Leveraging FOMO to be Present and Purposeful | Michael Perry (Dad of 2, Founder and CEO, Maple)

[00:00:00] Michael: Becoming a dad has just like, it has had the most profound impact on my desire to be kind to people. because I know at the end of the day, like, you are someone's son. I could not imagine anyone ever being hard on my own kids. You know, so it's like, you get to kind of approach life through this deeper level of love which is like, I know that I'm talking to someone else's number one thing in life.

[00:00:25] Adam: Welcome to Startup Dad, the podcast where we dive deep into the lives of dads who are also leaders in the world of startups and business. I'm your host, Adam Fishman. In today's episode, I sat down with Michael Perry. Michael is a serial founder and entrepreneur. He is currently the founder and CEO of Maple, an all in one app that helps parents get organized and stay organized.

Prior to Maple, he founded Live4Fame, Giving and Kit, which he led for six years before selling to Shopify and then continuing on with them for another four. In addition to being an incredible founder, he's also a husband and the father of two kids. In our conversation today, we covered a lot of ground. We talked at length about remote work and the return to office mandate of Amazon.

The right decision making frameworks for making the best use of your time and how to leverage FOMO to be present and purposeful. Michael offered a glimpse into the life of a serial entrepreneur, founder, and present father. Something we can all strive to be. I hope you enjoy today's conversation with Michael Perry.

[00:01:42] Adam: I would like to welcome Michael Perry to the Startup Dad podcast. Michael, such a pleasure having you on the show today. Thank you for joining me.

[00:01:53] Michael: It's such an honor and I'm so excited to be here. So thank you for having me. My two favorite things, being a dad and running a startup. So I feel like startup dad was my destiny to be here with you.

[00:02:03] Adam: You are named in the show title, basically. That's what we’re…

[00:02:07] Michael: I feel like you're right.

[00:02:08] Adam: So, Michael, you are a serial entrepreneur. I don't know if you describe yourself as such, but if I look at your background, you founded a bunch of companies, exited some of them and are working on one right now, which is why I have you on the show because it just fits so nicely the intersection of all the things that I'm passionate about.

Tell uh, our listeners a little bit more about your professional background.

[00:02:37] Michael: Yeah. by the way, I think that there's a time where I would have defined myself as a serial entrepreneur. I think that, you know, I'm in a stage and season of life, where certainly that's not how I would describe myself today. I think my journey of entrepreneurship started when I was about 10.

And won't get into the nooks and crannies of that, but I knew very, very early on that I likely wanted to run my own business. I started my first software company in 2007. That company, which the name is horrific in hindsight but it was a company that was pretty ahead of its time. The company was called Liveforfame.

And this was kind of right when the iPhone came out and you know, there's the rise of web 2. 0 and we really found a really sweet niche space of which we thought that like Vimeo and Flickr kind of had like a baby which I don't know how many people on this call even know what Flickr is anymore, but this idea of creating really rich communities online with people who are incredibly passionate about photography.

And that company was incredibly cool. We ended up very ahead of its time coming up with what we call the starring system, people would star, which you can almost say in today's world is almost like a Facebook, like, or an Instagram heart star of the content that they liked the most. That content kind of worked in like a feed system and upvoted that content to the top and very quickly learned that I absolutely love building technology and very much love this idea of the scalability that building technology brought like this idea that you can build something that as someone who grew up in freaking mortar businesses build something that was used by so many people, it's just an addictive feeling. It's often when ego works in your favor is this idea that like, you can kind of remain softly humble, but you felt the rush of doing something that was touched by so many people.

So that company ended up sunsetting and for a lot of good reasons, one of which my co founder of that company went and became the very first employee at Kickstarter as their lead of design and that kind of naturally dissolved the business at that point, but it also gave me a moment to pause and reflect about, you know, what really got me excited and who did I really get excited for?

Because, you know, I think in a lot of ways, which I think parenting represents too, you is that there's a tremendous amount of selflessness and servitude that goes into building a company. And I realized quite early on that where I wanted to serve was with small business owners as somebody who came from working for my father, my uncle, my grandfather had a small business and this idea of using technology to give small businesses a better fighting chance.

And so built a company Giving, that company was riddled with problems and great ideas. The largest of which was we built a B to B to C business. And I, I I learned quite quickly that consumer might be hard, but I feel like marketplaces no one wants to talk about this idea that you have to, you have basically two customers who have two different feature sets and two different requests and two different asks.

And for a tiny company, it, we basically drowned. We signed up, that was the business focus on helping small business owners track their sales through a digital loyalty platform and built in app marketing tools to market to their top customers are the ones who like kind of abandoned visiting the business.

We scaled with like 20 universities, six, 700 small businesses in San Francisco. And as that company kind of failed and by failure, I mean the lessons that were exposed. Really doubled down on this idea that I didn't really have a tremendous amount of servitude towards consumer I had a lot of love and servitude towards small business owner. So that company wound down shut down and I started Kit. Kit and Giving came very close to it being acquired by a business. That's often not talked about what happens when your company doesn't get acquired that the strain that puts on your business became very close to an acquisition with a really big mobile payment company.

And Kit was a company that just like, I think radically changed my life after pivoting out of Giving, we started in 2013, building CRM tooling for small business owners, then became hyper focused on online businesses. No one was using our software and got incredibly lucky in a conversation with my mother about the fact that no one was using our software.

And shortly after speaking to my mom, I got a text message from my grandmother kind of giving me some words of encouragement and realize that my grandmother, who was at that time, well into her seventies had zero problems sending a text, like there's so much familiarity with that chat interface that the learning curve for that is basically zero.

So how could we layer the simplest interface over the most complex of problems, which is digital marketing for a small business owner, and built what we feel very confidently to say in today's world is the very first AI employee for small business owners. And that company was acquired in 2016 by Shopify.

And I was at Shopify for 4.5 years is the. Senior director of product and partnerships across marketing technology for some time. And so it's been a long, long run that has me for some reason in a very sick way, starting, you know, back at company number four but a very blessed chance to do something special all over again. I feel very thankful for that.

[00:08:07] Adam: And so we will talk about company number four here in a second, but I thought this was so interesting because. You know, when I invited you on the show, I knew what you were doing now. And I knew that you were a dad and I was like, oh, perfect fit. And then I, as I was looking into your background, I'm like, oh, Michael's the guy that started Kit.

I know that company. And the reason I know that company is because. We were looking at doing tools for creators when I was at Patreon, and one of the challenging things for creators, who are also small business owners…

[00:08:39] Michael: That's right.

[00:08:40] Adam: Is doing marketing to their fan base. Because one, It's a skill that they don't necessarily have two it kind of feels icky to them and three, it takes a lot of time. So they either hire somebody or whatever. But then I came across Kit when I was looking at this, cause I'm like, oh, this company is doing exactly this for small business owners. And I do think it's pretty amazing that if you fast forward, like 10 years, 10 plus years later, now the sort of chatbot interaction with like AI marketing automation is exploding, right? So like Kit was really ahead of its time, which is fascinating.

