What's So Great About The 'Pee Pee Tee Pee' (and other important advice) | Kyle Lacy (Dad of 2, Jellyfish)

Kyle: The whole idea of hustling and hustling and hustling. I think being extremely productive is better, but if I've, hustled since I graduated college and then I have a kid. That pivots massive, right? So the change management of me took a long time and I'm still working on it.

It's still hard for me to separate it.

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 Kyle Lacy. Kyle is the CMO of Jellyfish, which is sort of like Salesforce for developers, in that it helps them make data backed decisions on resource investments.

He has spent nearly two decades building companies like Lessonly, OpenView, Salesforce, and ExactTarget. A product of the Midwest, he's also a husband and the father of two boys. In our conversation today, we spoke about how to manage work, life, and parenting appropriately, and managing the stress that goes along with it.

We dispelled the myth that you can have a separation of church and state between your family life and your work life, how to learn to put your kids before yourself and the role of nature versus nurture in parenting. We also had a brief tangent where we discussed the miracle that is the pee pee tee pee and how most parenting advice is complete crap.

I don't think I've ever laughed more during an episode of startup dad, and I hope you enjoy today's conversation with Kyle Lacy.

Adam: I would like to welcome Kyle Lacy to the Startup Dad podcast. Kyle, I've been waiting a long time for this conversation. I'm very excited to have you.

Kyle: Same. I'm excited to be here. Thank you.

Adam: And a quick shout out the woman, the myth, the legend, Sam Richard for connecting us. The two of you work together. Is that a thing that happened?

Kyle: We worked at OpenView venture capital firm, and I am a huge fan of her content in general on, I think, I think she's still using Twitter, but definitely on LinkedIn. She’s one of my favorite people to follow,

Adam: We will link to her in the show notes just because she's so awesome.

Kyle: For sure.

Adam: Kyle, you work at a company called Jellyfish. I assume that is not a seafood restaurant. Tell me a bit about your professional background and what Jellyfish does?

Kyle: I started in software in 2012, I started an agency after I graduated college, but that's a completely different conversation. It's more around how do you fail when running an agency? But the positive of that was exact target, which was an Indianapolis based largest email service provider in the world at the time hired me to speak at conferences and to build a content marketing team.

So that's how I started in software and I kind of fell in love with it. I fell in love with scale up. I fell in love with how fast we moved. And so that led to a job at a venture capital firm, which we just talked about where Sam was called OpenView. And then that led to marketing leadership roles.

And I joined an Indianapolis based company called Lessonly, which we grew, sold to Seismic for 300 million. And then I was on the Seismic leadership team and I burned out completely, which is a topic conversation, of course, for this, podcast, maybe. And then I'm at Jellyfish, which, you know, I'll use marketing speak, but it's, Salesforce for R and D teams, engineering teams.

So how do you measure the productivity, efficiency, output of your engineers, your software engineers. And that they started, I think it's been around now seven years

Adam: Yeah.

Kyle: And I joined in October 2022.

Adam: Okay. Cool. I love the name, too. I mean, I love a name of a company that doesn't actually describe what it does.

Kyle: Oh, well, that we're trying to unpack Google search is a little hard. When it comes to like, oh, we have a great branded organic search. And they're like, well, you know, half of it's people searching for the actual animal

Adam: Right.

Kyle: Right?

Adam: They end up there. They're like, this is not what I was expecting. I was looking for pictures of a jellyfish.

Kyle: But there is a small portion of that search who are software engineers that randomly come across this. And then we're like, you know what? This is a win win. You can read about jellyfish because we'll probably have it and you can buy software.

Adam: There you go. All right, so you're at jellyfish now you've mentioned Indianapolis a couple of times, or Indiana sounds like you are the product of the Midwest, like myself. But tell me about where you grew up and what life was like growing up.

Kyle: I was actually born in Spokane, Washington. We moved to Indiana when I was three. So midway, I was raised in Anderson, Indiana, which is north of Indianapolis, probably most center of the state. But I went back every year to Spokane to be with family. We had our family reunion every year at a river up in Northern Idaho, which is kind of a central place for me as a human being.

But, raised in Indiana, very different world than the coasts. And that led to my father was involved in music business, and I kind of was raised around the Christian music scene, which is a very different world than the secular music scene. And thats where I fell in love with marketing, music business.

And that's why I went to college originally at Anderson University, where I grew up to do music business, and I realized that you needed to actually know how to play music and be a producer to graduate from Anderson university. And then I switched to marketing degree.

So I grew up around it.

My father is an entrepreneur ever since I can remember. But you know, I kind of learned a lot of my marketing expertise and what it means to work hard from him. You know, he grew up on a farm in northern Idaho where they built combines. Like we're talking the fifties and sixties and northern Idaho.

And so that, that mentality of working hard and working a lot and making sure that you're providing is very central to how I was raised. Kind of has stayed with me, both good and bad as I've gotten older, because I am older now.

Adam: Do you have any siblings?

Kyle: I do. I have younger brother and a younger sister, so I'm the oldest. My sister lives outside of Orlando. My brother lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Adam: Any of them have kids and do you dispense just boundless parenting advice in their direction?

Kyle: My sister is married and has three children, three girls. My brother is not married. Doesn't have kids. He has an amazing dog and I do not dispense parenting advice to them. They wouldn't ask anyway. If anybody is dispensing parenting advice, it's probably my sister to me, but that is very rare.

Adam: Yeah. Well, we will get into all of that. Tell me about your family. Now you have a partner. You have a couple of kids. How did you and your wife whose name is Rachel, I believe. How did the two of you meet each other?

Kyle: So she worked at ExactTarget and when ExactTarget hired me, I had written a book called Twitter Marketing for Dummies. And they had hired me to train their sales team on Twitter because they had just bought a company called CodeSweep. And it was part of the email, like their platform we were building, right?

