Using Work To Teach Kids Important Life Lessons | Ryan Bozarth (Dad of 2, co-founder/CEO Dakota, Coinbase, Square)

[00:00:00] Ryan: It's oftentimes easy to be, like, rather hard on yourself. And so I think one of the things I would tell myself before that is just maybe more of a reminder than anything else. That like, hey, this is a completely new chapter, which you figure out very quickly the minute the first kid is born.

But that there's going to be a lot that goes on and like really you're here to kind of really do your best and you're here to kind of be a model. And don't worry about the little pieces.

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 Ryan Bozarth. Ryan is the co-founder and CEO of Dakota, a business bank powered by crypto. He was the CEO of Coinbase Custody, a product manager at Airbnb and a general manager at Square.

Rob is also a husband and the father of two kids. In our conversation today, we spoke about using work as a way to teach your kids about important subjects like hard work, discipline, and staying true to yourself and your values. We also talked about calendar blocking and other methods that he employs to be intentional about his time and how he spends it.

I got his take on the future of finance for kids, how he and his wife find time for each other, and some frameworks and guardrails for parenting that he's learned. I hope you enjoyed today's conversation with Ryan Bozarth.

[00:01:34] Adam: I would like to welcome Ryan Bozarth to the Startup Dad podcast. Ryan, it is a pleasure having you here with me today. Thanks for joining us.

[00:01:46] Ryan: Thanks, Adam. It's great to be here.

[00:01:48] Adam: And I also actually wanted to give a quick shout out to Will Rocklin who introduced the two of us. You and Will go way back to your early days working at Square.

[00:01:59] Ryan: Yeah, that's right. We worked together years ago.

[00:02:02] Adam: All right, well, let's get into what you're doing now and kind of what brought you to today. So, you know, as you know, this is a podcast where I mostly talk about parenting and talk to dads, but I do like to understand people's professional background, because it's highly relevant to this conversation.

Especially yours. So tell me a little bit about your professional background and then your company, Dakota, that you have founded.

[00:02:27] Ryan: Yeah. Well, Dakota it's been something a company we've worked on the last two years. It is a crypto powered neo bank. What that means is that we offer folks, particularly businesses, a global business bank account where they can accept us dollars, send out us dollars earn yield, all the typical facets and functionality of a traditional bank account, but the biggest difference is that we hold everything as a U S treasury backed stable coin.

Prior to this, we spent myself six years building large crypto custodians. So I was a CEO of Coinbase Custody, led product over at Anchorage, but spent a lot of time in crypto thinking about storage and asset movement and security, and before that it was a period of time, as we kind of alluded to in FinTech, so I worked at places like Square and Airbnb and really in many ways, Dakota is a combination of that experience.

If you take a lot of what's happening at the user experience, the bank partnership is really kind of building off what we saw and built in places like Square and a lot of the crypto pieces coming straight from the custodian experience that we have as a team.

[00:03:25] Adam: Very, very cool. So if I were to use Dakota. Would it feel just like a regular like online banking experience? Or does it feel like I'm doing something with cryptocurrency?

[00:03:37] Ryan: Yeah. So it feels like a traditional neobank or FinTech. So you're going to log in, you're going to see different accounts, such as a checking account, a savings account, they'll each have their own routing and account numbers but you'll also be able to do crypto things as well, if you like, and so each account will, in addition to having those routing account numbers, we'll have segregated on chain addresses.

Which just means that you have your own crypto address that doesn't co-mingle your phones with anybody else and allows you to do more crypto native functionality. If you're someone like that, who needs that area of functionality, but a good percentage of our customers. In fact, most of our customers use us purely for the banking services, which means they're sending in dollars.

They're getting back dollars. The difference, the reason we do this conversion is it allows us to offer this product more globally from day one, we get to inherit a bunch of property from crypto, such as the assets being transparent and verifiable. They move around the world much faster, better access to yield, things along those lines.

But by no means do you need to be crypto native to kind of get the core functionality out of the product.

[00:04:39] Adam: Cool. That sounds awesome. I would say I am crypto curious, but not a crypto native. I once worked with a company where they paid me partially in tokens. And every time I went to convert those tokens and then send them to myself, I was like, please don't type in the thing incorrectly. It will go and disappear and I will lose all this money.

And so every time I like held my breath when I pressed the submit button, thankfully it worked every time. So, you know, I did use Coinbase in that whole experience. So thank you for building a great product over there too. It was awesome. I'm gonna jump right in and ask you about finance and kids.

So you have two kids. We're going to get into that a little bit more. They're pretty young. So you probably don't talk to them a ton about cryptocurrency, I would imagine, but maybe, maybe we'll get into that later, but I wanted to ask you, given that you're a fairly like, you know, web three native user, very much more crypto curious than I am.

Crypto expert, I guess I could say, what do you think the future of finance is going to look like for our. Kids, are they going to be transacting in dollars and cents? Or are they going to be moving bits and atoms around and doing all this stuff in new types of currency?

[00:05:52] Ryan: I definitely think that if we go out that far, so my kids are young. So if you go out, you know, 15, 20 years. There's definitely a world in which we're living in. That's I'll call it like multi currency and that's going to span both what we think of today as kind of traditional fiat currency, such as a U S dollar, Euros, British pounds.

But I think we'll also include other assets that we today kind of think of at our conceptually cryptocurrencies. So notably things like. Bitcoin and Ethereum and the like I think that a lot of our actual transactions will be much faster. A lot of the crypto rails will be used much more. So that means even if you are interacting with US dollars, for example, as opposed to, you know, a Bitcoin you might be moving a dollar from your mobile application to another mobile application over there.

And there will no longer be these kind of walled gardens, what we have today with traditional fintechs. So whether you're using something like a Venmo or a Cash App, which works phenomenally well within that environment, I think we'll be in a world in which you're able to rely on the underlying kind of crypto infrastructure.

To I'll send these things to individuals outside of those applications to whole new applications, but you'll still get all those same properties of it being kind of instant global and free in many cases because you're able to rely on this new set of technology and infrastructure

[00:07:06] Adam: That's awesome. Instant, global and free. You're speaking my language. I feel like you know, I use Venmo and then whenever I go to cash out with Venmo, it's like, would you like to wait one to three days or do you want your money now? And of course I want my money now. But it's not free. So, you know, I always choose the one to three days.