[00:09:16] Michael: Kit, Kit was wildly ahead of its time, and I think also people, you know, you've been around a long time. So you have the benefit of having a little taste of history. But I think a lot of young entrepreneurs who are in this cycle right now, which, you know, it's very quickly, you can say boom or bust or wherever it's going to be at, ultimately AI is going to play a large fabric in society. That's not avoidable at this point. I remember right after Kit was acquired in very early. And this oftentimes doesn't get talked about, but while we were at Kit, there were so many APIs that we needed Facebook to build that they did not have.

And so kudos to them. They were very receptive and they worked very closely with us and they built us a lot of technology to help us really move that business forward. But I think what we did was we exposed to them how important like bots and AI was going to be. And they eventually ended up building a bot API ecosystem, which I don't know if that eventually got sunset with Messenger or not.

But that was the first like wave of like everyone wanted to build a bot company. Everyone wanted to build like an SMS or chat interface company and that blew up and everyone forgot about it. And then the technology that has been made available by, you know, again, Facebook with Blahma or OpenAI with ChatGPT and obviously Google is doing great work with Gemini.

There's so many companies that are now, again, powering this movement. And I remind people all the time, what's been kind of a constant in my experience of building companies is very rarely do people know what problem they're solving. I think so much of company failure is the lack of the ability to articulate what problem you're solving and who you are serving, right?

Because like, I remember as you probably remember I'm guessing we're relatively close in age. Like, I remember I was one of them in 2007, like, I'm gonna build mobile. And I remember pitching people and like this idea where like if you were a mobile app, you were cutting edge. And then, you know, it was about are you building in the cloud and cloud infrastructure.

And then it was like, you know, are you building in ar? Are you building in vr? Are you building in Web3? Are you building in crypto? Are you building a bot? Are you building ai? Are you, and so we always see these like constant technology shifts, our UI changes to how we do things. And very rarely do people recognize that the technology is just a vehicle to solve a problem because the technology should continue to change and we should continue to change with it.

So much of the businesses that we got wrong in the past, we could not articulate what problem we were deeply solving. And I think that the lesson that Kit taught me was as frustrating as it was in the fundraising process and building that company, trying to convince people where the world was going.

I mean, I have now, I live in a home that I have now letters printed out in frame from people telling me that no one will ever do their marketing over text message. So the largest, some of the largest venture funds in the world who now are convinced the AI is the future told me that no one would ever message with a robot to do their marketing.

Is that like, why that company did so phenomenally well was that we like actually realized that that company had two very deep seated root problems. One problem you nailed, right? It's like small business owners, content creators, influencers, what have you. Like they either, they're super freaked out by marketing, so they know that they need to be doing it.

They don't want to be doing it. They don't know how to do it. They don't have the money at the time. It was like a bucket of reasons. And so building for them was super difficult, but the actual root root root problem was that all these platforms, Shopify, Etsy, BigCommerce, Tiktok, they had their own set of problems, which is their highest level of churn was directly connected to people not doing marketing.

[00:12:59] Adam: Right.

[00:13:00] Michael: Right. So it's like in a weird way and I think Maple continues to seek it is like, you're always trying to dig deeper in the soil. I think everyone thinks about planting seeds and then a tree comes from it. But like, what you really want to do is get down to the base of the root and you want to figure out what is really going on here.

Why are people struggling and what are you trying to do to solve this?

[00:13:22] Adam: I think that is an amazing insight and I'm going to hold onto that one. Dig deeper into the soil, get down to the root. You just alluded very briefly, you mentioned your current company, Maple, which is, this is great…

[00:13:36] Michael: I'm jumping the gun here. I don't know how, I'm zigzagging on you. I'm Sorry!

[00:13:39] Adam: No, no, no, this is organic. There's very little prep involved for those who are wondering.

But the reason that you're here, not withstanding all the other cool stuff you've done is because of the current company that you're building. And so tell me a little bit about Maple. This is a product to help parents.

[00:13:58] Michael: It is a product to help parents. And I think, you know, to kind of start back to the origin story, I think what was important and why I, again, I don't think I see myself as a serial entrepreneur or identify one in that way. Is that I think forever my life was very, very much about like, what businesses could I make, what technology could I build?

I've found a lot of identity in that. And for me, like the greatest moment of my life was becoming a dad. I think it provided like a tremendous amount of humility and focus for myself. And purpose, deep sense of purpose. But it really put me on a different course of life of like servitude, because I think my whole entire life was about helping small business owners.

And now I realize that my empathy is towards working parents. Because I think it’s so challenging to maintain a marriage. It's so challenging to maintain a healthy household. It's so challenging to maintain a career and a social life. And I found shortly after becoming a father, which maybe your audience, Maybe you resonate with is like the overlap of similarities between entrepreneurship and parenting is uncanny,

[00:15:05] Adam: Yes,

[00:15:07] Michael: It's uncanny. When I was just an entrepreneur, I was like, no one gets it. No one understands how hard this is. And so I became a parent and then I was like, oh, every parent probably actually to some degree knows how hard entrepreneurship is, right? It's like, you're constantly exhausted.

You're trying to work with somebody else on growing something, building the best product you possibly can, which is your children. You have all these new inner working relationships of like maintaining your marriage, and then also being kind of a partner in crime in terms of that capacity and the learning curve is constant.

You know, it's constant. I mean, you first haven't got a holiday or kids are, my sons are five and three, but when you first have a baby, you're like, oh, I got to keep this thing alive. And you're totally freaked out. You're totally tired. And now it's like, my son's asking me the most incredible questions about life and like dealing with, like, he's in kindergarten and he's like in his third week of school and like trying to like deal with kids not wanting to play with him,

[00:16:08] Adam: Yeah.

[00:16:09] Michael: You're learning new soft skills in such a different, beautiful way. So I became a dad while at Shopify, I had this epiphany that like my life's work and your life's work is actually exactly the same, it's the same thing. We're all here doing the same thing. We're all just trying to like, keep our species alive and well, and care for the people in our smallest circle.

That's it. That's the name of the game. And I realized while I was there, I dedicated the last, at that point, greater than a decade of my life, building tools to get small business owners a better chance, empower them to bend the curve, to make life and their business goals more accessible. And then I'm becoming a parent and everyone's like, this is your most important job.

This is your hardest job and they're struggling and they're drowning and they're exhausted and they're beat down and their marriages are suffering. And like you started going down this line and you're like, wait, how's the best thing that ever happens to you causing this like insane ripple, right? Or it's like when the best thing that ever happens to you should have some like crazy positive ripple the whole way through. Right?

[00:17:15] Adam: Yeah.

[00:17:17] Michael: I left my career for that line of thought. I jumped the ship, the corporate ship and started Maple which stands for making all parents lives easier. And, you know, to be super honest with you, Adam, I think when we first started our lens of the problem, again, we've been digging deep in that soil, you know, we've really, really have been digging super deep in that soil.