Which is now the Salesforce Marketing Cloud. And so she was doing marketing there. And she was an executive assistant and she helped book a meeting for me and I stalked her on Facebook and that's how we met. And it was actually, there's a lot to unpack there that it's surprisingly that she agreed to meet me after stalking her on Facebook.

But because we worked at the same company, it was actually valuable because we got to travel together. There was a lot of events that we got to do together and I credit ExactTarget for helping me, which is uh, I'll send this to Scott Dorsey, who's the CEO of ExactTarget and the founder. I credit ExactTarget to launching my career and also my family, so you can tie them both back to that company in Indianapolis, which is interesting. This is kind of off the question, but we had a, 10 year reunion of the Salesforce acquisition in Indianapolis. And I bet there were 2000 people that showed up to that thing.

Adam: Whoa. Wow. Talk about like company loyalty, alumni.

Kyle: Career. Yeah. Career culture, like all that stuff. So anyway, thank you, Scott. If you're listening.

Rachel is now a personal trainer. So she has her own business where she trains men and women on how to be better people, more healthier versions of themselves.

Adam: She trains people probably outside a lot. You stand at a desk all day. It's a good yin and yang.

Kyle: That is. I hear about it. At least I have Orange Theory that I go to, and I'm pretty obsessed with that.

Adam: Okay, good.

Kyle: She, I definitely hear it from her.

Adam: All right. And you have two kids. How old are your kids? and are we back to school yet or are we?

Kyle: Third and first grade. And we went back to school August first.

Adam: Whoa. Dang. I thought California was early. We were August 12th. I was hoping that like I would get to be jealous of you and the Midwestern post labor day school start, but no,

Kyle: Nope. Nope. East coast. East coast is post labor day. But no we are super early. They get out May 22nd, I think. So it's a little bit earlier, but

Adam: Nothing like starting school August 1st in like the peak of Midwestern humidity and just having to just like sit there and sweat. Hopefully there's good AC

Kyle: I'm especially right now. I mean, right now it's frigging hot here, but we live like two blocks from the school. So it's easier. It's a neighborhood school. It's a good environment for them.

Adam: So they only sweat through like one shirt on the walk to school.

Kyle: Well, I don't know if you notice it. I think you probably saw this. Whereas Mark Zuckerberg was wearing a gold chain in his most recent interview with Emily Chang or whatever.

Adam: Yeah, he's a reformed man.

Kyle: He's a reform man. And apparently all this gold chain thing is popular amongst the children because…

Adam: Okay.

Kyle: All of my kid’s friends have silver or gold necklaces.

So my son informed me yesterday because he had the necklace in his mouth and I'm like, if you chew it, you're going to break it. Like it's an $8 necklace from Target. And he goes, well, you put it in your mouth and then you put it under your shirt and it cools off your skin and that's how you stay cool in the summer. I was like…

Adam: Okay, I'll allow it

Kyle: I just nodded my head. I was like, you know what you do

Adam: you do, you do you kid.

Kyle: It's hot right now.

Adam: So, so you mentioned that your wife, Rachel is a personal trainer. So we got two working parents. Tell me about the decision for the two of you to start a family. Were you just like, Hey, one day ExactTarget, just chat. And you're like, you know, we should have some kids at some point. That sounds like a great idea.

Kyle: I mean, we had definitely talked about it. you know, thinking back, I would assume that we didn't plan for it because we don't really plan in general. Like if we're going on vacation. We're buying tickets and we're just showing up at a place and we're figuring out what we're doing

Adam: Oh my God, Kyle, you are my worst nightmare. You are the polar opposite of me. I have to plan and research everything. I may not do all the things, but I need like a full on like potential itinerary. All the meals. I don't want to miss a thing.

Kyle: I've tried,

Adam: Okay.

Kyle: Because I, I'm fairly mindful about that in my job, but it's almost like I do it too much. As a CMO and so I need like this a little bit of chaos. So I'd say that we talked about it and it was more when we had moved to Boston. Rachel had a job.

I had a job and we said, you know, I think that. It's time based off of I mean, I don't want to be an ageist, but based off of age too, on when we wanted to have kids. And I think the biggest conversation was how many, we both were like, I'm not sure about three.

We're not even sure about one. So let's do a test drive before we decide to have a second.

Adam: But you've settled on two. So that's good. We're at two kids. Two is good. You've replaced yourselves on the planet. We're in a good place.

Kyle: We've got a dog and a cat, two kids. That's enough.

Adam: I would say. So your wife runs her own business. You're a CMO. How do the two of you manage work, life, parenting? I imagine you both have pretty demanding schedules, you know, when your wife is not training somebody, she's not earning.

Kyle: For us, it's mostly just making sure that we're having conversations about what's going on and her being very, very, very good at scheduling.

Honestly, like, I, I live and die by that Google calendar. I mean, that is she knows, and she gets very, I wouldn't say upset, but concerned asking me if I'm okay if I, like, ask her what time she's leaving about three or four times in one day because it's on the damn calendar.

It's like you've got it in your pocket. So, I mean, we're hanging on for dear life right now. Kids are in sports. I'm gone quite a bit. She's growing her business. We got social life that we try to keep up, you know, with friends and family. So, I mean, it's a little, it's a little intense, but Google calendar shout out to the Google gods, it's been quite the lifesaver.

Adam: So we don't have a digital calendar. We have a, like a dry erase board that has the days of the week and stuff. And I find that actually I prefer the low tech solution. I've, I also have the calendar, but like it's on my phone and whatever. I think I like the low tech solution because it forces me to like erase and write stuff out. And by writing it out, I'm like, oh yes, I remember we have this. And it's sort of like, I translate it from my calendar to the physical thing.

