12 Parenting Rules and Frameworks | Jamie Nacht (Dad of 2, Co-founder & CEO of Havium)

[00:00:00] Jamie Nacht: I do think that things happen like builders, entrepreneurs, creators. It all stems from that concept of just because it hasn’t been done before or somebody says I can’t do it, doesn’t mean it can’t be done. And so whenever my kids are talking about stuff, I encourage them. They say that they want to do something that sounds impossible, I’m all for it and I will join them in the effort just because I want to see how far we can take it.
[00:00:28] Adam Fishman: 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’m joined by Co-founder and CEO of Havium, Jamie Nacht. He has the honor of being married to his co-founder, Kristin, and raising two daughters with her. He joined me today for an absolutely epic conversation.
We talked about the importance of keeping things in perspective with kids, a ton of parenting frameworks and routines he developed with his wife, philosophies and rules around yelling, technology, and the ever-changing bond between kids and dads. He had some hilarious stories about how he learned his kids were always listening and the power of teaching your kids negotiation at a young age.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe to Startup Dad on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple. I hope you enjoy today’s conversation with Jamie Nacht. Welcome, Jamie Nacht, to Startup Dad — and a big thanks to Marlo Stru for connecting the two of us. So welcome to the show, Jamie.
[00:01:35] Jamie Nacht: Thanks.
[00:01:36] Adam Fishman: Alright, you, sir, are the founder of Havium. You are a dad of two, and you also have the honor of being married to your co-founder. I assume you were married and then started the company because that might run afoul of some HR laws otherwise. So that is a very unique dynamic. What is it like being married to your business partner and also having a family together?
[00:02:03] Jamie Nacht: I don’t have the other side of it. It’s the only experience that I have, but I would say we’ve found a really nice little rhythm in it, largely because I think the cliché is that I’m kind of the CEO of the company and she’s the CEO of the house — and it works really well. She kind of tells me what I need to do, what holes need to be filled, and whatever tasks I have.
But when it comes to the company, because it all kind of spiraled out of my little brain, she’s deferential to me when it comes to that stuff. Although I do rely on her pretty heavily because what I’ve noticed, at least in the company and actually in our family too, is that I’m not really a linear thinker. I get that from my dad, and so she is very good at taking — if we’re at A and we need to get to C — she’ll go A, B, C. And I’ll pass through Z and T and Q and all the other ones.
[00:02:57] Adam Fishman: You take some detours.
[00:02:58] Jamie Nacht: That’s right. So she is just absolutely a huge core part of our company, but it all stems out of whatever direction I think it should go.
[00:03:07] Adam Fishman: Okay, awesome. How do the two of you navigate the boundaries between business conversations and family time? Is there a boundary there, or is it just kind of always all the things all the time?
[00:03:20] Jamie Nacht: You know what, it is a learned thing, because I did not, out of the gate, set a boundary. We started the company before we had kids, and then we bought a house, and then we had kids. As we kind of moved through that whole path, it took a couple of years, but she definitely has a much better boundary with the business than I do.
I go to sleep thinking about it and I wake up thinking about it, whereas I think she dedicates the time that she needs to the tasks that are on her plate, and then the rest of the time she’s doing other stuff.
[00:03:56] Adam Fishman: But as you mentioned, she spends a lot of her other part of her cognitive load thinking about the household.
[00:04:03] Jamie Nacht: Oh, a hundred percent. Our house would be dysfunctional if she was not in control. I play very little part in the steering of the household. I’m like a willing participant.
[00:04:14] Adam Fishman: So you have a 6-year-old and a 4-year-old, and the company predates them. You also have a dog, so you did kind of the right order of operations. Well, maybe the dog could have come first, but you have a one-and-a-half-year-old dog, so you’ve got three kids — one of them has a lot of fur.
I’m curious, does work stuff — six and four is a little on the younger side — but does work stuff come up at the dinner table or on the weekends with the kids? Do they ask you about it, since the two of you are both working in the same company and parents tend to talk about work things with each other?
[00:04:47] Jamie Nacht: It is interesting. I think my 4-year-old is a little too young to really be asking any questions about it, but my 6-year-old — I mean, I am certain that she is going to do something incredible. She’s an entrepreneur by heart already. It’s kind of fascinating to watch.
But I think she doesn’t know what our business does. She’s in first grade right now, and as she started getting into school and learning that other parents do other things, she did ask. I think all she knows is that I am a boss — and she likes the idea of that. She likes that I help people figure out how to do their jobs and that my job is to help them do their jobs.
[00:05:26] Adam Fishman: Yeah, I love that. She’s like, “When I grow up, I want to be a boss like Dad. I don’t know who I’m going to boss around, but somebody’s going to get bossed.” Well, you mentioned that she’s kind of a natural entrepreneur at age six. How do you know that? What tells you that now?
[00:05:42] Jamie Nacht: She surpassed what we thought she would in terms of just understanding negotiation, understanding money. It’s interesting to see. She’s very kind — she loves buying things for others with her money — but she also understands the concept of earning the money and keeping tabs on it, and then trading her time for money.
And she talked about selling artwork and things. Nothing that we introduced — it has surprised me in terms of what they are capable of without you introducing the concept.
[00:06:19] Adam Fishman: So you’re not running Business 101 conversations at the dinner table or anything?
[00:06:23] Jamie Nacht: I mean, I do ask her — we frequently have the conversation, “What do you want to do?” And it always changes, but I think she understands that. She understands maybe to an uncomfortable level at this point. She’s like, “I want to make money,” and then she’ll just list off her list of things that she wants. She wants a house that’s got a pink roof and rainbow walls.
I would love her to talk to AI and then just say, “AI, show me what’s in her brain — what is she anticipating her life to look like?”
[00:06:51] Adam Fishman: You probably could have ChatGPT print out a design for the house that she wants.
[00:06:55] Jamie Nacht: I really could — that’s a good idea.
[00:06:57] Adam Fishman: Alright, I want to talk a little bit about parenting philosophy. The first thing I wanted to talk to you about is the importance of perspective. You mentioned this as we were preparing for the show. Tell me about the importance of perspective in your life.
[00:07:12] Jamie Nacht: Well, it’s something that we focus on a lot in our household. I think it’s something that, as far back as I can remember, I’ve just had a really strong focus on — and to my wife’s chagrin, when things are hard, I find that maintaining perspective really helps level things. Like, how hard really are they?
