What It Means To Be A 'Lead Dad' | Paul Sullivan (Dad of 3, NY Times Columnist, Author, Founder)

[00:00:00] Paul: I have been sitting on the bed of my 15 year old since she was born. Like I have put her to bed, I've done all the things that you would do at all the different, you know, stages.

Now, do I sit in her bed and read her a story at night? Of course I don't. She's 15 years old. But I go in and I'll sit with her and some nights she says, Hey dad, can you print this out for me? Or Hey dad, tomorrow, can you make sure you, you know, bring me to school early? Fine. Some nights she'll say, Hey, I want to talk to you about X that happened. But the only way you get to that, Hey, dad, I want to talk about X moment is you're sitting on that bed as much as you possibly can.

[00:00:47] 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 Paul Sullivan. Paul is the founder of Company of Dads, a community for lead dads, which he created to provide more support for dads who are the primary caregivers at home.

Paul is also the best selling author of two books. Clutch, why some people excel under pressure and others don't, and The Thin Green Line, the money secrets of the super wealthy. Paul has been a journalist for over 25 years and wrote the Wealth Matters column for the New York Times, the Money Game column in Golf Magazine, and has appeared in Fortune, Money, Barron's, the Boston Globe and Food and Wine. He is also a husband and the lead dad for three daughters. In our conversation, we spoke about the need for a community like company of dads and the role of the lead dad at home. Paul talked about the importance of building work around family, rather than the other way around.

The need for more fathers to lead open communication at home and a system for figuring out equitable participation in the household logistics. He also talked about the need for fathers to be more vocal about their roles as lead dads and how to champion policies in the workplace to support all parents, both working moms and dads.

He also shared some of the lessons in his book Clutch on how a parent can perform in high pressure situations. I hope you enjoy today's conversation with Paul Sullivan.

[00:02:32] Adam: I would like to welcome Paul Sullivan to the startup dad podcast. Paul, it is a pleasure having you here. You're my first recording of the new year.

[00:02:43] Paul: Adam, that's awesome. I was glad to be asked and I'm glad this all came together. So, so thank you for having me on.

[00:02:48] Adam: Yes. Welcome to 2025, by the way, it's going to be an interesting year, we will see.

[00:02:55] Paul: Yeah.

[00:02:57] Adam: Because there's a not small chance that people maybe don't know who you are. I mean, this is mostly tech people that I have on here and uhh

[00:03:08] Paul: Whoa, hang up. But I haven't, I have an iPhone here, so they'll righ? That makes me special.

[00:03:14] Adam: You're in,

[00:03:15] Paul: Okay, I'm in. Alright, good.

[00:03:16] Adam: Okay. But you are an author. You're a New York Times columnist. Do you still consider yourself a columnist even though you're…?

[00:03:25] Paul: No, I gave that up to start this crazy thing called the Company of Dads.

[00:03:28] Adam: Okay, but you do still publish some things for the times, right? Is this a thing?

[00:03:33] Paul: I do. Yeah, they ask and I answer, so yea.

[00:03:36] Adam: Okay. So author, you were a columnist. You still write for the Times from time to time. And you started this thing called Company Of Dads in 2021, which is why you are here on the show. Although I'm sure the author and the

New York times stuff was great. Mostly I'm interested in your dadding experience. So I have a question for you, which is why did you drop everything to start company of dads? Like what, why did you take that leap? And what is Company Of Dads?

[00:04:06] Paul: Why did you have to ask the question in that way, Adam? We were yucking it up before you hit record. I’ll answer the second part first, the Company Of Dads is media company, community platform and workplace educator aimed at lead dads. And what is a lead dad? A lead dad is the go to parent, whether he works full time, part time or devotes all of his time to his family. That's part one. Part two is he's there to support his spouse or partner in whatever they do. And part three is he's an ally to working moms and caregivers in general in the office. So that's what the Company Of Dads is. That's what a lead dad is. Why I started it longer story.

It kind of starts in 2013, but really ramps up 2020. In 2013 was when my wife started her own asset management firm. And I don't know how many of startup dads listening work in financial services but one thing anybody who works in financial services knows is that if you tell somebody you have good idea for a new business, they fire you immediately.

Like that's literally the last day. They don't want to hear anymore. They're like, okay, good, and you're gone. And so that's exactly what happened. She went to her then partner and said, you know, amicable clients first. And of course he went. And she came home and I'm, you know, at that point, five, six years into being a New York Times columnist, my first book had come out.

It did really well. I was on the keynote speaking circuit. That was awesome. We had two kids, two dogs, a cat. And she comes home and says you know, that's it. You know, I guess I'm starting the firm today. And I said, I think that's a good idea. Like, you know, I'm sure as a young girl growing up in Atlanta, you always dreamt of marrying a New York Times columnist, but that doesn't pay the mortgage in Fairfield County, Connecticut.

And so she, yeah, she agreed with me on that. And then the second thing she said, well, what are we going to do with the kids? And I said, I'll become the lead dad. And she said what does that mean? And I said, you know, Laura, is this really a time to panic? I mean, I did write a book called Clutch about people being good under pressure and you laugh and I just ran with it.

And what it meant was I was at a stage in my career where so much of my time was planned, not all of it, but like 80 percent of my time I could more or less control. And so I was able to take on this go to parent role, the logistics of life is the easiest way to talk about it. And I was able to work from home much more often than anybody else in the pre pandemic world, because a column is due at the same time every week and nobody really tracks where you are, they just track that it arrives.

But the interesting part in retrospect was that during that time I was what I now call an undercover lead dad. Like in my community, most of the caregiving at the time seemed, I know differently now, but time seemed to be entirely by moms and paid caregivers, you know, nannies, au pairs, et cetera.

And so I love what I was doing, but I wasn't like waving a flag going around town saying Paul Sullivan lead dad. I was like most men defining myself by my job. I was waving the flag saying Paul Sullivan, New York Times columnist. Now the flip side of that, the corollary of that is that at work I wasn't waving the flag either, even though most of my editors were working moms or dads who had kids, I wasn't saying, Hey, I'm Paul Sullivan lead dad. Why? Because I didn't want them to think that I wasn't 100 percent committed to what I was doing. This is my dream job. Like I grew up, you know, middle class in rural Western Massachusetts. Like, how the fuck am I at the New York Times as a con? This is remarkable shit. And so I didn't want to screw it up. And then 2020 is the inflection point because this thing called COVID came along and this work from home thing happened. And you know, this first couple of weeks, man, I wish I knew you then Adam, I learned how to make a mean margarita.

And, you know, every night, you know, some people bought the Peloton and they got super fit. Some people learned how to make a mean margarita and it was going fine until it wasn't because then it wasn't sustainable because being a lead dad was predicated. We then had three kids predicated on my daughters being in school.

Or at summer camp. And if they weren't in camp or school, we made a plan. We went on vacation. We got some high school kids or college kids or whatever driving around, you know, my dad came down any number that you could plan. I'm a planner and it worked and in 2020 it stopped. And so I did what any columnist would do.

I went to the source of all knowledge in the universe with this will connect me back to your tech community. I went to this thing called the Google. You guys have heard of it, right? The Google? And you type shit in. It's amazing. You just type in. And I typed and typed and typed. Like on my 14th margarita, I'm typing away.

And there's lots of stuff for moms. All the stuff for parents is really for moms. And the things for dads was like the most desperate shit you've ever seen in your life. Like, don't have 14 margaritas in your life or you'll be on one of these platforms. All super important, all jokes aside, divorced dads, dads, drug problems, dads who've been incarcerated.