And I think without getting into the three year journey and the painful lessons that we've unearthed in the process of that digging, what we have arrived at is that in 1950, 95 percent of dads were in the workforce, 12 percent of moms were in the workforce, 20 percent of households were dual working, 10 percent of kids did extracurricular activities, right?

The home in 1950 was dad went to some job. He's going to work there for 40 years. Mom ran this shit at home. And like the kid was out front playing in the streets. That was the world. Now, ironically, 95 dads still in the workforce is now greater than 65 percent of moms are in the workforce and actually that number was significantly higher pre COVID.

COVID pulled a lot of moms home. 70 percent of households are dual working and 80 percent of kids do a structured sport, right? So like you have more people who home is no longer home base. Home is the cloud because everyone is detached from their house. They come here to sleep and eat, but this isn't where they like well and live their life.

Right? And so what we've come to realize is that when we did a survey to 1300 parents across 16 different countries, the top five things that they cited as stress as a parent chaos inside of their homes, here were three of the top five, I'm sure everyone can guess. Financial stress was in the top five.

Here are the three of the top five scheduling conflicts. Okay, miscommunication, disorganization, and anyone that's ever, you know, you're an executive, anyone that's ever worked in a large company or down to start in a small one will tell you that if the team is not operational, productivity inside of that company is in peril, right?

If there isn't good communication, If there isn't good distribution of knowledge, if there isn't good ownership and autonomy, it's very difficult to work within that company. And what our homes look like today is that mom is still operating in a 1950s structure but living in a 2024 world. That's the problem we solve.

We make sure that homes operate in a 2024 world. We have built the most meaningful platform for parents to reduce scheduling conflicts, to reduce miscommunication and to reduce household chaos. There is not a single product in the market that thinks about that working family harder or longer than the team at Maple.

[00:20:25] Adam: It's pretty amazing. I'm just thinking about those three things that you said. I've got today alone, both scheduling conflict and miscommunication happening in my household. My kids have to be two different places at the same time. And figuring out how that's going to happen.

Communication challenge. It's pretty amazing.

[00:20:46] Michael: It's nuts. It's like, what's crazy is like, I spent, when I first left Shopify, I didn't know what we were solving really. We're just like, why is this so damn hard? You know? And it's amazing to me that like, there's a certain level of dads who want to lean in and you seem to be one of those fathers and God bless you for that.

It's amazing how like when we talked in our survey and we talked to our users and we talked to the people who define themselves as parents. You know, they just want their partner to care more, to lean in more, to participate more, to understand more. And it's like, then you start asking them, well, how does your household operate?

And it all always sends back to miscommunication problems. One person is the knowledge owner of everything in the home. The other person is not proactive because of that, but they're willing to help with direction, but then that creates a relationship dynamic. And so like, I think that the baseline problem is that for some reason, every single job on earth has become more efficient and better since those statistical dates of 1950 than parenting.

[00:21:49] Adam: Yes.

[00:21:51] Michael: Every job!

[00:21:51] Adam: I have never thought of it that way, but

[00:21:53] Michael: Every single one! Name one job that has gotten harder since 1950, and you can only name one job, and that's being a parent. And being a caregiver. And so like, we have failed. I feel deeply about this. I feel passionately about this. I feel on a human level, on a man to man level, father to father level.

I think once you've unearthed a problem, you have to have a certain drive to participate in the change. And there's different degrees of that, right? Like, It could start with your own home. It can then level up to your own workplace. It can level up to how you vote, but like when we recognize that the system is flawed and broken, we have to take action.

And I feel just very fortunate and proud that from a place of entrepreneurship I've been able to corral a group of people who have like leaned into this mission and who are like fighting for like systematic change and how our households operate and like the results have been, you know, we're still very early.

The results have been fantastic.

[00:22:51] Adam: Well, I, for one, am very appreciative that this product exists, and that someone with your drive is on this mission, because that's what it's going to take. So. I wanted to ask you a bit about your family, though. You have a family. I would be shocked if you weren't a dad trying to do this because you have, you know, you're drinking the cool, you're drinking your own Kool Aid here.

So you have a partner and two kids.

How did you and your partner meet and tell me a little bit about your kids?

[00:23:21] Michael: Well, that's a crazy long story. So I'll give you a podcast version because otherwise your audience will disappear on us. But like I said, I grew up working in small family businesses. When I was 18, I went to go work for my father selling cars. Again, to make a really long story short, I had, I would like to believe what some people would define as like a midlife crisis at 20.

I was 20 years of age. My friends were all at universities doing the whole saturday football party. You know, they were living life as a 20 year old. I was working 80 hours a week selling cars. And you know, I basically just dropped out of life and moved down to this little beach town called Santa Barbara, California, where I'm actually taking this call from right now.

I met this girl who still to this day is the nicest human I've ever met in my life. From this tiny little country bumpkin town of Madison, Maine. And I think when you meet somebody, whether it's a business professional friend, like when you meet somebody that gives you a gravitational pull that you've never felt before, I think you just become like, you're wise enough to know not to let go,

and um, my wife and I have been together for 18 years. We haven't been a day apart. I think that my life has been nothing but privilege. But spending time with her on Earth has been the, one of the best parts of my human experience. I feel very lucky to have met her. I feel very lucky that she kept me around and bet on an entrepreneur car salesman and it all worked out.

So about 2017 my wife and I found out that we would not be able to naturally conceive children. And that was a very hard moment in our relationship, not in terms of us being fragmented from it, but just like, and if you think about the chapter of time on earth together, that was hard news to hear.

And we still have just like the deepest level of gratitude for the decades of research that has allowed for us to build a family through IVF. So I'm a very, very proud and very vocal IVF father because it's a hard thing that people go through. And for some reason, it's one of these things that I think has a weird, like lens of shame around it.

Like you couldn't get pregnant on your own. And so you don't want to talk about your own fertility journey but very proud the father to a son named Leander, who's five and very probably to a son named Solomon, who's three. And to be honest with you, Adam, I think my life in two kind of like two big buckets.

I think there's life before children and there's life after. And I don't know if I love the version of who I was before children. I think in hindsight, and then maybe everyone feels this way about their 20s. There was a lot of drive, a lot of ego, a lot of just characteristics that I don't deem applaudable.

But becoming a dad has just like, it has had the most profound impact on my desire to be kind to people.

[00:26:28] Adam: Yeah.

[00:26:30] Michael: You know, because I know at the end of the day, like, you are someone's son. I could not imagine anyone ever being hard on my own kids. You know, so it's like, you get to kind of approach life through this deeper level of love which is like, I know that I'm talking to someone else's number one thing in life.

So, I'm praying that someone affords my children the same love and respect and grace in a very hard world. Because could you imagine someone being poor to your children?

