Taking Paternity Leave As A Founder | Luke Millar (father of 5, SVP Product & Eng at Medium)

Luke: You need some time to yourself and You feel bad about it as a parent often because it's like any alone time is just more stress on your partner right?

Because it's like, hey, I'm gonna go do this thing. And it's like, you're really gonna freaking leave me with five kids to go do your activity that you want to do. But you really have to be supportive of one another to say like, yes, no, but you should do it. I got it. Go have some time by yourself.

Adam: Welcome to Startup Dad, the podcast where we dive deep in the lives of dads who are also leaders in the world of startups and business. I'm your host, Adam Fishman, and in today's conversation, I sat down with Luke Millar. Luke is the SVP of product and engineering at Medium, where you can discover stories, thinking, and expertise from writers on just about any topic.

He joined Medium after the company he co founded, Projector, was acquired in 2021. He has been a technology leader at Shift, Twitter, and Microsoft, but most importantly, he's a husband and the father of five kids in our conversation. Today, we spoke about how to structure and take paternity leave as a startup founder, how to build individual relationships with each of your kids when you have so many of them, and how he handled the transition to working from home with such a full household.

We ended on an emotional topic, his wife's recent battle with cancer. He shared candidly about how that has become a big part of their parenting lives over the last few years and the support systems that emerged to help them navigate it. I appreciated how candid and open Luke was on the show, and I think you will too.

Adam: I would like to welcome Luke Millar to the Startup Dad podcast. Luke, it is a pleasure having you here today. Thank you for joining me.

Luke: Thanks for having me. I'm excited. This is gonna be great.

Adam: Yes. And as I learned, it is Millar, not Miller. There's an A, not an E there.

Luke: Yeah, that's correct. Everybody gets it wrong. Understandably. I, you know, really embrace it. I, it's funny because I actually, at some point, like, if I'm looking at, if someone's looking up my name on a list, I tell them Miller because there's so much more quickly able to find my name if I say Miller, then if I say Millar, and then they say, how do you spell that?

everybody does it. Even me!

Adam: Awesome. Well, I'm gonna jump right in today and go right to the meat of it. Luke, I have you on the show because you are a technology executive. You work at Medium, you lead a bunch of very important functions there. You also have five kids, ages two and a half to 12. That is a lot of children for a household, so you got a lot of them.

Luke: Yeah, feels like enough. Yeah.

Adam: Feels like enough. You have reached a critical mass of children in your household. First thing I want to know is what does a typical day look like in the Millar household with, you know, five kids spaced a decade apart from one another?

Luke: Yeah. It's pretty busy, but I feel like we have it down right now, but because of school and ages, it changes every year. So every year we have to refigure it out. So this year, my oldest daughter is 12. She's in sixth grade. So she is at a middle school now. First year where it's like, oh, we really do have kids at multiple schools.

So that's been an adjustment for us this year. Then we have our next daughter is 10. She's in fifth grade. And then we have an eight year old who's in second, a six year old who's in kindergarten. And then our son is almost three now, but he's not doing any of those, he's at home all day. Uh, So the typical day is, you know, you know, wake up in the morning, get the kids ready for school. Fortunately, the elementary school and middle school are near each other and start around the same time. And so we kind of split that just depending on who is feeling up for it. But take the kids to school in the morning. Come home, get ready for the day. I work from home now full time, full time remote at Medium. My wife also at home full time. And so even throughout the day, we kind of tag team a few things here and there. Including things like even when it's time for school pickup, usually my wife ends up doing that, but depends on the day. And then, you know, in the afternoon, kids are home from school, evening activities, sports. Often it's driving kids places. And so if there's multiple at the same time, we are both doing it. If it's only one, you know, we kind of share that. And so pretty busy day. But the thing that's really helped over the last couple of years is just being able to be home and manage it that way.

Adam: Yeah. And we're going to get into that a little bit but I want to go all the way back in time and just ask you a little bit about what life was like growing up. Did you come from a big family? Do you have four or more brothers and sisters? What was that life like?

Luke: I do. I have five siblings. I have four brothers and a sister. Great experience. I mean, we all are still really close. We get along well, we keep in touch really regularly. Pretty wide age gap. I mean, I think my oldest brother is probably, I think he's 16 years older than my youngest.

And so like that is just a completely different dynamic. So I came from a big family. Lisa also did, she has four siblings and so also a big family and so for us getting started it was it just felt like I don't know. It was just kind of assumed like, yeah, big family, right? It's cool.

Adam: Make sense. Tell me about your wife, Lisa 

Luke: So she's from Seattle. Her family still lives there. We now live in California. We lived in Seattle. That's where we met. That's where we dated. We got married. We actually started our family there. And then moved to California about 10 years ago. I'm from the Bay Area. So it was kind of like moving from one home to another.

Um, But she is an elementary school teacher. She taught second and fifth grade for a long time. Did that loved it. And then when we were talking about having kids, you know, we had that conversation around, like, what are we going to do? How do we want to manage that? She really was excited about wanting to be home with the kids and be like a full time part of their day. And so we talked through that, what does that look like? How's that going to work? How long do we do that for? Is that like forever or do we do that for a couple of years? What's, you know, and we kind of went into it with this idea of, well, let's do it.

We'll see where it goes. We can always decide later to change it. And now that was 12 years ago. She's still at home full time. But now that our youngest is three and we're for sure done having kids. The conversation for us now is like, hey, what is that going to look like?

And that'll be a new part of our family life is her going back to work and teaching again, but should be really cool and exciting.

Adam: So she's made up her mind. She's going to go back and teach again. I mean, I guess, you know, you've got five kids. You never really leave the classroom when you've got that number of children in the house. So.

Luke: You don't. And because she loves teaching and kids anyway, like that was just her passion in the first place. She can't stay out of the classroom anyway, you know, helping and volunteering in class for teaching lessons or helping the teacher or whatever it is. So she's been always really excited about that.

And now that when our youngest starts, I don't know if it'll be this next year, maybe the year after, but when our youngest starts in school. On a regular basis. It's like, wait a second. What does that look like? Do you go back and do you substitute for a bit like ease back into it or just jump right back into teaching full time?

I don't know. We'll see.

Adam: Cool. Well, that's very exciting. And the world does need more veteran teachers. I think as I've observed myself.