But that wasn't me. Like for people watching this on video, they're doing, there's a whole bunch of golf stuff behind me. I mean, that's my hobby and I can nerd out and golf on millions of different ways. But golf is fun. It's not important. Fatherhood can be fun. But it's super important. And so why wasn't there something like that for lead dads?

But then of course, you know, I'm introspective enough to say, well, maybe, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they just aren't a lot of dudes doing this. And so again, I went back to the Google and it told me that there are actually a shit ton of dads in this lead dad role. And this is all legit data. This is UScensus bureau of labor statistics.

Pew and the number I came up with was astounding. It was 25 million men in the United States are lead dads or could be lead dads. That's a third of all fathers. And it's being driven by men in their thirties and early forties, first time dads. But I also knew that guys like me that second group, forties and fifties, you know, COVID was going to be in this wake up call.

Like I live in this town that exists because it's close to New York city. Those parking lots are never going to be filled again, five days a week. People are going to work differently and there was a need for this and that was sort of the idea. And so like, okay, there is this market, there's this need, but how can I validate it?

Well, I can't talk to dads because if I ask dads, they'll lie to me. If I had asked me anytime before 2020, you know, Paul, are you a lead dad? Oof what are you talking about, man? I'm a New York Times columnist. I play golf of Friday morning. I would not have come forward because again, I was undercover.

So I asked senior female executives. And I said, what do you think of this idea? You know, your husband like this, your partner like this. And that was a light bulb moment because they sort of fell generally into three categories. One, that was my husband, a hundred percent. He had a good career, but my career was a rocket ship and I wouldn't have had it if he wasn't there to support me.

I'm so glad this exists. All of his friends made fun of them. They called him Mr. Mom, they called him the house husband. I love this term, lead dad. So like check. Second group was COVID has been tough, man. My husband, I love him. He thinks he does a lot, but let's be honest. He doesn't really do shit around the house.

And this is too much. There's a phrase not coined by me, coined by a woman named Eve Rodsky called the mental load. And these women are essentially saying like, I'm carrying all of the mental load. My husband is carrying none of it. So it's like, okay, there's a problem to be solved. Lead dad bootcamp. Okay. Check that off. And of course, the third group, very predictable was my husband could never wrap his head around this dynamic.

And we got divorced X number of years ago and, you know, we hobbled along, and it was through all this, and honestly, I give credit to my wife, Laura, who said, you know, this is your dream to be at the New York Times. You’ve been there a long time. You're doing great. You know, we've got three daughters. You know, what can you do with this idea?

And I had a talk with a woman who is a former CMO of GoDaddy, who said you know, my husband is a lead dad. Her name is Lela Brennage. My husband is a lead dad. And I think your moment is now, this is, you know, the summer of 21, your moment is now this is media and this is community.

Okay. She's right. But both those things are difficult where I'd had a lot of experience where I, you know, had a lot of success with giving keynote talks and I knew that companies would need this workplace education. And so it was with those three things, I went to Times I left at the end of 21 and the beginning of February of 2022, we launched the Company Of Dads.

So here we are, three years later.

[00:11:58] Adam: Wow. What a journey. What a journey. It's interesting too, that you describe those like three sort of modes when you talk to the, you know, successful female executives. And that third one my husband could never wrap his head around this and we ended up divorced. And I'm wondering if something like the concept that the lead dad or Company Of Dads had existed previously, would that have helped alleviate that third problem? And I'm guessing maybe it would have helped normalize it a little bit for some of those folks. I don't know.

[00:12:31] Paul: Look I, I'm an optimistic guy, but I'm also a realistic guy. The farthest I could go would be maybe cause let's say like, okay, 25 million people. That's a lot of people at the third of all dads, but guess what? Two thirds are not two thirds are still living in the sort of stereotypical gender norms of the father as breadwinner, the mother as caregiver.

And so, I mean, many people have married, you know, those two thirds of fathers who are not super involved. So I don't know if I could have gotten those people, you know, across the line. In the past three years, when I have conversations, you know, people sometimes I'll talk to these guys and they'll try to like, say, Oh yeah, maybe I was kind of a lead dad or like, and I don't, you know, drop the hammer cause they're trying to help me.

But I'm like, no, you weren't a lead dad at all. But the ones who weren't, who were in that more traditional group, the ones who weren't lead dads in that traditional group who really get excited about what we're doing at the Company Of Dads are the ones who have mostly daughters who are doing really well.

And they think, okay, my daughter's doing really great. You know, why does she have to, you know, pause her career? Why does she have to pivot in some way? What if she married somebody who's willing to take on this role as lead dad? And so those are the guys who get behind it, even though they didn't have that experience in their own lives.

[00:13:43] Adam: Yeah. So as the lead dad in your house, three daughters, and the ages of your daughters are, pretty spread out. You've got a couple teenagers, or one on the cusp of teen?

[00:13:52] Paul: 15, 12 and 7. So I have a ninth grader, a seventh grader and a second grader. And if you were my childhood best friends who all have kids going off to college or in college, you would make fun of me at this moment because I have a second grader.

[00:14:09] Adam: But where I live, that's actually not that uncommon. You're a bit older than me.

[00:14:15] Paul: I’m 29. I don't know how old are you? What are you?

[00:14:17] Adam: I can, well, I was going to guess 21 and then congratulate you on having your first drink on New Year's Eve. But yeah, there's here in the Bay area, in California, there are generally, people tend to have kids later.

[00:14:28] Paul: Yeah, I mean, we were in New York city, we were in New York city and we, you know, we met, you know, when I was 30 years old. So yeah, this is how it works out.

[00:14:34] Adam: So you've got three, three daughters. And for you being a lead dad is, the other way I've heard this described is the default parent. So you are the one who takes the kids to the doctor's appointments. You are the soccer dad. You are the first person that gets called from school when something's going wrong…?

[00:14:56] Paul: I try to be but schools are the bane, is schools, doctor's offices are dentist. You can put your name first on the list and they still scan it for a woman's name, which blows my mind, you know, head exploding emoji because so many of those people making those calls are working moms. And so you think to yourself, like, why are you doing this?

Like, call the person whose name is, yeah, I saying I'm the default parent is not incorrect, but I push back against that term because there's a negative implication to it. It's not like, like I had no other choice. You fell into this and that's why we really push on this ridiculous term, lead dad, and we push on it because it's proactive, it's progressive.

You're leading something. So like, this wasn't something where I was like, I had no choice. Like, I, you know, became an undercover lead dad in 2013 and then spent another, you know, eight years at the New York Times, I wrote another book, I, you started managing some of the special sections. I weaseled my way into being the seven string golf writer for the Times as a hobby.

And so it's more like, yeah, you're the go to parent. You're the person who's like, okay, this is what needs to be done. But it doesn't mean you do it all yourself. But like, you're the one who's carrying that mental load and you're thinking through these things. Now, what's an example of how we divide stuff up?

Yeah, playdates, you know, doctor's appointments, you know, reaching out to the school when a child is home sick. That's all me. But when it comes to stuff like we were a family that celebrates Christmas, Christmas presents. My wife loves to do shopping. I think she's on a board on a zoom call and she starts, you know, Amazoning away.

[00:16:25] Adam: She's the first person in the history of Zoom calls ever. 

[00:16:30] Paul: Ever. And you see the eyes drifting over here and you're like, where are they going? Look straight at the camera. Let's pretend you did. And so like, I joke like, you know, she loves that and so that's what she does. And so I don't for a second think about presents other than the presents that my daughters and I get for her.