I never need it quite that urgently, but imagine if that didn't cost us any money, that'd be amazing. Very excited for that future. I imagine you are too, given that it's your livelihood.

[00:07:34] Ryan: Very much so. I think one other thing that we'll see. is just that we'll have, I think, a lot more control and freedom over the assets, which will be really fun. I think that retaining ownership will be a key theme over the next 10 to 15 years here that historically we haven't had the access to tools.

And as those user experiences get better, and as you mentioned, kind of today, it is rather rough at times when you have to kind of code in a number of numbers and letters and you're worried about going to the wrong place. But I think there'll be over that time horizon far better improvements there and that'll allow people to at least when they want to be able to retain a portion of their assets, retain ownership of their assets.

Which I think will be very compelling for the next generation.

[00:08:13] Adam: So obviously finance was very different when you were a kid. So tell me, what were you like as a young lad? And would you say that there's any aspect of your childhood that kind of shaped how you are as a parent today?

[00:08:27] Ryan: So I think there's a couple of things. I, from a very young age was very interested in starting my own business, not because I was infatuated with making money or even the business itself, but I was able to kind of start these like younger endeavors, which I just had a lot of fun with. And I think that was like a key piece is that even at my own parents, they were very encouraging.

We sold t-shirts out of the back of my car as like one project and we'll even call it a company in high school. And the funnest part of that was going to get t-shirts made with a silkscreen and get a side of the designs and going through and talking to people as a 15 year old about distribution and all those pieces and doing it with, which was your best friends in high school.

And so a lot of those pieces that are early age, I think ended up being a lot of the ways in which I kind of in my interest as an adult, as I think about those influences as a kid, I think my parents were very encouraging around what we today consider big projects, not real companies in the sense of balance sheets and making money and all that.

But just be able to explore, find things that you like and be able to do with people that you enjoy spending time with. And if it becomes something great, if not, then it was a unwind of a project. I also think as a kid we had a lot of opportunity to kind of learn for a number of ways that kind of the value of money.

I think we all at that age we're had kind of experiences with our own families around what that might have meant. Within my own, we had you know, weekly allowances and things like that. And so you were always kind of understanding how you wanted to spend that allowance. If you wanted something, you had to save up for it.

And go through that experience as a kid. I think has been really helpful as an adult. That's something that I hope to pass on to my kids as well.

[00:10:02] Adam: Awesome. So let's talk about your kids and your family. you have a partner. You have two kids, how did you and your partner meet each other?

[00:10:11] Ryan: we lived in San Francisco at the time. We met actually working together. So we were working at Square on a couple of different teams. And so got a chance to meet her there. We've been together now for come up for 11 years now. And we have two kids. We have one that is just turned four and another is two and a half.

One boy, one girl our girl's the older one. And so we got a chance to spend close to a decade since we've been together and now we live in Colorado.

[00:10:36] Adam: Man, it all comes back to square between Will and now your wife. It was a lot of connections happening from Square. Sounds like a great company to meet friends and spouses.

[00:10:47] Ryan: 100%.

[00:10:48] Adam: Tell me about what your wife, I think her name is Carrie, what she does for work?

[00:10:55] Ryan: So Carrie is a product designer by trade. So we met at Square, which is a product designer. And she still does that today. Today she freelances and works for a number of tech startups.

[00:11:05] Adam: Two working household. I guess one of the things we didn't cover is that you technically have a third kid and that is your company. Many people, many founders have described their startup as their third child. and oftentimes that third child requires a lot more time and attention even than the first two.

What was the decision like for you and your wife to start a family? Especially considering you both work outside the home have, you know, startup careers. You're now founding a company. There's a lot going on there. Some people might say, Oh, too busy.

You can't do it. But what was that decision like for you two?

[00:11:46] Ryan: It was something that was really important to us. And in fairness, we had started the company after the kids were born, but at the time we were working at some tech employers in San Francisco. So in the city we felt that it was the right time. We both grew up in households where we had another sibling and we were close in age and we kind of had very fond memories of growing up and effectively having like a friend or a buddy with you.

And especially as someone like myself who moved around as a kid, it was really nice to know that my case, my younger sister was always there and she was your effectively your first friend wherever you moved. And so I think a lot of that background really got us kind of excited about having kids when we did and having two of them rather close together.

[00:12:27] Adam: You mentioned that both of your kids were already born when you went back to start Dakota. And so I'm curious, was that a discussion when you were thinking about taking the plunge to start this company and you got these two young kids at home and a partner who as well, like, how did you navigate that discussion?

[00:12:46] Ryan: Yeah, it's 100 percent a discussion and a factor. I think any parent will tell you the same where you have to really think about, you know, what you're doing for the family. If it's the right time. And I'll tell you a couple of the pieces that we kind of discussed. I'll say one for myself personally.

I wanted our kids to basically see their dad as someone who worked hard. I still wanted to be present and in their lives, but I didn't want to see them someone who necesarily had just a job that they went to when they kind of didn't really enjoy it. But it was something they did no matter what.

And so there was a capacity for basically to say, yes, this will be more work. This will being very honest, require more hours than some of the jobs that we had previously. It should and it will, but there's also a kind of thing that can be a more teachable area where it says, Hey, like you should do things that really matter to you. You should follow those dreams if you really care about them, you should put in the hours when you need to, and if you need to. And so for us, a lot of discussion revolved around us as parents, what we wanted to instill in our kids. And also practically as a family, what we wanted to do.

And so it was also a moment where in this case, Carrie, my wife could take some part time work and kind of dial back some of the full time work she had been doing up to that point. And we, as a family could kind of, you know, find that balance together as a unit.

[00:14:00] Adam: Yeah. I've talked to some parents on this who've talked to me about the concept of when you have two parents and they both work, oftentimes, somebody needs to have the greedy career and somebody needs to have the slightly less greedy career. And that can switch over time. Everything is a season.

But it sounds like that decision was, well, maybe Carrie's going to have the slightly less greedy career right now while I'm doing the thing that's all consuming and, you know, building this company.

[00:14:23] Ryan: Yeah, I think you put it very well around like seasons. I think that's definitely a big part of the conversation is like, whether their seasons or their chapters, like, what are we really trying to get out of this next season? How long do we think it'll last? How will things shift?

I think every person and every kind of dimension of the couple is going to have moments where you can make the compromise and say, Hey, for this season, this is maybe the role that I'm going to play versus some other season. And that's, I think in many ways, it's like a beautiful part of having a relationship and a long term partner and be able to do those things together.

