Teaching Your Kids Cultural Empathy And Understanding | Phil Carter (Dad of 2, Growth Advisor)

[00:00:00] Phil: More than anything, kids just want to be seen and they want to know that they're the most important thing in your world.

And so I think I overthought it early on at times with like, we need a fun activity or, you know, I'm going to take them to the swimming pool or take them to really fun, new novel thing. And that's all great. But I think in their minds, like all they really want is your undivided attention.

[00:00:22] 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 conversation, I sat down with Phil Carter. Phil is a consumer subscription growth expert who currently advises companies on their growth strategies.

Prior to that, he led growth and product functions at Fair, Quizlet, Ibotta, and started his career in consulting. In addition to being a subscription growth expert, he's also a husband and the father of two kids. In our conversation today, we discussed some great topics. We spent time on what life was like raising two young kids during the pandemic, how to successfully pull off international travel with your kids, and how to teach kids cultural empathy and understanding.

We talked about protecting coveted time with your spouse, and how to ensure it doesn't become a household logistics conversation every week. We also talked about the importance of the weekly family meeting and how that works for Phil and his family. I hope you enjoyed today's conversation with Phil Carter.

I would like to welcome Phil Carter to the Startup Dad podcast. Phil, it's a pleasure having you here with me today. Thanks for joining me.

[00:01:39] Phil: Thanks for having me. It's a thrill to be here. I've been wanting to do it for a while now.

[00:01:42] Adam: Well, I, you know, I had to go through your agent now that you're Lenny-famous on the show. I had to like really pull some strings to get you here.

[00:01:49] Phil: I think Lenny-famous is the right phrase. I have a couple of people have said this to me recently. Like, yeah, I guess I'm famous within this like super tiny niche of people who just really loves this stuff. But that was fun. Lenny was great.

[00:02:01] Adam: For folks who don't know you let's do a little bit about your professional background. So what would you say you do here, for work?

[00:02:09] Phil: Yeah, I've had a few different chapters. So I started my career at Bain out of college, realized very quickly that I did not want to be a partner at a consulting firm. But I did that in the Bay area, fortunately. And so I got into tech. And was the first employee at a car sharing startup. Actually did that while I was in business school at Stanford.

And that was fun because we launched on college campuses and Stanford was our first campus. And so I kind of got to be in the fishbowl, did a mix of a lot of different things. in many ways had no idea what I was doing, but it was a great learning experience. And we ended up getting acquired by Turo, went into venture capital for a few years out of business school.

And then I met my wife Ashley at the GSB and we wanted to be closer to family. So we moved to Colorado nine years ago now spent about seven years leading product and growth teams at Ibotta a where I was the first PM and then built out their consumer product team. Then spent almost four years at Quizlet, which was a great stop.

Built the growth team from the bottom up product growth and subscriptions. Then went to Faire, spent a year at Faire leading international category and upmarket expansion. And then just in the last year and a half or so decided I'd go off on my own, start my own growth advising and consulting business.

So I've been doing that ever since focused exclusively on consumer subscription businesses. And it's been a lot of fun. It started as an experiment, but it's going well and I'm really loving it. So that's what I'm doing.

[00:03:30] Adam: Yeah, that's awesome. You've worked at so many companies that I love. Quizlet is a great, great company. And obviously what you're doing now is awesome. Consumer subscription businesses need a lot of help these days. There's only so much wallet share to go around.

[00:03:45] Phil: Subscription fatigue is a real thing, although there's always room for great products. And that was part of the thesis. You know, I've been part of the Reforge community for a while. And thanks to you and others have gotten a lot of good mentors. And I just felt like, hey, I've spent almost my entire career working for consumer businesses and much of it, consumer subscriptions. And I just felt like these companies aren't getting enough attention and there are some really great ones out there. So it's been fun being contrarian and, you know, finding a lot of great sound working on these products.

[00:04:14] Adam: Awesome. Well, tell me a little bit about what life was like growing up. what was Phil like as a kid?

[00:04:21] Phil: Yeah. I mean, in a lot of ways I had this sort of idyllic American childhood, I guess, like, you know, middle class family. My dad worked in business, spent his whole career in marketing. My mom was an environmental lawyer. And we moved around a bit but I was born and raised mostly in Minnesota.

Actually, I didn't, plan this, but I've got my Vikings hat right here. I'm a diehard Vikings fan and they're five and 0, which like, who would have thought going into this season or really any season as a Vikings fan. But yeah, so I grew up, I was born in Minnesota, moved around a bit, but mostly grew up there, middle school and high school and have one younger brother, Nat, he's actually a software engineer here in Denver and we've even had a couple stops where we've gotten to work together.

I guess that's a separate story, yeah. So grew up with one sibling, you know, played a lot of sports. I was your typical, like. Soccer, basketball, track. That was how I spent a lot of my time out of school. And I don't know. Like, it was a simpler time, right? We would run around the neighborhood, causing trouble.

And but I don't know. I had a pretty typical childhood. So not like a lot of really exciting stuff to report. Two great parents who loved us very much. And learned a lot from them.

[00:05:31] Adam: And you mentioned you moved back to Boulder at some point. I think you said to be closer to family, someone's family. Obviously your brother lives in Boulder. Are your parents around? Are they still in, in Minnesota? Are your wife's parents nearby? Like who's the family that you're close to now?

[00:05:50] Phil: My parents are back on the east coast where they mostly grew up. They're in DC. That's kind of like the happy medium for them because my dad grew up in South Jersey. My mom's from Miami. So the Minnesota years were tough for my mom you know, when the temperature drops below about 60 she kind of just,

[00:06:10] Adam: Yeah, which it does for half the year in Minnesota.

[00:06:14] Phil: At least half the year, at least half the year.

But yeah, DC seems to be a great spot for them. So they're in DC, but they come out like every summer for a month, which is really nice. But one of the reasons we moved back to Colorado was my wife, Ashley's parents live just 45 minutes away from us in Golden. So we see them a lot.

And I'm one of these lottery winners where like, I have the best in laws ever. And I'm not just saying that, like they really, I didn't know what we would do without them, they’re so helpful with both of our daughters, Kimley and Liana. And. They're also just a lot of fun to be around. So I really lucked out.

And so in 2016, , I think we kind of like saw the writing on the wall. You know, I love San Francisco. I spent my whole twenties in San Francisco. It's probably still my favorite city on earth, but we're like, we're going to start having kids. We want to raise a family closer to our parents or at least one set of parents.

And so that's what prompted the move to Colorado. And it's been a great fit for us.

[00:07:07] Adam: That's awesome. That tends to be the advice that I get a lot from folks on the program. It's like, well, I would say some people do it, raise their kids without being close to family. And it comes up a lot on the show that that is hard. It's hard to grow a family without having that support network, especially one that you're related to.

So yeah, I'm glad that you could do that. And let's talk a little bit about your family. So you have two kids, you have two daughters and you have your wife, Ashley. You and Ashley met at GSB, is that where you met?