And so it's not like being the lead dead, you're not doing everything, but you know, those logistics of life you're really on top of them.

[00:16:53] Adam: Yeah. A lot of families, a lot of dads in particular build their family around their working life. That two thirds of dads that you're describing where like career and professional life comes first and they kind of hide or tuck off to the side, the fact that there's like something else going on.

This is actually one of the things I've identified in doing this podcast. I know a lot of people professionally. I don't always know if they're a parent or not because that's not a thing that they're broadcasting out and into the world for a variety of reasons. But I think this idea of building family around your working life, you have the opposite perspective, which is building your working life around your family.

So can you tell me a little bit more about how you've lived that practice?

[00:17:43] Paul: It's funny to say because whenever they are at work life balance, like we're gonna talk about work life integration or, you know, work life sway and it's like, well, what's the opposite of life? That would be death. So like, do we want to think of? Like, are you not alive when you're at work? Is this not something that you're deeply involved with?

And so, yeah, we think a lot about this, but just to throw out one statistic, like pre pandemic 2019, Boston College, they do all kinds of research on families, on working parents. And they found that back then largely true now, men who raised their hands at work to be full on parents, what we call lead dads, what other people call deeply involved fathers, were penalized.

They were seen as insufficiently committed to work and therefore they didn't do it. Now, every working mom in the world is going to, you know, raise her hand and say, what a good, you know, welcome to the show, buddy. What a genius you are. But I always point out to people, particularly smart people who listen to your podcast, two things can be true at the same time.

You know, women can be discriminated for having children. There's a motherhood penalty. It's been proven. It's true. And men can also be hesitant to step forward as lead dads because they're afraid of what the implication is around the work. And so what we talk about here at the Company Of Dads is how do you think about your life?

You have your life and all of these trends were happening pre pandemic, the pandemic just sped everything up. Like you're zippy Tesla going through traffic. You could zip before, but didn't accelerate like a zippy Tesla. it just accelerated. So when you think about, okay, this is my life.

How many hours do I have in a day? What are the things that I have to get done? What are the things that are important? What are the things that I need to do honestly during the daylight when other people are awake and what are the things that I can do when the sun sets and other people are not awake, you know, in nerdy speak, you know, it's synchronous work and asynchronous work and so, okay.

I can figure this out. So one of the things we talk to companies about is we offer the idea of them introducing a care shift and a care shift allows people to just think of their life holistically and think of the different components of what are your components of your life. You have work, obviously if you're a parent and listening to this podcast, you're a parent, you have caregiving, you have stuff to do with your spouse, hopefully, if you're married, and then you have fun.

You might may want to have fun. And then, of course, you have to sleep. So there's sort of five things that you're doing. You're not gonna probably do all five of those every day. You're not gonna do all five of those in an equal way. So we propose this idea of a care shift and people say, okay, explain this to me.

Care shift allows people who are parents or caregivers because everything we talk about can also apply to somebody who say has an aging parent who has a parent with Alzheimer's or something like that you opt into this care shift and you agree to work synchronously a certain block of time every day so if you're a parent your kids are in school easy thing to do 9:30 to 3:30 every day i'm going to be available six hours. Now does that mean that people only work six hours?

No, it means they become hyper organized. And in those six hours, they do all the stuff that they need to communicate with other people for. They save the emails that can be answered later until later at night or early the next morning. They save the thought work, like creating the presentation or the PowerPoint until some other time when they don't need to communicate synchronously with people.

And that's how it rolls around. And now the the push back that I'll get is like, well, where'd you get that idea from? Like, you know, the Sierra club I was like, no, no, I didn't get it from them. you know, I went to the University of Chicago for graduate school and I said, you know, the University of Chicago known for economics their business school is called the Booth school of business.

You don't get your name on a business school at the University of Chicago by showing up at 17 consecutive business school reunions. You get your name by donating 300 million. And then they put your name on the building. And the guy who donated 300 million is a guy named David Booth. He created something called dimensional fund advisors, which is an investment advisory firm, has its own proprietary way of doing things.

And he realized he had three offices in the US you realize like, okay, well, people can't overlap all the time anyways, because we have these things called time zones. Now let's say you work for an even bigger company your time zones get wider. We've already been doing stuff asynchronously to be productive when you have somebody on the East coast working with somebody on the West coast. What if during the pandemic we instituted, you know, what I call a care shift so that people would stay. That we could retain those top employees, and it's been wildly successful for them. And so we've sort of, you know, appropriated modified what DFA started to do.

But I give them as an example, because they are not a touchy feely nice company. Their business is to make money, putting money to work. But they knew that the risk of not introducing what we call a care shift, the risk of that was that their top employees would leave because their top employees got used to working in a different way during the pandemic and they realized that they had this life, they didn't just have this work life dichotomy and where they had this life and they were still really productive and so how could they apply that going back and you know, Amazon, JP Morgan, you know, all these companies are going back to five days week in the office.

What's going to happen? People are going to leave. But they're taking a gamble, they're taking a gamble that the people that they should have managed out anyways are going to be the ones to leave. We'll see in six months, we'll see in a year, I would bet a lot of money that those people are not going to leave.

Because if you're in the bottom 30 percent of your company, nobody wants to hire you, like you don't have any other options, like, you're not like, you know what, I wonder if that, he talked about the Google, I wonder if they're hiring right now, maybe they, I did shit here at Amazon, but maybe they'll hire me over there, no, it's your top performers, your top performers are going to walk out the door and say, what are you doing, and I have this great example, you know, one of these podcasts we did, this guy, his wife is super senior, Goldman Sachs, you know, managing director doing great and they say, you got to be back in the offices.

I don't want to go back in the office. She now works for Uber, has an amazing job there. She walked out the door. That's a tremendous amount of talent that walks out the door. And that's what happens when people impose policies that may have worked in 2019, but they're not going to work in 2025.

[00:23:29] Adam: Yea. One of the things that you talked about before in our prep, in our asynchronous prep for the show is this idea of leading open communication and dad's doing that and leaning into open communication at home and especially around the logistics of life. What does that mean?

Tell me about the logistics of life and what does it mean for a dad to lead that open communication?

[00:23:53] Paul: So it's a two way street, but I'll say like, you know, particularly. If dads are listening and they're not lead dads, chances are if their spouses, if they're married, if their spouses are listening, their would say, wait a second, I need this for my husband. I need this.

And so we devised something very low tech, which is going to disappoint your listeners. Very, very low tech. And we call it the paper test. Like, Oh my God, what is this going to be? And what it is simply is my thesis is that, you know, resentment builds up in a relationship very slowly. You fall in love, you date for a while, you get married, you decide to have kids. If you're crazy, you have a second kid. If you're stupid like me, you have a third kid. If you're really stupid like I am, you get three dogs.

And it happens over time. But at every step along the way, you say, I married a sociopath. That's it. I'm stopping at, you know, one kid. That's not how it happens. The resentment builds up the same way that dust builds up under a couch. You don't know it's there until you buy a new couch or you move.

And so you'll get into the, you'll see these situations with these relationships and these people will come to me often it's the woman. And does that, I do, you know, 27 things and my husband does three. What do I do? And I said, did you do all 27 of those things on day one? Is it no, how many did you do on day one?

Like, well, I did one and he did one. Oh, okay. And then at what point, and then it builds up over time because it's easier to just do it than to sort of, you know, have this open communication and talk to somebody about doing it. So the paper test back to what I said before, the paper test is quite simply, you find a moment and not an extremist moment, a moment, a Saturday afternoon, a Sunday afternoon, you're not going to be interrupted.