It definitely goes both ways where there's moments where, you know, things kind of, they can be more difficult discussions or whatever it is. But at the end of the day, I think you look back on those things and you go, wow, you know, we went through all of this stuff. We did it together. And in many cases it's a lot of fun.

At least I hope it is.

[00:15:05] Adam: You kind of talked a little bit about the importance of having a job that you're passionate about and kind of showing your kids by example that you can do hard things. You can work hard. You can do something that you love. So, do you see work as a way to teach your kids some important life subjects?

[00:15:29] Ryan: Yeah, I think that's one dimension and it definitely is like a big part of I think one area is that we do spend a lot of our time working. And so it's actually incredibly important for yourself as an individual to find meaning in that and do that work that is most compelling to you. But also for your kids, like they will likely spend a lot of time in their life as well.

Kind of working through a career of sorts and like that needs to be something that they really care about. It's something that they feel passionate about, and it'll be different for everyone, but I think having those kind of common threads are really nice. And so something that is something that you personally feel meaning or passion to find is like one of those areas for myself, I'd say, like, I think working hard is incredibly important, no matter what the work is.

And those areas I think are really nice to be able to instill in your kids. And as you alluded to. I think it's, I mean, it's really hard to be able to do it. Aside from just showing yourself, I think as a parent, it's very easy to kind of tell your kids one thing, but really what they're going to pick up on a hundred out of a hundred times is going to be what you do and how you act as opposed to what you say.

And so when it comes to work I think that's one way in which you kind of instill some of those lessons to them, not to say that there's not a bunch of other parts of your life in which you can instill those same lessons, but it is a one channel or one avenue to do it.

[00:16:41] Adam: I love that. Speaking of telling your kids things and not having it be super successful, have you ever tried to explain to your kids what dad does for work? Let me just add to it. I think there's a good chance that most adults wouldn't understand what it is that you do for work. I'm wondering if you've ever brought it down to the level of like a four year old and a two and a half year old?

[00:17:04] Ryan: So, In full transparency, I have not and not in terms of like the content of the work itself. What oftentimes we've talked about is that, you know, dad works with certain people and they'll come to the house and they'll meet them. And so like, that's been a really nice way of them kind of I think understanding more of what I do.

They'll definitely kind of come up and sit on my lap here at the computer and look at the computer screen and they can understand that there's something to do with this computer. But in terms of, you know, dad works at a you know crypto powered neobank. We haven't broached that yet, maybe in a couple years.

[00:17:34] Adam: In a few more years, you'll get into the real nitty gritty of the job, but right now it's just dad has this job, he works hard, he talks to people on a computer screen. Yeah, that sounds great. I think that's probably the right level of information to give to the kids. So I'm curious how do you, as a busy founder and a busy dad, remain really intentional about your time and what you do with it?

[00:18:04] Ryan: That's a great question. So I personally have found that a lot of what works well for me is having a program or a structure to it. And so you mentioned it being intentional for the way that I found my week to work best is that I carve out time for different things, but it's all effectively kind of carved out.

And so as an example, I'll carve out time to spend with my family every single day. I'll also carve out time that says, Hey, these are work hours. I like to be in front of a computer and working time for your own health, time to have more social activities. But I found that especially because, you know, with the family, running a company. You know, time is very scarce that like the best way to be able to manage your time is to be able to kind of be very intentional about it.

And so, I'll be the first to admit it's not perfect. I found never all kind of evolutions of trying to improve it, but try to look at my week and say, okay, great. Here's the kind of like working hours. Here's the family time, here's the health time and whatever else might come into the folds.

And also just being very you mention seasons. I'll go back to seasons, like just very kind of frank and honestly yourself about this is a season where there might not be a lot of extra time for hobbies, or extracurricular activities. That doesn't mean that's never coming back again, but for this next season or this next chapter, it might not be something where I am, you know, riding my motorcycle on the weekends or spending a lot of time in the mountain and things like that.

But those things will also kind of come and go.

[00:19:29] Adam: Yeah. If I could also recommend, if you do ride a motorcycle, now that you have young kids, I highly recommend life insurance, so definitely get that. Maybe some disability insurance too just in case. So do you do you and your wife do like calendar blocking? Do you sit down every week and kind of look at the upcoming week?

Or do you try to make it consistent from week to week? What's the system? Or maybe lack of a system that you've found works, works best for you and your family?

[00:20:00] Ryan: I found that it's really helpful to have like calendar blocking is an example of like a baseline set up and we all know kind of life comes up and that doesn't work perfectly, but I think I'm having like a kind of shared understanding of like, Hey, I try to work out in the mornings and we all kind of know when you or your partner wakes up and things like that.

And this is the kind of typical work day. It looks like this, which means like we spend the family time together. You know, before they go to school or when they come home and things along those lines, but of course things will come up and you'll have a late meeting and early meeting, you'll miss days of going to the gym or working out but you kind of have this like built in kind of baseline that you can go off of.

And so I found it really helpful to have that kind of shared, almost like consciousness, if you will. To say, Hey, like, this is kind of what we know what the weeks that look like for us as a family. But we also know that things change and that, you know, we'll have to meet with teams and for time zones, or we'll have to make adjustments because, you know, when the kids get sick or whatever it might be that comes up that tends to kind of throw a wrench of things.

And this is just part of the life right now. And trying to embrace that as much as you can.

[00:21:02] Adam: Yeah. A surprising number of times I've had to reschedule these podcast interviews because a dad's kid has gotten sick and I'm like, and they are really apologetic and I'm like, Hey, it's a podcast where I talk to people with kids. I have kids. I know what this is like. Kids get sick a lot. So, totally understand. I wanted to ask you to, because schedules can be. All over the place and things are often, you know, surprising. What's some of the most surprising things that you've discovered as a dad?

[00:21:34] Ryan: One of the ones that come to mind is just that I I think people talk a lot about patience as a parent and like kind of learning to be patient. I definitely think that's something that my kids have taught me and I actually feel like that has been actually a learning experience for myself. But I also think that being in the moment and being able to kind of take a beat whether it's like actually get breath or something else when things are kind of going haywire or whatever is happening in the house has been one of those areas that I think you do as a parent because out of necessity, like it's, I think it's really important to be like, Hey, like, you need to, in many ways, kind of be that more even keeled be able to say, okay, we're going to direct where this is going to go.