[00:27:05] Adam: I, you know,

[00:27:08] Michael: You'd kill a mother, you know, you just,

[00:27:10] Adam: Anytime I have observed even something remotely looking like that, it like

[00:27:15] Michael: It just crushes you,

[00:27:17] Adam: It. Yeah, it crushes me or it fires up a rage in my person. So,

[00:27:21] Michael: you know, and so it's like, it's easy to quickly look at someone like myself and be like, oh, he's a serial entrepreneur, but it's like, no, man, like, I'm the son of a waitress and a car salesman and a father of two boys, that's it.

[00:27:33] Adam: Yeah.

[00:27:34] Michael: You know, like my parents want what's best for me, I want what's best for my kids.

I hope that people treat you with love and respect based on those two sentences of truth.

[00:27:45] Adam: So you conceived through IVF and I imagine, you know, I've talked to a lot of people. We've actually talked a bit about that on this program.

[00:27:55] Michael: I like that a lot.

[00:27:56] Adam: And we've talked about fertility struggles on both sides, male fertility struggles and otherwise. For your particular journey,

[00:28:05] Michael: Mm hmm.

[00:28:06] Adam: You did this two times. Some people talk about it being a real struggle,

[00:28:10] Michael: hmm.

[00:28:11] Adam: A lot ofheartache, you a lot of work and ups and downs.

And some people are like, no, we're great right away. Just everything was smooth. So, you know, you don't have to go into excruciating detail, but for people who'd be listening and want some, you want, you don't want to feel like they're not alone in this journey. Like what was your journey like smooth sailing or a little bit more bumpy?

[00:28:35] Michael: I just had this conversation with my friend who just found out that his daughter has stage one diabetes. Heartbreaking. And he's like, you know, another curveball. And I said, you know what? I've come to realize that life is a bunch of curveball moments and how you respond to them. That's kind of life in the end, isn't it?

It's like a bunch of shit's kind of getting thrown your way and you kind of choose how to handle that. You know, my wife and I sat across from the doctor's table and he shared that my wife was likely not going to be able to get pregnant. And I remember crying, my wife crying, you know, the whole car ride home and just like feeling like our world was just like, shattering, you know?

And like, yeah, we had some missteps, not every single, to the people who are listening, I think that when you hear news like that, and then you have a miscarriage kind of right after that you start feeling very dark and very hopeless and finding the light becomes harder to see. You know, you're just like, fuck, nothing's going to go right now.

It's all these curve and, you know, credits to my wife because I actually didn't have the emotional strength to keep going. And she's the one who actually had to endure the pain, both physically and emotionally.

[00:29:52] Adam: Mhm.

[00:29:53] Michael: She had the strength to keep going. She had the strength to respond to the curve ball. She had the restraint to keep going up and swinging the bat.

I have the utmost, like, I'm in debt for life because my wife, on the back of her own pain, gave me the two greatest moments of joy I will ever experience the rest of my life. Having children is the crescendo. It will not get better. It can't get better. I remember every detail of my sons being born. If I died tomorrow, I lived a full life.

The sadness would be not seeing them become who they can become. But like, I've experienced it. Like the mountain of joy and the valley of sadness. And I just think that people have to sometimes slow down to see the pitch. You know, we're quick to walk away from the plate. We're quick to swing. And sometimes you just got to slow down, understand that everyone's being dealt hard balls, everyone's being dealt tough pitches, everyone, and in this case, unfortunately, You're getting a really, really, really, really tough go at it in terms of building a family. It's just, that's just unfortunately the way that the universe has issued you some form of truth.

I would say, just don't give up on your dreams and all aspects of life and that the universe is not working against you.

I firmly believe the universe is not working against you because as a result of that, as a result of our IVF, not only do I have two amazing sons, but you know, my wife and I have taken a philanthropic course of life to, like, give to furthering IVF research and been able to put us in a position to be a part of an IVF community and extend our home to dinners and these kind of conversations with people who are going through it and given us a chance to go build a company like Maple and I think if all things go well and everything continues to unfold, our life would be, you know, in a lot of ways dedicated to family development, you know, and so like the universe unfortunately selected us to go through something challenging, because I'd like to believe that the universe knew that we were capable of doing something great with that moment. And I think for anyone that's going through IVF or choosing adoption or choosing surrogacy, and they're not getting to build a family in the traditional sense.

There's something there for you to grow from. There's something there that's working in your favor. And you sometimes have to just be patient to look backwards at life to know that that's why that moment happened. Maple as a company does not exist today, for sure, without our IVF of journey

[00:32:28] Adam: Yeah.

[00:32:30] Michael: Does not happen. And now maple is helping 100, 000 families, right?

I'm not trying to necessarily directly tie those two things together But like it brings some comfort to me to know that we needed to go through what we need to go through to better our own life.

[00:32:48] Adam: Yeah. You mentioned that you remember every aspect of your kids being born in their

[00:32:55] Michael: Mm

[00:32:56] Adam: earliest days. What is a, just a super fond or scary or otherwise memory that you have after becoming a dad, maybe for the first time. And then the second time I'm curious what sticks in your head?

[00:33:12] Michael: I remember the drive home, like my, just like hand sweating, so nervous. Like, did I put them in the car seat correct. just, you know, praying that you get home basically, you know, just praying you get home and having just such nervous energy about, you know, bringing them home to my dogs at the time, may they both rest in peace.

And like, you know, I just remember like that initial like reentry back home being met with just so much nerves. I remember, listen, I remember holding my son for the very first time, you know, right around the time my wife and I found out that we're going to have a child, I was, in a lot of ways at the height of my career, I made a shit ton of money. I had gone from being a kid who grew up dirt, fucking poor, nothing climbing out of the gutter of life, clawing my way through the hardest of conditions to build a company on living on food stamps, being evicted almost every 60 days from my apartment and winning every stupid award that you thought mattered.

Every stupid title that you thought mattered and standing in my, my hotel room in Montreal, thinking there is no way that this is it. I feel so hollow, I feel so unaccomplished, like there has to be something greater to life. And I remember like it was yesterday, holding my son at 4 o'clock in the morning, and just feeling like every ounce of air I've been sucked out of the room, and feeling 100 percent confident for the first time in my entire life who I was.

I wasn't just some poor kid from Alameda, California who became self made. I wasn't some technology bro. I wasn't so I was none of these things, these communities that I never was able to tie myself into the feeling of completeness, the feeling of like identifying with who I am, like was met in that moment, I don't think it will ever be replaced.

I think my first son deeply gave me that. And my second son gave me a different relationship with time because my first son helped me kind of understand that like, oh, this is going to go fast. You know, I remember I'm sure you have kids. You remember we put them on your on your chest, right?

[00:35:43] Adam: I have those pictures still. 

[00:35:46] Michael: You know, the first week it's like this and then it's like this, you know, I remember my first son laying on my chest and like I remember his.

I had come home from work and his feet hitting my belt. And I remember just being like, oh man, that didn't take long. You know, and my second son, I went into it and I constantly almost feel bad about it. I'm constantly trying to be like, how can I be more present right now with this little boy?

I really think that my first son gave me the gift of purpose. And my second son gave me the gift of presence. And I savor literally every single day in such a ridiculously deep way you have no idea. Like, I literally don't take five seconds for granted because, A, I don't know when I'm checking off.