If you're a tea drinker, have tea. If you're a wine drinker, have a glass of wine. And you sit down and quite honestly. You know, we'll assume that we'll say it's a husband and wife couple, just to make it easier. The husband writes down on a piece of paper, one side, all the things that he does at home.

And then on the other side, he writes all the things that he believes his wife does at home And then his wife, the wife does the same exact thing, all the things she does at home and all the things she thinks her husband does at home. And the one thing we guarantee 100 percent of the time or your money back is that those lists will never, ever match each other.

And what is that? That is a starting point for communication because it goes back. You married somebody that you loved. You married somebody you had a lot of fun with and you were having great times. You just stop communicating over these little things that nag you because you're thinking of the higher level, you know, things like, but it's that nagging stuff in the back of your mind.

That's the stuff that keeps you up at night. That's the stuff that bothers you. That's the stuff that makes you pissed off. When your spouse goes and plays golf, your spouse, you know, goes on a trip again, you know, you think, and once you lay it out, you're like, oh, okay, well there is a clear imbalance here.

What are these tasks can I own? And that's the start of better communication. And then you just sort of maintain it going forward.

[00:26:35] Adam: Oh, love that.

[00:26:36] Paul: But if somebody wants to create that as an app, they can, because that will then make it a billion dollar idea not like a million dollar idea.

[00:26:44] Adam: Yeah, you know, I can't believe no one's ever thought of a list making app before that.

[00:26:48] Paul: No, that's the last week. That's why it gets lost. I mean, honestly, like jokes aside, that's why it's a piece of paper and you sit down because you can put all kinds of shit in your phone and then you forget that it's there or all kinds of screenshots that you take, like, oh, I gotta get gets it. And then you're looking through like, huh?

I screenshotted that seven months ago. I guess I don't need that. Like the physicality of the piece of paper allows you to have that conversation in the moment.

[00:27:07] Adam: The key with the list making app though, is it has to have two columns, which is revolutionary.

[00:27:12] Paul: Revolutionary. It has to also ding a lot. Like it has to make a lot of noise, particularly at like 3am for no reason.

[00:27:19] Adam: Right. You touched on this a little bit, but what do you think the biggest misconception is of the lead dad or the role of the lead dad?

[00:27:29] Paul: Oh, boy. I don't know if there's one answer that.

[00:27:31] Adam: I'll take them all.

[00:27:33] Paul: I mean, I think one of the biggest misconception is that he had no other choice that this is something that he fell into. you know, what perpetuates this, you know, number of portrayals in TV, popular media, you see, dads kind of fit into these tropes.

They're angry. They're absent. They're jokey. You know, all of these things that are not empowering, proactive, and they're also not true. And so, you know, for some dads, they're fighting against those stereotypes. Some dads are like, okay, well, if this is how little is expected of me, I'm just going to go back, you know, into this role.

But what does that do? Again, comes back to why we use the term lead dad. It creates, you know, most people, I believe I'm a, as I said, optimistic guy, most people are not inherently malicious. They just happen to say stupid things. And so would tell the story that, you know, I play a lot of golf.

I'd finished playing golf. There were three other guys after a round of golf. I have a beer and I have a sandwich or something like that. And if they're going around, you know, checking their phones and like, Oh God, I get this at work. I get this at work. Or, Oh my goodness, my wife nagged me. If I had ever looked at my phone and said, Oh, this is bad.

They'd be like, oh man, Paul, what's going on? He's like, this is really bad. Do you have any idea how fucking hard it is to get a four year old into ballet in this town? Do you guys have any idea at all? This shit is real. And like, what? It's like, you got compliance over there for that arbitrage risk you just took.

Don't give me that shit. This is fucking ballet. And they would not have any sense of it. So, because we are afraid because I was an undercover lead dad, because we're afraid of this stuff, we don't talk about it. And when you don't talk about it, you think you're the only person doing that. And that's why I've stepped forward as the leadiest lead dad in America, because they're a third of all fathers in this role.

And it's only growing because men in their twenties and thirties want to work and live differently as do their partners. And so, you know, getting past the stereotypes. Showing this in a proactive way. I mean,  I think the second podcast we did was with a guy who won a Superbowl championship playing for the Philadelphia Eagles, played 10 years in the NFL.

His name's Najee Goode. NFL players are about the most masculine guys you can imagine. He sacked Tom Brady. I mean, this guy was legit, but he's a single lead dad of two girls in Jacksonville, Florida. There's nothing wimpy about him. He stepped up in this role, you know, things didn't work out at all with his wife and he has full custody of these kids and he is a lead dad he's become a friend, he's an advisor, but like he was a key person to have on early on because this isn't, you know, Everybody Loves Raymond.

This is a guy who's out there, you know, in the most watched sport in America, and he's also a lead dad. He can be both a super bowl champion and a caregiver.

[00:30:13] Adam: Yeah, he's probably like huge, gigantic human being too,

super tough and also a dad of two girls.

[00:30:22] Paul: There's a funny story that so we hung out with him in Jacksonville like a couple of years ago. And my middle daughter wanted to race him because she said, you know, Najee, you're retired. He's like, you're retired. And so he's so competitive. And so he's like jogging along the beach or they're jogging away and she's going to beat him.

And then at the end, he goes like this and goes right past him right past her. Like he can't is his competitive instinct. He's not going to let a, you know, 10 year old beat him.

[00:30:46] Adam: Yeah, she can't have a better 40 time than him. So, you know, you mentioned this a few times now and this is something I've observed too. Being a lead dad can be pretty isolating. My personal story of this. I remember, you know. The kid would be off of school and my wife's an attorney.

And so she works a lot, a lot of client demands. And so, you know, I would take one of the kids to the playground for the day, cause they were off of school or daycare was closed or whatever when they were younger and on the playground I was the only man there. And it was mostly nannies, female nannies, and then some moms.

And then there's just me, dad, you know? And I'm looking around and I'm like, I wonder who else I could talk to here. There's no other dads. I don't have much in common with these nannies. So, you know, it does feel very isolating. How does Company Of Dads help with that? What are your thoughts on this sort of isolation of being a lead dad?

[00:31:44] Paul: There is no more isolating place in America for a father than a playground, with a small children. And as we say, like, if lead dads are going to be allies for working moms and for fighting for gender equity in the office, then moms need to do the reverse. And moms need to help lead dads on the playground.

Because what were you on that playground? Were you some, you know, creepy dude looking to find a mistress? No, you were, I'm going to say no, I don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, no, I don't know. Thank you. You were a parent. You were a parent who happened to be a dad, but you were a parent. And what did you want?

You wanted your child to have some exercise. You want your child to have some fresh air. Maybe you wanted your child to get a play date. Maybe you wanted to talk to another parent because you noticed that she had a child about the same age as your child. These are all normal interactions that people, you know, there becomes this barrier like, oh, well, that's a man and I'm a woman.

Well, obviously, but like this isn't a realm in which you are there with the clearest of intentions to provide some stimulation and an outlet for your child. And so it is, you know, super isolating. We talk about this, you know, all the time. I mean, you're the type of person who, as I am, you know, can sort of, you know, enter a situation, go forward, you know, crack a joke, it sometimes works, but it doesn't always, you know, work, you know, I'd say of the moms of my kids, maybe 20 percent of them, 25 percent of them, you know, comfortably reach out to me comfortably, you know, communicate with me, but it's very problematic and I'll tell you an extreme story to sort of illustrate how problematic. It is, you know, a couple of years ago, this guy reached out to me. He's a doctor, Harvard trained physician moved from Brooklyn to one of the suburban towns in Connecticut. And he says I talked to you. I'm a married dad. You know, my, my kids have two dads. We had the twin boys by surrogates.