Kyle: For me, the biggest problem is we have a dry erase board right now. That's for chores for the kids. Cause they, they earn money. I put them into, Greenlights. So they have debit cards and savings and all that stuff. And erasing chores and the check marks every week has just with two kids drives me crazy. And so maybe it's because the lines are off and they're not straight and I sound OCD even though I don't plan vacations, but I'm not I swear, but can't handle it and then they're using markers and my 6 year old like randomly draws a line across the space on accident without a checkmark.

So it's. That's why we're moving to a screen, which we don't need another screen, frankly, but

Adam: Dad, can I use this? And it's a Sharpie and they're like writing all over the dry erase

Kyle: And they're right on the $500 screen. I just bought.

Adam: Yes. Yes. So you mentioned you're in it, like, you know, you have a first grader and a third grader, you got the kids sports. I just did an episode on the mania surrounding kids sports, which was awesome. Top notch Linda Flanagan. You travel. Is it just you and your wife, like making this all work? Do you have extra help? Like how do you get the kids to the things, you know?

School doesn't end at 6 PM. Like when the work dance, it ends at like two or three, like they're just ejected out into the world and you better be there.

Kyle: That's where it's because my coworking space is so close to their school and to our house. It's fairly easy for me to block time to go pick them up. Our eight year old's also old enough to pick our six year old up and walk home, which is good. My parents also live in Indianapolis six months out of the year.

They spend the other six months in Florida. So they're there to help of course. And then we have a community pool. That we are members of that's close to our house that we go to especially days like today and yesterday which were stupid hot and my six year old made friends with two high schoolers a boy and a girl and Convinced them to buy him food and hang out with him for like six hours one day the young woman is actually a babysitter now for us because my six year old became really good friends with her at the pool randomly one day.

So, we, so we have, like, neighborhood people, like, older kids that can watch them, and so it, it works out in the long run, for sure.

Adam: I love that. Your six year old, the mayor of the town is just like to the teenage girls. Just like you live here now. You're my sister.

Kyle: Yeah, you live here, come hang out. When she babysits, they bake things.

Adam: Amazing.

Kyle: I know,

Adam: Wow. Can I get her phone number? I was like, does she travel to California? Like let's,

Kyle: You can send it jet, it'll be fine, it'll be fine.

Adam: I don't know. I don't know how lucrative you think pot this podcasting is, but let me tell you, there's no PJs in my yard. No private jets. I wanna talk about you know, you mentioned in our prep this idea of the separation of church and state between work, life and parenting.

And I guess my question for you on this is there truly a separation of church and state how do you manage the stress? How do you think about that?

Kyle: So to answer you directly, there's not. I think anyone that tells you there is, who's a high performing individual, is lying, honestly. Like, I find it hard to believe that somebody can separate that clearly, cleanly. I love what I do. I love my job. And you know, I think it's more of a conversation around How do you make sure, like you mentioned, the stress doesn't overflow into the home, where you are being kind of a jerk to your kids because you have something due for the board, or, you know, your CEO is disagreeing with you on something, or you made a bad call on an investment, or whatever?

So the way that I manage that, frankly, is I exercise, it seems like such a, like, bro tweet thing to say, but I exercise, honestly, like, I do it every morning, most days. And it's a good way for me to reset. And then, you know, you and I were talking before we got on the call like, why I have a coworking space, even though it's so close to my house, even if it's a 10 minute walk or a 3 minute drive.

That is a good disconnect for me. You know, during the events that we will not mention that happened four years ago or whatever,

Adam: Those that shall not be named.

Kyle: When I left the room that I was working in, it was so difficult, it was so hard for me to disconnect, to try to reset and to focus on the family, and I have a hard time doing that, even with exercise and resetting and muting my phone.

Because I care so deeply about my job, whether right or wrong, and I've been that way ever since I can remember. And I think that the transition for me has been a difference between caring about my job because it was more of a self esteem boost, to hey, I have other people that I'm supporting and that I care about and that I love and the job is secondary to that.

But the job is still a very close second honestly. Because I put so much of my self worth in my career.

Adam: Iwanted to transition and ask you about some dad stuff. What's the earliest memory that you have after becoming? A father.

Kyle: This kind of coincides with another question you're probably going to ask, but we were gifted, so we have two boys, we were gifted something called a pee pee tee pee. I don't know if you're familiar with these.

Adam: I am familiar. I have one boy. I don't think we used it. We used a wash cloth instead, but, go on.

Kyle: Oh yeah, I mean that'll work too. We were gifted this pee pee tee pee and I was like, this is very weird. I mean that for those of you who don't know, they're listening or watching, they're just like cloth cones. That's basically what they are, right? Tents. And I'll never forget the exact moment where I used it for the first time and the epiphany.

I mean, just like the amount of appreciation I felt for the individual who gave us these was unlike anything I've experienced, honestly, because it saved me. And honestly, that is my first, it was the first week he was home. That we had brought him home from the hospital. And that's my first memory.

Adam: Yeah.

Kyle: Is that pee pee tee pee.

And to this day, if I know somebody that is having a boy, I immediately we'll send them a pack of pee pee tee pees. They're fairly cheap on Amazon for those of you who are about to have boys.

Adam: We'll link to them. just to get real explicit here, because that's what we do. The thing about the pee pee tee pee is it prevents the untethered fire hose that is your young boy's manhood, boyhood from just spraying pee everywhere, which is the first thing that happens when the diaper comes off. It's like, hey, I'm free fountain of urine.

Kyle: And untethered is fair, but for some reason they're very good at aiming too, and if you don't have a pee pee tee pee. You get it in the face. And nobody wants that. You don't want that at two o'clock in the morning when you have somebody screaming at you, a little baby screaming at you and like

Adam: There's,

Kyle: Peeing on you.