There are points in time where we have a very nice house. It’s not in downtown Seattle but near Seattle. We look out over the water and it’s a great place. We love it. But we’ll have very hard weeks where we’re just taxed. We both get up very early, and in the summer when the sun rises, we’ll have coffee before the kids are up.
So I was downstairs, and it was a hard week, and I was sipping my coffee and just smiling, looking out the window. She comes downstairs and she’s like, “What is wrong with you?”
[00:08:04] Adam Fishman: What are you smiling about, weirdo?
[00:08:05] Jamie Nacht: Yeah, because I mean, we were both just exhausted and wiped, and she started listing off the stuff that she’s kind of frustrated over and all this stuff. And I can’t help — my brain just taps into this rhythm of, like, well, yeah, that all sounds really hard, but imagine if you were a single parent, how hard that would be. Or imagine we didn’t have your parents live five minutes’ walk away. And I realized — this is a specific story where I started doing that — and she just looked at me and she’s like, “Can you not right now? I don’t need that right now.”
[00:08:44] Adam Fishman: Classic male problem-solving moment there, where you’re like, “Totally — I must fix this situation.”
[00:08:51] Jamie Nacht: So I realized that is my self-soothing — when things are tough, I’m like, well, it could be way tougher. And then it kind of level-sets it. So I kind of help the kiddos because I think I want it to be in their fabric to think about things and say, like, “Oh, maybe you had some piece of artwork that got ripped and you’re really upset about it, but think about it — there are way worse things that could have happened.”
If they can train that muscle, I really do think that in the long run it helps you just be resilient, and I think our kids are already kind of exhibiting that — the resilience to just understanding the luxuries that they’re afforded.
[00:09:29] Adam Fishman: Yeah. One of the other things that you mentioned about your kids — or just your philosophy on kids in general — is that they come out, I think the quote was “incredibly baked.” And you kind of mentioned this with your daughter having these entrepreneurial tendencies, where you’re like, “Well, we didn’t steer her in that direction.” But I’d love to hear more about that. What made you realize or come to this kind of conclusion that kids are mostly baked when they start growing up?
[00:09:57] Jamie Nacht: For anybody that has kids, you watch them and you’re like, “What is going on in that little brain?” She came out the other day — we have a powder room on our main floor — and she came out the other day and said, “I want all the toilet paper tubes.” And I was like, okay. Then she proceeded to make a box and a sign to put in there that said, “Put your toilet paper tubes in here when you’re done.”
And I’m like, she’s a little scavenger, and she loves if we get an Amazon package and we unwrap it and there’s a box — she’s like, “You can use that box!” And I’m like, what? I mean, it’s little stuff like that that is just kind of fascinating to me to watch.
Or the fact that they had the exact same parenting. Jovi — very art-focused, will sit and draw and color. Bricker — really builder-focused. We have those magnet tiles, and he will just build structures, and he gets really dialed into it and super focused.
Neither of those things — we basically just presented all the options to them and said, “Go with what you want.” But watching them make those decisions and then watching them negotiate with each other — none of it is stuff we gave them. We give them the tools to figure out how to negotiate, but the approach that they take is nothing we would have shown them.
It’s just great. And now there are other things that we’ve kind of captured. My mom has done this great thing where she every year captures what they say and then makes a photo book of “Jovi-isms” or “Bricker-isms,” and it is great to hear how their little brains think with no prodding. Yeah, it’s a lot of fun.
[00:11:36] Adam Fishman: Yeah, that’s very cool. I love that idea. Now I kind of want to— well, maybe it’s a little too late for me to steal that idea. My kids are a lot older now, but if only I had done that. Now, there’s probably still some good “-isms” from my kids. Mostly we just get a lot of eye rolling from my daughter now.
[00:11:53] Jamie Nacht: Yeah.
[00:11:54] Adam Fishman: How old are your kids?
[00:11:54] Jamie Nacht: Almost 13 and 10 — almost 11.
[00:11:58] Adam Fishman: You’re heading into the eye of the storm — all the changes.
[00:12:01] Jamie Nacht: I’m rewatching all of the Startup Dad episodes with the dads of teenagers just to prepare myself.
[00:12:06] Adam Fishman: I have this working theory that if your kiddo was easy when they were little, then the teen years— I think it’s—
[00:12:17] Jamie Nacht: Like the opposite.
[00:12:18] Adam Fishman: Karma.
[00:12:19] Jamie Nacht: Yeah, I think karma takes its pound of flesh. I think if you get an easy little one, you get a real crazy teen, or vice versa. I could be wrong, but that’s my working theory.
[00:12:28] Adam Fishman: Well, speaking of crazy teens and kids’ personalities, what are some of the most surprising things that you’ve discovered about your kids’ personalities that were kind of just already there — some of that par-baked nature?
[00:12:42] Jamie Nacht: Bricker being four, we’re seeing a lot of things just now bubbling up. The three or four years — because he is very young — for Jovi, she’s like an old six. So Jovi, just her general approach to everybody is just raw kindness, which I am delighted by. She’s been that way since— I mean, right out of the gate she could barely speak, and she would just walk up to kids and introduce herself and want to make friends.
Bricker — I’ve been so fascinated because, aside from the building stuff, she’s such a force that it could go one of two ways. If she wasn’t kind, I mean, I would really be concerned. But she’s so kind that in the mornings he will immediately— he wakes up, runs across the hall to her room, jumps in, and then we see him on our little cameras we have, and they’re just hanging out. They talk about any number of things. I don’t get to hear those parts of the conversation amongst four-year-olds, but we get to tap into it just because we hear them sitting in bed talking about who knows what.
[00:13:47] Adam Fishman: Yeah, that is awesome. That’s really awesome. I wish my kids were that friendly to each other.
[00:13:54] Jamie Nacht: Well, I was shocked because my sister— I’m one of two, I’m the younger one, and my sister— I think she would agree with this— but until about 20, she spent a lot of her energy torturing me. But I’m a human golden retriever, so I never really knew it. I was just like, okay.
She would go after me, and then at 20 we became best friends. So I was worried that’s how Jovi, being pretty similar in age gap, would be to Bricker. But I mean, to date — knock on wood — she’s just the sweetest, nicest sister.