Luke: It's underappreciated. I mean, one of the things that we talked about for this is the idea of like, oh, well, you know, do you keep teaching and we can get childcare? Teachers don't get paid enough. It sucks. It's unfair. It's not great for society but it is just the reality where it's like it would be more expensive for her to go to work and us pay for child care than for her to be at home.

And so it's just like a real decision and like math equation, even, it's not the only reason that you decide to go back to work. For sure. Like it's totally valid to decide it anyway even in that circumstance, but it does make it extra hard.

Adam: Yeah. Childcare for five kids to is, 

Luke: I can't imagine

Adam: I know you live outside of the Bay Area now, I think, but even in the state of California, that's just like a crippling expense for most people. So, yeah. Yeah, never. Well, we're going to come back to Lisa in a little bit, but first I wanted to ask you about building a pro parent company.

So you founded a company called Projector and as a founder, co founder, you have to define all of the systems. And by my calculation, you and Lisa had at least two new-ish babies while you were there at the company. I might, I tried to do a little reverse engineering from LinkedIn and timetables and stuff, but what does it mean to you to build a pro parent company.

Luke: When all of that was starting, it was actually pretty, pretty tricky. Me and my co-founders at the time they were a couple of guys that I'd worked with at Twitter. And had known before and again, not necessarily fathers, but in like, you know, similar stages of life, right.

It's not like straight out of college and I can, you know, be in an office, 18 hours a day, was just not where we were. It wasn't the vibe we wanted for our company. And so early on it was kind of, there are a lot of conversations about what really does work life balance look like at a startup at this stage of life.

I went into it, and when I started Lisa was pregnant. we had just found out that she was pregnant and we were going to have a kid. And it was, it really was one of those like, holy crap, all of these decisions that you just kind of take for granted because your company and HR team decides them for you at some point of like, what are the policies around this?

It's like, I don't know, Luke, what are the policies around this? Are we doing paternity leave? Like, what does that look like? How long do you get? You know, how do we manage things like health care? And you do we really max out that side of our company's budget to be able to support families.

And we made that decision early on that like, yeah, I think we have to, the type of product that we were building. It really wasn't like, hey, how do we slap something together? It was something that took like real craft. And I think a lot of experience and expertise that required some more you know, senior talent, whether it was engineers or designers or product thinkers.

And so being able to hire a team that, you know, was in later stages of family life or personal life. And knowing that, hey, we got to build this into our culture from the beginning, where there is real flexibility, And how you show up at work and how does the company support you? Lots of conversations on that early on, but it was really important to us.

It was important to me. I mean, I was in the, you know, right, right in the mix of it. And I'm glad we did. That was a really good experience. And it didn't mean that like we didn't work a ton. We did, but just, I think the key is insane flexibility. That's the thing that parents need the most. It's not just time.

Adam: How have you benefited from that insane flexibility in your life as a parent? 

Luke: It's things like you know, knowing that I have to be the one to get the kids from school because of something that's come up you know, as a parent, you don't always feel well, parents get sick, and it's like, what happens when a parent's sick?

And it's like, yeah, it sucks. It's really hard because your life doesn't stop. Like, everything keeps going. It's not like, hey, I'm not feeling well. I guess all the kids are going to stay home from school so we can chill. It's like, no, you still have to do all this stuff, you know? And so, you know, if Lisa has appointments or stuff that she has to go to, or if she, you know, and being able to say, I can't be in the office or I need to leave early.

I need to leave at lunchtime today because of this thing that's happening tonight. We have two kids with different games on the other side of the city. I need to be able to go to that. And being able to make those decisions and have the trust from your team and from your work to be able to make those decisions and know that I'm not just like trying to take advantage by not being at work and not getting stuff done.

But I do need this time right now you know, I'll make up for it later at some point.

Adam: When you think about your paternity leave from this company that you founded, what was paternity leave like as a startup founder?

Luke: That was hard. Because it wasn't obvious how long I should take. Before that with our previous child, that was our fourth child, Caroline, who is now six. Before that, our previous child, Annalise she was born when I was working at Twitter. And it was at a time where Twitter was like, you get, I can't even remember what the number was, 12 weeks of leave or whatever.

And it's like, amazing. So, you know, that's just such a benefit to be able to take that time off and know that your team has your back. As a company of three people at the time when it's, we're still trying to figure out what really are we building? Is this going to work and say like, okay, I gotta go.

I'm going to be gone for the next six months because I'm having a baby. It just, it felt. Unrealistic. I don't know. And so trying to figure out, how long am I going to take? I went on paternity leave. I did take paternity leave, but I took it not knowing how long I would be out. It was really just, we're going to go see how this goes.

When Lisa's ready, when I'm ready, I'll come back. And maybe that starts with, I'll come back by, I'll do some work online when I can from home or maybe it's, you know, I'll come back into the office. And I think in the end, I actually didn't take that much time off. Maybe it was four weeks, maybe which felt pretty quick, but it was, I don't know how, it doesn't make any sense, but I'm like, having that fourth child, it was like, hey, nothing, we're kind of okay, I can come back to work now which seems, Crazy.

Adam: Yeah, I've done this before then I've gotten some reps doing this. So yeah, you mentioned four weeks feeling quick, which it certainly does when you're on the parent side, when you put on your founder hat, though, four weeks is like a funding cycle or you know, shipping the product four times or 200 customer conversations or something like that.

So it is really hard to strike that balance, but it sounds like you were able to make it work and made a decision that felt right for your family. So how would you encourage other startup founders who are in the like throws and intensity of building a company and starting a family to think about the choices in those kinds of trade offs that they're making.

Luke: I think there's a couple of things. One is my co founders were so supportive of it, right? They were the ones encouraging me to take more time, not less. If I rushed back to work, it was because I rushed back to work, not because they were frustrated that I wasn't at work. That at the end of the day is the main thing.

So if you're in that situation, that is my number one, like, advice is figure it out with your co founders. Or your co-founder or or your team, whatever it is, what's really the expectation? How do you just get on the same page about that? They were so happy to take on that extra workload while I was out, whatever that was, whatever it looked like.

And I forever appreciate that they did that for me because it was important. The other part of it is, parenting it's not a sprint, right? This is a, it's a marathon, it goes on forever. And when you're working, you have to figure out how to make it sustainable.

