I'm a little claustrophobic. So you get in one of those tunnel slides and it's all hot and stinky. And it's like, that's not for me. Uh, The kids like slides.

[01:01:23] Adam: Okay. What is your go to dad wardrobe?

[01:01:26] Aaron: I mean, you're looking at it. Literally, every single day, I wear a black t-shirt and black Vuari jogger pants and a pair of Nikes. That is, like, fundamentally, every video I've ever been on, it's a black t shirt, so. Yeah. 

Adam:That's your dad core outfit. That's what you got. Okay. How many parenting books do you have in your house?

Aaron: all of them.

[01:01:48] Adam: How many parenting books

have you…?

[01:01:50] Aaron: None of them.

[01:01:50] Adam: Come on, you anticipated my question.

[01:01:54] Aaron: None of I knew it. Yeah, I will say the one educational material that was indispensable for twins and probably singletons is Taking Care of Babies. The woman's name is Cara. So C. A. R. A. Taking Care of Babies and it was it. You Super helpful on like getting them to sleep through the night. All of our kids slept through the night at like two or three months old.

And so, it was crucial when you've got that many. And so, taking care of babies is good. Of the books, eh, haven't, yeah. I'm sure Jennifer's read many, but I have not. 

[01:02:26] Adam: Okay. How many baby foods have you tried and which one is your favorite?

[01:02:31] Aaron: Baby foods? Gosh, probably zero. I mean, I'm, I'm a pretty it would be pejorative to say I'm a pretty picky eater, so instead I will say I'm a very specific eater. Um, So, once we, once we reach toddlerhood, chicken nuggets, graham crackers, goldfish, I'm on board. But like, mashed peas and carrots, forget,

[01:02:53] Adam: Not for you. 

Aaron: Not going to happen.

Adam: Okay. What is your favorite kids movie?

[01:02:59] Aaron: Oh, you know, I don't have a lot to draw on here because they don't watch, they don't watch TV, so I've missed a lot of like the horrible ones. I will say one time Simon got sick and had to miss his school Christmas, like, extravaganza. And so I brought him up here to the office and we set up a projector against that wall and we watched Burl Ives like 1950 Rudolf movie and it was he had the best time he's talked about it ever since.

And so there's something about that one that holds a special place in my heart because it's like, yeah, me and buddy, like we got croissants and watched it at dad's office and that was a lot of fun.

[01:03:35] Adam: Awesome. What is the worst experience you've ever had assembling a toy or a piece of children's furniture?

[01:03:42] Aaron: Cribs. Easy. Easy, easy, easy, easy. Setting up two cribs. And the problem with cribs is like, don't mess up or you'll kill your baby! And you're like what do you mean? Like, I've never done this before! So yeah, that was awful. I actually had two, two friends come over and it still took us, like, two or three hours to set up these two cribs.

[01:04:02] Adam: Oh, wow. Okay. What nostalgic movie that is a favorite of yours can you just not wait to force your kids to watch with you?

[01:04:12] Aaron: There's just something pure and Americana about The Sandlot. Like, it's just, like, kids running around, unsupervised, getting into a little bit of trouble but not too much, having fun, making their dreams come true, like, that's the kind of thing, so Sandlot specifically, but just generally that genre of like, it almost captures the magic of like what it feels like to be young.

And that's the kind of stuff that I'm excited for them to watch.

[01:04:40] Adam: Okay. I don't know if you've taken any long road trips with the age of your kids, but have you developed any dad hacks for road trips or car trips?

[01:04:49] Aaron: You know, we flew to California once with the little one, or the now older ones when they were like one and a half or two, and our, I think our best hack is to not do that again. Yeah, that was kind of it. We kind of, that's, that's literally the last trip we took with, with kids. So no, I don't have any hacks.

[01:05:09] Adam: That's amazing. Not do it again. That's a good one. My next question was going to be, have you taken the entire family on an airplane yet? And do you have a strategy for this?

[01:05:18] Aaron: Absolutely not. No freaking way.

[01:05:21] Adam: It sounds like the strategy is never.