Adam: There's nothing that will ruin your evening or early morning and prevent you from going back to sleep

Kyle: Then pee in your face.

Adam: Then getting blasted in the face by pee. On a more serious, I love the pee pee teepee,

Kyle: Is that the title of this episode?

Adam: That is actually, we have, we've figured out the show title for today. I'm going to find a way to work it in.

Maybe that'll be the title. It'll be the pee pee tee pee  and other life advice from Kyle. Okay. On a more serious note, although pee pee tee pees are serious, dads don't often talk about the feelings that come along with becoming a father after the first time or the second time. A lot of dads are not good at this. We can be, it's just not a muscle that we have to exercise that much, but we should be.

So when you think back to the emotions that came up for you, what do you remember about that?

Kyle: I remember very clearly thinking, I hope I don't fail this human being,

Adam: Yeah.

Kyle: My son, right? Because of a multitude of just head trash. Right? But I think that other than like extreme love and.

And being pretty overwhelmed with the fact that I had to take care of somebody, of a human, right? With the help of my partner, of course. It was. I don't want to screw up and that it's not based off of the way I was raised or anything like that. It was just. You know, I've spent so much time thinking about how to build a career and build myself and build my brand and build my worth and all that stuff.

And now it's a pivot that you don't know how to handle no matter what books you read.

Adam: Yeah.

Kyle: I mean, it sounds negative, but that was one of my first thoughts. It's like, I just don't want to fail this person.

Adam: You know, that's actually a really good segue to another question that I have, which is you talked about before you had kids, it was all about yourself, your career, your brand, like growth, personal growth, maybe you and your partner then you have kids and you pivoted.

And so now it seems like you have this philosophy of putting your kids before yourself. Did that come naturally to you, did you have to work at it? How did that manifest itself you?

Kyle: I hope to God my wife listens to this interview.

Adam: She will, she'll be one of the two people.

It's going to be her and the ExactTarget founder. And that's all we got. And Sam and Sam Richard.

Kyle: Sam. Oh no, Sam. I'll listen to it. So that'd be four. Okay. So, I work at it. I still work at it daily. I mean, the thought process of not being selfish, stop reading email and responding to slack, put down your phone, happens daily for me I feel like all the time. It's been more of a how do I change my day to day life, for example. If I'm going to work on the weekend, which I do,

Adam: Mm hmm.

Kyle: They're block times where I know it's not overlapping with the kids being up because I'm a fairly early riser. Or overlapping a soccer game or a party or us going to a park or something family oriented. But I had to spend a lot of time internally convincing myself because I think it's right that it's okay for me to do that.

Adam: Mm

Kyle: It's okay because, the whole idea of hustling and hustling and hustling. I think being extremely productive is better, but if I've, hustled since I graduated college and then I have a kid. that pivots massive, right? so the change management of me took a long time and I'm still working on it.

It's still hard for me to separate it. And I think that's just how I was raised. When I was growing up, if I woke up and it was raining on a Saturday, I was super happy because it meant I didn't have to go work outside with my dad.

Adam: Yeah. Building.

Kyle: And to this day, to this day, if I wake up and it's like stormy, I'm like, oh, wow, I feel really good right now. Cause, cause I'm like, I don't have to go lay brick out in the backyard or dig a hole or whatever. But yeah, it's been difficult for me to separate. For sure.

Adam: Has that been a surprising aspect of fatherhood for you? Just like how hard that was to make that pivot or how much you have to work at that?

Kyle: No, because it was difficult for me when I met Rachel, my wife to there. There have been numerous occasions where she has said quit talking to me like I am a teammate.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle: Or I'm like on your team where I'm, you know, your peer at the job, it wasn't surprising because it was mostly that I had to get over it because I like working a lot. I like getting big wins. I like building a team. I like that stuff. It fills my cup, but you know, if you ignore everything else and eventually it won't.

Adam: It's almost like have to retrain your brain on what winning looks like, you know, and like what winning with a family looks like, it looks different than winning in your job.

Kyle: Well, how do you do that?

Adam: You know, that's a great question. I am not great at it. I think the right thing is, am I modeling good behaviors with my kids?

Right? You don't have to go to every soccer game. I've had a lot of people on who have talked about that and like the, those trade offs and stuff. But like when you do go knowing that you're there, like you're present, you're dialed into what's happening in the moment.

And you're not, which is hard, you know, we're connected 24/7, our brains can be elsewhere and you have to like actively redirect yourself. Yeah. If we threw Kyle into a time machine and we rewound the clock, you know, eight years before you had your first kid, what advice would you give the younger version of yourself?

Kyle: I think the main piece of advice would be take a breath. When you have your first kid, it's like, are they still breathing? Are they going to die? I hope they don't hit that kid on the playground and they're like six months old, eight months old. It's like, just take a breath and not overreact. And, you know, I think that I wish that I had been a little bit less uptight with my oldest. Because I just didn't know. I didn't know. And, it's this debate of nature versus nurture, which I, you know, we could spend a lot of time talking about that, but, you know, I think that the way that the anxiety that you might show to hopefully they don't get hurt, it definitely affects them.

And then I have our youngest where our second born who is, is happy go lucky and absolutely insane. Both good and bad.

Adam: Just YOLO. YOLO parenting. Yeah.

Kyle: Just like, because we weren't as like, like anxiety and what are they going to do? And I don't want them to get hurt. And why didn't you eat all your freaking green beans or whatever?

And it's like, just take a breath. Enjoy the fact that you brought a human being in the world and they're functioning appropriately.

Adam: Right.