It's not just, hey, how do I get through these next four weeks? Or how do I get through these three weeks? It really is a shift of how do I make this so that, you know, a year from now, I'm not completely burned out. And then my company falls apart because I burned out. That is as important as the, how do I not burn out in these two weeks while you know, we're in the hospital because we just had a baby. You know, and thinking about both sides of those and figuring out how to pace yourself a little bit and set up the structures at your company so that you can and be flexible, I think. That's the other half of it. That was really key to what worked for me.

Adam: Yeah. That's really interesting and solid advice there. It, this idea that, you know, most people just think about what is my parental leave going to be, even people who are building companies for other parents. Like. That they're going to employ and they don't think about actually the hardest part is, you know, the next 17 and a half years after that first handful of months.

So, really, really good advice for folks there. So I've had dads who have large families on the show, although. I would say it's less common. I just don't know that many dads with large families, but I'm meeting them. And they talk a lot about the importance of one-on-one time with each kid. And I, only having two children myself, still have a really hard time understanding how that is possible when you have a lot more children. And so I'm curious how you build individual relationships with each one of your children. Kids. And maybe that's not one on one time or maybe it is, how do you do it?

Cause I'm skeptical.

Luke: Yeah, me too. It is really hard. The reason that I think it comes up probably with people with a lot of kids is because the natural flow of things is to not do that, right? Like you kind of bucket your kids into groups where it's like, so we have four girls and then a boy.

Right. And they're all pretty evenly spaced, you know, 12, 10, eight, six, and then almost three. But in our minds, it's really easy for us to say, Oh, we have our older girls and we have the younger girls. Right. And you think of them in these groups, right? And you plan activities based off of these groups.

And that's fine. Like, you have to be able to strategize. Like, how do you get by day to day in terms of just the logistics of getting stuff done. How do you split the workload? Those sorts of things. You just kind of naturally do it. But you, to be a good parent, you have to intentionally push back on that a bit and understand because it would be really easy if you're not careful to go, you know, four days and say, have I even had a conversation with Caroline this week?

You know, and that sounds horrible, but it is really easy. The more kids you have, the easier that becomes where that doesn't mean I didn't see her. That didn't mean that doesn't mean I didn't, you know, help her get ready for bed and put her in bed, but, Did I spend any time? Like was there real time spent with her this week and thinking about that and trying to figure out how to apply like changes to our structure has really helped us a lot and what that looks like it's like how do you do it and it's like you just have to carve out time And it can be anything.

It doesn't have to be, hey, we have meaningful time. We're going to sit down and we're going to stare at each other across the table and have a meaningful conversation. That's not the point, but like, hey, I need to go to the store because we need to get groceries. Can I take one kid with me and just have that, you know, an hour of us going out together, spending the afternoon together, talking about different things as we do this activity together and kind of, you know, just taking turns, of who do you do those sorts of things with.

Don't always just go to the person that's going to be the most helpful or the easiest to come along, but like intentionally include everyone in those types of activities. Those sorts of things as you make time for those, they become really meaningful and fun opportunities to be able to spend time with people where I think it's pretty natural to say, I'm going to go to the store, can I please have some alone time? And it's like, no, no, no. Yeah. Have some alone time, but maybe with one kid that's your alone time.

Adam: When you have five kids, one, maybe even two kids with you is the equivalent of alone time. It's like, wow, it's so much quieter. I only have one of you to be responsible for right now. 

Luke: My daughter was at camp last week. And we were in our kitchen. It's like, it's so quiet this week. And it's like, it's so funny because we have four kids at home, but like, you know, even just one less instantly. It's like, Whoa, wow. So, so light. So easy. 

Adam: So, last couple years transition to working from home. You have an army of children in your household, and now you need to work from home. What do you do?

What are the systems that you put in place or set up or, you know, how did you stay productive when you have so much going on at your house?

Luke: Like everyone else, I mean, it wasn't a choice, right? Like, I started working from home because we all did. And it was, you know, initially really hard because not only was I working from home, but the kids were doing school at home. And it was just insane, and it's easy to forget how crazy that period was, and I'm not sure that there's any, like, useful takeaways from that period to now.

It's I don't know. It was its own thing. But you fast forward to today and, you know, still working from home and having kids at home. I think there's a few things that I've done. 1 is it was really important to me to have a room that is an office. The luxury to do that. I understand, like, not everyone can. Part of you know, the reason that last year when we left the Bay Area was because of that.

It was like, hey, how do we have more space? If I'm going to be home, if kids are going to be home, kids are getting bigger. And older, like, how do we have more space? We need more space. So being able to have my own room that is an office where I can close the door was really important. Seems simple, but wasn't.

I think also being able to have just like some ground rules for like the kids understanding like, no, you can't just barge in on me when I'm at work. It's fine. That doesn't mean I don't love you. Doesn't mean I don't want to see you, but you can't just barge in. It's actually really hard, you can see in my background right now, my door has a window on it, which actually isn't great for that because it just even if they don't barge in, they like to peek in which is fine, but can still be distracting. I would say the benefits though, the other part that has been really good that kind of counteracts it is the idea that, you know, if I have 15 minutes between calls or whatever, I can go out and see the family for a few minutes.

And it even like reenergizes me back for whatever it is I'm going to go back to at work, right. To be able to take those short breaks, even if it's just for a second to say, you know, say, hi, the kids are home from school. Check in. How was that? Okay. Yeah. I got to go back to work for a little bit.

You know, I'll see you a few hours. That's been really good. You know, being able to be close to the school so that if there is an activity or performance that I can jump out to that I can block off an hour on my calendar and jump out to that if I need to has been great. And then the other part of it is when I was working in an office, I was never home for dinner.

I never had dinner with my family before. You know, Lisa would do that every single night. It was always a huge stress on her. Not just like making the dinner, but then sit down and like, try to have a dinner with all the kids.

Adam: Quarterback the chaos. 

Luke: Oh my gosh. I just, yeah. But ever since being able to work from home, I'm home for dinner every night.

And that has been incredible. And not because I mean, sure dinner, but like just being able to sit down and have that time where, you know, before bedtime, before things, you know, devolve into mayhem to be able to sit down and like, have some time as a family every day, we didn't get that before. So there's been some real pros and cons.