But that's actually has had the influence in other parts of my life, you know, into work and other relationships where you say, Hey, it's actually a lot of value and just being able to be the person that takes a beat for a second. And whether it's kind of redirecting a conversation where it needs to go, whether it's having a difficult conversation with someone.

And that was 100 percent something that my kids taught me. That is maybe a kind of path off of patience, but kind of stemmed and was a, for me, smart case, a separate lesson

[00:22:43] Adam: That's a really good point. I was actually, before you said that was going to ask you if this is a thing that you learned at work that you then kind of taught your home self, or if your kids, if you got better at this as a founder and CEO and leader of companies after having kids, and it sounds like the latter is the case.

[00:23:02] Ryan: It was for me in this example. And I think it does go both ways. And maybe if I was, you know, a different kind of professional or different kind of dad. It might be like, Oh, I brought over all these like amazing skills from work to the house. But I think in many ways it goes the other direction where you're kind of learning these things with your kids, you're, they're teaching you, you're teaching them, you're going through that experience and then you kind of recognize an opportunity to use it somewhere else.

[00:23:24] Adam: Yeah. On the patientce front, which sort of life is the hardest one to remain patient in? Is it the working life founder and CEO, or is it dad with the kids? I have my own personal answer to this, but I'm curious about yours?

[00:23:39] Ryan: I would say it's harder on the business side. I think in the family side it's a little bit easier because you have I think this ability where you are in many ways kind of looking to your kids and they might be kind of acting in ways that your business colleagues might not be. But that's the dynamic, that's the relationship, right?

Like you are their dad or their father and you're able to kind of like, you have that role in that case. Whereas I feel sometimes in the business setting and things are kind of going in a direction. There's a different set of kind of expectations around us as a company, the culture that we have and want to instill.

And so in many cases I have found those to say, Hey, like, while still being patient and having that same capacity for things like empathy in that environment, it's a little bit easier to say, Hey, like there's a way of doing things, the culture that we instill here, and so we're going to direct people back to that kind of baseline for us as a company in a way that you might have a more flexibility with your family.

[00:24:34] Adam: Oh, that's really good and surprising to me. I personally find a little bit harder on the home front, but that's me. It shows you that every dad is different. So, I wanted to ask you about advice. So let's say that you are rewinding the clock, you know, four years and a couple months, right before you're gonna have your first kid, you bump into younger Ryan.

Fresh out of the time machine. And you've got to dispense some advice to younger Ryan. What advice would you give the younger version of yourself?

[00:25:07] Ryan: I think the number one thing is that I think as a parent, especially as a parent that has young kids, it's oftentimes easy to be, like, rather hard on yourself. And so I think one of the things I would tell myself before that is just maybe more of a reminder than anything else. That like, hey, this is a completely new chapter, which you figure out very quickly the minute the first kid is born.

But that there's going to be a lot that goes on and like really you're here to kind of really do your best and you're here to kind of be a model. And don't worry about the little pieces. I think in the moment, it's very easy to look at something that happened, a kind of moment that didn't go well or whatever it was and kind of be rather hard on yourself and it's not that we shouldn't improve and get better on those things.

I think we should. But I feel like if I could still one thing on myself, kind of, or having kids would be like those are going to happen like kids is going to be like this whole new chapter, you'll have ups, you'll have downs, you're going to go through it all as you might expect. But just don't forget that, you know, you're going to do your best and that don't be too hard on yourself when you mess up because everybody does.

You talk to other dads and we all go through this together in many ways. And it's very easy to, I think, commiserate with other parents. Just whether it's at a park or a party or something else, but in that moment, I think it's easy to be hard on yourself. So to be a little more forgiving would be the one.

[00:26:25] Adam: I love that. Be a little easier on yourself when it comes to being a dad. I'm curious if you got a lot of advice dispensed at you when you were starting the journey.

And as many parents get, you know, a lot, there's a lot of opinions when it comes to raising kids. So I'm curious if on the other side of this, you would go back in time and tell yourself, here's some advice you should just ignore that someone's going to give you?

[00:26:51] Ryan: I will say, I think we were rather good about kind of letting it roll off our backs and kind of hearing what needs to be heard, but not necessarily taking too much stock at any one person.

And so I think that's actually was for us a healthy way to go about it. In terms of kind of tennis onto the next person and presenting that advice, I think it's incredibly difficult because you can, I think, do things that are very tactical and say, Hey, here's a crib that worked really well for us.

Here's a toy that the kids absolutely loved or something that it's like very specific. And those can be really nice way of kind of showing you care. But when it comes to the advice, those are the things that people need or what they're looking for. I think it's much more on the emotional side. And those things are incredibly hard to port from whether it's one relationship to another, whether it's with you and your partner or with the individual and their kids, maybe their newborn in this example.

So I don't know if I would have too much to be able to offer in that capacity. I think having the kind of ability to be a little more forgiving to come back to that idea is like one of those, I also think being able to find time for you and your partner together is incredibly important, especially when the kind of kids are young and you know, they're not sleeping and things are hectic.

It's making time for yourself and time for you and your partner is incredibly important. But it really kind of comes around to those areas of like self care that I feel like people will tend to fall back on. So it's like, make, take time for yourself, be healthy, do all those things. Be present with your kids.

It's all going to be the advice that I think most people will hear a hundred plus times going into it. And so it won't be anything that's revolutionary, but I will say in some capacity that does help to kind of hear those things over and over again, because that's the stuff that ends up sticking. And so that's the only advice I think that I would have.

[00:28:34] Adam: I think that that's great because especially what you mentioned about hearing things hundred times to internalize them, they say repetition is the mother of studies. So oftentimes like one person says something, you're like, okay, that's interesting, and then if you hear it from several more, you're like, okay, maybe there's something really here.

That's why I do this pod, right? Sometimes we get a lot of the same themes, but that's totally okay. We're normalizing it. Question. I wanted to go back actually, because you just mentioned the importance of carving out one on one time with your wife, your partner. And you mentioned, you know, obviously doing kind of blocking with the calendar and things like that.

Do you and your wife have any kind of rituals or ways that you prioritize time to spend with each other?

[00:29:15] Ryan: 100%. Speaking of like time blocking, we have like a standing date night as I think some couples will. So we have our same date night is on Thursdays. That's our night together. And so, one Thursday we'll opt in, stay in, and we might do something like cook a meal together which would be nice, maybe have a glass of wine, and just enjoy each other's company, and put on some music and then one, Thursday we might go out to dinner, and so that kind of means that we kind of go out for a date night every, let's say, two weeks or so, and in between those, we're having something that's at home.