Kyle: That's what I would tell myself. And In Boston, eight years ago.

Adam: That is priceless, advice. I want to come back to the nature nurture thing, but first I wanted to ask you. You know, you're in the time machine again, people are peppering eight years ago, Kyle with new parenting advice. People are like, Oh, you got to do this. You got to do this. Your parents, the in laws, the siblings, like the whole thing.

What would you tell yourself to ignore from that advice? What's a piece of advice you got where you were like, Oh, hell no.

Kyle: I actually have an article that I wrote about the five things to remember as a father, but I would think that you have a question on the sheet you sent about books that you read.

Adam: Yeah.

Kyle: Like,  ignore most of the books. You can read as many books as you possibly can. Want, you're still going to not have any idea what you're doing.

Adam: The lived experience is what really matters, huh?

Kyle: yeah, yeah, yeah, because you're fine, it will be fine, it will be fine. And I'm lucky that I can say that. I'm lucky that I can say that, we had the means to be fine. We didn't have any health issues, like, I'm just very lucky that that was the case.

the only book that I read was what to Expect When You're Expecting

Adam: Yeah. The doula's handbook.

Yeah.

Kyle: I think I listened to it while I was training for a Marathon. I would listen to it while running in Boston, and I think I listened to it twice. And then I have, like, 37 books that I bought that I got through, like, half of them. Maybe this is coming from somebody that just read one, really, so maybe you should take it with a grain of salt, but.

Adam: Oh, one is probably more than many have read. Speaking of books, what's your favorite book to read to your kids?

Kyle: Calvin and Hobbes.

Adam: Nice.

Kyle: I grew up with them. I bought all of them when our oldest was old enough to care. it's still borderline. They don't understand a lot of it because Calvin is a very intelligent five year old. But yeah, it's Calvin and Hobbes. My son's in Dog Man and our six year old's like Gemstone Dragons, which I don't love.

But Dog Man's good. But yeah, Calvin and Hobbes I'll read any day of the week.

Adam: Awesome. I love that too. We also went through a dog man phase. Now we're in a different phase in our house,

Kyle: Now he's in Diaries for a Wimpy Kid right now. And Big Nate,

Adam: Huh.

Kyle: Tall Nate or something. I don't know.

Adam: Okay. Okay. So coming back to nature versus nurture. Are you on team nature, team nurture? Sounds like maybe a little bit team nature. The kids are all right.

They're going to be fine. Just don't fuck them up.

Kyle: Yeah, I am. I mean, a lot of it's just experience you know, seeing friends raise kids and us raising our kids. And I just think that there are genetic things, you know, my family has anxiety. We have addiction in our family, right? Like, those things are, you know, Like, you can't, I mean, you could show, you said you could show a good example, like, you could model the behavior that you want, but, you know, I have siblings that were raised like I was, and they have different anxiety issues than I do, right?

And so, you know, I'm not going to get into have you read the scientific paper and do you really know and I think you can whatever answer there's great papers on whether nature works and whether nurture works. But for me, it's been trying to model the behavior appropriately, live the values that you want.

And, you know, love your kid because ultimately that's really all you can do.

Adam: This may just be a continuation of that, but do you have any particular parenting frameworks or philosophies or guardrails that you've established? Maybe you, things that you and your wife kind of had to agree on coming into parenting?

Kyle: Not frameworks. I think for us, it's been more, learn as you go, right? Like I am a huge believer in doors at a certain age and teaching kids how to manage money appropriately. My father was like, I balanced the check. I was balancing the family checkbook when I was 10, which probably didn't work very well for balancing the family checkbook.

It didn't really help. You know, the nature versus nurture. It's like, my dad spent so much time trying to teach me how to manage money appropriately. And from the age of 16 to 26, I was terrible at it. So, you know, who knows? But for me it's, not a framework, it’s consistency, being consistent. And no matter what you do, for me, it's making sure that you're modeling what you want them to learn and be consistent about it. And whatever framework you want, it's fine. But, there's a great CMO named Joe, Joe staples, who I met when I was at OpenView. And he has a set number of values that he's lived ever since he was a teenager, and it's very rare. I run into people who have done that and done that consistently, but I would say that his family is where they're at today. They're all grown with kids and everything, but because he had this value set that he lived no matter what. It was consistent about it, and I'm just now getting to the point where I feel like I have some consistency with how I'm living or my values.

And I turned 40 this year, so I'm a little behind.

Adam: Well, I don't know. I think you may be more in the norm than you realize.

Kyle: Maybe

Adam: You alluded to this in talking about sort of like your, anxiousness with your first kid and then being less anxious with your second. But as your parenting style or your approach evolved between your oldest and your youngest between kid one and kid two?

Kyle: I mean we talked about it. I am less concerned about whether they're going to hurt themselves, or I let them be a little bit more free. Like, hey, go walk to the friend's house in the neighborhood than I was when we just had 1 kid. And it comes with age, of course, I wasn't going to have a 4 year old go walk to their friend's house, right?

So he's 8.

Adam: Yeah.

Kyle: It works, but I do have a hard time when, with both kids, when I feel disrespected,

Adam: Hmm. Mm

Kyle: And I've had a real hard time balancing an understanding of how they react to the environment. And they're not an adult and them ignoring me doesn't mean they're disrespecting like I've had to unpack that quite a bit and I overreact a lot with my youngest because he's just he just doesn't care.

Adam: Chaos personified.

Kyle: He just does not care and I love that.

And I think it's the balance of how do you make sure you nurture things like that and not kill it, right? Like my oldest is super aggressive, super aggressive, and that works extremely well in sports.

Adam: Sure. Yeah.

Kyle: Right? Our youngest, very creative, very out there. Doesn't listen at all, but you, you don't want to kill that either because there is some value to both of those things.