For the younger kids, it's really hard to get them to understand that, like, I'm home, but you can't bother me. I don't know. It's fine. You got to kind of be okay with that.

Adam: So you said you moved relatively recently. So now you have this office and closed door with a glass. So people can still peek in. Did you ever have a, like a BBC dad moment where a kid busted in on you, maybe before you had the sanctity of an office or, you know, anything like that?

Like an awkward pseudo embarrassing work from home dad moment?

Luke: All the time. My two year old, it just has no concept of it. The thing that's funny is, I usually try to like lock my door sometimes. And I don't always. I'm not great about it. Especially if I'm going to be in like meetings and conversations. But there have been times for sure where, you know, in whatever important conversations and just burst through the door, but not just burst through the door, but like, you can see clearly running away from Lisa to burst through the door and turn around and then lock himself in here with me.

And then it's like, it's okay. You know, I'm sorry. I gotta, give me 30 seconds. So I'll be right back. That's not uncommon.

Adam: It almost becomes a game at that point in time. How can I avoid mom and lock myself in with dad? So, my kids are obviously a little bit older than two, and I also have a door, which is helpful that does lock, although we had to install a little extra lock. But my kids will know that I'm in here and my son will slip notes underneath the door while I'm working.

So I will see like out of the corner of my eye, like little notes with like drawings on it, or like a question or, hey dad, can I do this? And Sometimes I turn around and there's like 15 notes that have been slid under the door and I'm like, well, you know, he didn't knock. That's okay. The notes are fine.

They're kind of cute. I should save them for the future, but that is hopefully your two and a half year old eventually we'll get to the note slipping stage of life.

Luke: My daughter did that recently. It was funny cause she wrote a note that said it's time for dinner, but she didn't like slip it under the door. She actually like pressed it up to the window and taped it to the window. I didn't notice, but the person that I was on a call with did and was like, hey, I think it's time for you to go eat dinner.

And I'm like, what are you talking about? And he's like the note on your door. And I'm like, oh, great. Perfect. Thank you.

Adam: You could just like perfectly see it over the shoulder or something like that. That’s amazing.

Luke: Yeah. Thanks kids.

Adam: That's amazing. So. You've got a bunch of siblings. Your wife has a bunch of siblings. There's probably a bunch of other kids involved, nieces and nephews, aunt and uncle situation. Like sounds like it's a really giant, you know, extended family, which is amazing.

And one of the things that happens a lot when you have other, especially siblings who have their own kids and things like that in laws, all that stuff, you get a lot of advice about raising your children. We like can't help ourselves. So. You've collected probably, you know, an LLMs worth of advice on parenting.

If you could rewind the clock and go back to, hey, I'm Luke. I'm about to have my first kid, or I'm about to have my second kid, which is a pivotal point for a lot of people. What's like a really significant piece of advice that you would give your younger self?

Luke: I think the advice I would give is ignore the advice. Every family, every kid, every parent is so different. I feel like what were the frustrations early on? It was like me setting some expectations for what things were supposed to be like, and then those things not like happening.

And then the letdown of that or the frustrations that come along with that. And it was because, you know, you see what other people are doing and you're like, oh, that's what we should do. And you try to do it. And it's like, why isn't it working? Like, are we bad parents? Or what is it? and then as you have multiple kids, one of the real benefits of having, you know, a bigger family is you realize, every kid's different just naturally.

Like your kid's not really calm because of your insane parenting skills. They're just naturally really calm. You like hit the jackpot and I know that because like we have some that are and we have some that aren't and it's not because like they were raised by different families. Like some of those things are just, you can't plan for them.

And so be okay with you know, the unknown, be okay with not trying to control everything. Don't feel bad if things don't feel perfect or if it looks like other families are doing things really well. Cause you don't see the problems, right? Like that's one of the problems with social media is you just, you only see for the most part, the positives.

Like what's all the great stuff that other families are doing. And then you feel crappy about yourself because why don't we do that? And it's like, you're, it's just not a fair comparison. So my advice would actually be like, ignore most of the advice. Do what you think makes sense for you. Some of it probably is right.

Some of it's probably wrong, but you won't know until you do it. Do what you think is right and figure it out.

Adam: I love that. Do you remember what the most ridiculous piece of parenting advice that you received was? One that you were like, oh, absolutely ignore this.

Luke: One thing that we did early on that was our decision that we got a lot of advice against early. But it wasn't ridiculous because we intentionally chose to do something different. Which was when I was working in San Francisco, we lived in the East Bay.

And so, like, I had an hour plus commute every day which meant, like I said, I wasn't home for dinner. I got home pretty late from work. And to miss traffic. Sometimes I would stay later in the office and then come home later just so I didn't have to sit in traffic, which meant sometimes I wasn't home from work till eight o'clock at night.

And normally it's like, cool. So your kids are asleep when you get home. And we had the conversation where we said, we don't want that. Like, not going to do that. This was before our kids were in school and we just said, have our kids stay up really late. Our first daughter, when it was just one kid, she stayed up till midnight every night and people told us we were nuts for that.

They're like, why, like, you're going to ruin her sleep schedule. You guys are crazy. But it was amazing. Cause I would get home from work at eight. We stayed up late anyway. I'm a night owl. Because I work in tech, it was okay for me to sleep in and go into work late, you know, like that was just the expectation.

And so being able to, you know, stay up and have me be home with her for four hours, even though I was working full time in an office, be home for bedtime every night. And then I could sleep and go into work the next morning. That was the decision we made. People told us we were nuts for that.

So many people and we kind of ignored it and I'm glad we did and we didn't do it forever. Like at some point we had to phase it out because she was going to go to school and needed to be able to wake up early. But while we did it, it was great. Like there was no other way for me to get that time with our kids.

Adam: And probably that time is more valuable than, you know, she could shift her sleep. She could sleep in later and totally fine, but you know, getting to spend some time with dad totally worth it. It gets back to your point that like every kid is different. Every family is different.

You got to do what's going to work for you. And if that is the thing that creates a lower stress, more relaxed household, because everyone's cool with that, it's probably a good thing. 

Luke: Yeah, and she did. She slept in until 10 every day or whatever it was, which also, as a parent, was incredible.

Adam: That's true. That's true. Yes. I wish my kids slept into 10 now, but eventually they will, I'm sure.