I feel like I've lived a very blessed life. The universe owes me nothing left. And I just am gonna miss this. I know for a fact, I'm gonna miss this era so much

[00:36:50] Adam: One of the things you mentioned in some of our prep was this idea of FOMO being a motivating factor and helping you to be present and purposeful. Is that what you're talking about? Is this idea that like, I'm going to miss out on these kids?

[00:37:07] Michael: 100%. FOMO makes me present, you I got up this morning, I was having a rough morning with work, building a company is awful, building a company with small children is.

[00:37:16] Adam: You're building a company. One, you're building a company and you have small children. You're

[00:37:23] Michael: Oh my God.

[00:37:24] Adam: For people with small children.

[00:37:27] Michael: It's the iron man of life. But, you know, I was sitting here at my desk and, you know, I said, you know, I'm not missing this morning. I'm walking my son to school today. I'm not missing this anymore. You know, and him and I got to walk to school, my five year old and I walked to school and I held his hand and he was telling me about what he was excited about for the day.

And like, you know, I think that when you're in your twenties or even maybe in your 30s, just depending on who you are. There's so much fear of missing out on the party or missing out on, you know what? No one has laid on a fucking deathbed and missed out on a party.

[00:38:02] Adam: Right.

[00:38:03] Michael: FOMO, FOMO is missing out on your kid's first steps. FOMO is missing out on your kid's first words. FOMO is missing out on the life moments that you will regret for the rest of your life, at the end of your life, that you did not get to see. You know, I think that people have this very negative FOMO is an important thing to talk about. I talk about every single day I'm going to miss.

I'm missing life moments with my children. And when I'm experiencing them, they have to be the center of gravity. Get off of your phone. Stop looking at Instagram when you're in front of your children. You know, don't worry about Slack for 30 minutes. Don't look at email. The most important pieces of your life, the things that you would be calling and begging for the universe to give you five more minutes with, are in front of you, giving you undivided attention right now. Yesterday I was sitting at my desk. My son came into my office, my three year old. And ask me if I go play hot wheels with him. I have made the mistake in the past of saying daddy can't, but you know what? Carving out 10 minutes of my day to get up and walk into my son's room is a divine privilege that I get to work from home

[00:39:32] Adam: Yeah.

[00:39:32] Michael: and that I don't actually have to miss out on a 10 minute session with my son.

To play Hot Wheels and play with his firetruck. At the end of my life, I can guarantee you one thing. I'll get so many things wrong. You're going to get a lot of things wrong. I'm probably going to build companies that fail. I'm going to build some that succeed. I'm not going to be thinking of any of that shit.

I won't be thinking about Kit. I won't be thinking about Maple. I'm going to be thinking about when my son was three, did I get away from the desk to go play Hot Wheels? Not did I miss the white party in the Hamptons. I don't give a fuck about the white party in the Hamptons.

[00:40:08] Adam: The white party in the Hamptons.

[00:40:11] Michael: You know what I mean though?

[00:40:12] Adam: Yeah. I know, know exactly what you mean.

[00:40:14] Michael: I think that people need to lean into that.

[00:40:17] Adam: Yea and obviously you're at your house and you just mentioned, hey, I can go play hot wheels just for 10 minutes. That's all it takes 10 minutes with my three year old. Three year olds don't have an attention span much longer than 10 minutes

[00:40:28] Michael: That was it. He was done. He was like, on to the next one. Yeah. Yeah. That's it.

[00:40:32] Adam: But you mentioned remote work, your home, you're building your company from your house. So I wanted to talk about that for a second, because. This week in particular. Now these podcasts are supposed to be evergreen, of course, but

this week, Amazon just announced that they're going to mandate a five day a week return to office policy.

So like they're probably the first one, the first of the bigs saying this, and there may be other dominoes that fall. Now you could argue that Amazon is doing this maybe to trim some employees,

[00:41:07] Michael: That's the conspiracy theory.

[00:41:08] Adam: Get that stock price up a little bit. It's been lagging. You know, still a 2 trillion company, but hey, I guess you're generally right.

But I wanted to ask you about your philosophy on the role of remote work and know, every company probably needs to do something a little bit different, but like, does that Amazon news, I don't know, ruffle your feathers or make you feel a certain way?

[00:41:33] Michael: It's incredibly disappointing. You know, I think that as a society, America specifically, we have done a great disservice to parents. That's just like baseline, right? We don't offer the right care to parents. We don't offer the right support at a governmental level. I mean, God forbid a mother breastfeed her child in a park, you know, in some cities, she might get a fine.

Like we've done a terrible job of allowing people to do their life's work because America is built on capitalism. We are a country where somebody can grow up where I grew up, to a waitress and a car salesman that had them at 20 and produce a child that can reach different economic heights. The whole country is built on this premise. Right?

There are countries where like, if you are born poor, you will die poor. If you're born rich, you'll die rich. But like, they have better policies for families, right? And we haven't been able to figure this out. I think that if you can do every aspect of your life from your phone, then you should be able to do every aspect of your life from your phone.

I can call my doctor right now and get a medical visit in 30 seconds from my phone. And I don't have to get in the car and go to a doctor's office. I can check in with my friends via mobile. I can order dinner, breakfast, lunch. I can book dinner reservations. I can do my entire Christmas shopping from my desk.

I can have telecom companies around the world for my desk. As a matter of fact, I raised five and a half million dollars from this desk. I hired over 10 people from this desk. So don't tell me that it's not possible. As a matter of fact, we discussed them being a 2 trillion company. Go back and look at what they were after the dip, the COVID dip COVID pooled tech sector back, had nothing to do with infrastructure.

Sure. And go look at the rise over the last 18 months. There's been a recovery. Look at the profit margins. They're having record breaking quarters.

[00:43:26] Adam: Mhm.

[00:43:27] Michael: Shopify is completely remote. It just had its best quarter ever. Right. Nike's in person. How's Nike stock doing? Their CEO just stepped down.

[00:43:36] Adam: Yep.

[00:43:37] Michael: Right. So like, I don't buy it. I think that like my personal philosophical belief is this. I'm not attending a single one of my employees' funerals. They're not attending mine. My children will be attending my funeral. My wife will be hopefully attending. I pray to God that the universe allows me to escape the pain of saying goodbye.

Right? And so I think like, again, about this decision making framework of FOMO, I believe in a leadership framework, which is You have to do more than your teeth. You set the watermark. So I would pray if the Amazon CEO is forcing people into an office five days a week, then he should go to the person that makes the least amount of money in that company that he's forcing into the office.

Find out if they have a man, find out if they have paid help, find out if they're using car services or private planes to get around, right? You should be living the life. of the smallest person on the team, right? I do not make any exception to that rule. Now, I'm not talking about the size of his home, his wealth, I'm talking about the working conditions. Which I am, this is going to be my, after this podcast, I'm going to pick up my son from school and I'm going to take him to skateboarding practice because I can miss a retro with my team in order to be there for my son. I can, and I'm guaranteeing you this individual, I don't even know his name.