So it's the balance of how you nurture it and how you make sure they're respecting people at the same time.

Adam: You know, I found that the remembering that they're kids and that you're an adult, you know, I found that your spouse can be a very good helper there to remind you. Whether or not you want to hear it at the time.

Kyle: Oh yeah. Most of the time, most of the time I don't want to hear it and I can be a jerk about it, but it's like, you don't have to tell them to eat their food seven times in a sitting. And I'm like, well, they're not listening. Like, it doesn't matter.

Adam: We're not going from it's, isn't like a sick, cold sales outreach between that six and seventh email. That's when they're going to suddenly respond to you like now they heard you the first time. They're just not.

Kyle: I've never really thought about it that way. I'm gonna borrow that. Like, oh,

Adam: We learned something new on this show. My mission is accomplished. So that's kind of how your parenting styles evolve.

Have you found that becoming a parent has changed how you act as a manager or a leader to the people that you manage and lead?

Kyle: I care more about the people. meaning, I care more about what's going on in their lives. I care more about, you know, where they're at mentally. I think it's a maturing process for me as a leader. But yeah, I mean, I care. I care way more about my team than I did when I was a first time manager of ExactTarget without a family. But it's also, we've talked about it quite a bit.

It's the transition between, you know, 100 percent or 120 percent of your focus is on yourself to try to manage a 50/50 split. And then when you hire people that are parents, like, there's just an understanding there. I don't have any idea how to manage Gen Z, but I'm figuring it out.

Adam: I'm told that if you just watch enough TikTok videos, you'll learn.

Kyle: No emojis. Well, emojis aren't cool anymore,

Adam: Yeah. No emojis but also mid-calf white socks are back in, so, so I'm told.

Kyle: And gold chains.

Adam: Gold chains, because they cool you off.

Kyle: And Crocs.

Adam: Yes, Crocs are in.

Kyle: I don't get it. I've never got, I've never understood Crocs. Never understood Crocs. But they're Crocs and then they're called jibbitz,

Adam: Uh huh, that go in the crocs.

Kyle: I think, that go in the Crocs. So my kids have, like, my eight year old has every single NFL team on two pair, like, his Crocs.

Adam: Impressive.

Kyle:You can't even tell they're Crocs. It's just, you know, logos.

Adam: Impressive. One of my earliest pods was a recording with Josh Hertzig Marx and his wife Carla Numburg. Carla's coming back on the show soon. And he talked about dad Crocs. And I was like, what are dad Crocs? And he's like, they're just Crocs, but they're worn by dads. And therefore they're a lot more embarrassing.

I agree. I have a pair of dad Crocs, but the, the dog

got to them. And so they look like a shadow of their former selves. Still wear ‘em.

Kyle: I, I've not, I still can't, I still can't bring myself, no offense. I still can't bring myself to buy Crocs or the dad shoes, which were like the white New Balances.

Like I just can't, like I'm, I am Nike,

Adam: Team Nike.

Kyle: Nike all day long. I just cannot bring myself to do it. I don't care how comfortable they are. I will get blisters in my feet wearing Air Max.

Adam: I love that for you. I love that for us. I love it. Um, Okay. Real talk here. Partnership. Very important when you have kids, partnership between you and your spouse, super important, but also hard to agree a hundred percent of the time with your spouse. Where is an area that you and your wife do not agree on when it comes to parenting? Remember, she's going to listen to this.

Kyle: She's one of the four that are gonna listen to this. Um, how strict I am with the kids. She's more laid back. She's a little bit more happy go lucky with them. I tend to be more stern more often and that's definitely where we have disagreement like you know, make one meal and make them eat it. Food we disagree with all the time.

Adam: Is that cause she's a personal traineror because…?

Kyle: No, I don't think so. I think it's mostly she wants to make sure they eat. My side of it is. They're gonna want to eat when they're really hungry because they didn't eat what you made.

They're not going to starve and die, right? Like, the kid needs nourishment. They will eat the very delicious piece of chicken you made for them. It might be two hours later. So, that's probably where we have the most. But, it seems like a very, now that I'm saying it out loud, it seems like a very simple thing to disagree on.

But it's pretty constant. And eventually I'm just like, you know what we'll cook what they want, and they're going to have to learn at some point that they just don't get what they asked for. And so we're going to have to figure out that. We're going to have to unpack that in 10 years.

Adam: Yep. Yep. Well, you know, you can ease them into it. You can ease them into it. I think

I've made my son a quesadilla perhaps for the past six days in a row, but not at like dinnertime, he's hungry at like 4:30 and he's like, dad, can I have a quesadilla? I'm like, you know what? Beans cheese, tortilla, go nuts.

We'll throw a vegetable in there.

Kyle: Well, at least at least there's beans Like I like our son won't our oldest won't eat a quesadilla unless it's like the white cheese from a Mexican restaurant.

Adam: Yeah.No, my, my son actually refuses the quesadilla if it doesn't have beans in it. So I should buy stock in Bush's beans.

Kyle: push push you're putting Bush's baked beans into the quesadilla?

Adam: No, no, no, no, no. The black bean varietal. Yes. Yeah. No, no, that would be, that would be true Midwestern values right there.

Kyle: So Midwest where you'd have to, you'd have to put it in and then fry it and then give it to the kids. Like, that's more Midwest. The other thing that has to do with what we're talking about is both kids get hungry right before bed. And so they'll have crackers or something and I've read enough about sleep to know that if you're eating food right before you go to bed, you're not going to get good sleep. But I have lost that argument in my household and my kids get crackers and eventually I was like, you know what, it's not worth it. I'm not going to say they need better sleep and when my kid’s tired, I don't look at my wife and be like. What's up? I told you so.