I'm a doctor. My husband is a doctor. I was like, yep, yeah. You know, let's go. And we were talking, he says, you know, we moved to this town and I'm there with my husband and we're on the playground. And this lady comes up to me. I mean, you're not going to believe like how bigoted and small minded people are out here.

I was like, I don't know, to test me, try me. And he says, she comes up to me and she says you know, I know this may come across as awkward but we have this, and I won't name the town, but we have this, you know, XYZ town, Facebook. Mom's group and he's like, okay. He's like, and we're just wondering, like, which one of you here is the mom?

And he says, fuck, you talking about lady? Like I'm a dad, he's a dad, we have sons and she's like, I am so sorry. I cannot believe I just said that I am so deeply sorry. And she went away and he tells me this. I said, Dr. Ramone, you went to Harvard medical. So Daniel's yeah, as you're a smart guy, right? He's like, you had a better shot at getting into Harvard medical school than you did getting into that Facebook mom’s group. Guess what though you could have been a great doctor if you slummed it at Johns Hopkins or something like that.

Okay. You need to go back and talk to that woman. When I say I don't want to be in that group, a whole bunch of bigoted people, I was like, no, remember. Like the worst thing somebody says is often not what defines them. I said, take it from me. I grew up Irish Catholic, my people, we traffic in guilt, you're going to guilt the shit out of that woman.

You're going to make her feel so bad, so shitty about herself, and she's going to let you into that group. Like, why do I want to be in that group? I don't want to be in that group. It's like, you want to be in that group because at some point your kids are going to need ice skates. At some point, your kids are going to need a lacrosse stick.

At some point, your kid is going to try dance and you don't want to shell out 200 bucks for all the dance equipment, knowing that he's only going to do it for a month and a half. That is the source of all your knowledge in your community. So he pauses and says, go back, guilt the hell out of her. So he does, goes back, guilt the hell out of her, as I told him.

She obviously feels awful, as she should. And here's the moment of progress. He comes back to me and says, you're not going to believe what happened. I said she let you in the group. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she let me in the group. I believe that. No, no, no. It's better than that. It's no longer going to be called the town Facebook moms group.

It's now going to be called the town Facebook parent group, and so that's what we advocate. It's so small and it's a long, it's this cultural change we're talking about. This is a long slog here, but in those moments where men will speak up and say, Hey, and then people think for a second, like, well, that's right.

Like, why is this only a Facebook mom's group? We're not talking about anything specific to moms. We're talking about all the activities in town. I said, that's a great one. I, I throw a Dr. Ramon because he helped bring about change in that small town. And now, you know, say, let's say there are a hundred moms on it.

Maybe there are only 10 dads, but that's 10 more dads than there were before.

[00:36:15] Adam: Yeah. Oh, love that. Love that story. And those dads probably feel a little bit less isolated.

[00:36:20] Paul: Right. That's right.

[00:36:21] Adam: To, You know, commiserate with.

[00:36:23] Paul: And maybe, you know, some percentage of those moms are now, you know, pals with those dads, but if not those other dads were on the group, they now know that there are men in that community who are doing this job.

[00:36:33] Adam: Yeah. Yeah. Love that. I wanted to ask you about one of your books. So you wrote, you've written two books, right? Two books. Cool. That's two more books than I've written. So that's awesome. And one of those books is called Clutch. And in that book you explore people excelling under pressure, like how to operate in clutch situations.

I am sorry to say I have not yet read this book, but I will. It's gonna happen. I have a pile of guest books that I still have to get through.

[00:37:04] Paul: There’s an audio book too, you can just listen to it while you're…

Adam: Do you narrate it?

Paul: You're being, while you're being ignored at the playground, just put it in, and then people think, and then you can motion like you're on a conference call, and then people won't bother you,

[00:37:16] Adam: And is it you narrating it?

[00:37:17] Paul: No, I only, I did the introduction, and the guy who narrates it is, like, the guy who does all the voices for, like, those big, big shows.

Blockbuster moves like, you know, have you ever in a time far away where men are savage and it's like, ah, this guy's voice is, and I remember calling him up cause he had a quiet, I called him up and he talked exactly like that on the phone. Like, how do you get through your life talking like that?

[00:37:35] Adam: But it's not the let's get ready to rumble guy?

[00:37:38] Paul: I wish. He's booked. He's booked for years, like five years out. He's booked.

[00:37:42] Adam: Okay. So, aside from the narration you know, parenting is a pretty high pressure situation. And obviously that situation that you went in where your wife came home and was like, I don't have a job anymore. You know, kind of clutch kind of, kind of high pressure.

Obviously you wrote this book. Did you have kids when you wrote the book?

[00:37:59] Paul: My wife was pregnant with our first.

[00:38:01] Adam: Okay. So you've learned a few things about parenting since writing that book. Is there any advice in that book that. You would apply to parenting or what advice from that book would you give to parents?

[00:38:13] Paul: Yeah, that's a good question. Thank you. I mean, so when you're talking about, I first, I'll start by defining what I mean when I use the term clutch, because it's a term that gets used very loosely often in sports and they go, man, he's so clutch or you're a recreational, whatever, you know, you're in a men's league playing basketball oof that was clutch shot I just made. What clutch actually means. It's the ability to do what you can do under normal circumstances. Under pressure. So you have to be able to do this thing normally first, and then you do it under pressure. And if not, it's luck. And so the opposite of clutch sometimes is just being bad at what you're doing.

And so when you think about these clutch situations in that book, yeah, do I talk to some athletes? Of course, you can't have a book called Clutch and not talk to athletes, but I also talked to top attorneys, I talked to business leaders, I talked to guys in the Army, I talked to secret service agents, I talked to this one actor who was in this play where he has to deliver this, this sort of 15 minutes soliloquy at the end. And if he screws it up, everybody wants their $4,000 back from seeing the play on Broadway. And that those are all clutch situations. And so parenting for a lot of it is. It's not that glamorous. You're not in this clutch situation. You're managing a lot of stuff.

You're trying to find those fun moments of memories, but where clutch comes in as I remember, you know, my youngest daughter had croup and none of my other daughters ever had it. And if anyone knows what this is like, it's this striated breathing and it's scary as shit. And you're like, what's going on.

And in a moment like that, you know, having written a book like that, you know exactly what to do. Cause what are the tenants of being clutch? There are five tenants, you know, but the first four of the ones that really matter the most here, you have to focus. You focus on the one thing that matters right now.

So what mattered getting her calling the doctor and when the doctors are bringing the emergency room, getting it there. Second is discipline. Discipline helps you never lose your focus on that thing. We're driving like, like crazy to get to the hospital because the ambulance is not going to get there in time.

The third is adaptability. Like I'm driving again, this is back when we had like a suburban, I'm driving that suburban, like something out of the Fast And The Furious, you know, going around minivans and Tesla's like, fuck you. I'm out of my way. But that, you know, that adaptability, the things that are in front of you.

And then the fourth and most important thing is there is being present. You're thinking of nothing else. Other than that clutch moment, you know, that thing that you have to accomplish in that clutch moment. So in parenting, what is that? That is, those are in extremist times in parenting your child breaks her leg.