Luke: They will, and then you want to undo it. Yeah.

Adam: So across five kids, have you noticed that your parenting style or approach has evolved or changed anything you're doing differently now from. your first or second or third kid.

Luke: The answer is probably yes, but maybe not consciously. I think naturally we've gotten more chill in how we interact with our kids and raise our kids and even just run our household. Like that same idea that like, you don't have to be so uptight. Like, things are going to be fine. It's okay if you're not on an exact schedule, it's okay if things are different today.

You can't control it all and you have to be okay with that. And I think early on when, you know, one kid or two, we were trying more, like do things, right, do things by the book and like, it's okay, you don't have to. Some of that stuff has definitely changed over time. I also think the other thing that ends up happening is when you have older kids, you feel like you can introduce younger kids to things earlier right? Because the younger kids look at what the older kids are doing and want to do it. And you're like, oh, sure, I guess you could, but I would have never considered my oldest kid at that same age doing that same thing. I'm trying to think of a specific examples, but even like, you know, taking them to different activities.

Like with our older kids, I don't think we did too much of taking them out to like public sporting events. But now that we do, because they're older, our younger kids are like, we want to go. And it's like, cool. Yeah, I don't know. Why not, do it, that sounds great. And you kind of end up exposing them to more things earlier, which is probably just naturally true across the board, which is why, you know, youngest kids have the reputation they have of like… you know.

Adam: You just triggered something in my head when you said, exposing them to different activities and things like that. And I'm curious, you may not do this very often, but what is it like, do you, I don't know if you ever go out to dinner as a family, all of you, but, what is the scene like when seven of you walk into a restaurant and like how do you kind of wrangle wrangle that how do you go out in public as a family of

Luke: It's really hard. we do it. We actually do go out to dinner with our kids. Just because we kind of decided early on that we wanted them to, I don't know, participate in things. Just because we have a lot of kids doesn't mean we should like, deprive them of like, experiences that, you know,

Adam: Yeah.

Luke: So we do take them out to dinner and almost every time it ends with why did we take all the kids out to dinner?

Maybe we shouldn't do this anymore. Almost every time. And in fact, we actually went out last night. Our kids are on spring break this week. So they're home this week. And so last night we went out to dinner. And it was one of those. It's always like, you know, you check in and we have a table of 7, 7 is actually really hard because places are set up for six places are not set up for seven.

You can't even get like a reservation for seven at restaurants. Yeah, I, maybe we should have thought that through earlier. But it's really an underrated thing that like we never considered even like airplanes, airplanes are not set up for families of seven, they are set up for families of six, not for families of seven.

And so those sorts of logistics, but yeah, we, you know, you show up, hey, we have a table for seven and it's like, oh, you, it's all kids. It's like, yeah, this is gonna be a fun one. And usually, you know, it's like, can we get a booth? Because if so, like we can sit on the end and like lock them in. And you know, so you like learn some of these tricks of just like, how do you logistically make this happen?

Our two oldest girls are just, they're so mature and helpful and want to help. They love our youngest and just want to be with him and even fight over who gets to be with him and that sort of thing. And so, just, you know, it is a lot of help from them, which I sometimes feel bad about.

But. Yeah, it's kind of just a group effort and I don't know. It's fun.

Adam: That's amazing. You know, sometime soon, probably those two older girls are going to find a way to monetize those talents through babysitting. I have found our best babysitters come from large families where they've kind of had to take care of, you know, a long tail of other siblings.

Luke: 100 percent. Our oldest this year has been the first time where it's like, we felt that she's old enough and responsible enough that we can leave all of our kids at home with her and go out. So it's actually really changed even mine and Lisa's relationship because we can go out on, you know, it doesn't have to be like a whole night thing, but like we can go out to dinner for an hour or an hour and a half. That sounds awesome. Awesome. And like, we've done that more in the last year than we had in the previous 12. So, that's been a huge unlock for us, but yeah, already she's like, but you should be paying me for this though.

Right. And I'm like, well,

Adam: You'll get to go to college someday. That's your payment. This is actually a really good transition point because I wanted to talk a little bit about your relationship with Lisa. Parenting is one of those things where. It's a partnership with your spouse. And when you have kids and especially when you're in a situation like you are, where you have enough children to kind of form a basketball team you gotta get on the same page with your spouse about rules and limits and even just spending time with each other, like you mentioned, it's probably hard for, or at least up until this last year, hard for the two of you to find one on one time. How do you and Lisa get on the same page about parenting and carve out time to spend with each other?

Luke: For a long time, we really didn't. And I don't mean that in like a bad way. Like we've always had a really great relationship. I think one of the things that's worked really well for us is that for the most part, we agree on almost everything. And even when we don't, it's like minor things and they're not things that matter.

So like we both kind of just let them go. And so, you know, that part has been really easy in terms of it not being time consuming activity of getting on the same page about parenting. It's usually the logistics of like, you know, just managing calendars and schedules and who needs to be doing what and what help do you need?

And, oh, holy crap, you're at your limit. You need extra help today because. You're just mentally struggling, you know, like those sorts of things and trying to recognize those. In terms of spending time together and making time for each other just it's so important to do but it is really hard. I think when you just have young kids, it doesn't even matter how many kids you have.

It is really hard because the day is just structured around the kids' day. And so for us, it's so many times where we get to the end of the day and the kids are finally in bed. And it's like, we have time together. And it's like, I'm so tired. I just need to go to bed. Right. And it's like, no, we didn't. Okay.

We didn't get any time together today. One of the things that we did early also in our relationship, I feel like is we always tried to go to bed at the same time. And it wasn't really like, hey, you know, like, hey, I'm going to go to bed. You got to come too. But Jess, you know, even if she was tired or wanted to go to bed, that's fine.

I'll come in to our bedroom and maybe I'll do some work late at night in there, as opposed to let me go to my office where we're going to be separate to do it. You know, and trying to find ways to spend time together, even if it was through other activities. You know, in my office, sometimes Lisa will come in and hang out in here if I'm working and it's not meetings, but like writing stuff, it doesn't mean that we're, you know, having deep conversations necessarily, but even just being next to each other and being able to spend some time together while we're doing all the other things that we have to do, those have been meaningful, even though they feel small.