Adam: You just ply them with more crackers at that point. 

Kyle: Yeah. Yeah. And the fact that's what we argue about it. We are very blessed.

Adam: Yeah, exactly.

Kyle: As a family, but that's like, what do you mean? You do want to have food before bed, get out of here.

Adam: So you have built an entire career in technology. What is the relationship that you want your kids to have with technology as they get older, and is that something that you and your wife have had to get on the same page about?

Kyle: So I'm going to say this before I've read the new Jonathan Hyde book about screens and anxiety. I've not read it yet. It's next up.

Adam: It's a good one. I read it.

Kyle: It's a good one. Okay. So I'm going to say this out loud before I read that. I'm guessing that my opinion is going to change after I read it. Shout out to Jonathan. I was raised having those things.

So we were one of the first people in the neighborhood who had a computer. We had a Nintendo when it came out. Like my dad just loved that stuff. And I do too. Like I'm, I am the first one to buy an Apple product when it's released. Except for the vision pros. Those freak me out. But maybe it's just because I'm old, but the ad where the dude's in the kitchen, like, talking to his wife with that headset, I was just sitting there going, oh my god, I can't do it. And I love Apple. I'm an Apple fanboy, right? Okay, so, I think that I want them to use technology in a meaningful way to help them and I think AI is going to have impact that you and I can't imagine still yet, right with our kids, but I want them to experience that stuff.

I want them to experience the fact that my Tesla can drive itself, right? I want them to see that the screen thing, my wife and I have gotten to the point where we've agreed on making sure that the screen time is a thing that they get daily that it's regulated using the screen. Like, you know, if you're not using the screen time app on the apple device management you're missing out because they no longer can argue with you. Their ipad turns off.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah. Password protected.

Kyle: Yeah. Yeah. So we've had to talk about, like, what are we comfortable with? What games are we comfortable with them playing? You know, hey, you can't watch YouTube.

You can only watch YouTube kids. Things like that, and we're okay with iPad time, but where we are not okay with it is if they're upset and they want the screen,

Adam: Yeah, using it as a pacifier or something.

Kyle: Yes, they're using it as a pacifier. We do not do that.

Adam: mm

Kyle: We did it a couple of times early on when we were on an airplane. And you can judge me all you want, but when you have a screaming four year old, not you, I know you wouldn't, but people listening, judge away, the co-founder of ExactTarget and my wife, judge away at me. yeah, so, I mean, we've used it a couple of times, but that's kind of where we draw the line.

You have a limit and we don't use it as a pacifier.

Adam: I think it's a good philosophy to have

Kyle: But like I said, I might change my opinion after I read this book.

Adam: Maybe we'll reconnect on this and see I don't know if you will change your opinion so much as just think about what you already seem to be thinking about what they do and do not have access to on the device, and limiting. And I think those are two themes that are pretty prevalent in the book.

So you'll, you'll find out. I think you'll like it.

Kyle: If they were five or six years older, I'd be, I would be terrified. I'd be terrified. Because it's, that's a whole nother thing to unpack. But I have individuals who I know who have kids that don't have guardrails. And it's not good. It's not a good thing. In my opinion, but I'm also not their parent. So do what you will.

Adam: That is right. Okay. Two more questions for you and then we'll get to our lightning round. What is a mistake that you've made as a father?

Kyle: Being too uptight about things. I shouldn't have been uptight about like eating something or, you know, fighting with each of the boys fighting with each other. Like, you gotta let them live a little bit.

Right? That's probably, for me, that's been, that's the biggest mistake. I think I make pretty good decisions overall as a parent and put them first, but like being the overlord of everything that they do is, is my biggest mistake for sure.

Adam: Yeah, you will appreciate Hyde talking about this a little bit in his book. Also a common theme that comes up in this podcast. So, founder of ExactTarget’s going to know a lot about this.

Kyle: Scott, Scott, I hope to God you listen to this.

Adam: Well, you know, be the change you wish to see in the world, Kyle.

You can send it to him. Okay. Last question for you. How can people follow along or be helpful to you in some way?

Kyle: I mean, a lot of my time and energy, I spend at least the thought process around parenting, leading teams, marketing. I published the LinkedIn. So you're on LinkedIn. I have, I do the X or the Twitter but it's very random and it's more personal, but for me, it's LinkedIn for sure.

Adam: Did you have to change the name of your Twitter book when it changed to X? No, you just left it.

Kyle: That book has been out of print, I mean, I, published Twitter, so this is how old it is. The second edition of that book, we published a week before they did the complete UI overhaul that you see today.

So this was like 2013. So you can buy it if you want. I had a person send me an eBay page where they were auctioning off Twitter Marketing for Dummies.

Adam: I love that.

Kyle: It was like $2.99, so. The Branding Yourself book still sells, but it's because there's some professor in Seoul, South Korea that buys it every year for his class. I'm not sure why, but the Twitter Marketing for Dummies book is out of print and will not help you in any way. So don't buy it.

Adam: A few things have changed.

Kyle: A few things have changed.

Adam:Yeah, okay, well we will direct everyone to LinkedIn so your DMs are about to go berserk. 

Kyle: Please do. Love it.

Adam: Alright, Kyle, in our waning moments, are you ready for the rapid fire lightning round? Here we go.

Kyle: Ready.

Adam: What is the most indispensable parenting product that you have ever purchased? I think I know the answer.

Kyle: Pee pee tee pees.

Adam: Done. What is the most useless parenting product that you've ever purchased?

Kyle: The most useless, oh man. The most useless has probably been a, before we bought a Diaper Genie, we bought an off brand that's been, that was the most useless because it was terrible. It didn't contain the smell. It was terrible.

Adam: You might as well just be dumping them on the floor at that point.