Your child you know, breaks a glass bowl and slices up, you know, his hand. These are not moments where you your tween or teen comes home and had a shitty day at school. Those are more the kind of, you know, but yeah, in those extreme situations that your parents have, hopefully you don't have a lot of them.

It helps because nothing else matters. And that focus, discipline, adaptability, and always being present is what kicks in.

[00:40:56] Adam: Okay. So those things are just to recap: focus, discipline, adaptability, and presence was the last one?

[00:41:04] Paul: Yeah. Being present. Yeah. Being present. Yeah.

[00:41:06] Adam: Cool. Oh, I can't wait to read the book. I'm going…

[00:41:09] Paul: Or listen to it or at least listen to the intro. Then you'd hear my voice all over again.

[00:41:12] Adam: Cool. And so I want to ask you about another aspect of your writing.

You had a very interesting job with your column. Your column was called Wealth Matters. You followed super rich people. Like, so tell me about like, what the level of richness are we talking here? Like, are we talking like Elon Musk? Are we, you know, where are we at? Are…

[00:41:38] Paul: I mean, in the te, I mean, I talked to Pierre Omidyar once when he had a mere, I think he only had about 10 billion back then, I think he's probably up to like 25 or 30 billion now.

[00:41:47] Adam: Okay. So we're talking like, like things that end with, you know, several zeros, a B for billion.

[00:41:54] Paul: Yeah, but no, it could be any, the whole idea of that column was to talk to some of the most successful people in America, many of whom are very wealthy, but there's certain things you can do and be very successful and you'd be lucky to have 10 million bucks in the bank, let alone 10 billion bucks in the bank.

But the whole idea was to talk to them about, you know, the, what they did to preserve that wealth. So you think of it, you could write a, you could write a column about buying a 400 foot yacht. That's not what I would do. I would write a column that said, okay, you bought the 400 foot yacht. How much does it cost to run the 400 foot yacht?

What do you have to think about when you have a 400 foot yacht? And that is more applicable to somebody who maybe has a 24 foot boat and doesn't have a yacht. Cause he, okay, that's how they, so it was really rooted in behavioral economics and how we think about money. Cause as I say, in my second book, there are only four things you can do with money.

You can save it. You can spend it, you can give it away, or you can think about it. And that was really the guiding principle of that column.

[00:42:53] Adam: Did you ever uncover any interesting stories about parenting or about super rich family dynamics in your column? That's what I'm really curious about.

[00:43:04] Paul: Yeah. I mean, super rich people who aren't mindful are raising their kids at a huge disadvantage to middle class people. And people will say that and say, oh yeah, that's because they have so much money and the kids get into drugs. And I was like, no, that's not it at all. That's not why at all. Like if you're a middle class family.

And you need to buy a new car and you have a normal car, you have a Honda, you have a Toyota and that car is 10 years old, 15 years old. If you're a normal middle class family and you're buying a new car, it is a discussion you have around the dinner table. Like, okay, well, a new car payment is going to be 400 bucks a month.

It's going to cost $1,300 to fix the car we have. Is it worth putting the 1, 300 into the car or getting the new car? But then we're going to have a car payment for the next 60 months. Can we put that in our budget? And your kids are listening to all of that. Because remember, you know, kids don't, if you tell a kid to do something, they'll do it, but they may not learn the lesson.

If your kids see you, doing something. That's how it's going to sink in. So to continue that analogy, if you're a very wealthy family and you decide to buy a Cybertruck, I don't know why you do that. They're the ugliest cars in the world. But if you decide to buy a Cybertruck, now Elon Musk is going to shut off my ex right now.

He's going to come in here. He's watching me. If you decide to buy a Cybertruck, it just shows up. Nobody is sitting around the table saying, huh, how am I going to afford this? What am I going to do? Where am I going to put the charging station? Nobody's having that conversation and take it a step further.

If you buy a Range Rover, if you buy $150,000 Range Rover, it just shows up. And that's a disadvantage. And one of the guys that I talked to, you know, for many years ago now, but he liked to get a new Range Rover every three years. And he made a point though, cause he thought, okay, I've got this daughter.

This car just magically appears. Like she has no idea and so he would sit her down and let's just keep the math simple. Let's just say it costs $100,000 back then he bought a $ 100,000 car. He would sit her down and say, okay, to buy that 100, 000 car, I have to make $200,000 because half of it is going to disappear in taxes.

Then to insure that $100,000 car, that's going to begin simple numbers. That's going to cost me $5,000 a year. Now, this car is not energy efficient, so it's going to cost me, you know, $100 bucks a week to put gas in the car. And he would very specifically like lay it all out because what parents of super wealthy people do is they believe that if I don't tell my kids how much money I have, if I don't tell them this, they will be super incentivized to go out and do this on their own.

That is 100 percent incorrect because your kids already know how much everything costs. They can go on Zillow. They know how much your house costs. They know how much your car costs. Cause that's easy to find. You're taking trips. If you're taking road trip to Sausalito, that's one thing.

If you're getting on a jet and flying to Hawaii. That's another thing, and they know how much all these things cost, and so you're only fooling yourself as a parent, and that is a disadvantage to your kid. It's way more impactful to talk openly about money with your kid. Now, people say, well, I can't tell my kid that I make, you know, 17 million dollars a year, or I make 1.7 million dollars a year, or I make 700, or whatever it is. The numbers don't matter. I said, well, the numbers don't matter. Kids don't understand numbers. You could tell your child that, you know, you made a million dollars and depending on what you do for living, that could be the most money you could ever possibly make in your life, or it could be the worst year you've ever had in your career because you're somebody who earned way more than that.

And so one thing that, but I found that worked really well, my kids is you find an object that they covet. Hopefully with a round price and you use that to explain things. And so back when my daughters were younger, there was there still is a toy store in our town where the basic Barbie doll cost $10.

And that was like a gift from heaven because all kids learn math doing 10 frames. You can count by tens. And once you could say like, okay, how much does that cost? When it got really big, you're like, that would be 3000 Barbie dolls. And then they're like, Holy, that's a lot of money. Cause they could then conceptualize in their hand 3000 Barbie does it fill up their whole playroom?

They get that. And that was a better way to explain things than to say, you know, mom and dad make X amount of dollars that would have been lost on them. 

[00:47:09] Adam: Oh, love that. That's really good. Cause it's a tangible thing that they can understand, the Barbie doll. It's like right in front of their face. They get that. They know what $10 is, you know? I wanted to ask you about your relationship with your daughters. So you've three daughters.

[00:47:23] Paul: Haven't seen him in years. I started now. Who, what are you talking? I put this amazing retina scanner on my door here. There's no way they're getting in.

[00:47:35] Adam: I guess I have kind of a two parter for you. One thing that I'm curious with is as your daughters have gotten older, how your relationship with them has changed, especially as lead dad. And then the other thing is, you know, I think one of the things that makes dads nervous about having daughters is like, well, I don't understand everything that's going on in their heads or their bodies or whatever, my wife does.

How has it been like navigating that as a lead dad, or you're the parent of three girls and you know, you're doing the doctor's appointments and everything else. Like, is that awkward? Is that, you know, how do you bridge that?

[00:48:11] Paul: You know, to answer that question first, there are facts in this world and there are opinions in this world. And so, every woman alive who's lived past the age of 13 has had her period. That's just a fact. And so you can either be a juvenile about that and say, Oh my God, what am I going to do?