[00:07:36] Phil: At the GSB, a, we have a fairly typical GSB

[00:07:41] Adam: Courtship story.

[00:07:42] Phil: I can get into it. There's something at the GSB called ambigu-dating, which is this idea of in business school, everybody's there to network, right? That's a huge part of what you're paying for. And so you'll like go out on these, you know, coffee dates or walks or bike rides or whatever.

And it's like, Is this networking or is this more than network? And in our case, it turned out to be more than networking. So.

[00:08:10] Adam: Well, there you go. You hit it off and rest is history. So tell me about your kids. How old are your kids?

[00:08:15] Phil: So Kenley's our oldest, she's seven. Liana is our younger daughter. She just turned five in September. Her birthday is actually on our anniversary. So. And not just any anniversary. It's our five year anniversary. So like every five year milestone corresponds with a big milestone for Liana, which is fun.

But those are our two daughters and they're great, we have a lot of fun with them.

[00:08:39] Adam: And then what does Ashley do for work? She sounds like she's very cool job?

[00:08:43] Phil: Yeah, much cooler than me. It's like, she's the real deal. So she has spent most of her career in non profit. She started a non profit called Daring Girls, previously called Africaid when she was a teenager, believe it or not. I think she was 16 when Africaid really got off the ground. And what it is is a girls education non profit focused on Tanzania originally they were like building brick and mortar schools in Arusha and other parts of Tanzania, but then they pretty quickly moved into curricula development.

And so it's basically leadership programs that teach young women, usually in middle school and high school. You know, speaking skills, leadership skills and more than anything, a lot of it is just building their confidence and empowering them to be you know, professional young women who are able to get into real careers.

And then one of Ashley's core findings that sort of sits at the core of the whole idea of Africaid, now Daring Girls is you invest in men in a lot of these towns and villages and some of them will come back, but many of them, they go off and they make their mark on the world. You invest in women, and a lot of them will come back into the village, and then it's just this compounding virtuous cycle where they're successful professionally, that wealth then accrues to the village, they invest their time and energy in training and empowering the next generation of women.

So the non profit has been around now for over 20 years. It's gotten grants from the UN from Jack Dorsey's philanthropic arm. And it's been really cool to see a couple of generations of girls go through now because you can really see this compounding effect. And so that's what Ashley spent much of her early career doing.

You know, she worked in the private sector for a little while, did a stint at BCD, but then has just always sort of had a heart for workforce development and education in particular. She worked with the state of Colorado for many years and then now with the state of Washington helping them develop youth apprenticeship programs, which is basically this idea of a four year college and university isn't for everyone.

Let's empower high school students to find their first job while they're still in high school so that when they graduate, they've got a career path. They've got a stable income and we could sort of set them off on the right foot. So that's what she does.

[00:10:57] Adam: That's so awesome. Wow. She does have a more interesting job than you, I gotta say. And it, as you were describing Daring Girls and this idea of funding young women who then kind of come back and like pay it forward. And I was thinking like, sounds like a growth loop.

[00:11:12] Phil: It did cross my mind and I started to describe it as a growth loop, and I was like, if I do that, Adam's totally going to roast me, so I'm not going…

[00:11:18] Adam: Ah.

[00:11:18] Phil: To say it. I'll say virtuous cycle instead.

[00:11:21] Adam: Well, that's where my head went. So we're on the same page.

[00:11:23] Phil: We've been indoctrinated. We're part of the Reforge mafia.

[00:11:26] Adam: You can't not see them. They're everywhere. So tell me with you and Ashley, what was the decision like for the two of you to start a family?

[00:11:34] Phil: I mean, I think we're two people who always knew we wanted kids. I think the question was always how many. So I grew up with one brother, Ashley grew up as an only child. I think both of us wanted at least two. And there's actually an ongoing discussion around, hey, do we want to have a third? I think the full story here, and I should be careful how much I share, but I think a few years ago I was like, I'm ready, let's have three kids.

I'm ready to do it. And for whatever combination of reasons, we decided to hold off. And now it's like, okay, we're through the worst part of this. Like our kids are seven and five. They're, you know, they're happily playing together and entertaining each other. Now life has gotten so much easier. We're in Colorado.

So naturally they're like doing skiing and snowboarding lessons. And it feels idyllic. Like everything has gotten so much easier. And so part of me is like the idea of going back to the beginning and starting all over with a third kid is daunting. And at the same time, you know, being a parent is fun. And I think part of us yearns for a third, but we'll see what happens.

[00:12:34] Adam: Well, I did just have a dad on the pod. We recorded it's coming up, who now has a fourth kid and his third kid is six and he has a seven week old now, and so it is possible, but I had that same reaction. I was like, oh man, just when you're like, , the sun is shining on you and you just get pulled back into the darkness. Diapers and you know, all that stuff.

[00:12:57] Phil: I mean, that would be us. Like that would be us, our youngest would be at least six. but I actually have a former coworker who I was just talking to last week, who she and her husband made that exact same decision and they seem to be very happy. So.

[00:13:09] Adam: You know, it's interesting. So, you have one brother. Ashley's an only child. You have two kids. I mean, maybe, maybe it could be your brother that has the three kids, you know, it doesn't have to be you.

[00:13:20] Phil: We keep telling them that we keep telling them. It's like being an aunt and uncle sounds amazing.

[00:13:26] Adam: Yeah. What's the earliest memory that you have after becoming a dad?

[00:13:31] Phil: I'm a huge Harry Potter fan. I think that that is probably true of almost everyone in my generation. Harry Potter is one of those things. I'm, if I'm honest, like if I meet somebody and they're like, oh, I've just never read Harry Potter. It's like, okay, your loss. But I get it. If they're like, I read Harry Potter and I just really didn't like it. It almost makes me question them as a human being. It's like, is something wrong with you? Are you a Slytherin and you just don't know it? But I will admit I haven't done a lot of reading. I haven't read a lot of the dad books, probably should have done more of that. But one of the things that I did read early on, before our first child was even born was, that a child can actually hear their mother and father's voice in the womb.

And so one of the things that I did before Kinley was even born was I would read Harry Potter every night before we went to bed. Ashley and I would cuddle up in bed and we'd read Harry Potter. And this was my way of like hopefully building a relationship with Kinley even before she came into the world.

And it just so happened that we finished the first book, Ashley and I watched the first movie that night and we finished it. And then at like one in the morning, Ashley wakes up and is like, it's time, baby's coming.

[00:14:39] Adam: Wow.

[00:14:40] Phil: So even in like, in the email that I sent out to friends and family about Kimberly's birth, it had like a heavy Harry Potter theme to it.

And then that's just sort of carried over. So you know, not that she, was really taking any of it in. But even when Kenley was an infant, I went through the first three Harry Potter books, we had illustrated versions of them, and then now she's just getting to the age, you know, she turned seven in April.

And so now we're actually going back and like really reading them. And Kinley’s an amazing reader, obviously biased, proud father, but she reads more than any kid her age I've ever met. And so she just loves them. And so every night we read a chapter where we're just about to finish the fourth book.