But now, yeah, now that, you know, as our kids get older, it's like, wait our relationship can be even different. We went on a trip this year without our kids and it was fantastic.

Adam: Yeah. And everyone survived. The house was still standing when you returned. That's pretty awesome. You mentioned though, that there are you know, mostly minor areas where you don't agree when it comes to parenting. Was there anything that you really had the two of you really had to have a conversation about and get on the same page?

About when you were sort of first starting your parenting journey. Did you have any kind of competing philosophies or anything like that?

Luke: We didn't. No big ones. the minor ones that come up are things like it's, they're like, they're so dumb. It's like, nutritional things. It's like, hey, Lisa's not a soda drinker. And so she's like, no, I don't really, the kids don't need to drink soda. And the kids are like, wait, but dad drinks soda all the time.

And I'm like, yeah, I don’t know.

Adam: Soda is delicious!

Luke: And I’m like yea, go for it. Yeah, that sucks. It sucks to be you. You know, so it's like those minor things and then, I mean, it's fine. They're never problematic really. are some of the other ones, not really parenting, but even just in managing the house. And like, I think finances wise, we've had different perspectives.

We, we grew up pretty differently on that front. And so trying to figure out how to make that stuff work of like who manages finances, what does that look like? Do we try to stick to a budget or do we not, you know, we're actually pretty different on that front. But I actually think that that's worked in our favor to be different because I think if you have like a couple where you're both like big spenders and don't care about a budget. That's probably not great. And so, I feel like that's balanced well, but you know, it comes up regularly, especially as you know, kids are expensive.

Adam: That they are. That they are so I wanted to transition and end with a couple of things, but one of them is more of a serious topic which you told me in the prep for the show, which is that Lisa has been battling through a diagnosis and battling cancer the last several years. And even though it's sounds like it's ongoing I am happy to hear that you said she's through the worst parts of it, but I imagine that this has consumed your lives and really impacted your parenting and so I'm, I guess I have two questions for you about this topic. One is how has that diagnosis and that process kind of consumed your lives. And then the second part is, how did you talk to your kids about this when you found out cause I imagine that that is a delicate topic and you have kids across a bunch of different ages.

So, very different conversations.

Luke: Yeah. We found out that she had cancer when Jake, who's our youngest, was six months old.

And it was one of those things where she actually has bracket to gene mutation, where we knew that she was more likely to develop breast cancer at some point in her life. So she was, you know, regularly monitoring and that sort of thing.

It wasn't something that we. You know, were expecting at this point especially like in the middle of trying to figure out five kids and a little one at home to add to the, just the craziness of it was Projector got acquired by Medium literally a week before we found out. And so it was just in the middle of what was already one of the craziest parts of our life.

And so, you know, us coming to like terms with like, what does it mean, you know, and I think for a lot of people that haven't been through cancer don't totally, I mean, it's pretty easy to like not understand the details of like, how does it work. And what does the diagnosis actually look like?

But it was one of those things where it's like, yeah, you do have cancer. We don't totally know yet the details of it. And so you're left in this state of like, what does this mean? Like, what does this mean long term? What does this mean short term? Do I have to do treatment? Like it was unknown.

So you're like, in this period of trying to even just figure out. Logistically, how are we going to deal with this? I mean, we don't know. You know, and then through different tests and seeing a bunch of different doctors and understanding and putting together a treatment plan. And then you realize, oh, crap, this is going to be.

This is going to be a while that we have to deal with this. This is not, hey, we got to go deal with this for the next couple of months. It's, oh no, we're going to be dealing with this for the next few years is what this looks like. And at that point we had the realization that like, we can't do it on our own, not going to happen.

Jess, you know, knowing that she's not going to feel great through a lot of it. And even like physically, but then even just mentally and emotionally. And the kids are going to struggle with it. And like, what is, how do you, I don't know, like you're a parent. It's like, I don't, I'm not an expert in this.

I'm trying to figure it out for myself. Like, how am I supposed to teach you how to, feel about it too. And so, yeah we sat the kids down and told them, like, as you said, you know, differing levels of understanding of what that even means, you want to give them the positive optimistic view of it.

You know, while telling them what to expect, mom's sick and she's gonna, you know, be having lots of doctor's appointments you know, she's probably not gonna have a lot of energy and she's probably gonna be sleeping a lot and, you know, she will lose her hair and all of these things that, you know, for little kids, those things they can really struggle with.

So, like, if you can help set their expectations and manage their expectations early. I think it helps quite a bit. The thing that maybe made it easier, but maybe made it harder is our family wasn't new to cancer. We actually have quite a history of it within our family, including my mom who passed away from cancer nine years ago.

Our kids remember that, right? So like then hearing that mom has cancer, like those things are really scary. And, you know, trying to figure out how do they feel about it? We had them meet with the school counselor. And they did that on a regular basis of like meeting, check in, how are you doing?

You know, those sorts of things. I think that was really good for them. They all at least seem to like it and enjoy those conversations. And then, like I said, it was, you know, just a lot of help from a lot of people, a lot of friends, a lot of family, almost every single person. Like you said, I have a big family.

She has a big family. Holy crap. Everyone just kind of like ran to our help where most people would, you know, come spend a week with us at a time where there was probably a six month period where there was always someone living at our house with us just to help with things. You know, and so it was.

You know, flying someone out here to us, come stay with us, and help take the kids to school every day, deal with that stuff. I was still working off and on throughout it, as I was trying to figure out my new role at Medium, leading the engineering team. And trying to figure some of that stuff. It was important to me to be at all of Lisa's appointments.

We knew that early on that, like, we wanted to go do those together and I didn't want to leave her to be the one to go do it on her own. But that also meant like, we need people to watch the kids on a very regular basis. And so having someone stay at our house with us that our kids know and trust.

That we trust that we can, you know, do that. Holy crap. There's no, I don't know. I don't know how else we would have done it. That was just that was the key to it. And like I said, everybody helped. Like, I think every single one of my siblings at some point stayed with us. My parents, her parents you know, her siblings, cousins, whatever it was everyone just kind of jumped in and to help.

And that was huge for us but also just huge for our kids to have some stability or not stability, but like have someone around that they can depend on

Adam: Somebody that they knew. So it wasn't like a revolving door of strangers or anything like that. Wow. What an amazing journey and also support structure that you were able rely on. And like you said, feels tough to think about how that could have gone if you didn't have that stuff.