Kyle: Yeah. Yeah. Smearing them on the walls. That's all. Yeah. Buy a Diaper Genie

Adam: All right. Finish this sentence. The ideal day with my kids involves this one activity.

Kyle: We're season ticket holders for the Colts and my oldest and I, we love going to those games. So it's either that or going to a park.

Adam: Yeah.

Kyle: We do parks quite regularly.

Adam: Awesome. What is the most frustrating thing that has ever happened to you as a dad?

Kyle: Oh, man. Frustrating thing that's happened to me as a dad. Oh, okay, so the most frustrating thing that's happened to me as a dad, it has happened quite regularly, which probably is more about my parenting than my children. But when I get them something, or I ask them if they want something or hey, your iPad won't update, we can't manage screen time. So we got to get a new one.

And they complain about what we're getting them.

Adam: Hmm.

Kyle: That is where I could get them, which is more parenting on my part. But it's like picking out they didn't like the color of the freaking iPad. Like I, it just drives me insane.

Adam: Yep. Yep. We covered this a bit, but what is your go to dad wardrobe?

Kyle: Vuori.

Adam: Vuori, head to toe, just head to toe.

Kyle: We're getting to a point where I have a group of friends that we're from college that we're still in touch and our parents are starting to wear Vuori or step parents. And so we're like, I think we need to find something new. But I've been wearing Vuori for, like, four years, five years. I love it. And Nikes. Vuori and Nikes.

Adam: Awesome. Also talked about this, but how many parenting books do you have in your house?

Kyle: A lot, and I've only read one.

Adam: That addresses my next question.

Kyle: A lot. I have a lot. I have a lot of books in general that I'll buy if I hear an interview or I want to read it. So, I got a lot of books in my house.

Adam: Okay. How many dad jokes do you tell on average in a given day?

Kyle: So, here's the problem. I'm not sure what is a dad joke, so I might be telling a lot of them and nobody's just telling me. So, my guess is that's the case. Is that, I'm trying to be funny. It's not funny. And if you're listening, if you interact with me on a daily basis, please tell me that it's a dad joke because I want to try to curb it

Adam: Here's how you know. You tell the joke, and there's a collective groan in the room. That's how you know it's a dad joke. Signal number one.

Kyle: Or rolling of eyes.

Adam: Yes, also that. Have you ever pretended to be asleep to avoid a middle of the night wake up from one of your kids?

Kyle: Yes.Yes. I'm a pretty deep sleeper, but my wife is usually the one that just gets straight out of bed, but I've done it for sure.

Adam: What is the most absurd thing that one of your children has ever asked you to buy for them?

Kyle: It's more funny because they don't quite understand how much things cost. So it could be, we've walked by a new Corvette and my six year old asked for me to buy it for him. And then we will be on a lake somewhere and we'll come across a five to 10 million home.

And they're like, why can't we live there? And I'm like, well, let me teach you about interest rates

Adam: Yeah. Let's balance that checkbook. What is the most difficult kids TV show that you've had to sit through?

Kyle: Oh my God. had a stint where they were watching video of cars crashing. They were like, Grand Theft Auto, but it was designed just showing cars driving around and jumping off of mountains and stuff. That was.

Adam: Painful.

Kyle: And it was, they were made in like Eastern Europe, like it was just very weird and I had to sit through them and outside of that Pink Fong drive me insane, but we had that too. Baby Shark.

Adam: All right. Baby shark. Have you ever used your kids as an excuse to get out of a social event?

Kyle: Yes.

Adam: What is your favorite kids movie?

Kyle: Home Alone.

Adam: Good one. What is the worst experience that you've ever had assembling a children's toy or a piece of furniture?

Kyle: Anything IKEA. I love IKEA. And I put stuff on backwards every single time, every single time.

Adam: It's impossible not to.

Kyle: Yeah. I mean, I, I very much appreciate the drawings and I love the design. I just screw it up every time.

Adam: What nostalgic movie can you just not wait to force your kids to watch with you?

Kyle: Gettysburg

Adam: Okay. That, I was not expecting that.

Kyle: Between the ages of 10 and 13, I watched that movie probably 30 times.

It was the two VHS set that I could rent at Marsh supermarkets. And I cannot wait to show it to them.

Adam: Will you make your kids watch it on VHS is the real question, if we have it?

Kyle: I should, I should. But probably not.

Adam: Okay. And finally, you are a product of the Midwest. What is your take on minivans?

Kyle: So, I will never have one. We prefer the SUV. But, every friend group that I have, every friend that I have that has bought one, begrudgingly, absolutely loves them. So, I'm not going to judge. I will never own one. My wife will never drive one. She refuses. But, I am not going to judge the people who have them because, they work and people love them.

Adam: They're very practical, not going to lie.

Kyle: They are very practical.

Adam: You ever get one on a trip, like on vacation, you just like, I'm just going to try this out. We're on vacation. Let's rent one. No.

Kyle: No. won't even rent one.

Adam: Okay. Got it. It offends your delicate sensibilities.

Kyle: I guess. I don't know. I just don't even, it doesn't even, if I'm scrolling through, it doesn't even enter my mind ever. It's like, see, they're going to be an S a midsize SUV or a large one.

Adam: All right, Kyle, that concludes our lightning round. You did an excellent job. Thank you for your participation. Really appreciate having you on the program today. Thanks for joining me. This was a wonderful and very funny conversation, and I am going to go reach out to the pee pee tee pee people and ask them if they want to sponsor the show.

Kyle: They should. A hundred percent. I will share about pee pee tee pee online if they decide to sponsor you. How about that?

Adam: Amazing.

Kyle: Thank you for having me on.

Adam: Thank you, Kyle.

Adam: Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Kyle Lacy. 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.