Or you could say like, okay, well, this happens and this is a natural process of maturation and let's just talk about it. Openly. And that's it. No jokes. No nothing. Just like this open. Oh, okay. You need me to go get you something. I will go get that for you. And that is a very fact based way of going about it.

And if somebody doesn't feel well, I'll say, do you know what's wrong? Can I help? I don't say you don't feel well because you know, you're having your period. I've never seen something so Neanderthal like that. It's like, and like, can I get you something but that's like blocking and tackling. That's like, as I say, like if you're in the corporate space and their company is debating, like, do we give equitable parental leave to men and women?

I was like, God, that's like table stakes in the shittiest game of poker you've ever played in your life. The answer is yes, you do. But guess what? Life continues to get way more complicated beyond that parental leave. You give everybody three months, give everybody six months, give everybody a year. It doesn't matter because it's not like parenting gets easier once you return to work.

Those companies that think beyond the more sophisticated stuff around care leaves and certain care policies. That's the other part of your question there. Like, how has my relationship with my daughters evolved? It's just become better. And I only, you know, I did stuff in instinctively intuitively that has paid off and so.

It's easier for me to give this advice to dads who are, you know, early on with kids, you know, boys or girls who are three, four, five, six years old. But I'm also believing that you can repair it at any time. I have been sitting on the bed of my 15 year old since she was born, like I have put her to bed, I've done all the things that you would do at all the different, you know, stages.

Now, do I sit in her bed and read her a story at night? Of course I don't. She's 15 years old. But I go in and I'll sit with her and some nights she says, Hey dad, can you print this out for me? Or Hey dad, tomorrow, can you make sure you, you know, bring me to school early? Fine. Some nights she'll say, Hey, I want to talk to you about X that happened. But the only way you get to that, Hey, dad, I want to talk about X moment is you're sitting on that bed as much as you possibly can. Now, do I sit there seven days a week, 365 days a year? Of course not. I travel, everybody travels, but there is this sort of habituation to sort of dad being there and the feeling that I can ask this question to dad just as I would to mom and particularly the 15 year old and 12 year old I mean, they're getting to this age where, like, do we give the same answer to everything?

No. You my wife, you know, go to for any problem is need to get more sleep. My go to is you need to drink water, take a zyrtec and try to go to the bathroom. And so it's gotten to this point where, you know, they do make fun of us for those things. But we own it, but it's literally being there, you know, And being present and not thinking of anything that happens in the natural maturation of, a child boy or a girl is anything other than the route that all of us took to get where we are today.

And how can I be at the very least supportive of that journey?

[00:51:38] Adam: Love that. Just a couple more questions for you. And then we got to wrap up and get to our lightning round.

[00:51:45] Paul: Oh, I like the lightning round.

[00:51:45] Adam: Lightning round is fun. I think you're going to do really well.

Paul: I got to stretch for that. Let me stretch for that, I don’t want to pull anything.

Adam: Yeah. Warm up. You got to warm up the muscles for the lightning round. Okay. So you built an entire career in journalism and media.

You've written a bunch of books. You're a columnist. You still write the New York Times. You do this media community around Company Of Dads. Like, when you put on your dad hat, when you think about your lead dad hat, and you think about the consumption habits of kids and that's changing pretty rapidly, right?

And it has been over the last five to 10 years. What examples are important for you to set in your own household with your kids around media consumption and information and things like that, especially curious about this from the perspective of a journalist and a writer and author.

[00:52:37] Paul: So, you're asking me because, as you know, I'm the only parent in America who's ever had to deal with a child and an iPhone. So, I'm glad you singled me out for this because I have all the, because I'm the only one. I'm a unicorn. Two parts of that question. So the first part sort of, you know, where it came from, you know, traditional media, we watch the news every night, which is such an old timey thing to do, I’m partial Lester Holt on NBC news.

And then we talk about it and we literally will pause the news as we're watching it. So we can talk about it and kids understand, you know, what's going on. So it's so important for me for them to be, you know, informed citizens. And, you know, my daughter asked me the other day, she said, you know, if you were to write a story about, Donald Trump's economic policies, how could you or anybody not be biased?

And I said, well, it's actually really, quite easy because if you're writing about his economic policies, you can say, okay, here are the five things that he's proposed you know, tariffs you know, tighter immigration, different environmentalists, nobody knows the answer. Nobody knows what's going to happen.

And so you can go into and say, okay, this is what he said. I hear a whole bunch of people who think that if these things happen, the following three things will occur. And then here are a whole bunch of people on the other side who think that if these things happen, the following, you know, four things will occur.

And so we have those conversations so they understand information, they understand fact from fiction, they understand how you construct an argument and how, you know, you write something and think about something, even if you may not agree with it in some way. The second part of your question, what do you do around sort of, you know, the media, cause of the social media consumption that particularly my 15 year old and my 12 year old have.

Well, again, we figured this out first time out cause we're geniuses. That's not true. So what do we do? We did what every parent in America does. And that was, we yelled at our children to get off the damn phones. And that was wildly successful. No, that's also not true. That was an utter failure.

And so then we sort of, And, you know, it's kind of investigating, you know, different products that would help us sort of monitor this and we through a friend who works in technology and again, I don't get paid by this company. I have no financial ties to them unless they want to call me up and then I'll take their money.

But there's a company called Custodio and Custodio has created this app that essentially allows you to dole out time to every child and also to dole out time, you know, this is broader internet time and then time to be used on specific apps or not at all. So if you don't want your children on a certain app, you can block it.

And this was, again, I have to get no money from them, no endorsements. I've never I am such an evangelist for this company because it was a game changer. Because my 15 year old gets an hour and a half a day, my 12 year old gets an hour until she doesn't feel left out on her iPad. My seven year old gets 15 minutes.

And what is this teaching them? This is teaching them that they have to budget their time. They're budgeting their time on social media. But sometime in life, they're gonna have to budget all of their time, you know, they're in school now where they're often told what to do, but at some point nobody's gonna tell them what to do.

They have to know how to budget their time. They have to know how to budget their money. They have to know how to budget, you know, their emotional you know bank account of who they're going to be friends with, who they're not going to be friends with. And so we're teaching this very important skill of budgeting early on and we're teaching it with something that is highly desirable.

Like my children want to make sure they get their time on YouTube shorts. They want to go on Instagram. They want to do Snapchat. You know, look this is how my kids are communicating, but I'm not going to let my child go on Snapchat for three hours a day. You know, she has 15 minutes and in that 15 minutes, use it however you want and then it's done and that's it.

And so there are no more arguments. And now that honestly has been a game changer over the past sort of year and a half in my family.

[00:56:09] Adam: I'm going to have to check out this app. Sounds very cool. All right. We're almost to lightning round, but I did want to ask you one more thing, which is how can people follow along or be helpful to you, Paul Sullivan on your journey as a lead dad?

[00:56:25] Paul: If they could send me a letter, a handwritten and stamped preferably delivered by courier pigeon, no the CompanyOfDads.com, the company of dads.com, we have a newsletter called The Dad, thecompanyofdads.com/thedad. And of course we're very active on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook.

So, you know, reach out and find us there or write me a letter.

[00:56:48] Adam: I'm going to get a letter writing campaign going right now after this episode. Awesome. It's time for the lightning round. Are you ready? You look limber and ready.

[00:56:57] Paul: I hope I'm more ready Mike Tyson when he fought Jake Paul, but I'm ready, I'm gonna do my best here.

[00:57:03] Adam: You have the knee braces on. Okay, good. All right. Here we go. The rules are simple. I ask you a question and as quickly as you can, you give me the answer. And there is no judges judgment free zone. You can elaborate if you'd like, you will not get any judgment from me.