[01:05:23] Aaron: Yeah, so before the new twins came, Jennifer and I booked an Airbnb in Vermont to like get out of the Texas heat for like three or four weeks. It was just like, Hey, we got to get out of here. You're pregnant with twins. There's nothing to do. Let's go. And so I drove from Texas to Vermont and then Jennifer and my parents flew up to Vermont and so they had three adults against two kids and that was, that was fine.

And then they all flew back down, you know, many weeks later and I drove back down, but yeah, and no way have we taken the four kids anywhere beyond, you know, a five mile radius.

[01:06:02] Adam: That's going to be years before that happens.

[01:06:04] Aaron: Years. And I got to get a sprinter van and get it all decked out. Cause there's no way I'm putting four kids under, I don't know, eight, 10, six, whatever on an airplane.

Forget about it. No.

[01:06:14] Adam: Okay. Well, this brings me to my very last question, which you alluded to in question number one. What is the Aaron Francis take on minivans?

[01:06:26] Aaron: Devastatingly embarrassing and infinitely practical. It is, it is like if they, if they went into the lab with the charge, make the most embarrassing, most useful thing you could possibly make, the minivan comes out the other side. So we like, we have a Honda Odyssey. And the reason we got the Honda Odyssey is because they have the ability to remove the middle seat, which makes some captain's chairs, you know, in the, in the front. So captain's chairs, but the captain's chairs slide left to right. And so you can have, we're in this really weird situation where we have four kids in car seats, right? And so you put the two little ones in the captain's chairs, and then you shove one of the captain's chairs over, and big kids and big adults can climb in the back to buckle everybody in instead of having to go squeeze between like the shotgun and the the front captains like it's just never going to happen so the minivan is really embarrassing to like drive around and be like what's up y'all but it's just incredibly practical.

[01:07:31] Adam: Who is the driving force behind it's time to get a minivan?

Aaron: Both of us. Oh, listen to this. There's a woman, a YouTuber named the Car Mom and all she does is like review cars from the point of view of a mom, right? And she offers these consultations and it's like 50 bucks for a 30 minute call. And I was like, ah, absolutely. And so I bought a call with her and I got on the phone.

I was like, here's the deal. Here's what we've got. And she said, you have two options, Honda Odyssey, or if you want an SUV, the like Ford Explorer Extended Edition or whatever, and I talked to Jennifer and she's like, I'm not picking kids up and like putting them in a Ford Explorer Expedition or whatever.

And so that left the Honda Odyssey. That was it. She's like, these are your only options if you need to get to four children to physically buckle them in. These are your only two options. And so we went with the Honda Odyssey.

[01:08:23] Adam: Oh, lovely. I also recently learned a little known fact about the minivan. It also helps you when kids can't open a door and swing it into the car next to you.

[01:08:34] Aaron: Uh, I believe that.

[01:08:35] Adam: So pretty important probably as they get to be like four or five, you know, 12 like mine.

[01:08:41] Aaron: The other thing is for whatever reason, you can get everyone in the car and shut the doors and then figure it out. Right? So you can, like, if it's raining, get everybody in the car, including one adult in the back, and then we'll get everybody buckled. If you're in a park, if you're my wife and you're in a parking lot and it's a little bit scary, you can get everyone in the car, shut the door and lock it, and then you have enough room to, like, move around in there.

And so, it's just, it's like a, yeah, it's, it's, it sucks, but it's really powerful and really great.

[01:09:09] Adam: Oh, all right. Well, strong endorsement, kind of, for the minivan.

[01:09:12] Aaron: Kind of. Yeah.

[01:09:14] Adam: All right. Well, Aaron, this has been a fantastic conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time and joining me on the pod today. And I wish you and your double sets of children and your wife, Jennifer, all the best.

[01:09:29] Aaron: Thank you so much for having me, and I'm super grateful not only to be here, but that you do this for other dads and other parents to listen to. So, thanks for doing this.

[01:09:37] Adam: Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Aaron Francis. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, share, and leave me a review on Apple or Spotify. It'll help other people find this podcast. Startup Dad is a Fishman AF production with editing support from Tommy Harron.

If you're a startup founder, leader, or just want to get better at your job in tech as a growth practitioner, product manager, or executive, you can join a community of over 11, 000 subscribers and stay up to date on my thoughts on growth and product by subscribing to the Fishman AF newsletter at www.fishmanafnewsletter. com. Thanks for listening. And see you next week.

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