That's maybe a little more subdued, but I would argue equally nice sometimes. And so that's kind of like our kind of moment in time, like throughout the week that we got to carve out and maybe those few hours. And then aside from that, it's just, I think throughout the day, trying to be able to let them know you're there, let them know how much you care about them and things like that.

And I think those little moments end up being the ones that probably add the most value or add the most kind of to the relationship. But it's nice to also have the big chunk of time together on a weekly basis. And of course, like anybody, we have definitely missed our fair share of eight nights, but we have that as like our standard baseline or our program that we're trying to do.

And it is nice to be able to say, things ebb and flow, but we're trying to get back to this place where on Thursdays, you know, one week, the kids might be sick, another week might be on a business trip, but in general, we're always kind of trip back to, you know, Thursday nights are night. And the same way we have like Friday night dinners with ourselves as a family.

But for Thursday, it's for me and my wife, me and Carrie.

[00:30:34] Adam: Yeah. I love that too. It kind of goes with your theme of like, don't be too hard on yourself. Like sometimes you're going to miss the Thursday, but the North star is that we're trying to get together every Thursday and do something just the two of us. So, I love that. I wanted to ask you a question.

I've been asking a lot of parents lately, which is, do you have a favorite book that you like to read to your kids? Or put another way, do your kids have a favorite book that they like you to read to them?

[00:31:03] Ryan: So we have a kind of reoccurring book that we got to go back to which is the kind of like, I don't know if you guys have seen the kind of Five Minute stories from the Disney series. And so they will go back to that one over and over again. We go to the library and we get a new set of books, what feels like on a weekly basis.

And you'll get a couple of books that are juiced into the mix. But within a few days, you'll find yourself back to this five minute stories. I'd say, so that's probably our most reoccurring theme. And the actual story itself probably changes every three to six months. We are currently on a Frozen kick.

And so we are doing a lot of Elsa and Anna for those familiar with that. But we've kind of dabbled for everything from, you know, Ariel to Snow White you name it.

[00:31:44] Adam: Awesome. And the way, did Elsa and Anna make their way into the family Halloween costumes this year? Or would you go in a different direction?

[00:31:52] Ryan: Our oldest had a fairy Elsa costume. It was kind of a combo there. And so Luca was very much in it. The rest of us were not, but she kind of represented our household on the Frozen front.

[00:32:02] Adam: That's good, something tells me I had a feeling this was part of the Halloween get up. So, you know, oftentimes in work and probably, you know, in various points in your career, we think and operate a lot in frameworks, right? We use frameworks and product management.

We use frameworks and marketing. Like you probably have leadership frameworks, right? As a CEO and founder. Do you have any parenting frameworks or guardrails that, you've put into place or try to live by?

[00:32:27] Ryan: There are a couple, and I don't know if I would classify them as frameworks, but I'll kind of do the best with what I kind of consider to be maybe these areas where we try to kind of instill guardrails, I think that’s a great way of putting it, where I think after work is a great example where we have this kind of time together as a family.

We do our best to eat dinner together on most nights, and one kind of guardrail for us is that we're not looking at our screens or email, things like, that that we kind of put our devices aside and that we are kind of hanging out. We're talking about each other's day. And so we're going through and just like having those moments, being able to go play with the kids after dinner with their toys and to like one area saying, Hey, we have this time together, carved out for us as a family.

And important part of that for us is like, Hey, there's no screens during this time. Cause we're here really to engage and talk and play and do these things together. I think one other one that I might add to that is thinking through kind of how much structure we have. We talked a little bit today about having a program and time blocking and things like that, and kind of having this balance of like structure and also being spontaneous.

And so it's like, how do we kind of make sure that, you know, throughout the week, and this is more something that we kind of touch base and how we feel about it than necessarily a strict rule, but wanting to make sure that because we have a relatively structured life and day in many cases that we're providing like space to be spontaneous.

And so what that means doing something kind of fun after dinner or doing something on a Sunday that we don't normally do, or going on adventures. We've been making adventures out of like small things that normally might not be an adventure. But when you can hype it up and you can do it the fun way, like you can kind of create something more out of it.

Those are probably the two that come to mind in terms of a guardrail, maybe even framework to parenting.

[00:34:12] Adam: I love that. What's a recent adventure that you've crafted for the kids?

[00:34:18] Ryan: So, I live in Colorado, as I mentioned, and we just went through fall. We got our first snow. And so just this last weekend, we had a combo adventure. One was, we got a bunch of boxes and we made forts in the front lawn briefly followed by raking the front lawn. So a bunch of leaves that came down.

And so there was an adventure to the hardware store where we got not just the adult has their rake, but that was also now two two and a half foot rakes as well alongside our adult rake that we got from the hardware store. And everyone got to, you know, contribute or go on this adventure of raking leaves together, which was a lot of fun.

[00:34:52] Adam: I love that. One of my son's favorite things to do was going to the gardening center and finding the kid sized gardening utensils. And getting one, you know, a rake, spade, who knows, but I love that. Also practically useful for you… lawn, fully cleaned. I'm sure the two and a half and four year old were diligent in where they raked and how well they did it.

[00:35:16] Ryan: Absolutely. And it's just training for the future, right? Where this is a long game. We'll get better as we go for sure.

[00:35:22] Adam: Yeah, just giving them some reps, giving them some reps. That's what's most important. So, you mentioned, having a, blocked off date night and partnership is super important when you have kids, but I also find you know, it might be projecting a little bit, but I find it's hard to agree all the time.

Right. Like you live with someone, parenting is complicated. There's going to be disagreements. What's an area that you and your wife don't always agree on when it comes to parenting?

[00:35:50] Ryan: I think there's a couple areas in which you find yourselves on a different, it's oftentimes I'll describe as like a spectrum and you might feel a little differently on that spectrum. I think a lot of time when you're with someone, it's often because at least some portion of the ratio is built on like a core set of values.

And so you generally don't find yourself on like two opposite ends of a spectrum. So you're saying, okay, I feel a little bit more this way versus that way. I think one dimension of that will just be like, Hey how, how do you feel, you know, good. Do you feel about the kids being able to kind of play, you know, on their own when maybe they're a little bit younger?