So, I have a follow up question for you, which is what do you do personally to restore your batteries or center yourself? There's obviously been a lot going on in life. And so what do you do when you get, you know, you're, I don't know, 10 minutes of you time what does that look like?

What are the ways that you recharge?

Luke: This is actually pretty new. I think probably over these last couple of years of, you know, taking on, now things are, you know, much better at home. Lisa feels great. And things are feeling pretty normal, but for a while there like so much of the family load fell on me as well and it was I don't know.

I mean she does it all the time So like I can't really complain about it, but like it was really hard And you really recognize like oh, you just you do really need some alone time. You need some time to yourself and you feel bad about it as a parent often because it's like any alone time is just more stress on your partner, Right?

Because it's like, hey, I'm gonna go do this thing. And it's like, you're really gonna freaking leave me with five kids to go do your activity that you want to do. But you really have to be supportive of one another to say like, yes, no, but you should do it. I got it. Go have some time by yourself.

One of the things that I realized at some point that clicked for me is like, wait, I can do things after the kids are asleep. Right? And like, it's good for everyone. It's good for me. Good for her. Good for the kids. It's not like extra stress or anything. I can still get the kids to bed.

And then like, I can go see a 10 o'clock movie at night. At the theater with a friend or even by myself, I don't care. Those things have been actually pretty big game changers in terms of like, oh, time to actually do something. I have a group of friends right now that we get together weekly, actually for a board game night.

But again, it's one of those things where we do it late at night. It's like, nope, kids are in bed. We're going to get together at someone's house and play games or just hang out for the night. Being able to do those things and yea the unlock there is doing them late at night. So it's just, it's, great.

Adam: I was going to say that is the ultimate unlock you were already a night owl, but just kind of shifting to be like, all right, kids are asleep. Every, everything is right in the world. Now I can go do something. That's definitely a tactic that I have employed, both me and my wife have employed over time.

So game night for you. Anything else? Podcasting CrossFit, I don't know. Aggressive pickle ball?

Luke: Huge. You know, I love pickleball, but it's, yeah hard to find time for that. Cause that's not one that you can do at midnight. Podcasts, listen to a lot of podcasts. I think the other one used to be a good one for when I used to commute. Cause I did listen to a lot of podcasts, but it just, you know, that time between work and home was so valuable to be able to like disconnect from things and like separate work from home.

I used to do it in silence. I would do that whole drive and commute without listening to anything just to like, work through my own thoughts. It was almost like a meditation, you know, but while driving. I still look for opportunities now that I work from home, I don't, I can't do that in my commute, but I still look for opportunities to do that.

I've just, can I be by myself in silence for 30 minutes? Cause it actually feels really good to do that. 

Adam: Okay. Last one or two questions for you. I'm sure that you are a flawless parent, like we all are but I do wonder what is a mistake that you've made as a father? 

Luke: Like I don't have any stories of like dropping kids or hurting kids. Like, I don't know. But I think one is just not treating kids as kids, like sometimes you think of them as older than they are and you treat them as if they should be responsible adults or something, you know, or fully formed people with like real logic.

And they're not always of course they're not cause they're children and they're still trying to figure things out. And I think about this in the context of like our oldest child that year that we were really in the mix of Lisa in treatment and dealing with things, we put way too much on her to like manage at home.

Like, hey, it's bedtime. Can you please help get your little sister in bed tonight? Will you please read her a story because I got to take the other three or two or whatever it is and mom's not feeling well, you know, like a lot of those and, and she was up for it. She was game for it. You know, she was always excited to help, but I remember there was one night where she just kind of broke and was like, you're asking me to do too much.

And it was one of those like, oh crap. Yeah, we are. You're a child. You're not an adult. It's not, this isn't your problem. Um, yeah, that, that, that's, stuff’s hard.

Adam: Yeah. But also…

Luke: Sorry. I'm like all emotional.

Adam: No, no I, I, that's a lot. I think the other thing to turn that around on a positive note, which is how great that your 12 year old was able to communicate something like that to you, right? And sort of express her needs and not keep that tied up inside and actually tell you, you know, maybe it was an emotional telling of it.

Maybe there was some yelling involved or something like that as you know, I have an 11 year old, I know how this goes. But how, how wonderful that she was able to do that and you know, recover from that and you could all work together through, through that stuff. So thank you for sharing that.

That story with me. And uh, that's going to help a lot of people as they hear that.

Luke: Good. I hope so. Yeah.

Adam: How can people follow along or be helpful to you? I don't know if you have a Medium publication that they should be subscribing to. It is your business. But yeah what would you recommend if people want to connect or follow or, I'm sure you don't live your life on the internet cause you got enough stuff going on, but…

Luke: I would say obviously at Medium I'm @LTM on everything. So Medium, Twitter, follow me there. It's interesting because Medium, I think, you know, has been around for a long time and like the reputation of it.

I think over the years has fluctuated. The thing, the focus today has just been so much around. How do you help people really deepen their understanding of what's happening in the world and learn from each other. Exactly the type of thing that you're doing here with this podcast, which is don't get professionals get people that are just trying to figure it out and share their experiences and learn from each other.

And I think that's a huge part of what we're trying to do. So if you're interested, follow us there in our talking about that. What we're doing you can follow me on Twitter. That is usually where I tweet my dumb dad jokes and try to be funny and fail at it.

Adam: You got a lot of ammunition with five kids. You, I mean, if you think an average of one dad joke per kid per day, that's a lot of dad jokes. So. 

Luke: Love it

Adam: Well, we're going to get into that in the next round, which is, are you ready for the rapid fire round? This is one of my faves. So here we go. First question, what is the most indispensable parenting product that you have ever purchased?

Luke: Uh, double stroller with great wheels. Number one. Number two, I know a lot of families do like, oh, we have an iPad that like we use for trips or flights or whatever. We did do that. Didn't work with five kids cause they just fought over it. What we did was we actually bought them all individual iPod touch.

To take just for trips. Amazing because they can just pick their own videos. They don't have to fight over it. They can carry it themselves. 

Adam: Oh, the carry it themselves thing is a big part of it. Those iPads are pretty bulky. So love that. What is the most useless parenting product that you've ever purchased?