[00:14:29] Adam Fishman: You and your sister are kind of like how me and my brother were. He was on this show — he was the 100th episode — but we also became friends once I went off to college. Basically, I was the oldest and tortured him beforehand.
[00:14:45] Jamie Nacht: There’s something there. I think it’s just a sibling thing, but I’m kind of fascinated. I didn’t anticipate it, nor did I have any solution if Jovi was torturing her brother, but she really does— if he’s at school and she has the day off, she can’t wait for him to come home so they can hang out. It’s kind of neat.
[00:15:06] Adam Fishman: I want to talk about creativity a little bit. You told me that it’s important for adults to reignite creativity and play when they have kids. Can you tell me a little bit about what that looks like in your house?
[00:15:24] Jamie Nacht: There’s a very specific example that I was thinking of when I wrote that to you. Every night, we have a pretty prescribed routine at night when I put Jovi to bed. We’ve been doing this for years now. We go upstairs, we brush our teeth, get ready for bed, and then we go in and I read to her — or she reads a little bit to me — for about 40 minutes.
Then we used to have this thing where we would watch one or two YouTube videos on my phone. My wife kiboshed that — she does not agree with technology in the bedroom. So we went to playing “Mermaids,” which is my daughter’s creation where we basically just pretend we’re mermaids.
She has an unhealthy amount of stuffed animals in her room, and she’ll grab stuffed animals and we kind of play like little kids. At the beginning, it felt so foreign to me because your brain is like, “This has no purpose to me.”
[00:16:28] Adam Fishman: Probably feels ridiculous. You’re like, “This is silly.”
[00:16:30] Jamie Nacht: It feels so silly. But I started to really enjoy it, and I delighted in how much she just enjoyed it — she just soaked it up. And so it has become part of that routine, and I think by letting her be that creative, it is kind of nurturing more parts of her creativity throughout her day.
Because she really does look forward to it. And then she has that creativity when she goes downstairs — she will, in the morning, draw something that relates to “Mermaids” from the night before. It’s really neat. It’s something that I didn’t anticipate before being a dad.
[00:17:04] Adam Fishman: Okay. Has she seen The Little Mermaid yet? That might—
[00:17:09] Jamie Nacht: She has.
[00:17:10] Adam Fishman: Okay. That can be a little scary for a six-year-old.
[00:17:14] Jamie Nacht: Yeah, I think we introduced it to her before she had the concept of fear. Because now she is super— and I think there are some kids that do this, I think it’s not uncommon — but new movies are persona non grata.
We have to really ease her in, so we started instituting new movie Fridays. We cook pizza at home every Friday night, and then on occasion we’ll do a movie afterward. Forever we were just watching the same movies, and finally I was like, “We are not watching [insert movie] again.”
And she still to this day puts up a fight if we want to watch a new movie. We watched— I forget the one with Kumail Nanjiani where he’s a duck — but we got eight minutes into it. It’s not even that scary, but there’s maybe a scary-looking duck. They landed in a pond and she just started losing it, crying, “I can’t watch this! Too scary! Too scary!”
We haven’t watched it since, but it is one of those things where now there’s a lot of bartering in our house. And so it’s like, “Alright, we’re going to watch a movie. It’s going to be a new one. If you don’t like it, put your head under the pillow for the time being. I’ll let you know when it’s done.”
We’re trying to teach that new things are okay.
[00:18:20] Adam Fishman: I believe that that movie is Migration.
[00:18:22] Jamie Nacht: You’re right.
[00:18:23] Adam Fishman: Yes. Kumail Nanjiani.
[00:18:25] Jamie Nacht: I hope it’s good. I hope I get to watch it at some point.
[00:18:29] Adam Fishman: You will. Date night with your wife. Okay, let’s talk about parenting frameworks. You have many of these — several that you’ve developed or maybe in conjunction with your wife — and I want to dig into a few of them.
The first one will be one that’s familiar to a lot of guests and listeners, which is routines. For you, routines are priceless, and you said they prevent 90% of frustration. Can you take me through some of the routines that you have in your household?
[00:19:04] Jamie Nacht: Sure. I will credit— we have some friends, Sarah and Ty, who had kids earlier than we did. They let us know, they were like, “We put our kids— I don’t care if it’s summer and the sun’s not going down until nine o’clock— we put our kids in their rooms at seven. Everything after seven is our time.”
And we adopted it, and it has worked so well. It sets that expectation like, hey, at 6:45 we’re heading upstairs, and then by seven we’re out of those rooms. They might sit and be quiet by themselves, think about things, or play with something in their rooms — but that is the routine.
Then we have these funny routines that are accidental. We do have pizza Friday almost every Friday — we cook pizza at home. And every Sunday, because my in-laws live so close, we go over there. My wife’s mom cooks; it’s like Sunday dinner and we hang out.
I think the kids don’t realize it, but it really does stave off the friction that comes with not really knowing what’s going to happen or trying to plan stuff. It makes life really easy for them too because they don’t argue with it. It’s an expectation.
[00:20:20] Adam Fishman: It becomes very predictable for them. They’re just like, this is my life, this is what I do.
[00:20:24] Jamie Nacht: And when there are changes, we try to couch them in excitement. Like, “Oh, we’re not doing dinner with Nana and Papa on Sunday because we’re going to this show — that’s exciting.”
I think a lot of it is just that expectation. If they have those expectations framed, then there’s not really a lot of fuss.
[00:20:43] Adam Fishman: Speaking of deviating from the plan, you have another parenting principle: when things go wrong, that’s just part of the fun. I love that reframing, by the way. Could you tell me how that works in practice and how you teach that to your kids?
[00:21:00] Jamie Nacht: A lot of it has just been on-the-fly maintaining that approach. So Jovi, we put her in soccer when she was four, and then we took a year off, and then we put her back when she was six.
When she was six, maybe the second or third game of the season — I mean, soccer at that age is raw chaos — and she’s not a big fan of chaos. All the kids are running at each other, and she’s keeping her distance.
[00:21:26] Adam Fishman: The ball squirts out and—
[00:21:29] Jamie Nacht: And then the horde moves over it.
[00:21:30] Adam Fishman: Exactly.
[00:21:32] Jamie Nacht: Yeah. So she’s not a huge fan of that. She likes to observe her environment and then enter. But we kept telling her, “Hey, you’ve got to get in there and kick the ball.” So finally she kind of got into it, and some kid stepped on her foot. I think it hurt. She ran — middle of the game — runs over to the sidelines to me crying, and she was like, “My foot! They stepped on my foot!”