Part of me is like. Do I press on into books five through seven? Cause they start to get a lot darker.

[00:15:26] Adam: They get heavy.

[00:15:27] Phil: But so far so good. She's really loving them. So that was one of my first memories.

[00:15:30] Adam: That's cool. Well as someone who has done all seven books I've read them twice myself and read them cover to cover with my daughter who's now 12. I can say the books I think are okay, as the kids are still young. The movies I would not recommend. Those get really dark and very real.

And so I would wait on the movies, or at least maybe past movie number two or three. But yeah, it's pretty, they're pretty scary early on. So anyway, but that's awesome.

[00:16:03] Phil: I agree with you. So far I haven't taken your advice and we've watched the first three movies and the Dementors surprisingly, like Voldemort, no big deal. But the Dementors, the number of nights where Kinley has like come into our room at one in the morning and been like, I’m dreaming of Dementors…

[00:16:21] Adam: Yes, that was it for our daughter too. It was the dementors. That's what started scaring her when she was younger. So parents who are listening, be careful with the Harry Potter movies, especially with the young kids. So, speaking of nightmares you raised your two kids during the pandemic and they were pretty young, right?

So they're seven and five now. So a few years ago, I mean, technically there still is a, pandemic, but it's relatively under control. But a few years ago, they were a lot younger. That was, must've been very hard. And, you know, in general, I know it's incredibly hard on parents. It was hard on us and we had just young school age kids.

What was your experience like raising your daughters during the pandemic?

[00:17:06] Phil: Yeah. I mean, as you said, it certainly wasn't easy. In some ways you could argue we maybe had it easier than a lot of other parents because our children were so young that they weren't in school that had any material consequences. Yeah, right. Kinley was in Montessori preschool, but you know, Kinley was three.

Liana was born September 2019. So like six months before the pandemic really exploded. In fact, I remember Ashley's parents have this small cabin and so Ashley and I went up for New Years and spent a weekend just the two of us. As the fireworks were, you know, going off for new year's 2020. I remember telling Ashley, like the next decade is just going to be amazing. I can't wait to see what 2020 brings. And then like three months later, the world just falls apart. But I guess the short version of the story is, you know, we had a three year old and a one year old.

We're both working full time jobs at that point and pretty intense demanding jobs. And we had a nanny share. But the first thing that happened was. You know, we went remote. So now we have, I like to call it a nice but very small, modest house in South Boulder, right? We've got these beautiful views of the mountains, but it's a pretty small house.

So we've got four people living in this small house. We're both trying to work from home. You know, you're dealing with nap schedules, which never go according to plan. The next thing that happened was we just had nanny after nanny after nanny fall through for a combination of reasons, like in one case we had a nanny move away and then we had a nanny who some other parents swooped in and like gave her 50 percent more than we were offering without even having a chance to counter. So like she goes away obviously cause demand shot through the roof for child support during the pandemic. And then we had a nanny who we loved, but she was living with a roommate who, you know, was out all the time.

And so we didn't feel comfortable with that from a health standpoint. And so we had to let that one go, even though we really loved her. And, so finally we decided we're just going to move in with Ashley's parents for six months. So that was wild. And I said this before, I mean, thank God I get along so well with Rick and Nina, Ashley's parents. In a way I actually think it was like a dream come true for me because so we move in with Ashley's parents for six months. They live up in the mountains. So we're like living this idyllic life kind of back in the woods. It almost didn't feel real. And like, I'm, you know, working from Rick's study. And so I've got a great setup.

He's retired. It's so like, you know, I great wifi, great internet, really wasn't disrupted at all from a work standpoint. And then like every night we'd have like family TV or movie nights. So we'd like get together throw on Netflix, Nina would like bring down ice cream. It was pretty nice. I just can't say enough good things about them. They've gone so out of their way to make me feel welcome in the family, and so, we did that until things started to normalize a bit and then went back to Boulder and things started to normalize, but huge benefits of having your in laws close by, especially when they're very willing to roll up their sleeves and help out with the kids.

[00:20:18] Adam: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:20:19] Phil: Very grateful for that time we got to spend with them.

[00:20:21] Adam: Yeah. So you mentioned to me that this summer you took your kids, your daughters to Tanzania And that was to visit Ashley's nonprofit organization. Now when I heard that and I thought, okay, seven and five and international flight to Tanzania. I mean, that is a terrifying prospect for me.

And I think probably a terrifying prospect for many parents. So I guess the theme of this podcast is various nightmare scenarios between Harry Potter and international flights, but what was it like for you to take a five year old and a seven year old to Tanzania? Which to my knowledge is not very close to Boulder.

[00:21:02] Phil: Oh, pretty far, pretty far. I don't know if it's like directly on the opposite side of the world, but it's, you know, it's getting there. I think it was 27 hours door to door.

[00:21:12] Adam: Oh, my God.

[00:21:13] Phil: That's pretty brutal, but you know, we were lucky in that Ashley's spent years of her life cumulatively. When you add up all of the mini trips she's taken there for work in Tanzania, she knows it very, very well.

She has a network of close friends and mentors who live there. And then Ashley's parents also came. So Rick and Nina came. And so we had extra support built into the trip and they have also made many trips over there. I've made a few trips there myself with Ashley. So we knew what we were getting into.

And to be honest, it went way better than, we always expected there would be very high highs. We also expected there would be very low lows and there were a couple, but fewer than we expected. As far as the travel goes. I mean, that was one of the hardest parts. Those first 26 and a half hours went so smoothly.

Like, believe it or not, I think we flew from Denver to Minneapolis to Amsterdam. And then we had like a long layover and then we flew to Kilimanjaro Airport near Arusha. And with like 30 minutes left to go on the flight, everything had mostly gone according to plan. You know, we definitely had iPads and we were not going to get religious about no screen time on a 27 hours worth of flight.

So like we leaned on movies on the fly, we leaned on iPads, we brought a bunch of, you know, books and games to play with our kids. But with like 30 minutes to go, I'm watching Pokemon Detective, Pikachu Detective, whatever that movie's called, with, like, the third movie we'd watched over the last two days.

And out of nowhere, she just vomits. Everywhere. Everywhere! Like,

[00:22:49] Adam: Is your younger daughter or your older daughter or your

[00:22:52] Phil: Older daughter.

Older daughter. And so, yeah, I mean, talk about a nightmare. It's like everybody on the flight is just strung out from hours and hours of travel. You could tell the flight attendant was just not having it. He was like, I cannot believe with 30 minutes to go this has happened, but he didn't, you know, he was a professional. He showed up with All of the fixins, the you know, the plastic bag and the puke bag if she had to do it again. Which fortunately it a one and done thing, but still the damage was done and it was like we spent the rest of the flight just cleaning everything up so it was kind of this like anti-climatic conclusion to this otherwise very successful journey. But then once we got there, it was mostly great. It was such a magical experience to have three generations together in this place that had meant so much to all of us, but in particular to Ashley and her career and then to see particularly two daughters watch the work that their mother had done to empower other young women in this completely different part of the world with this completely different culture.