[00:57:19] Paul: I'm judging you Adam, so there's nothing in my life that isn't judgment free.

[00:57:22] Adam: All right, here we go.

True or false. There is only one correct way to load the dishwasher.

[00:57:28] Paul: True.

[00:57:28] Adam: Which is the crazier block of time in your house? 6 am to 8 a. m. or 6 p. m. to 8 p. m.?

[00:57:34] Paul: 6pm to 8pm. They will not go to sleep, just go to sleep, just get in your room and pretend to be asleep so I can talk to your mother for 15 minutes before she falls asleep.

[00:57:47] Adam: The ideal day with your kids involves this one activity.

[00:57:52] Paul: Doing things with each one of them alone. I love, you know, with three kids, I love being able to go out and then there's no fighting and then we just talk and they get to do what they want and I'm always up for that.

[00:58:03] Adam: Okay. If your kids had to describe you in one word, what would it be?

[00:58:07] Paul: Dashing.

[00:58:11] Adam: What is the funniest thing one of your kids has ever said in public.?

[00:58:16] Paul: One of my daughters, when I was taking her to the pediatrician, she had some issues with strep throat in her vagina. And she's quite young and her pronunciation wasn't great. And so we walk into a waiting room in a pediatrician's office filled with moms and female caregivers, and she yells, dad, why are we here? My vagina is fine.

[00:58:36] Adam: Amazing. I'm sure that one's going to come up at the wedding.

[00:58:40] Paul: A hundred percent. I've already scripted it.

[00:58:43] Adam: Favorite ages for your kids?

[00:58:45] Paul: Five is maximum cuteness for any child. So somebody says I have a five year old, I said, cherish it. I mean, every age is great. You learn so much, but five, you can still pick them up. You can cuddle them, yet they can dress themselves. They can tie their shoes. They know what they want to eat.

Five is maximum cuteness.

[00:59:00] Adam: Okay. What is the least favorite age?

[00:59:02] Paul: I haven't got there yet. Yeah, I mean, probably like, you know, no, I guess that's not true. Probably like, you know, like to where they think that they're really good at walking, but they really suck. And then you're just like following around like, God, you're so bad at this. Why are you so confident?

Like, you're going to be an entrepreneur one day you suck at this yet you have abundant confidence. What's happening here?

[00:59:23] Adam: And there are sharp, hard objects everywhere.

[00:59:24] Paul: It's everywhere. And you're like following around with like, you know, pool noodles. You're trying to like pool noodle everything.

[00:59:30] Adam: Okay. What is the most difficult kids TV show that you have ever had to sit through?

[00:59:37] Paul: Oh God. There's one. I can't remember the name. I blocked out, but my dad would watch it. My dad would laugh along. It was like one of those Disney shows. And it's like, Oh my God. And they had a laugh track and everything. And they were like superheroes. But it was like a low budget version of the Incredibles.

I can't, if anybody can help, I can't, it was awful. And I would watch my daughter and my dad would like be laughing like, how are you laughing? Like nothing. This is not the laugh track laughs for. You don't need to laugh.

[00:59:59] Adam: Have you ever accidentally mixed up your daughter's names?

[01:00:03] Paul: Like every hour of every day. but only when it's like you need something quickly or, you know, you're angry and it always starts with the oldest. And so it's like, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And yeah, all the time.

[01:00:13] Adam: Do you ever mix them up with the dog's names?

[01:00:15] Paul: No, no, I did not do that.

[01:00:18] Adam: Okay. It's coming. It's coming. Don't worry. Speaking of dogs, how long can a piece of food sit on your floor and you will still eat it?

[01:00:25] Paul: It depends on what like pathway it is in my house. If it's a highly trafficked pathway where the dogs are in and out, we're walking not very long, if at all. But if it's like something like super desirable, like a piece of bacon and I can get it first, then yeah, I got it. I'll eat that.

[01:00:41] Adam: Okay. Awesome. What was the first nostalgic movie that you ever forced your daughters to watch with you?

[01:00:47] Paul: E. T.

[01:00:48] Adam: Ooh, great one. Great one.

[01:00:50] Paul: second one though, and my middle daughter still talks about this to my wife’s chagrin was Happy Gilmore. Adam Sandler classic. Yeah. And she was too young to watch it, wildly inappropriate.

[01:00:58] Adam: There was a rumor that they were making a second Happy Gilmore.

[01:01:01] Paul: They are, oh my god, she loves every Adam Sandler film. 

Adam: Can't wait. Adam Sandler's like in his fifties, I think, now?

Paul: This guy’s a genius.

[01:01:07] Adam: Uh, yeah. How often do you tell your daughters back in my day stories?

[01:01:13] Paul: We tell it all the time, but I also tell stories to them because, you know, I think their lives are pretty good. I'll tell them stories like, you know what? This could be the topic for your college essay. The day my dad would not take me to Starbucks after school. If this doesn't fucking get you into Stanford, I don't know what does.

Those people are crazy at Stanford. They let nobody in there.

[01:01:34] Adam: That's amazing. Okay. Last one. Super important. You got three daughters, three dogs, a spouse, probably some golf equipment. What is your take on minivans?

[01:01:47] Paul: Oh the, yeah, the death of American civilization. Like, I would never, ever. And we have a friend who has one, and she drove us into the city and I was in the minivan. I was like, Oh my God, I can't believe I'm in here. No but this is not like, not good. Like I'm a suburban guy, which is not very good for the environment, but the minivan and my wife justifies it by saying like the safety ratings and minivans are very low.

They're only, they only get a three star rating. Whereas our suburban has a five star rating. It's like, of course it does. Our suburban just ran over a Tesla for fun. I mean, come on, it's not a fair competition, but yeah, no, no minivans for this guy.

[01:02:17] Adam: Do you think that secretly your wife is using that as justification just because she doesn't want a minivan in the family?

[01:02:23] Paul: Oh, she 100 percent doesn't want a minivan and there's no way that it's not like her car. I'm the one driving the stupid suburban. She's got a nice car, no.

[01:02:30] Adam: Okay, Paul, that concludes lightning round. You've passed with flying colors.

[01:02:35] Paul: I think I pulled something now, but that's okay. I'll just, I'll just kind of get on the exercise ball after this.

[01:02:40] Adam: have, we should have talked about this was a clutch situation. This was a high pressure situation. You wrote a whole book about this.

[01:02:46] Paul: I was focused. I was focused. I was disciplined. I adapted when he threw me curve balls. 

Adam: All right. Well, don't, don't forget to stretch afterwards before your next call. It's good to cool down after an event like this. Paul, thank you so much for joining me on startup dad today. It was. An amazing conversation. I laughed a lot and I wish you and your daughters, your wife and the dogs an amazing start to 2025. It's going to be a big year.

[01:03:11] Paul: Adam, I appreciate you asking me. And if the rest of the podcast I'm on this year can be half as fun as this one was, it's a winning year. So thank you again for having me as your guest.

[01:03:19] Adam: Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Paul Sullivan. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, share, and leave me a review on Apple or Spotify. It'll help other people find this podcast. Startup Dad is a Fishman AF production with editing support from Tommy Harron. If you're a startup founder, leader, or just want to get better at your job in tech, as a growth practitioner, Product manager or executive, you can join a community of over 11, 000 subscribers and stay up to date on my thoughts on growth and product by subscribing to the Fishman AF newsletter at www.fishmanafnewsletter.com. Thanks for listening and see you next week.