And I was like, “You did it!”
And she was like, “What?”
And I was like, “That’s like level one — you just got past level one.”
And she was like, “What’s level two?”
And I was like, “You’re going to get kicked in the shin.”
And she was like, “What?”
Then she came back at the end of the game and she was like, “I’m past level two! Some kid kicked me in the shin!”
So reframing it — we’re taking it from “This happened and it didn’t feel good” to “You just got past something that you didn’t have happen before.”
She really does— both my kids are coin-operated and progress-focused, and so it has worked for them to frame it in that way.
Bricker has been another story — he’s just been funny. He’s younger, and he didn’t take to it quite as welcomingly as Jovi did.
We have this funny story where Kristen and I were sitting at our table, and we have a recessed playroom area. He has these magnet tiles, and he built this giant structure. He’s obviously not an architect or an engineer, so he didn’t build it super well — and it fell over.
[00:22:56] Adam Fishman: Oh, a tragedy.
[00:22:58] Jamie Nacht: Oh, it was just— yeah, his world was over. But what we cracked up about was, I don’t know when we started doing this, but we heard him say to himself, “It’s part of the fun.” And I was like, “Oh buddy.”
[00:23:10] Adam Fishman: Yeah, if you knock it down you get to rebuild it.
[00:23:14] Jamie Nacht: But I think both of them kind of understand it. Bricker still— I think he’s like 80% there — but I think it’s that, “Hey, you built it, and that way didn’t work. Let’s try a different way and maybe it’ll get even bigger.”
Both of our kids have started to learn: it’s not fun when things don’t go the way you wanted, but it’s part of it. And I think it ties in with being a good loser — being willing to understand that failure is part of the path to success.
[00:23:44] Adam Fishman: Learning to lose, making mistakes — that’s one you mentioned that you’re kind of still working on in your household. I mean, as an adult — as a mid-forties adult — I’m still working on this personally. How do you teach your kids to lose gracefully? What does that look like in practice?
[00:24:02] Jamie Nacht: This is a work in progress, and I wish I had a better answer. Have you ever had the experience where you learned something so far back that you don’t remember how you learned it? So it’s kind of hard to teach to somebody else?
For as long as I can remember, that’s just been part of me. I like the game. I love winning, but I don’t mind losing. If we were playing cards and you won a round, I’d be like, “Great, let’s play again.” I’m not mad that you won — I’m like, “I’ll probably win the next round.”
My wife, when we first met, she said she didn’t like games. I took that to mean she just wasn’t very competitive, but I’ve come to realize that she is insanely competitive.
[00:24:43] Adam Fishman: And she doesn’t like to lose.
[00:24:45] Jamie Nacht: She does not like to lose. So if she sees that she has a low probability of winning, she will want to leave the game. She’s like, “I’m done with this game. I don’t want to finish it.”
[00:24:58] Jamie Nacht: And I think part of that has kind of come through — I wouldn’t say the kids have that exact characteristic, but I would say Jovi hates losing. Bricker — I think he still kind of hasn’t really gathered how he feels about it.
For Jovi, if she loses, she gets very, very upset. And so now my goal with this is to start to get her familiar— she’s very good with numbers, and so my family game growing up was Mel Rummy. I played with my parents; my parents played with my grandparents, all that stuff.
I want to get her into that because I think that was foundational for me — to be like, “Hey, it’s just a game, and at the end of the game we can play another round. It’s not that bad.”
It’s one of those things where I’m really trying to figure out how to teach them. It kind of falls in line with the perspective part of it. I’m trying to teach them, “Hey, it’s just a game. Play really hard, have fun with it. I do want you to try to win, but if you don’t win, recognize that life will go on.”
[00:26:04] Adam Fishman: Yeah. There are a few more that I want to cover here. One that I absolutely love is that you have this principle of “don’t immediately answer,” and kind of turning this back on your kids to get their perspective on what they think. What’s an example of that, or something surprisingly insightful that they told you when you kind of did this with your kids?
[00:26:26] Jamie Nacht: It’s fascinating to watch their little brains work on stuff. A lot of it I probably should pay more attention to, but they just figure it out, and I’m like, “Oh, great, you figured it out.”
I do think that for a certain period of time when Jovi was starting to understand that babies come from adults and all that stuff, she started asking questions around that. We didn’t want to prejudice her with how it actually works.
So she’d be like, “Where do babies come from?” and we’d be like, “Where do you think they come from?” And she would come up with — I mean, I’d say it’s a 50/50 shot whether she still thinks babies come out of the butt — but I think it’s possible.
[00:27:08] Jamie Nacht: Because at some point I think she was like, “That’s probably what happens.” And I was like, “Could be!”
Even if they have the right or wrong answer, a lot of times I don’t want to just correct them. So I’ll just be like, “Hey, that’s very possible. Could be. I don’t know — maybe we should talk to an expert about it.”
I should look back on the Jovi-isms because a lot of them stem from her trying to figure out how something works and me not being open to share how it actually works. I’m like, “How does it work? You tell me.”
[00:27:36] Adam Fishman: There’s probably an entire chapter of the Jovi book that’s just “Where Do Babies Come From?” — all the things that she thought or believed at one point.
[00:27:45] Jamie Nacht: Yeah, I would love to see the pictures associated with that.
[00:27:47] Adam Fishman: Okay, I’ve got two more principles of yours that I want to talk about. One is teaching negotiation early. You told me that you love watching your kids negotiate. What do they negotiate about? What’s the best one that you’ve witnessed between your kids?
[00:28:03] Jamie Nacht: I think both of my kids are master negotiators. I’m usually someone who goes in with a concession — I’ll try to meet you halfway. My kids go for the throat.
They’ll ask, “Can we stay up late?” and I’ll say, “How late are we talking about?” And they’ll start at something like, “Midnight.” And I’m like, “Well, we’re not doing that.”
Or they’ll ask, “Where should we go this weekend?” and they’ll say, “Disneyland.” And I’m like, “We’re not going to do that. That’s a plane ride away.”
And I think it’s great to see those instincts. They are so good at negotiating to a point where I think it maps to another part of what I shared with you, which was this “stick to your promises” rule.