It was really, really cool. We got to meet with a lot of the students that Daring Girls was directly impacting. We met with a bunch of the teachers and administrators. They just talked about the impact that it had. And then we did some of the more touristy stuff. Like we went on safari and we went to Zanzibar for a few days off the coast.

So it was mostly a great experience. But there were those occasional lows, which were inevitable.

[00:24:22] Adam: Now, did you have any warning before the plane vomit, or was it just like, we're watching the movie movie's going great. Movie's going great. Oh, vomit everywhere.

[00:24:31] Phil: It was the latter. There was nothing. And this is, it's so funny. I was one of those kids who. I was a sensitive kid, and so when I got sick, it was like, I was gonna let everyone know about it. I was not a kid when it came to, you know, getting sick. Kinley does this weird thing where when she throws up, it's like, it does not emotionally register for her at all.

It's like Children Of The Corn. She just looks at you like, I'm totally fine, but it's not fine for the rest of us. Like.

[00:25:01] Adam: No. No.

[00:25:02] Phil: We got to make sure she's okay and clean everything up. So there was no warning. It was just like lightning bolt from the sky.

[00:25:09] Adam: God. Plus after, you know, 26 and a half hours of traveling, I can only imagine what food items she had been consuming on that adventure. So I'm just going to leave that there.

[00:25:21] Phil: Well, and I think that, so there was the lesson learned, which is sort of obvious in hindsight. I mean, we did our best to make sure that we'd brought some healthy food along, but there's only so much you can do with 27 and a half hours in a tin can at 30,000 feet. And so you know, she had just eaten snack after snack and airplane meal after airplane meal. And so I think that's what did it.

[00:25:41] Adam: Yeah. So I wanted to ask a little bit about your experience in Tanzania. So obviously you're, you know, you're in Boulder and you know, you're a family of four white folks I don't know how diverse Boulder is, but my, I imagine it's not the most diverse place. And so you're going to a very different part of the world than what your daughter's day to day experience is.

I'm curious, like, how do you talk to them about that? And did they have questions that came up? I mean, kids always ask the like cutest most innocent questions, but I'm just kind of wondering, like, how'd you prepare your daughters for a trip like this? Or to you know, help them appreciate the significant cultural differences between your life in Boulder and Tanzania.

[00:26:33] Phil: Yeah. That's a great question. I mean, we did a couple things. In preparation for the trip, one was there's this great, turns out it's a consumer subscription app, but it's called Dinolingo. It's basically Duolingo for kids. I mean, Duolingo now has Duolingo for kids, but there's an app called Dinolingo that they played with and loved, where they learned some words, some Swahili words, and that was a lot of fun.

And then we do a family meeting every weekend on Sundays, so I can talk more about that later, but you know, this was a theme that would come up in our family meeting as we got closer to the trip was like, what are we going to see in Tanzania and, you know, how is it going to be different? And how's the culture different?

But there's only so much you can prepare kids who are that age for, you know, a place and a culture and a lifestyle that looks so radically different. And I would say the biggest thing that came up, not surprisingly. You know, the, the race thing and I look different than everyone that came up a little bit, but travel a decent amount.

And so, you know, it wasn't the first time we've gone to a very different part of the world. I think the bigger part was, and I think this is a good thing. It was like just seeing how radically different the lives of these people were. Like how they live with so much less than we have in the U. S.

And then, you know, Boulder is not New York or San Francisco, but like it's. It's a wealthy place. And so I think it was good to just sort of show our children, one, how privileged they are and how lucky they are. And then two, impress upon them why it's so important to understand how different people live in different parts of the world.

And then hopefully the natural questions that leads to is, you know, should we be doing anything to help? And if so, what does that look like? And how can we be most helpful? In a lot of ways, that's what led Ashley to start Daring Girls in the first place. Her grandfather was an entomologist, so he studied bugs, including mosquitoes, and he did a lot of work on epidemiology and how to stop the spread of disease and w- in Eastern Africa.

And so because of that, Ashley went on this trip to Tanzania when she was not seven or five, but when she was a teenager, that then one thing led to another and eventually led to her founding Africaid. And so, yeah, they asked a lot of good questions. Some of them tougher than others, but it was great to expose them to them to that.

[00:29:02] Adam: Well, that's great. And I'm curious about the family meeting. I want to just talk about that for a minute because we've tried to do a family meeting in our house, our kids are 12 and 9 and for whatever reason it never stuck, but sometimes we do one.

We were like, we really need a family meeting to like talk about a topic. We had one this week to talk about technology use and come up with some reset on expectations and things like that. And it was good. It was good. This one was driven by my wife. Tell me about how you came to create this practice of the family meeting and sort of what the purpose is of it.

Cause I love the concept and we've just never really been able to pull it off ourselves.

[00:29:44] Phil: Yeah. Well, first of all, I think you have rightfully put your finger on the hardest part and in doing so shatter the facade that maybe I was trying to present that this has just been smooth sailing from the beginning and every Sunday we all just gather together…

[00:29:58] Adam: No, I mean, it's parents who are listening to this. They know the real truth!

[00:30:02] Phil: Yeah, no, we've had many false starts along the way.

[00:30:05] Adam: Yeah,

[00:30:06] Phil: Largely at Kinley and Liana's age, just because, you know, their attention spans are only so long, and so we try I guess we've done our best to keep it short and simple. So, there are three parts. The first part is rose, bud and thorn. I don't know if that's a game you've played with your family, but we'll start with rose, bud and thorn, you know, something I'm grateful for this week, something that maybe didn't go as well, and then something I'm looking forward to.

Then we'll get into the topic of the week, which is usually the weightier thing we want to talk about. Not always, sometimes it's, you know, we're going on this trip to Tanzania and that's super exciting. What are we going to do there? But other times it's, you know, how do we be more thoughtful as a family and do a better job of listening to each other rather than immediately, you know, telling others what we need or how do we do a better job of sharing?

And so a lot of times the major topic relates to, if I'm being honest, it relates to things we're trying to impress upon our daughters that we want them to change.

[00:31:06] Adam: Yeah, no, that makes sense.

[00:31:07] Phil: And sometimes that goes well and other times it goes less well. And then the last one, which I actually think to the extent that our family meetings look any different than anyone else's.

We always end with a song. So we'll like throw a song on Alexa and then we'll just like dance around like crazy people. And I actually think that's the most ingenious part. Because it's just a fun way to like, laugh and be silly together. And I think it means that the girls look forward to family meeting.

Now, the flip side of that is we've had plenty of meetings where from the first minute, they're just like, let's play the song. Let's play the song. That's all they want to do. But it's fun. I think it's been more success than failure. I think we've both realized that like, hey, as long as we're getting some good out of this, then even if there's a little bad, that's okay. It's a net win. So little by little, we're making progress.

[00:32:02] Adam: Yeah. And I think, you know, a common theme throughout this podcast through all the ones I've recorded is like, you know, modeling it, trying it, definitely better than not, and also you're never going to get to perfection, especially with young kids, like just anything could go wrong, you know, what's one of the popular song requests from your daughters these days?