And like how close do we need to be in that room on that same floor or whatever it might be. And that's like one dimension that we've worked on the go. Like sometimes I think that they can, you know, play together on some floor and we'll come back and check in on them, but like, we'll kind of find a middle ground there and say, Hey.

Maybe one of us is listening more attentively to what's happening upstairs than the other. But you're kind of on that spectrum, you're like, Okay, I feel more comfortable than they might not feel as much. One other area that we've kind of talked a little bit about is going to be something like your screen time.

Like, there's definitely kind of value in kind of the educational aspect of technology, especially as they get older. And quite candidly, this doesn't really come up today in terms of like our kids and what they spend their time on, but we've definitely talked a lot about like, Hey, like, as we kind of see them getting older, like, how do we want to incorporate technology?

Do you want to do it through this dimension? And there's definitely some difference there in terms of how we could do it and how each of us feel about it and things that are, I think, important for us, for them to get out of that exposure. And so those two are the kind of ones that come to mind at least at the moment.

[00:37:18] Adam: Yeah. Given that you both work and have worked in technology, what has that conversation been like about the relationship that you want your kids to have with technology as they get older? This is the thing that pays both of your paychecks. So. Yeah, I'm curious about that.

[00:37:37] Ryan: I think it's an incredibly important tool and use the right way. I I think of it just in terms of like education, the fact that they can get exposure to, you know, arguably the best teachers in the world will have, you know, classes that are free and online and effectively like piped into your house is just no short of a modern miracle in some ways.

And so I think there's this component that says like, Hey, like, you know, There is all this, it comes from that. I think there's also the recognition that there's a lot of other just whether it's like risks or other things that come along with that much power and having the tools in your hand, everything I think from spending, you know, what a parent might describe as like too much time with that technology and say, Hey, do I really want them in front of a screen for, you know, multiple hours a day or whatever it might be when they could be doing other things, you know, engaging, socializing, playing outside, et cetera.

Once you've been online, the behavior that's happening online. There is the kind of like, what are you actually engaging with? What kind of content are you looking at? Like all of those components of it as well. And so I think for us, and as we start to kind of think about those are like the dimensions of the conversation that sounds like, Hey, like, what's going on?

What is the kind of ways which we want to use the technology? What are the kind of like healthy and educational aspects of it? And what do you want to kind of protect from, versus things that they might just need to figure out on their own and they should maybe get exposure to some of the stuff and they'll have to kind of figure out those components and learn as they go.

So that's kind of the structure. I've played many ways of the conversation and some of the dimensions that we talked about.

[00:39:04] Adam: Oh, love that. I think it's very, very thoughtful of you. Last couple questions for you. What is something that you've had to give up to become a father?

[00:39:15] Ryan: There is, you know, I would describe them as, you know, minor sacrifices that are going to be things like hobbies, whether that's a motorcycle or something else.

I think those are some of the areas in which you think about as something that is like, hey, Whether I knew this going in or not, it is kind of relatively small in the grand scheme of things. I know it's going to come back. I think there are other sacrifices that are like quite a bit different, I guess I'd say.

And like one capacity of those is I think you have in many ways as, a parent and as a father, kind of a, a sacrifice that is like, there is no longer a world in which like you are the only person in it, even if you had a partner, I think there's a certain amount of responsibility. And so you kind of sacrifice this ability to say, Hey, I'm not going to be a certain person or take on some level of responsibility in a certain situation.

So I think those are sacrifices that are maybe more subtle. But oftentimes I think the ones that are like far more important. And so we, I think as a parent and I'll say for myself as a father, they'll say, Hey, there's, you know, a world in which you had a kind of ability to kind of think about yourself more or be kind of more front and center.

And some of the things that you wanted to do and you want it to pursue. And even this conversation today, we're talking a lot about the kind of trade offs, things that happen and things they have to structure. And so there's, I think a sacrifice there. It's just like, Hey, like this is 100 percent the world I want to be living and I really enjoy that, but it's definitely in some ways a kind of like sacrifice of saying you are not the thing that is most important.

Even though you might have spent the first kind of chapters of your life as the kind of star of your own movie, that's no longer the case now.

[00:40:50] Adam: Yeah. What is a mistake that you've made as a dad?

[00:40:55] Ryan: I think one mistake I've had is I have, when our kids were younger, tried to, I think, truly compartmentalize everything and say back to the program and the structure and say, Hey, this is work over here. These are the kids over there, or the family life is over here. And I think for me, it didn't quite work the way that I want it to. It felt like it was like on or off switch. That was like really hard to manage. And so now I still have that structured time, but I think it's much more fun to be able to have this kind of almost like a spectrum where I think it's great to be able to have the kids kind of run in here and jump, I'll be on a call with the team and there's nothing better than having someone to kind of jump in your lap and have them here.

And it doesn't happen often, but when it does, it's like one of those moments where it doesn't have to be like, Hey, like this is work time. This only can be work time. It's like, yeah, you can actually do both. You can take a call in your headphones and be on audio and be able to help with the kids and things like that. And the same goes for the converse. And so being able to say, Hey, you know, once in a while, I gotta be like, Hey guys, I'm on the call real fast. I'll be right back. And be able to be a little more flexible with that was traditionally kind of a rather strict, I think carpentry, all those things.

So that's been one kind of big learning lesson as a go and I'm sure there'll be more

[00:42:12] Adam: Yeah, that's a really good one. This idea that you know, things kind of bleed into each other. And if you're too rigid, it could create problems for you, right? You have to be a little bit more flexible there, kind of go with the flow. And you can do both. Very good. Very good. Last question for you before our lightning round, how can people follow along or be helpful to you in your journey?

[00:42:37] Ryan: If people want to follow along. They can check us out Dakota.xyz. That's probably the best place to get more of understanding what we do. Otherwise, if you'd love to connect up on LinkedIn and Twitter you can find me in both those forums. I'm always happy to have those conversations.

And in terms of just helping, I just really enjoy being able to have the conversations with folks about really what they are kind of looking for in products like this. And oftentimes we'll treat them as just a way to talk shop. And if we could learn something about how we can serve our customers all that much better.

[00:43:08] Adam: Awesome. I will point people to all of those places when we release this episode. So thank you for sharing those. Now it is time for lightning round. I assume that you are as ready as anyone ever is for lightning around. So we're just going to jump into it. I ask you a question and you tell me the first thing that comes to mind.