Because the negotiation side of it — from our side — is, “If you don’t eat all your food, then you’ve got to stay at the table.” That’s a promise that I’m making to you. And if you bolt from the table to go play before we’re done with dinner, then I’m going to take you up to your room. You’re going to hang out there for a little bit.
And I think they have learned that. Kristen and I have worked on it because Kristen — she has a lot of threats but no follow-through. “If you get off one more time, if you get off the bench…”
[00:29:19] Adam Fishman: I know that mode. I myself have fallen prey to that.
[00:29:23] Jamie Nacht: And Kristen will see — we have an open kitchen — and she’ll say something like that, then look at me, and I’m like… (nods). But my kids are just very good at asking for the most they could possibly get and working backwards.
I think it’s great — I wish I had that negotiating skill.
[00:29:44] Adam Fishman: I feel like Chris Voss in Never Split the Difference probably talks about that as a strategy.
[00:29:49] Jamie Nacht: Anchor to the most and then work backward. Yeah.
It started— I’ll share just a quick story. When we started introducing the concept, it was Bon Jovi— she was like three. I like to treat them older than they are. We were trying to get her to go to bed, and she said, “I want two stories tonight.”
I was like, “We’re not doing two stories tonight.”
And she was like, “I want two stories tonight.”
And I said, “Alright. If you can give me a three-pillar thesis — this is verbatim what I said — if you can give me a three-pillar thesis on why you should get two stories tonight, we’ll do two stories.”
Jovi turned to me and she goes, “I saw a deer. I like butter. I need stories.”
And I was like, “Okay. You got— that’s three.”
[00:30:35] Adam Fishman: That’s a three-pillar thesis.
[00:30:37] Jamie Nacht: You got your two stories. You win.
[00:30:39] Adam Fishman: Three completely unrelated, independent statements — but I mean, she kind of got the assignment.
[00:30:46] Jamie Nacht: She got it. She knew there were three things that needed to happen.
[00:30:49] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Cool. Okay, the last one I want to talk to you about — I found this really interesting. You described that there are two types of chores in your household. There’s the kind you do because you have to contribute — it’s sort of an expectation — and then there’s the kind that you can get an allowance for.
And allowance is really interesting because people have a whole myriad of philosophies around this. Can you tell me a little bit about the two types of chores and how you think about all this? I think your hope is that this helps kids understand how the world really operates.
[00:31:21] Jamie Nacht: There was some YouTube clip or something I saw years ago where this lady talked about that, and it really framed in my head how I wanted to approach it with our family.
As an adult, there’s stuff you’ve got to do just to do. You’ve got to do your own laundry — nobody’s going to pay you to do your own laundry. And then there’s stuff you’ve got to do — you’ve got to go out and be productive to earn income.
She talked about how modeling it for kids that way really helps them understand that there’s a baseline: as part of the family, as part of the unit, you’ve got to do that, and that’s just part of your contribution.
So Jovi now understands that when she gets up, her responsibilities are: she has to go get her brother up, then she has to make her bed and put her laundry in her hamper. She’s been doing a pretty good job with it.
But she doesn’t get an allowance for that. She doesn’t get any money for that. But then she’s also been asking — she’s like, “Can I do something else?”
The comedy of it is that we have a lot of glass in our house — glass railings — and so she was like, “Can I do glass?”
So we give her a little spray bottle and a rag. It does not look clean, but she’s working away.
[00:32:35] Adam Fishman: Yeah, sweating.
[00:32:37] Jamie Nacht: Sweating, yeah. She really is. She’ll do it for 20 minutes. But I’m like, you came to me and said, “If I do this, can I get a dollar?”
And so we’re starting to get to that point. My next hope with it is this concept — from that YouTube clip I was referencing — where this lady said she grew up in a household that did this. I thought it was so clever. She said, “When I did chores and earned money, if I earned $10, I got $8, and two of those dollars went into the family fund. And then when the family fund got enough, we did something fun with it.”
And she was like, “It was a tax that I didn’t even realize.”
And I was like, “Well, that’s a good way to kind of introduce the concept that there’s stuff you’ve got to do just to do it, there’s stuff you’ve got to do to make money, and that some of that money goes toward the greater good.”
[00:33:25] Adam Fishman: Awesome. Well, you’ve told me a bunch of cool stories, and I want to ask you about a few more.
There are a couple lessons that I learned from you in our prep. One that you have is that kids are always listening, even when you don’t think they are. And I have a feeling there’s a really good story behind this — so I’d love to hear it.
[00:33:45] Jamie Nacht: I’ll share two: one that is more risqué and one that’s fine.
The less risqué one was that when we have pizza Friday — my father-in-law is 100% Italian — so with pizza Friday, we would have a bottle of wine that we’d all share.
And at a certain point, when Jovi was two or three, she wanted to participate. So we’d give her a little cranberry juice with some water in it and we called it “Jovi wine.”
And I remember we were up visiting my parents, and we went to this restaurant — it’s called The White Spot up in Vancouver. It’s really excellent, super casual. But we go there, we sit down, and the waiter came by and said, “Before you guys order, can I get drinks started for everybody?”
And before we could say anything, Jovi was like, “I’ll have wine!”
[00:34:36] Adam Fishman: She’s like two.
[00:34:37] Jamie Nacht: And we had to immediately be like, “What? She means— we don’t give her wine!”
That was the one that was less risqué.
The one that was more, in my opinion, comedic — when Jovi was maybe a little over two, she asked, “Where was I before I was here?” A deep question.
[00:34:57] Adam Fishman: Yeah, that is a deep question.
[00:34:59] Jamie Nacht: And so we were like, “Where do you think you were?” She was like, “Well, I think I was in Mom’s belly.”
And we said, “Yeah, you were. That’s right — you were in Mom’s belly.”
And I leaned over the table and jokingly said to my wife, “Before that, she was in balls.”
And I thought it was just between my wife and I.
[00:35:17] Adam Fishman: Right. Kids have very good hearing.
[00:35:19] Jamie Nacht: Such good hearing.
And so a week goes by — I didn’t think she caught it — and then we’re at my in-laws for dinner. Jovi goes up to them and is like, “Nana! Papa! Before I was here, I was in Mom’s belly, and before that I was in Daddy’s balls.”
And my father-in-law looked at me and was like—
[00:35:44] Adam Fishman: “What? What is going on at your house?”
[00:35:47] Jamie Nacht: “And why. Just why.”