[00:32:28] Phil: There's a lot of Lion King. So I guess on brand for our family, given the Tanzania.

[00:32:35] Adam: Oh, love those songs. Okay. I want to ask you if we could hit the time machine for a second. So let's say it's seven or eight years ago, and you meet Phil from seven or eight years ago, you're in the time machine. Phil's about to become a dad. What advice would you give younger Phil as he's getting ready to jump into fatherhood?

[00:32:58] Phil: Yeah, I think the single biggest piece of advice would be take as much paternity leave as you can. And in my particular case, I'm not sure I really had that option. I was at a company where the standard policy was you get one week of paternity leave. In my case, I was able to negotiate for two weeks because I'd been there a couple years and I was a strong performer.

But that was it. It was like two weeks and then you're back on the job. And in my particular case, I also happened to be working on a really big product launch at the time. And so it was like, literally I'm working 60 plus hour weeks in some cases, 70 hour weeks for a couple months leading up to Kinley's birth.

And then I have these two magical weeks off to bond with my new firstborn child. And then I'm right back into the frying pan and fortunately the launch wrapped up within a few weeks after I went back, but as a result of that, and I only really figured this out in hindsight, it should have been obvious, but I got two months of paternity leave with Liana, with my second daughter, and the impact of that was pretty significant.

Like, I think there was a little bit of a gap with Kinley that took me a while to fully close. Simply because I had so much less time to just be with her and deeply bond with her early in her life. And even those two weeks, it's like, when you only have two weeks off. It's hard to mentally remove yourself from, you know, all of the stress of work and what you know you're going back to.

And so, you know, we don't all have that privilege, but I do think definitely don't turn down paternity leave if given the option and take as much as you possibly can, so long as it works for you and your financial situation. I think that's the biggest one. And then I guess the, maybe the broader lesson in that is.

I think that just being with your kids and being in their world without distractions, no phone, like fully immersing yourself in their reality is so powerful. And I'll credit my wife, Ashley, who's shared plenty of literature with me on this again, like, , I've been derelict in my duties when it comes to like, reading a lot about being a great dad I like to think I have decent instincts and I've learned a lot along some of the literature she shared is just like, more than anything, kids just want to be seen and they want to know that they're the most important thing in your world.

And so I think I overthought it early on at times with like, we need a fun activity or, you know, I'm going to take them to the swimming pool or take them to some really fun, new novel thing. And that's all great. But I think in their minds, like all they really want is your undivided attention. And so that would be the other more broader piece of advice is just like that quality time is irreplaceable and so just finding ways to be fully present with them.

[00:35:55] Adam: Yeah. Did you get any advice that you would tell yourself to ignore? I don't know if you were getting a lot of advice dispensed in your direction, but what would you tell younger Phil not to bother with?

[00:36:06] Phil: I mean, this sort of relates to the parenting book stuff. Obviously, it's oversimplifying things. But I think there's like two poles here. And then there's a spectrum in between. They're the people who like they've read every parenting book, every parenting blog, newsletter, podcast.

And I just think it leads to so much stress and anxiety and honestly confusion. Because it's kind of like, I think nutrition is another category where you see this, where it's like, you'll read one book and it tells you one thing and then you'll read another book and it tells you the complete opposite thing.

And so my attitude, for better or worse, and maybe I'm oversharing here, is like, we have millennia worth of, you know, evolution that has trained us to have pretty good instincts about how to figure it out as parents. And at the end of the day, the most important thing is just, Loving your kids and showing up for them, showing them you care and always being there for them.

So to a fault, I think I have oversimplified the journey of being a dad at times. But I guess the advice I would tell people to ignore, especially as brand new parents, because I think there's this tendency to like over rotate on all of the literature around how to be a great parent is like, you know, there are a few books out there that I think are really, really good ones.

But otherwise don't worry too much about other people's perspectives because every parent has a slightly different style. Every kid is a little different. And so it's not color by numbers. You kind of just have to figure it out as you go, it's messy. And I think that, while it's well intentioned, all of this stuff out there, I think just it, it just leads to too much confusion and anxiety among the average parent.

That's my perspective.

[00:37:42] Adam: That's great.

Yeah, I wanted to ask you, so you, you mentioned in our prep for the show that protecting time with your spouse, with Ashley, is really important for both of you and that a thing that you prioritize.

So I'm curious to hear a little bit about how you do that and what benefits you've found in kind of being strict about protecting that time?

[00:38:04] Phil: I'm kind of surprised that this isn't something parents talk more about. I assume the reason is you have kids and for good reasons. So much of a parent's attention quickly shifts to how am I gonna be a good mother or father? How am I gonna show up for my kid? But you also have to maintain and invest in your relationship with your partner, right?

Because that's the foundation of the whole family. And in our case, I think it's particularly important because one book I do love, it's not a parenting book per se, but it's called The Five Love Languages, and it's all about how different people feel perceive love and affection in different ways.

And it turns out that quality time is one of my two primary love languages and one of Ashley's two primary love languages. And so for us, it's even more important to protect that time every week. I think for us at first arose shortly after we moved from the Bay area to Colorado, like in the Bay area, we didn't have kids yet.

You know, we were both working long hours and demanding jobs, but we still had plenty of time for each other and we loved spending time with each other. So it just happened naturally. But I think after we moved here and after we had Kinley we just sort of went on a couple of long walks. We both love to spend time outside.

And we're like, how are we gonna do this? How are we gonna make sure that as we have a first kid and then eventually a second kid and as the demands of being parents and of our careers just, you know, go up and up and up, how do we protect time for ourselves and reconnecting? And so we just instituted this tradition of a weekly date night.

And so almost without exception, we certainly miss a week every once in a while, but almost every week we'll go out on a date night. It's pretty simple. Like we'll go to a restaurant. Not even a particularly nice restaurant. In many cases, just like go out for 90 minutes, grab a meal, grab a couple of drinks, usually go out for ice cream afterwards, and then, you know, either spend time outside together or watch Netflix or a movie or what have you.

But that weekly ritual is really powerful. And it's just meant that we continue to put each other first and we continue to really understand each other's worlds and have provocative conversations. Then there's sort of another layer to it, which is every couple of years, usually we don't get to do it every year, but every two or three years, we try to go on a longer trip, just the two of us.

So we actually have our 10 year wedding anniversary this year. And we're headed to Peru actually next week. And so that's been the other, there's like the micro ritual, which is the weekly date night. And then there's the macro ritual, which is every two years getting away for like a week and just really fully recharging.

And fortunately we're lucky that we have not one, but two sets of parents who will really lean in and give us that gift. But that has been so powerful for us. And you know, it's cliche, but we're 10 years into marriage. I think we love each other more than we ever have. And it's. It's hard to achieve that if you're not spending time together.

[00:40:58] Adam: Yeah. For those weekly date nights do you have like a standing time with a babysitter or the grandparents or something like that?