It's a judgment free zone. We move on to the next question. Here we go. What is the most indispensable parenting product that you have ever purchased for your household?

[00:43:41] Ryan: There was one that we got when the kids were young. I think it's called a shusher. But it is white and orange. You can hang on the crib and it makes a shushing noise. And so when you have done all the shushing that you can possibly do you can let someone else take over for a little bit that for both kids has been an absolute lifesaver.

[00:43:57] Adam: I am familiar with this product. We had one as well. What is the most useless parenting product that you've ever purchased?

[00:44:04] Ryan: Any baby onesies or baby clothes that assume that the kids are going to lie flat and be able to like, have some kind of like buttons on their, like buttons on their back. Like, I don't understand any onesie that has buttons on the back where you have to like, put them, like, I don't know what they're facedown.

Like all of those clothing articles that make absolutely no sense for anyone who's actually a parent is like, I don't know how you'd position your kid in a way to put this on or any onesie that is expensive or cost any kind of money because they're going to go through it in weeks.

[00:44:38] Adam: Okay. What does the ideal day look like with your kids?

[00:44:43] Ryan: I love having breakfast with the kids in the morning. And so getting them up, we get to hang out maybe play a little bit, but then making them breakfast. And so, doing something with like eggs and toast and stuff like that. It's always fun making it together. I know their vote will be pancakes. So also pancakes get in the mix there. I think it's really fun to take them on errands. We do go to a park and have some fun as well. But a lot of those days have just been a mix of being able to say, Hey, let's go do something fun, but also, you know, we might have to go going back to the hardware store example with the rakes, like let's go to the hardware store and go grab something and like.

Come home to those activities as well with them. And then, you know, if we're gonna do something extra special, it'd be going out to a kind of farm or kind of outdoor space where they can go kind of get exposure to the animals or the food and things like that are always a really good time. And they may wrap it up with a dinner and hanging out and playing and maybe watching a little bit of a show or something like that. 

[00:45:34] Adam: That sounds like a lovely day. I would like that day today. What is the most frustrating thing that has ever happened to you as a dad?

[00:45:43] Ryan: I think the most frustrating times or thing that's happened to me has to be when you are trying to do too many things at once and you're stuck in this mode of wishing you had three, four or five hands and you clearly just don't have the capacity for it all. And I've often found those times are the ones where you need to either A, admit defeat or B, just be like, Hey, I have two hands, these are the two things that we're doing right now and everything else can happen later. And that's happened unfortunately kind of more times than I can count. So I don't have an exact example for you. But there's been a number of them this month, let alone this last couple of years.

[00:46:18] Adam: Okay. What is your go to dad wardrobe?

[00:46:22] Ryan: hoodie, a t shirt jeans and house slippers are, you can't go wrong with that.

[00:46:28] Adam: You would be maybe not surprised to know I'm wearing that exact outfit right now. Except my slippers are left. I'm going to show them on the camera. My slippers are leftover from Halloween. They are hippo slippers. Check that out.

[00:46:39] Ryan: Oh, there you go.

[00:46:40] Adam: Yeah, I was Mudang for Halloween. The pygmy hippo in Thailand.

Great costume. I love that you and I have very similar fashion sense. So this is good. I'm learning. How many parenting books do you have in your house?

[00:46:55] Ryan: We probably have less than five, three or four. And I would be remiss if I said that I read, I've read one and a half, maybe. Like I haven't even read that many of the books themselves. Like there's not a lot to begin with, but the actual reading that has happened has been a small fraction of what's there

[00:47:15] Adam: One and a half books, still impressive by modern dad standards, I will say. And really impressive by historical dad standards, so.

[00:47:23] Ryan: That's I'll take that one. 

[00:47:25] Adam: Good Job. What is the favorite ages so far for your kids?

[00:47:29] Ryan: Man. That's hard because it feels like us right now, if I'm being honest, like the kids were amazing when they're young, but right now you have. a four year old that is just like, her personality is just changing what seems like a daily basis and you get this era of story time and telling you stories and what happened with her day and who she's playing with what they did, and she's old enough for she now kind of, you know, can on occasion take care of and look after a little brother and stuff like that, which was a lot of fun.

And then you have our two and a half year old who is putting together his first sentences. And so for as long as he's been around, it's just been this kind of more of a one way conversation. And so for the first time you're getting to kind of hear what he really wants to do and what he's excited about.

And he's always trying to keep up with his sister. And so it's been a lot of fun. So I think it has to be right now. This current age, that being said, I'm sure it'll change every year kind of going forward.

[00:48:22] Adam: Do you have a least favorite age so far?

[00:48:26] Ryan: That's hard. I will say that as amazing as it is when they're really young, I think the sleep deprivation of newborns is tough and it might not bet he first month but there is this period I'm looking back on it that I think is like between month, like two and four or something where you're just you, the first two months, you've gone through any kind of sleep bank you had.

You've gone through a number of nights and you're kind of ready for them to start sleeping better and ready to get back into some sense of normalcy. And of course, like no kid is thinking about that and worried about that or has any notion of what that is. And so that might be the period that was just kind of like emotionally just acceptance of just like, Hey, this is the world that I now live in.

But it was harder, at least compared to some of the other ones.

[00:49:12] Adam: Yeah, you know, I have read that kid's go through a bit of a developmental leap around the age of three months, and that is coupled with a sleep regression. So just when you think things are getting better, Bam! They throw a curveball at you. How many dad jokes do you tell on average each day?

[00:49:33] Ryan: Oh, man. I feel like all my jokes have turned into dad jokes in the last couple years. I feel like I've actually lost any kind of sense of what a normal joke can or should be now, because they've all just been translated effectively to dad jokes. It's basically 100 percent of the jokes now dad jokes.

for better or for worse. And it's probably for worse.

[00:49:53] Adam: The ratio has improved. I love that. So you have a four year old and a two and a half year old, your two and a half year old, just kind of stringing sentences together or words into sentences make sense, but what is the most absurd thing that one of your kids has ever asked you to buy for them?

I don't know how they would even ask if they couldn't, but maybe they pointed or maybe your four year old did. Very curious about this.

[00:50:19] Ryan: Yea. I think that our youngest one there's probably a, so we haven't quite gotten there yet, but I'll take our Luca, our oldest. We've definitely been to, you know, I'll go back to the hardware store. You go to places like a hardware store and they look at something that is just a large, effectively a large piece of machinery or something like that.