[00:35:50] Adam Fishman: That’s amazing. Love that story. Kids are always, always listening.
[00:35:55] Jamie Nacht: Always listening. They pick up so much.
[00:35:58] Adam Fishman: Another thing that I learned from you is you have this rule — I guess I would call it — that is “no yelling at anyone in anger,” but yelling in frustration is okay. So help me understand that distinction and what that looks like in real life.
[00:36:14] Jamie Nacht: I can tell you in our house what it looks like, which is: if you get mad — I mean, if Jovi gets mad at Bricker, or Bricker gets mad at Jovi — more often it’s the second one that I encourage. I’ll join them if they’re upset.
And so if I can see one of them boiling over, then I’ll go over to them and be like, “Hey, do you need to scream?” And then they’ll start screaming, and then I’ll scream with them, and it immediately becomes enjoyable.
The second that we’re both yelling, whatever they’re mad about is gone because both of us are yelling and making faces at each other. And then all of a sudden — I think just the act of yelling is a release.
[00:36:56] Adam Fishman: Oh yeah, totally.
[00:36:57] Jamie Nacht: Totally. So helping them understand you can be mad about something, but unless somebody did something to purposefully harm you or hurt you or do something to you, don’t be mad at them — be mad that that happened.
And I think it works for them. Part of it is just the DNA of my wife — she’s very calm all the time. But it’s like, they don’t scream at each other. They don’t scream at other people. Most of it is just raw frustration. It’s like — it’s part of the fun.
[00:37:25] Adam Fishman: I love that. I want to talk a little bit about technology with you. So you obviously started a technology company with your wife, and you have an interesting approach to technology for your kids, which is around giving them devices that are intentionally slow and frustrating. Tell me about how that works.
[00:37:47] Jamie Nacht: There’s a real plug for the Amazon tablets for kids.
[00:37:51] Adam Fishman: Oh yeah, they’re horrendous.
[00:37:54] Jamie Nacht: They’re so bad. They’re so bad. Oh man. We have two generations back—
[00:37:59] Adam Fishman: The Fire HD Kids tablet.
[00:38:01] Jamie Nacht: That’s right.
[00:38:02] Adam Fishman: Sorry, sorry. Amazon will never be a sponsor of this show, but you tap the screen and something happens 10 minutes later.
[00:38:09] Jamie Nacht: That’s right. And if anything, this is a plug for them because I’d say it works so well to discourage them from wanting to be on that thing.
Because it will freeze up on occasion, or they’ll want to change to a different app and it just stops working. The Bluetooth is unpredictable, so it works well.
My wife has really spearheaded this — no technology in the bedrooms, limited technology. But it’s funny because my kids, to date, don’t have a lot of desire to do it. They love watching movies and shows — we’re a big Bluey household — but the act of playing with that thing, and when it runs out of battery (which it does not have a great battery), it’s a gift for us.
It serves its purpose — if we’re on an airplane, it’ll last two or three hours — but it is so annoying to them that a lot of times they just move on.
[00:39:04] Jamie Nacht: I will say just in the last week or so, my wife — we were talking about that specific thing — and I was saying, “Well, this is not working to your benefit.” Because she could not, for the life of her, get Bricker’s headset to pair.
You’d go into the parent mode and it would pair, and then you’d flip to the child’s profile and it would unpair. And she was like — she came down so mad — and she had to go pick up the kids and she was like, “Can you get this to pair?”
And I spent five minutes and was like, “It’s not possible. I don’t know.”
[00:39:33] Adam Fishman: Throw it out the window.
[00:39:35] Jamie Nacht: Exactly. And so I gave it back to her, and she was like, “This is not helpful for me.” And I was like, “Well, I don’t know what you mean to do — I didn’t make it.”
[00:39:41] Adam Fishman: You’re like, “I have a solution — a corded headset. Here we go.”
[00:39:45] Jamie Nacht: Exactly. I told her, “We have old iPads we can give them.” And she’s like, “No. It has to be garbage.”
[00:39:51] Adam Fishman: Those work so well. Those old iPads, you get— “No! It’s got to be way worse.”
[00:39:55] Jamie Nacht: It has to literally be a napkin with a screen on it.
[00:39:58] Adam Fishman: Like an Etch A Sketch.
[00:40:01] Jamie Nacht: That’s right. We bridge them in.
[00:40:03] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Okay, I wanted to ask you one more technology question, which is about AI and creative AI uses as a parent. We have this part of the show I call “AI Corner.”
Your kids are not quite old enough for you to do a bunch of AI stuff with them, but you did invent a tiger-giraffe hybrid that you turned into a coloring book. Tell me about the Tiger-Giraffe story, and what are you doing with AI that’s fun with the kids?
[00:40:33] Jamie Nacht: I mean, a lot of it — just because of their age and the nascency of AI — I mean, ChatGPT in December was not on my radar. So it’s so new that really, a lot of it is just tied to coloring stuff for them.
But it is really neat. One of the things that we did was I fed into whichever one I was working with a picture of each of my kids.
For about a year, my daughter loved everything unicorns, and my son loved everything my daughter loved. So they were both into it — then it flipped to cats, and then tigers became a thing.
So I was like, “Can you make a picture — a coloring picture for my kids — a black and white picture for my kids to color, of Jovi and Bricker on a unicorn with a castle in the background?” And it did a pretty good job.
[00:41:22] Jamie Nacht: And then they started wanting to color more and more. One of the things I made — Jovi asked for her riding a tiger on a mountain. And then Bricker said he wanted that, and I made one for Bricker. And then he was like, “No!”
Then he starts telling me, “No, I want a giraffe.” And I was like, “Okay.”
And so I go in — because at that point it must’ve been March or April, where the software was still not great at that point, it was still iterating — and I said, “Okay, can you just change the picture to Bricker riding a giraffe?”
And it came up with this hybrid — and Bricker loved it. It was like a tiger with giraffe bumps and a long neck but definitely a tiger.
I would say for adults — if you have kids that are two to four and are in the coloring age — one of the best hacks that you can do is come up with (because kids love stuff where they’re in it) a series of coloring pages. Especially if you’re going on vacation — make 20 and print them off and bring them.
It allows them to get that creative part to it, where they can see and add to the things, and they can color in. Maybe you just make the horizon and then they can color in the stars and all that stuff.