[00:41:08] Phil: It is very routine. Yeah, we typically do Thursday nights. I don't know how we ended up with Thursday, but it works pretty well because by that point you're most of the way through the work week. You're not yet into all of the chaos of like managing kids schedules in the weekend. So it's usually Thursday night, sometimes Friday, but usually Thursday.

Usually with a babysitter. For a while we were lucky because we had a nanny who had worked with us when our kids were really little and then she was willing to, you know, do extra babysitting on the side. And so, we just used her for a couple years and then she moved on to another career. And so at this point we kind of have like a rotating network of about half a dozen different people who we can turn to. But for the most part, that's been reliable enough. And then every once in a while, the grandparents will pitch in, but we already asked them to do so much that we generally don't ask them to help with date nights.

[00:42:03] Adam: One more question for you about date night. How do you keep the date nights from becoming a logistical discussion about your kids? Which I find is a thing that can happen. Cause you know, you have so little time to catch up. Do you have like a safe word or some sort of way that you protect and redirect the conversation together? Like, how do you do that?

[00:42:26] Phil: We don't have a safe word. That's a great idea. We should have like a Harry Potter theme safe word

[00:42:30] Adam: Yeah. Slytherin.

[00:42:31] Phil: Or something. Slytherin. Um, no, we don't have a safe word, but, and you know, it does come up like not every date night is rediscovering why I fell in love with Ashley in the first place and walking down memory lane, reliving the romance, but more of them are than you would expect. You know, there's the occasional date night where there's so much going on. We just have to deal with family logistics. There's also the occasional date night where we've had a rough few weeks and we just need to repair on something.

So that happens too. But for the most part, I would say we’re pretty good atcompartmentalizing date night. Like it's sacred, right? We spend the other 99 percent of our lives being parents and. Mostly serving our kids at this point. And so I think we've both been pretty good about making date nights more about, you know, what's a book we read recently that is really interesting or what's something we're excited about over the next month or, you know, sometimes it is reliving a particularly fond memory from a prior era, but everyone's a little different, but I do think the routine helps because it's like, it's not just Thursday nights, usually with the same one of half a dozen sitters.

It's also, it's a little bit embarrassing, but like, you know, Boulder's got a decent food scene, but it's certainly not San Francisco. Right. And so we've got like a rotating set of about half a dozen restaurants we go to, we are both creatures of routines. So we order a lot of the same meals. We order a lot of the same drinks, but what's always different is the conversation and there've been a lot of great ones.

[00:44:08] Adam: Awesome. I love that. So I wanted to ask you maybe this has come up date night before, but you know, you seem like you're working on a building and maintaining a strong partnership with Ashley and that's super important for parenting. Where’s an area that the two of you don't agree on though, when it comes to parenting?

[00:44:25] Phil: This one always makes me smile because Ashley and her mom are both very good. And they would be the first to agree with this. So I don't think I'm outing them here. They're both very safety conscious.

Also, when I say safety conscious, what's funny is, if you think of like, you know, I'm a growth nerd, so I can't help but go here.

If you think of the expected value equation, it's like, I tend to get bent out of shape about situations where the outcome isn't necessarily catastrophic, but the probability of something going wrong is pretty high, right? Like, you know, something that would send you to the ER, but probably not, you know, lead to something worse.

I think that Ashley and her mom, it's more like, there's a 0.0001 percent chance this is gonna happen, but if it happens, like, the world is over. And I do think it's actually really healthy, right? We're a good counterbalance for each other, because I will often be a little bit more, I think this is pretty typical, it's a stereotype, but I think fathers, as a stereotype, are often a little bit more interested in pushing the envelope of what's safe.

I even, did a daddy boot camp before Kinley was born, it was like this, you know, two day thing, and I don't even know if this is true, the guy seemed credible, but one of the things he said has always stuck with me, which is men will instinctually hold their newborns out facing the world and women will tend to instinctually hold their newborns towards them.

And so it's this dichotomy of like, again, like, especially in today's world, I don't want to get into gender stereotypes and obviously everybody's different. Everybody has different style, but it did strike me that like, my instinct is often to, you know, take Kinley up on the rock. That's 10 feet above the lake and jump off of it with her.

Or when we were in Zanzibar, like the tide was out. And so, you know, there were only a few feet of water. There was a boat that was like a hundred yards offshore and I swam all the way out there with Kinley. You know, it was very calm. There were no big waves, but I like to push the envelope sometimes because I think it builds confidence and resilience.

It's also just fun. Like, I'll be honest. It's something I enjoy and have fun doing with my daughters, but then, you know, there's attention there because if the worst happens, it could lead to some negative outcomes. And so I would say that's probably been the single biggest source of tension is just like, what is safe enough?

And then where is the right cost benefit balance of like, exposing your kids to enough risk that they learn their own lessons. They build resilience. Occasionally they get the skinned knee, but you know, they learn everything's going to be okay, but not taking it too far to where something terrible happened.

[00:47:11] Adam: That makes sense. I think that's good. It sounds like a good balance to me.

[00:47:15] Phil: Yeah, I think so.

[00:47:16] Adam: What's a mistake that you've made as a dad?

[00:47:18] Phil: I think my biggest mistake goes back to what I said before around not fully appreciating just how critical those first couple of months would be. And you know, some of it was out of my control, but some of it certainly was in my control to just, even more than I already was, compartmentalize what was going on at work, and the moment I crossed the threshold into my house, I'm like, fully engaged, fully involved.

All of my attention is on my kids, or Kinley at the time, when it was just, when she was our only child. You know, I think I'm somebody who probably like a lot of people who are type a and working in tech. It's like, I'm always multitasking. I'm always trying to do too many things at once. And I've just learned that is a really bad way to approach parenting.

Like you just, like, it just doesn't work. It flat out does not work. And not only is it harmful to your relationship with your kids, but it also robs you of one of the greatest parts of being a parent, which is like deeply connecting with this other human who, you know, is so connected to you in so many ways.

And so I'm still working on it. I would be lying if I said that I fully figured it out, but I think I've gotten a lot better at it. I also think this new career path I'm in part of the reason that I left the beaten path of climbing the corporate ladder was I wanted to have more control over my own schedule and more flexibility.

And so owning my own business now, it just gives me a lot more freedom to, you know, if there's an opportunity to like take a powder day and go up to the mountains with one or both of my girls and go skiing and snowboarding. Finding ways to do that. Or on a more simple level, just unplugging and being fully present with them when we're reading Harry Potter or when we're doing other things at home.

[00:49:02] Adam: Well, that's great. I have a couple more questions for you. So I'm recording a holiday mashup episode and I'm asking dads to answer some of these questions. So, In the theme of upcoming holidays, a couple questions for you. What's the Halloween situation like in the Carter household?

Do we have costumes? What are we working with here?

[00:49:25] Phil: We've got costumes this year both Kinley and Liana want to be witches.

[00:49:30] Adam: Okay.

[00:49:30] Phil: There was a whole debate amongst the two of them. It was mostly Kinley trying to convince Liana that she didn't want to be a witch. She wanted to be something different because Kinley didn't want Liana to wear the same costume she was wearing.