They're like, Oh yeah. Like. We should, that looks great. And you're like, well, that's not what that's for. I'm not sure you're really going to enjoy that. But to them, it's just something big and it's going to be bright and it's going to be, it looks like it's fun. It might even be loud if they're turned on.

And that's something that they like automatically, you know, gravitated for, toward, geared towards. So I think for the older one, it's going to be something along those lines. We are kind of going to a shop, like a hardware store and they're just like, Hey, I'm pumped on that, you know, giant mower or blower or something else.

That has just absolutely no need for whatsoever.

[00:51:08] Adam: Awesome. What what was the most or what has been the most difficult kids TV show that you've ever had to sit through?

[00:51:19] Ryan: I will say they've gotten a lot better within what I remember being as a kid. I feel like there was generations where I always heard like the older parents that would be like, oh my God, these shows are bad. I'll say that so far what we've seen, I've actually been really impressed by, and I'm sure that at some point this will wear through and I'll probably have an answer, but for right now, I feel like a lot of the stuff we've seen, there's a, go back to Disney go back to even Pixar. A lot of those are surprisingly good for the adults as well. And so I think we've done a lot more of those styles, kind of like movies and setups. I will say like Paw Patrol does get old after a while. But in general I've been actually very impressed with a lot of the shows, the movies that are on today.

[00:52:03] Adam: All right. What is your favorite kids movie?

[00:52:07] Ryan: I mean, I feel like I have to say Frozen right now. I feel like with the recent between the book and Halloween and everything else I'd be at a loss if I didn't say Frozen and it is quite good. So I'll go with Frozen.

[00:52:19] Adam: Now Frozen one, Frozen 2, which one, which, where are we leaning here?

[00:52:25] Ryan: I would stick with the original or the Frozen one. We got to go with the classic.

[00:52:29] Adam: Okay. All right. What assembling a kid's toy or a piece of children's furniture?

[00:52:38] Ryan: Oh, man, I think the one that was that comes to mind when you say that, and there's been a few that is really the crib of our first born. So I think as a dad building the crib for the first time, you feel like a certain amount of excitement, but also anxiety, I'm just like, I have to do this right. And I think that there's those moments where you think very kind of small or takes a bit longer than you might initially think carries a lot more weight.

But then as you go through and you end up building more and more things, I think you learn that not only is there not the same kind of just. Wait, that goes with it. It turns like where they're going to sleep, but it's also just a space going back to being a little more forgiving of like, yep, this is kind of how these things work, not everything is going to be kind of well made or they might not give you every single piece that you think that they should or that the toy or the thing requires but it's okay.

And so for me, I think if I look back, it's really that first big item for a bunch of reasons, but for us, that was the crib of our daughter.

[00:53:38] Adam: How long can a piece of food sit on the floor in your house and you will still eat it?

[00:53:45] Ryan: I will say we generally live by somewhere between the 5 and 10 second rule in this house, which is like, I think, totally fair game for everybody. If you're in my shoes, if you're a dad, I think you get a little bit longer. You've kind of been exposed to enough things. You kind of built up a tolerance.

And so for dad, it might go a little longer than 10 seconds, but I feel like that's a pretty good threshold for us in general.

[00:54:05] Adam: That's good. That's good. What nostalgic movie, favorite of yours, can you just not wait to force your kids to watch?

[00:54:14] Ryan: Oh, man. There's so many movies that I grew up with that I feel like our kids are gonna have absolutely no interest in whatsoever. I think a lot of the stuff that I think about that were kind of like for me and my childhood really like fun and things that I remember are you know, both toys and movies.

So the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a great example of a kind of, you know, it was a movie, a show, a toy. And I can almost already tell that my kids will have zero interest whatsoever in that. We'll see. That might be different. But I am excited about getting them exposed to those and we'll see how it goes.

[00:54:50] Adam: Okay. All right. Vote for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. How often, I don't know if this has happened to you yet, but how often do you tell your kids back in my day stories?

[00:55:01] Ryan: Oh, probably too much. Especially because they're so young and they're like, still like comprehending what is in their day and like what's supposed to happen. But it would be for a little remiss to not say like, Hey, when we have to walk somewhere and we're gone two blocks of the park, it's like we, we wouldn't make much, much longer walks to get to where we had to go when I was a kid.

And it was uphill. Right. But at least those do come up and think a lot of times, at least at this age, they just kind of look at you and I think I know what you're talking about, but I'm not really sure. So I'm just going to nod along with what you're saying.

[00:55:33] Adam: Yeah. Uphill, both directions in the snow.

[00:55:36] Ryan: Exactly.

[00:55:37] Adam: All 365 days a year. How many times have you said, go ask your mother? This week?

[00:55:43] Ryan: Oh, this week I was like, I don't know the answer to that one. I think the short answer is too many. There is, there's always the. Back and forth that one. Thankfully I have an amazing person as my partner on the other side. So that's all I'll say. It's too many and I'm very lucky.

[00:55:59] Adam: All right. Now, last question for you. You do only have two kids, so maybe we haven't gotten there yet, but what is your take on minivans?

[00:56:09] Ryan: I'm torn on minivans personally. On one hand, it feels like I can get everything that I would want from a minivan in an SUV or a big truck or something like that, especially with two kids. And you're right. I think when you have more, it's a little bit different. But on the other hand, you look at a minivan and you go, Hey, this is the right tool for the job.

This is purpose built for what I'm looking for right now. Like, why would I take anything else and try to make it a minivan? Why not just go do the minivan? So I'm a little bit torn. We don't have a minivan today. But it is one of those things that definitely, especially as if you ever had more than two, I think there's a real case for it.

[00:56:44] Adam: We're not taking it off the table yet. We're saying there's a chance, potentially a minivan chance for you.

[00:56:50] Ryan: There's a chance, one with big wheels, maybe you lifted an inch or two and you paint it black and you have a great time with it.

[00:56:58] Adam: You just have a completely murdered out uh, minivan. That's uh, that, that's what you would call it. All right. Well, Ryan. This was a wonderful conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me about building crypto finance, also your family. And I wish you and the whole fam a great rest of your year and a wonderful start to 2025 and to your company as well.

[00:57:28] Ryan: Thanks Adam. This has been a lot of fun. I really appreciate you having me on. Been a great conversation.

[00:57:33] Adam: Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Ryan Bozarth. 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, and see you next week.