I feel like that is a lifesaver for us, in that it’s so different from coloring a normal coloring book.
[00:42:40] Adam Fishman: Yeah, I mean, very rarely do you purchase a coloring book in the store that has a tiger-giraffe hybrid in it.
[00:42:45] Jamie Nacht: Very rarely — almost never.
[00:42:47] Adam Fishman: Yeah. But if they were smart, they would do that — Houghton Mifflin or one of those companies.
I want to ask you a little bit about— you’ve mentioned a few times that your in-laws live very close to you, which, Italian family, I get it — makes a lot of sense.
And I think they moved — they sold their place and moved across the country right around the time Jovi was born, which is pretty incredible. What a gift to have family moving close — it makes such a difference.
But I’m very curious. That was a big deal. What was that conversation like? Or was it mostly your wife having that conversation? Was it the two of you? What kind of discussion did you have with your in-laws around this — picking up their whole lives and moving closer to you?
[00:43:31] Jamie Nacht: I did not have that expectation, and I was shocked — pleasantly shocked — when it became an opportunity for that to happen.
Because Kristen is the younger and her older brother doesn’t plan to have any kids. So when Jovi was born, they came out and got an Airbnb for a couple months.
And I think the conversation must have happened when I wasn’t in the room — of Kristen talking about whether they would like to come out here.
But I think, according to Kristen, it was a foregone conclusion. Her mom, Nana Mary, wanted to take a big role as a grandparent.
And we got so incredibly lucky because the place that we lived when we moved back to Seattle — we lived in downtown Seattle — and then my wife found this great place that I thought was going to be an investment property. But we have this great house and there was a community — really nice, brand-new homes.
[00:44:32] Jamie Nacht: And so Doug and Mary, my in-laws, saw that and they had a house they had built 35 years ago in North Conway, New Hampshire. But it was getting older. It was a nice, welcomed opportunity.
So they said, “Hey, we’re going to sell our house and move over there.”
It took me a minute to process all of it, and then I was like, “This is incredible.” Because I don’t know if you had this with your kids, but there are two moments that really stand out for me.
One was when that happened — seeing how important it is to have family as part of it and how fortunate we are compared to some of my friends who moved from other parts of the world or the country and don’t have any support system.
And the other one was picking a preschool — the first time you’re like, “Okay, I’m giving my child to somebody else for a period of time.”
When we started interviewing preschools, I was like, “I’m so uncomfortable. I don’t know what to expect.” And they were pretty pivotal times. Both of those moments were impactful for me, where I was like, “Oh wow.” Finding the right preschool, and then being just overjoyed with how much they care about your kids.
[00:45:43] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Okay. So with these grandparents, in-laws that live five, ten minutes away, you have a no drop-in rule — a mutually respected, no drop-in rule. Can you tell me why did this boundary get established and how has that worked out for you all?
[00:46:01] Jamie Nacht: So that I borrowed from another set of friends, Carly and Kyle. Carly kind of shared this story that they have kids and I think Carly anticipated more. And so they set that boundary because I think there was an expectation that they would just be — those would be showing up whenever they wanted.
[00:46:20] Adam Fishman: Surprise.
[00:46:21] Jamie Nacht: Yeah, exactly. So I kind of laid that out as my expectation when the concept developed of my in-laws moving close. But Kristen kind of reminded me that my in-laws appreciate that rule as much as I do. They don’t want us to be just popping in on them as much as we don’t want them to pop in on us.
And so there is kind of a mutual respect there. The only violation — I wouldn’t say violation — the only time we sort of navigate that rule is we have a great bakery by us. Occasionally, Doug, my father-in-law, will go down there early in the morning on a weekend and then just show up at our house with fresh baked croissants and pastries, and that is very welcomed. We have no problem with that drop-in.
But it’s funny because he does it and then he doesn’t want to stick around. He’s like, “Hey, I bought all these things here,” and he kind of hands them to us on our deck and then he takes off.
But aside from that, the boundary worked really well because I think there are certainly circumstances where that would be really frustrating if they were just up.
[00:47:29] Adam Fishman: I think a lot of people who are listening to this will appreciate knowing that you can set that boundary and that it is mutually respected. So let’s go, people — if you listeners take away one thing, just know it is a gift to have your in-laws nearby. And you can also create a rule that says no unanticipated visits.
[00:47:49] Jamie Nacht: Yeah, don’t show up unannounced.
[00:47:52] Adam Fishman: Okay. I have just a few more topics that I wanted to cover with you. We are now in the throes of recording an epic podcast here, so this is lovely.
You have some dad friends, as one does, and I think you had some friends — you said maybe you have some friends who had kids a little bit younger than you or a little bit earlier than you — and some of your friends told you about the bond between dads and kids and how that kind of changes at different points in time.
What does that mean? And do you have an experience with this that you can share — when you were like, “Okay, now I’m a dad”?
[00:48:28] Jamie Nacht: Yeah, I can speak to that. It was helpful for me to learn from my friends that preceded me in becoming parents. Comedically, for me, it was a funny story and I won’t share who it was. When Jovi was very little, we went to this great restaurant out on the peninsula, on the Olympic Peninsula up in Washington, and we met our friends.
And my buddy, who I’ve known forever, we were talking about the bond between you and your kids. And he jokingly said, “Yeah, I didn’t even like my oldest until she was three.”
And I was like, “Oh my god.” And he was like, “I did, but we weren’t hanging out. It was more of a responsibility.”
At first I was like, “Whoa.” And then I was like, “Oh yeah, I guess that kind of makes sense. Sure, maybe.”
And then I realized that for the first year of life — so my wife was fortunate enough to be able to breastfeed our kids — and so for the first year of life, they’re so dependent on their mom that the dad is like… I was there as a supporting character.
And the combination of not really growing up with a lot of small children around — so it was kind of foreign. When you see, I would say, college-aged males — if you hand them a baby and they’re like, “What are you doing?”
[00:49:51] Adam Fishman: Holding it like a greased pig?
[00:49:54] Jamie Nacht: Yeah. They hold it out.
[00:49:56] Adam Fishman: “Where do I deposit this thing?”
[00:49:58] Jamie Nacht: “Take it back.” So I felt like when we had Jovi, I really did, for the first while, I was like, we have this baby. I don’t know anything about it and I can’t give it food. So it just kind of was sitting there staring at you.