And Kinley is like one of the best negotiators I've ever met. Like she's either going to be a CEO or a trial attorney because she is so good at manipulating people. I think she probably got that from me. Anyways, they're both going to be witches. Ashley and I both have costumes left over from Kinley's first birthday where, no surprise at this point we were Harry Potter characters.

Ashley was McGonagall, I was Dumbledore, so I think we'll probably throw those on again for old time's sake. But yeah, Halloween's pretty great in our neighborhood. It's like we live in South Boulder, which is sort of tucked up against the Flatirons. So there's not a lot of traffic. There are a couple streets where all the families go.

And so that's our situation. So far, it seems to be going pretty well, but we haven't gotten into the like super complex. You know, we're gonna be a theme this year and everybody's gonna like be part of the theme. We're not quite there yet.

[00:50:27] Adam: We kind of vacillate on that. Some years we do it, some years we don't. Now we're at the stage of life with our kids where they couldn't be less interested in going in a family theme.

[00:50:36] Phil: Again, I hope I'm not oversharing on behalf of my wife here, but, so my wife went to Harvard undergrad and she has PTSD because, she said that at Harvard, there would be these costume parties every once in a while, but it was like, you were expected to show up with the wittiest, most avant garde costume.

And if your costume wasn't a talking point at the party, then like you had failed in life. And so I think both of us are all about like, let's just wear whatever our kids want to wear.

[00:51:04] Adam: Yeah.That seems way too much pressure to me. I couldn't do it. Couldn't handle it. Okay. Couple more holiday theme questions for you. was gonna buy a book for themselves or their spouse for holidays, do you have a top or number one book recommendation from this past year or last couple years that you would recommend people get?

[00:51:25] Phil: Yeah. Well, I guess there's the classic. Fiction versus nonfiction, which are obviously two very different conversations. On the fiction side, I mean, it's not a recent book, but I really love the Kite Runner and that full series of books. So I guess that, I mean, it's probably not a very relevant recommendation at this point.

Cause those books have been out for so long, but I do really love those books. So that would be my recommendation on the fiction side,

[00:51:56] Adam: Mm hmm.

[00:51:57] Phil: On the nonfiction side. I mean, I guess this is the boilerplate answer right now, but both my wife had been reading Anxious generation.

[00:52:03] Adam: Oh yeah.

[00:52:04] Phil: I’m sure you have probably gotten this response from other parents recently as well.

[00:52:06] Adam: We've talked about it a little bit, but I have read it. I have read it. It's a good one.

[00:52:11] Phil: Yeah, me too. And it's, I think it's really good and really timely right now and it even goes back to some of the stuff we were talking about around safety and security and around. You know, just letting kids be kids. So that's when we both read and a lot of our neighbors have read recently.

And I think as a parent in particular it's really important.

[00:52:29] Adam: And then do you have any favorite holiday recipes or family traditions that you'd like to do together? 

[00:52:38] Phil: So on my side of the family, we were the outliers where we, like I said, we mostly grew up in Minnesota, but we moved around a lot. But we're the outliers, because my dad grew up in South Jersey, his whole family, he has two sisters, and like, his sisters and all of their kids, they're all still in South Jersey.

And then my mom, same thing, they're all still in Florida, they're spread out all across Florida and we're thinking about them right now, given hurricane, hopefully it's all gonna be okay, but they're all over Florida. We were the ones who sort of bounced all over the country. And then even when we settled, we settled all the way up north far away from everyone else.

So, we had these amazing traditions where every Thanksgiving we would go to New Jersey to visit all of my dad's relatives, and every Christmas we would go down to Florida to visit all of my mom's relatives. So, those traditions have just been so important for me as a kid growing up and then now for our kids because they see technically not cousins, but like, you know, they see all these other kids and now they're having kids.

And so, I guess that's not a specific tradition, but those trips to see family on those two holidays have been really powerful. And we'll do the same thing on Ashley's side of the family. The traditions maybe aren't quite as strong as on my side, but we'll try to do that on both sides.

As far as more specific traditions, I mean, we do the typical, like, Thanksgiving football game. Which has always been a lot of fun. And then the day after Christmas, we'll go out to a movie, which has always been, you know, a big thing for my family. So, none of that is terribly original but we love it.

[00:54:05] Adam: Well, that's okay traditions don't have to be original. They just have to be special for you. So I like that. How can people follow along or be helpful with you on your journey?

[00:54:16] Phil: I mean, I would say, on the parenting side you know, being a parent can be emotionally taxing. It can be lonely. It can inspire a lot of doubt at times. And so, I have fortunately found a great community locally here in my neighborhood of other fathers and parents who are sort of sharing the journey together.

Certainly if there are other parents out there working in tech, sort of balancing the demands of a busy career with being a good dad, like, I'm always happy to have a conversation.

[00:54:45] Adam: All right. Well, we will definitely point people in your direction for that fatherly bonding. Okay. We've got a few minutes left. Let's do lightning round. There are very few rules, but there is one. I ask you a question and you respond. With the first thing that comes to mind and then we move on.

It's a judgment free zone. We're in the, we're in the trust tree here. So the trust tree,

this whole episode is a trust tree, but especially now. Here we go. What is the most indispensable parenting product that you have ever purchased?

[00:55:14] Phil: Yeah this one's actually relatively easy for us because alluded to this. We're both big lovers of the outdoors. No surprise given we're in Boulder and for Ashley's baby shower, we were given one of those Osprey backpacks where you can plant your kid in it. At this point it's like in tatters because we used it so often and we've got this whole trail network, like minutes from our front door now in Boulder.

So that's been great. Unfortunately, our kids are too big now for me to, they'll still ask every once in awhile, Kinley will be like, put me in the backpack, daddy. And I'm like, That is gonna end up in the hospital, throwing his back out if he does that.

[00:55:45] Adam: You know, it's funny. That is your most indispensable one for another guest I've had on the show, that is their most useless parenting product. so that question, I'm going to turn that question to you now. What is the most useless parenting product you've ever purchased?

[00:55:59] Phil: This is maybe an indirect way of responding, but we have all these birthdays, obviously, every year, where we get all of these new toys, And our daughters for the most part, will get really engaged with a toy for like five minutes and then they'll completely forget about it and move on to the next one. And one of my first mentors at Bain was this partner. His name was Joe Scalise and he called it the war on crap. It was like, we just have this constant influx of crap coming into our house and we have nowhere to put it.

And like most of it just sits idle. So I guess I'm not really answering your question cause I don't have a specific product, but I will say some of the parents and bowler have banded together and said, like, no more gifts on birthdays. We don't like gifts, like make a donation to this organization. And so I'm a big believer in that because it's like, you know, toys are only novel for so long and then they just collect dust in the basement or the crawl space.

And so that's my not particularly helpful answer.

[00:56:56] Adam: My favorite invite to a birthday party is the one that includes no gifts, please. That's my favorite.

How many parenting books do you have in your house?

[00:57:06] Phil: We probably have a couple dozen. Most of which were purchased and read by Ashley.