I am guaranteeing you pretty heavily guaranteeing you he's got a lot of hired help.

[00:45:20] Adam: Yeah.

[00:45:22] Michael: So it's really easy for somebody who's not having to be the primary caregiver at home, for somebody who's not having to live paycheck to paycheck. For someone who probably has never been to the grocery store in the last five years to say, oh yeah, everyone come back to the fucking office, too bad, so sad.

[00:45:38] Adam: Yeah.

[00:45:39] Michael: That's the problem with the world, man. The problem with the world is we make decisions based on our world, versus making decisions based on the average person's world. And so the average never gets to go up, right? There's no empathy in that decision. There's no relatability in that decision. He cares about his shareholders.

Fine. How about caring about your staff? You know, it's insane to me. I'm very disappointed by it. But again, I take the longstanding belief that every company has to make decisions based on what they believe is best for the company to survive and to succeed. He must believe that forcing everyone back in the office is the most important thing for Amazon to survive and succeed.

And he has a fiduciary responsibility to make those decisions. I just fundamentally do not believe that is the way to operate.

[00:46:30] Adam: Well, I appreciate that perspective. And I think there's a lot of people that will listen to this show that will share that perspective. So it's good to hear it.

[00:46:37] Michael: Again, I hate to sound like a broken record and beaten drum. It's just like, we can be efficient and empathetic. You know, it's not an, it's not an or, it's an and. Do both.

[00:46:51] Adam: I wanted to ask you, cause one of the things I'm always fascinated by, and you seem like you've got a pretty good handle on this is, you know, life is a founder and a dad can be hectic, we've established that throughout this entire episode.

[00:47:05] Michael: Yeah.

[00:47:06] Adam: But there are ways to think about how to make the best use of your time.

Do you have any decision making frameworks or kind of approaches for thinking about like the best use of time?

[00:47:19] Michael: I do. I mean, I think I'm someone who like, used to very much struggle with this. It always be very pendulum swinging, right? I was too much of one thing and I wanted to be, you know, everybody's everything. And I think that like that's a very quick recipe to drown. What it came down to me was I established three things that I was unwilling to abandon.

Number one thing was if there was an opportunity that presented itself, a time commitment that presented itself. Is it bettering my relationship with my children or is it bettering my relationship with my wife? Is it net positive for my family? If that time opportunity or that opportunity cost did not meet a yes, then the question goes to the second bucket.

Is this opportunity bettering my business? Is it bettering Maple's chances of success? Is it bettering my ability to be a better leader? The answer is no. Then it goes to the third and final bucket, which is this making me physically, emotionally, or mentally stronger? Is me spending time with this person, at this event, at this dinner, however you want to frame it, is this use of time, which is now taking away from my business and taking away from my family, is this use of time going to better me?

And if that answer is no, then I just always say no. I always say there's not a fourth bucket. There's not a social life bucket. There's not, it's there's no other buckets. It's, is this helping my family? Is this helping my business or is this helping myself? And I think establishing those three things, maybe four, maybe two, but whatever the things are that you just know for a fact, back on your deathbed, you're like, you look backwards.

You're like, I did everything I could. If Maple fails, I can say I tried my very hardest. I will not be a bad dad. I will not be a bad husband. And so, a lot of ways, I work right to left and from my family being my top priority and myself being my, the least of my time investment on where I'm willing to continue to trim, you know, there's been some very hard mental touch stretches where I've gone too far, not investing in myself.

And then I got to be more intentional about trying to get myself back on the horse. But I really don't have the bandwidth to be good at anything outside of those three buckets. I just can't.

[00:49:46] Adam: And there's nothing else. That's where you draw the line.

[00:49:49] Michael: There's always going to be outlier moments, right? There's going to be moments where you have to put your company before your family. You have to put your company before yourself or yourself before the other two. The way that I've always been able to create the priority for me, at least, is like, if I'm just given the opportunity to choose to save one, which one am I choosing? Maybe this is the difference between me and the Amazon founder. I'm always choosing my family.

[00:50:15] Adam: Yeah.

[00:50:16] Michael: No matter what. No matter fucking what, right? Family is number one for me. It will never not be number one for me. I'll let everything else fall apart. I'm never going to let my family fall apart.

And so, I think knowing and being conscious and being accepting of whatever that answer is. If your business is number one, there's nothing wrong with that as long as you want to live with that.

[00:50:35] Adam: Right.

[00:50:36] Michael: Right? Those answers should be private and they should be guilt free. But there should be a guiding light so that you can stomach and understand the prioritization and the decisions that you're making around those three things.

[00:50:50] Adam: So I want to ask you two relationship questions, very different ones. The first is you mentioned that your wife is like the kindest person that you know. Which is very helpful. Because one of the things I've found. Not that I've nailed this 100 percent of the time, or any of us have, but partnership is super important when you have kids.

Like it's important building a company. It's definitely important building a family. All that being said, I wanted to ask you, is there, this can be a little tongue in cheek. Is there an area of parenting or something with the kids that you do not see eye to eye on?

[00:51:29] Michael: Oh man. That's a tough question. I have to be honest. I'm always just honest. This might get me in trouble. I have to be honest. I'm dreading answering this, but I've always taken the case. I'm going to be honest. And this may be a really unpopular response. So raising two boys is interesting. What are you, what are your kids, boys or girls? Or a mix?

[00:51:51] Adam: I have one of each, a nine year old boy and an almost 12 year old daughter.

[00:51:55] Michael: So you may have a very different take on this, given that you have a daughter. So, I'm hard on my sons.

[00:52:04] Adam: Mm hmm.

[00:52:05] Michael: And I'm hard on my sons for two reasons. One is,

I believe it's my job to give them the skills that they need to, to navigate life, but also to replace me,

[00:52:18] Adam: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

[00:52:19] Michael: right? I'm training my replacements. Like that's the way I approach it. Like I want to give everything I can to transfer knowledge to my sons. To be there for them, and I want to lead by, you know, good example, I want to go to the skateboarding practices, I want to do the dishes in the house, I want to cook the meals, and I expect that they, too, someday, as they become in with their life partners, and I hope that they would choose to have a family, but if they don't, that they, too would continue to invest in bettering the next generation, right?

The second thing that I find myself being very hard on them about. Is understanding their world and how badly oftentimes people in their position become, right? My sons are both very fair skinned. They're lighter than I am. They're blonde hair, blue eye, very white skin growing up in a very privileged town with a lot of resources.

And men in these positions oftentimes don't help move society forward. They very much are used to things going their way and they live a life of very divine privilege. And that's just not the type of men I want to raise, right? I want my sons to realize that their world is uniquely special because it's theirs, that their world is going to be easier than most people's worlds, and that they have to live a life of extreme empathy and to try to help raise that average up, right?