Luke: I can't think of any dumb parenting products. There are a lot of toys that we bought that we thought our kids would like that they didn't at all care for. But parenting products, we actually didn't end up buying a lot of the like. You know, gimmicky, whatever it was, you know, here's the thing to help your kid roll over stuff.

Like, I don't, we didn't get a lot of that stuff. We just kind of avoided it. I can't think of any parenting products that like really was a flop for us.

Adam: So, I guess the advice there might be, you probably don't need those things. 

Luke: Yeah. I mean, they didn't exist 50 years ago and people were, I don’t know.

Adam: That's true. All right. Finish this sentence for me. The ideal day with my kids involves this one activity.

Luke: We're pretty big homebodies, like having a family movie night, like where we all like cuddle up on the couch is great. We all kind of like that. We like spending time together. Board games with family. Big Disneyland fans. That's probably the ideal.

Adam: Nice. Okay. Cool. What is the favorite age for your kids? What has that been so far?

Luke: I wonder if people have the same experience that I have, where I always feel like, oh, now this is my favorite age. And then as kids get older every year, I'm like, no, no, no. Maybe it's this one. And it's always kind of fun. Like every age, even as like my oldest gets older, I'm like, no. This is still fun, like now she's like a real teenager and that's fun.

But my favorite age is probably two, which is the age that everyone dislikes for the most part, like terrible twos, but I just, I freaking love it. It’s awesome.

Adam: Wow.

Luke: Like, they're fun. They're hilarious. They can start talking and they're trying to communicate. They love to get like tickled and squeezed. And I don’t know, it’s awesome.

Adam: Amazing. This may be the first time anyone has ever chosen two as the age on this podcast.

Luke: I know I get that. I'm abnormal there. My wife doesn't agree with me. So

Adam: What is your least favorite age?

Luke: Also maybe controversial newborns, not my thing. It's not that fun. Lisa loves them. She's just like, ah, babies, I just wanna hold babies. And I'm like, enjoy. Have fun. I'll see 'em in nine months. I don't know. babies are nice. They're cute, but not that fun.

Adam: Yeah. I get it. I get it. What is the most absurd thing that a child in your household has ever asked you to buy for them?

Luke: I dunno, there's probably just lots of electronics that they think that they should have, that they definitely shouldn't. Others are like trips like wait, why aren't we going to Europe and it's like what do you talking about like this?

Adam: Family of seven to Europe is you have to take out a second mortgage for that. Yeah,

Luke: Yeah, just you know, real misunderstanding of how much things cost.

Adam: That's okay. They'll get an appreciation for it eventually. What is your favorite kids movie?

Luke: I really enjoyed…Inside Out was really good.

Adam: Yeah.

Luke: I like that movie a lot. My kids like that movie. Encanto was fun just because, I don't know, we listened to the music. That music didn't get old to me. I don't know. A lot of the movies did. That one didn't. So, I was kind of fine with that one.

Adam: Inside out and Encanto, you know, they're making a sequel to inside out? 

Luke: I know my kids, yeah, talk about it every day.

Adam: Can’t wait. Also a favorite movie of mine. What is your worst experience assembling a kid's toy or a piece of children's furniture?

Luke: Oh, so many. I actually kind of enjoy it. It feels like a puzzle and so does Lisa. So we usually end up doing those as like joint activities, which is, makes them more enjoyable. The hardest actually was this last Christmas where we didn't totally think it through and realize like really late Christmas Eve that like, Oh no. All of our kids had something that needed to be built.

Adam: Oh no!

Luke: Oh, this is going to take us hours and hours. And we didn't pre start. It was, yeah, that was rough.

Adam: Yeah. Well…

Luke: Like a desk, a bike this, that it's like, oh my gosh.

Adam: Oh no. Christmas morning, the kids wake up, you're like, hey, Santa brought you a pile of stuff, put it together.

Luke: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. An art project.

Adam: Have you ever accidentally mixed up your kid's names?

Luke: Yeah, all the time. I don't feel like I serially do. I remember my parents doing it a ton when we were kids. I don't feel like I always get it wrong like they did, but yeah, pretty regular.

Adam: Okay. I think I'll allow that. That seems permissible with five kids. So.

Luke: Yeah, sure.

Adam: Maybe this has already happened but what nostalgic movie can you just not wait to force your kids to watch?

Luke: I got one. We just started it. It's not a movie. It's a TV show. Lost. I just started it with my older two daughters, Maddie and Claire. Um, yeah, it felt like it was time. They weren't that excited about it. We watched a couple episodes. I was like, give it a couple episodes. They're like locked in where we're cruising through now.

It's been a lot of fun.

Adam: Even, I don't want to spoil it, but even knowing how Lost ends, you were excited to start this with them, huh?

Luke: Oh, I was, I'm a big fan. I understand. I totally understand why people aren't. I love it.

Adam: I have watched it as well, end to end. So it's a fantastic show. How often do you tell your kids back in my day stories?

Luke: I try not to, I make too much of an effort to like, not be the annoying parent. So I really try not to. I think where I probably do it the most is with music. Of like, no, no, no, yeah, we're gonna listen to Third Eye Blind and you're gonna like it. Just, you know, a lot of that stuff.

Adam: Yes, I love that Third Eye Blind also from back in my day. And finally with five children, I'm curious to hear what is your take on minivans?

Luke: Necessary evil. We do have a minivan. We look forward to one day not having a minivan. Just the convenience of it is insane. I think the biggest thing for me is the sliding doors. Because as soon as we don't have those, our kids just start banging the doors into the cars next to us in the parking lot.

So like just for that one feature, that's the only thing I really care about. But we do talk on, you know, dream of the future when our kids are responsible enough to have real doors and that we don't have to have a minivan.

Adam: I think that is the underrated value of the minivan is the fact that the doors do not open up into traffic. So you're not going to take out a biker, you're not going to ding another car door, and with the number of children getting in and out of your car, that could be a lot of dings. So, all right.

Well, that concludes Rapid Fire. Luke, thank you so much. For taking the time to join me on today's Startup Dad podcast. I super appreciate it. And good luck to you, your family, your wife, and professional career at Medium.

Luke: Thank you.

Adam: Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Luke Millar. 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 Heron. You can join a community of over 10,000 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. 

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