[00:57:12] Adam: I was going to say, how many parenting books have you read cover to cover?

[00:57:16] Phil: Probably like five.

[00:57:17] Adam: Wow. That's impressive though. That is impressive.

[00:57:20] Phil: And Ashley might call bullshit on that. I don't even know if it's cover to cover, probably like two. This is kind of the way I am professionally too, it's like, I'm one of these collectors of frameworks and ideas. And so we'll take snippets from a particular chapter, from a newsletter, from a blog post, from a podcast.

And it sort of creates this Rorschach of how I approach parenting. But have failed miserably as a parent if the primary criterion is reading lots of parenting books. That's definitely my thing.

[00:57:47] Adam: It's okay. Good thing is that is not the primary criterion. What's the most difficult kids TV show you've ever had to sit through?

[00:57:54] Phil: So, there is this movie called How to Train Your Dragon. And I love it. I'm a huge How to Train Your Dragon fan. To the point where I went to it with my cousins. I'm When I was, I don't know, like 25. And this just happened to be the movie we were watching.

But I posed this hypothetical question to them, which was like, if you had to choose between getting to spend your whole life in a movie theater, but all your needs would be taken care of for you, and you could just watch movies as long as you wanted, or you could never watch another movie again, which would you choose?

And of course, all of them chose the right answer, which is like, I don't want to spend my entire life in a movie theater. And I ultimately came to that conclusion as well, but the fact that I even posed the question shows you how much I love movies. Anyways, this happened to be while we were watching How to Train Your Dragon, and I've always loved that series.

But now they have this really poorly done kids TV show that's on the theme of like these dragons and viking kids, and it's just so poorly done, which would be bad enough even if I didn't love the movies, but because I love the movies, it's like insulting to me. And so this is top of mind because we just had a night recently where my wife is actually on a business trip this week. And so as a sort of olive branch to our kids, we said, okay we're going to have a family movie night tonight where we can watch whatever you guys want. And they chose this dragon show.

[00:59:19] Adam: Oh no!

[00:59:21] Phil: The whole time I'm like, this is so bad and they just ruined it.

Like, it was such a good franchise.

[00:59:26] Adam: So maybe the answer is How To Train Your Dragon, but what is your favorite kids movie?

[00:59:30] Phil: Well, I'll start with Favorite Kids Show is Bluey, and I'm not alone there. Like, it's just so well done. They've taken the Pixar playbook of like, telling two stories at once, one for the little kids and one for the parents, and they've like, outdone Pixar at their own playbook.

Like, I get very emotional watching Bluey. So that's easily my favorite kids show. Favorite kids movie? Okay, we just watched The Wild Robot in theaters.

[00:59:55] Adam: Yeah.

My daughter just saw that.

[00:59:58] Phil: That movie is so good. I told my parents right away they needed to go see it, and I think part of why it's so good. It goes back to the telling two stories thing, like our kids just love the story of the robot and Kinley in particular loves animals.

So, you know, it was a great fit for our kids and they loved it. But as a parent, it just hits you so hard. Like, I don't want to give any spoilers because it's that good. Like, if you're a parent, you haven't seen it, you should go see it. But especially as a parent, I just think it like really hits home on both the wonderful and hard things about being responsible for another living being.

And so I spent almost that whole movie either laughing or crying.

[01:00:41] Adam: Wow.

[01:00:42] Phil: And then afterwards I told my wife and her parents, that was one of the best movies I think I've ever seen. And they were like, yeah, it was good. It's a little weird that you think it was that good.

But anyways, I love that one.

[01:00:55] Adam: On the subject of movies. What is a nostalgic movie that you cannot wait to force your daughters to watch with you?

[01:01:06] Phil: I guess I'll say Mighty Ducks, and the reason Mighty Ducks is great is, you know, I grew up in Minnesota, I played a little bit of hockey, and so I feel like that movie is like a little piece of my childhood. And so they're not quite there yet, but I think in the next couple of years, we'll be seeing that one.

[01:01:20] Adam: Yeah. Yeah, I forgot. that does take place in Minnesota. Gordon Bombay. It's a good one.

[01:01:25] Phil: Well, and little known fact, the Hawks and Adam Banks are from Edina, which is the town

that I grew up in.

[01:01:30] Adam: Nice. Okay.

[01:01:33] Phil: I'm a cake eater, which the other Minnesotans out there will know what that is.

[01:01:37] Adam: Awesome. Okay, How long can a piece of food sit on the floor and you will still eat it?

[01:01:43] Phil: So this goes back to the safety thing, because for my wife and her mom, the answer I think is like, once it hits the floor, it's dead to me.

[01:01:51] Adam: Yeah, it's done. Off limits.

[01:01:53] Phil: For me, I would say the 10 second rule, but if I'm being honest, if it's food I really want to eat or my kids really want to eat, I'll go a little over 10 seconds.

You only live once.

[01:02:06] Adam: You only live once. Yep.

Phil: Gotta live dangerously.

Adam:Yep. Have you started telling your daughters back in my day stories yet?

[01:02:13] Phil: Yeah, a bit, which I'm definitely like, there's like a, I haven't written it out, but I think there's a mental checklist in the back of my head of things that like older disgruntled men say. And I'm starting to say more and more of those things. So.

[01:02:30] Adam: There's certainly something that's going to involve the temperature of a Minnesota winter. Yeah, at some point that's coming up for sure.

[01:02:36] Phil: Although I'm so lucky in that regard because Liana is still a little bit too young, but Kinley loves cold weather.

And so one of our favorite things, obviously they're skiing and snowboarding, but one of our favorite things to do together is we've done this in San Francisco, we've done it in New Jersey going in like freezing cold ocean water together and everyone else thinks we're crazy, but I haven't had to pull that out because she loves cold weather.

[01:03:00] Adam: Okay. Good. All right. And finally. What is your take on minivans?

[01:03:06] Phil: I'm very anti minivan.

[01:03:08] Adam: Anti minivan.

[01:03:10] Phil: I'm a pretty open minded person in general. I never thought Ashley would be the mom who's like. What do you think? Pretty convenient, but I've told her, like, I just can't do it. Like, I would die inside.

[01:03:25] Adam: It's those doors though, Phil. The doors. They slide open. They're, you know. Yeah. I'm not a minivan person.

[01:03:31] Phil: But that’s not even, more of a thing for me, like, there are all these cars now where you have to press the button to close the door, and I just instinctually, like, Want to close it. And I've had Uber drivers yell at me cause they're like, no, no, no. Press the button.

Like I'm a full grown man. I can close a car door.

I don't need a button for this. So I don't know. I'm anti, I think we are going to buy an SUV, but no minivan

[01:03:53] Adam: Okay.

All right. Well, with that. Our minivan saga is concluded as has this podcast recording. Phil, thank you so much for joining me today on Startup Dad. This was a really fun conversation and I learned a lot. So thank you.

[01:04:08] Phil: Me too. Thanks for having me. It's been fun.

[01:04:11] Adam: Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Phil Carter. 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.