They can't go hide and force people to do things because their life is easy and they want a particular outcome. They have to participate as men. And leveling playing fields and rising the average. That's what makes great men. That's what makes great people for that matter. Men and women. But like when you make the lift and the effort to raise the average for everybody else.

And so, you know, my wife believes in that deeply as well. But I think that I'm probably a bit harder on them than she is.

[00:54:11] Adam: Mm hmm.

[00:54:13] Michael: Because I know what it's like to be a white man in this country.

[00:54:16] Adam: Yeah. 

[00:54:17] Michael: And I know I'm not going to fail my son in terms of the type of men I want to make. And those are her babies. Right. So like, we're probably, you know, I would say my wife and I, Alex and I are uniquely coupled as a pair.

We're a true partnership. We are truly co founders of life. We're not husband and wife. We co found life together. But every partnership has its yin and yang, its strength and weakness. Right. And like, My co founder of maple and I have been co founders through four companies and over 20 years, we too handle things differently for the net betterment of the business. So like, we're supposed to be doing things slightly different, but I would have to say if there's one spot where, you know, there's a yin yang moment, that would probably be the most glaring spot.

[00:55:01] Adam: alright. That's a good one. And I'd like the way that you shared that. Thank you. Okay. My second question on relationships, this is different.

You, aside from car sales have built a huge part of your career around technology, right? We talked about this. Like there's a reason building software is fun. What is the relationship that you want your kids to have with technology as they get older?

[00:55:31] Michael: Man, that is a complicated one.

[00:55:35] Adam: We don't ask the easy questions here on Startup Dad.

[00:55:39] Michael: No, that might be the harder question someone's ever asked me. And I talk about it a lot privately at dinner tables. I struggle with that.

[00:55:53] Adam: Why?

[00:55:54] Michael: That’s probably actually, that's probably actually the thing I struggle with the most, to be honest with you. Like dead, dead serious. It is the number one thing I struggle with because I have a deep love, like a genuine love for technology. I love building things. I love working in products. I love where the world is at and sometimes very deeply hate where the world is going. And I read a quote recently, which I think about often, which is the moment you hand your child a cell phone is the moment you end your child's childhood. Um, and I think that beyond like the rise of cyber bullying and all these other things, I love technology when it makes us, there's a certain line of efficiency that we need. You know, where like, it allows for us to be efficient, but still be purposeful. There's a lot of things being built, or I very much question if we're going way too far beyond that line.

And does it make us unnecessarily lazy? We'll start turning parts of our brain off in a new form of evolution because we've outsourced so much of the thinking to other pieces. You know, I can probably spend an entire hour discussing my own just general concerns with where technology is going in terms of its the fabric of society that it's manipulating. And so I want my kids to say the fuck away from technology,

[00:57:13] Adam: Mm

[00:57:14] Michael: Like full stop. I'm sorry if I'm using poor language on your show.

[00:57:18] Adam: We're an explicit language podcast, it's totally fine.

[00:57:21] Michael: I want my children to be educated and treat technology probably more aligned with cigarettes. And they can choose if they'd like to at a particular point in time outside of my control to smoke. But I hope that there's a tremendous amount of education between now and then about the harmfulness of tobacco. And given a lack of exposure to that too early on, there may not be an opportunity for them to make a good decision.

And so we will be a cell phone free home for our children. I've told my son that he can get a cell phone who's five because he asks, which is crazy. When he decides that he wants to start joining the workforce. Because it should be a tool for your job. It's not a tool to entertain yourself. There's a bike and a street and a beach and a tree and a ball and chalk.

And there's plenty of other things to do with your mind. So generally speaking, I hope you go as long as possible. And I think that creating a good vitamin stand when you need a phone to call me to pick you up from work. Should probably delay that for a pretty long period of time. But I think that what we're doing to kids.

In some ways is just not even fair, you know, like I know that the earlier you have access to it, the earlier you're comfortable with it and the better you're going to be with it. Then a smarter amount, but it's also like, you know what, you get to be little for a little bit and you get to be big for fucking ever,

[00:58:59] Adam: I love that. That I, yes, yes you do.

[00:59:03] Michael: You know, it's like the phone's going to be there. The desk is going to be there. The job is going to be there. Life is going to be waiting for you there. Why are you racing? Why are you abusing time? My son said to me today, I can't wait to be in 5th grade. I walked him to school. Random number, I don't know why he said, I can't wait to be in 5th grade.

And I said, son, it's gonna be here before you know it, but don't waste a second of what you got right now.

[00:59:30] Adam: Yeah. Oh, kindergarten is so fun.

[00:59:32] Michael: So epic! I'm like, dude, dude, I'm like, you can color right now all day and make beaded bracelets and like play tag at 5th grade, you're gonna be doing like math homework and history and, you know what I'm saying?

So like that same line of thought is when you're in fifth grade, you're going to be saying to them, you know what? That job is, Slack will be waiting for you. Someone is going to force that shit on me. So I guess when you're in eighth grade, also enjoyed getting an eighth grade. And when you're 15, you know, a man go on dates, go have the butterflies in your stomach to look somebody in the eye and go for that first kiss. Go be nervous around people. Go feel, you know, listen, I don't know how much time I got left. I'm going to tell you my last closing thought because I thought you and I know each other though.

I'm absurdly greedy for one, one thing in life. And I hope my sons acquire the same greed. I am super greedy to experience life. And the one thing that I've learned at this age is that if you are greedy to experience life, that means you also have to be prepared for a tremendous amount of pain. You have to be prepared for a lot of sadness, a lot of heartbreak, because the only way you can feel the fucking highs of life, the love, the joy, all of that stuff is that you have that counter feeling of what the other thing feels like.

I don't want my kids to go miss out on life because they're hiding behind a screen. You have to like that first kiss does not feel as good without the butterflies.

[01:01:06] Adam: hmm.

[01:01:07] Michael: You know what I'm saying? Those first moments don't feel as good without the nervous interaction before. The walking off stage after speaking to 500 people, it doesn't feel like an accomplishment until you felt like you're going to throw up 30 seconds before you went out, right?

The success of kicking your first goal doesn't come without missing a lot of shots. Selling your first company doesn't feel good without shutting two down before it. Finding the love of your life doesn't come without having your first heartbreak,

[01:01:35] Adam: Mm hmm.

[01:01:36] Michael: Right? And so like, I just feel like the one thing I feel like, and I've experienced the highs of technology, I've experienced the depth of technology, is that there's a lot of upside.

It doesn't really serve a lot of the real life downside. You get, you deal with some cyber bullying, but like it's an extreme dark world, right? It's a dangerous dark world, the downside for kids, but like the exchange of losing sunlight for blue light is just not worth it.

[01:02:05] Adam: Mm. Yeah.

[01:02:08] Michael: So you're asking a technologist how he feels about technology for his kids, but I'm like, don't choose this life.

[01:02:13] Adam: Yeah. Yep. You may not be surprised to know a lot of people share your similar sentiment on this pod, especially so with that, how can people follow along or be helpful to you on your journey?

[01:02:31] Michael: Honestly, if people download Maple and tell me why they hate it, that would be the number one way that someone can be helpful to me right now is that, I take time away from my children to work for some of the listeners of this podcast. And, if they can just email me, Michael@growmaple. com. Or if there's things that they love that we need to go further on.

You know, like I, I'm desperate to know how I can be better for parents. So that, that would be the way, way that somebody can help me.

[01:03:03] Adam: Alright. Well, we will link to Maple in the show notes. And I'm sure you'll get a couple emails.

[01:03:11] Michael: Blessings. I appreciate that.

[01:03:12] Adam: Before you go to take your son to skateboarding practice,

it's time for the lightning round. Here's how the lightning round works. I ask you a question. You say the first thing that comes to mind as quickly as possible.

And then we move on. No judgment, lots of laughs, zero judgment. All right, here we go. What is the most indispensable parenting product that you have ever purchased?

[01:03:40] Michael: A helmet.

[01:03:41] Adam: What is the most useless parenting product that you've ever purchased?

[01:03:45] Michael: a snoo probably.

[01:03:48] Adam: The ideal day with my kids involves this one activity.

[01:03:53] Michael: Laughter

[01:03:54] Adam: Best time in your household, 6am to 8am or 6pm to 8pm.

[01:03:59] Michael: 6 pm to 8pm.

[01:04:01] Adam: Okay. Which one of your kids is your favorite?

[01:04:04] Michael: No, neither. No, does someone actually answer that? Do people answer that? 

[01:04:08] Adam: Usually people say the dog. What is the most frustrating thing that has ever happened to you as a dad?

[01:04:14] Michael: Being treated as like a, like, like, like my wife is the only parent in the room. Okay.

[01:04:21] Adam: Ah, I know that feeling.

[01:04:23] Michael: For sure. Like, or you just like, you're just a dad. Like, mom is the caregiver. Like, you know, there's something about, for some reason, men are very discredited in the roles at home.

[01:04:32] Adam: What is your go to dad wardrobe?

[01:04:36] Michael: Probably a pair of swim trunks. And I mean, I live in Santa Barbara, so there's a lot of time in pools and oceans, so. You know, quick, dry shorts.

[01:04:44] Adam: Okay. How many parenting books do you have in your house?

[01:04:48] Michael: A lot.

[01:04:48] Adam: How many parenting books? Have you read cover to cover?

[01:04:52] Michael: Zero for sure zero.

[01:04:54] Adam: Favorite ages for your kids thus far.

[01:04:57] Michael: Right now.

[01:04:58] Adam: What is your least favorite age?

[01:05:00] Michael: There's never been one.

[01:05:01] Adam: Okay, how many dad jokes do you tell on average in a given day?

[01:05:06] Michael: Not a lot. I'm not a big dad joke person.

[01:05:08] Adam: Hey, this may not apply to you just yet, but what is the most embarrassing thing that you've ever done in front of your kids?

[01:05:14] Michael: I mean, honestly, the only thing that I can think of, which is not, it wasn't embarrassing to me, but I embarrassed them. And this is actually more of a heartbreaking moment. I'm sure people have felt this. My son and somehow in the process of becoming a kindergarten, no longer wants me to kiss him goodbye.

[01:05:28] Adam: Okay. Okay.

[01:05:30] Michael: Like, it's like I go in for a kiss and it's like a, you're kind of like dodging a little bit. So I feel like I, I told my wife I'm officially embarrassing our children in front of this classmate. So that has to be it.

[01:05:40] Adam: All right. Have you ever secretly thrown away a piece of your kid's artwork?

[01:05:45] Michael: Oh my God. Yeah, a hundred percent.

[01:05:46] Adam: What is the most absurd thing that one of your kids has ever asked you to buy for them?

[01:05:51] Michael: My kids are somehow trying to figure out this whole Batmobile like situation in my household, so I'm going to go with. I'm having a hard time explaining to them that we're probably not able to go to a dealership and buy a Batmobile.

[01:06:02] Adam: The Batmobile.

[01:06:04] Michael: Yeah.

[01:06:04] Adam: What is the most difficult kids TV show that you have ever had to sit through?

[01:06:10] Michael: There is a show that my son's like on Disney + that I can't even, it's so painfully bad I don't even know the name. It has to deal with like, Some princess and like a gypsy kind of time period situation. It's just so, so absurdly painful.

[01:06:29] Adam: We'll see if we can find it and link to it so that other people can hate it too. What is your favorite kids movie?

[01:06:36] Michael: You know, my kids, I'm kind of, I mean, my kids like Frozen for sure, but they're not like big movie people. My kids love Spider Man and his Amazing Friends, the animated series, but we've watched so many episodes of Spider Man and his Amazing Friends, but I'm kind of pumped on that, to be honest.

[01:06:51] Adam: Okay. Big fan.

[01:06:52] Michael: Like it's kind of worked out. Well, like I like spider man and Batman So like it's not a bad thing in our home.

[01:06:58] Adam: What is the worst experience that you've ever had assembling a kid's toy or a piece of kid's furniture?

[01:07:05] Michael: I mean my wife bought my son's like Power Wheel things and I got two so it was like I spent four hours building like fucking you know Yeah, we're seeing that too. You can't like do one and be done

[01:07:23] Adam: Right. Correct.

[01:07:24] Michael: You can’t take a break. It's not like I'm doing one today and one tomorrow. That's like world war three.

So it's like, imagine being in like the grueling sun building power cars or whatever they're called.

[01:07:35] Adam: Oh, man. How long can a piece of food sit on the floor in your house and you will still eat it?

[01:07:41] Michael: I'm a germaphobe so zero seconds.

[01:07:44] Adam: What nostalgic movie for you? Can you not wait to force your kids to watch with you?

[01:07:52] Michael: That's so easy. Cause I've now tried three times and all three times I've been wrong, but I keep trying that Star Wars.

[01:07:57] Adam: Star Wars. Okay.

[01:07:59] Michael: Yeah. I was a big Star Wars kid.

[01:08:01] Adam: okay. Have you told your kids a back in my day story yet?

Michael: Every day. Every day.

Adam: And if so, okay, every day. All right. How many times have you said, go ask your mother this week?

[01:08:11] Michael: More than I want to admit.

[01:08:13] Adam: All right. And finally, this is a great lightning round. I appreciate it. Finally, what is your take on minivans?

[01:08:21] Michael: Absolutely fucking not.

[01:08:25] Adam: What a great way to end, team no minivan.

[01:08:30] Michael: Team no minivan, no way.

[01:08:31] Adam: Michael, thank you so much for joining me on Startup Dad. This was a fantastic conversation. I really appreciate it.

[01:08:38] Michael: Thank you so much for having me.

[01:08:40] Adam: Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Michael Perry. 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. You can join a community of over 11,000 subscribers and stay up to date on my thoughts on growth, product and parenting by subscribing to the Fishman AF newsletter at www.fishmanafnewsletter.com.

Thanks for listening. See you next week.