[00:50:11] Adam Fishman: Yeah, it’s like a potato.
[00:50:13] Jamie Nacht: And then I realized — another set of my friends, they were ahead of us by I think a year, year and a half — and my buddy said, “Oh yeah, I didn’t really bond with my daughter super well until we had our second.”
Because when we had our second, I was the caretaker for the first because my wife was doing everything to keep this little baby alive. But having those pieces of knowledge, I did get to witness it with our experience.
It was like these points in time when you have this intense bonding — if you have a second child where your first child kind of bonds to the dad — that was pretty profound for me.
And it quickly became like, we’re two kiddos together up to no good. Mom has to do something with Brooker, so why don’t we go get a donut or something? It was all the fun stuff that once you go through that really tight bonding period, I think you develop a different set of feelings for your kids.
Not that I didn’t love them right out of the gate, but it’s like I became best buds.
And with Brooker, he’s now at the age where when I’m doing stuff just with him — we just had a daddy Sunday and I took him down to the waterfront, and he took me on a tour. I was like, “Where are we going?” He was like, “Come on.”
It was like, there’s nothing to see there. He was like, “No, no, keep coming.”
[00:51:36] Adam Fishman: Well, if Jovi had taken you, you would’ve ended up at a wine bar. She likes wine so much.
[00:51:42] Jamie Nacht: We’d be tipping bottles for sure. Yeah.
[00:51:45] Adam Fishman: I love that. I really love that idea. And I think hearing this will help a lot of dads who probably go through the same thing of just like, “I’m pretty useless. When am I going to really be into this kid?” And it just takes some time and changes.
Okay. So I just have a couple more questions for you before we wrap up and move to the lightning round, which is always a treat.
You described yourself to me as having an anything-is-possible mentality. You think your parents instilled it in you, and you said your wife Kristen rolls her eyes at it a little bit sometimes.
[00:52:18] Jamie Nacht: Still, yes.
[00:52:20] Adam Fishman: So tell me about that, and then how are you passing that mentality onto your kids?
[00:52:27] Jamie Nacht: So yes, to start with, I still have that. And I did get it from my parents, and my wife still does roll her eyes at it. She was reminding me that the concept started when we were dating, and she was like, “You’re very confident.”
I would say, I try to make sure that I’m not cocky, but I am very confident. And so I was like, “Yeah.”
And she goes, “You think you can do anything.” And I was like, “Pretty much.”
And she goes, “You can’t.” And I was like, “But I think I can.”
And she was like, “You couldn’t be— at this point, I think we were, I was 30 — and she said, ‘You couldn’t be an astronaut now. It’s too late.’”
And I was like, “Well, I could very much be an astronaut right now.”
And then she started finding harder ones. She was like, “You couldn’t be a pro athlete.”
I was like, “If you gave me enough money and time, for sure.”
And then she was like, “You couldn’t be a pro basketball player.”
And I was like, at that point in my head I was probably not, but when I just fed, I was like, “I think I could.”
[00:53:22] Adam Fishman: You went out in the driveway and started shooting threes to get ready.
[00:53:25] Jamie Nacht: So anyway, we still have that. And so I have encouraged it. She thinks it is delusional, but I do think that things happen — like builders, entrepreneurs, creators — it all stems from that concept of, just because it hasn’t been done before, or somebody says I can’t do it, doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
And so whenever my kids are talking about stuff, I encourage them. They say that they want to do something that sounds impossible — I’m all for it, and I will join them in the effort just because I want to see how far we can take it.
[00:53:58] Adam Fishman: Okay. I have one more question for you, which is: if you think about your kids growing up and you try to teach them things and you have these principles that we talked about, if there was just one thing that they embodied as they got older that you’ve tried to teach them, what would you want that one thing to be?
[00:54:22] Jamie Nacht: That’s a good question. I think I would have to cheat and give you two responses.
[00:54:28] Adam Fishman: I will allow it.
[00:54:30] Jamie Nacht: Okay. So I would say — I think they need to understand that kindness is important. That at the end of the day, your job is to impact others in a positive way.
And that work ethic — practice — is important, and that the only way you’re going to get better at something is by doing it over and over if it’s important to you. And be comfortable with the process of practicing.
I think that’s lost on kids. Everybody talks about the whole concept of piano lessons — no kid is thrilled about taking piano lessons. But my mom said this, and I’m sure she stole it from somewhere else, but she said that no adult was ever mad that they had to take piano lessons.
It’s in the moment, when you’re a kid, you’re like, “What? I hate this. I don’t want to have to practice and it’s by myself.”
But then when you get much better, you start to realize the real value — like, wow, I spent all this time doing these stupid songs that I didn’t enjoy, but now I can play the piano.
I think those two things — being kind and understanding the gravity and the value of practicing hard things — I hope my kids listen to this 30 years from now and are like, “Nailed it.”
[00:55:48] Adam Fishman: “Nailed it, Dad. Good job.”
Alright, well, with that — how can people follow along with what you’re building at Havium or your life, or connect with you if they feel some kindred spiritness in listening to this podcast?
[00:56:06] Jamie Nacht: So I’m not a big social media individual, although I think that is going to be changing just because of my role at the company. But the easiest way to get ahold of me is on LinkedIn. That’s probably where I’m going to be the most active.
But yeah, just follow Havium. We’re building something that I’m very excited about — 100% of our clients love us. Check it out. Take a look at havium.com.
[00:56:27] Adam Fishman: Cool. You may have people pinging you asking for tiger-giraffe hybrid coloring pages.
[00:56:32] Jamie Nacht: Oh, unlimited. I have so many.
[00:56:35] Adam Fishman: Alright, let’s do lightning round. Are you ready?
[00:56:39] Jamie Nacht: I think so. We’ll find out.
[00:56:39] Adam Fishman: Okay. What is the most indispensable parenting product that you’ve ever purchased?
[00:56:47] Jamie Nacht: I noodle on this a lot. I talked to my wife about this, and I think the best product that we came across was a sign that you put on your front door when you have little kids. It says, “Do not ring bell. There will be babies crying, dogs barking. Things will get ugly.” And it cost — I think we got it on Etsy for like eight dollars — and it saved our lives.
[00:57:10] Adam Fishman: Yeah, we had a similar sign. Love that.
[00:57:13] Jamie Nacht: Such a good piece of it, yeah.
[00:57:15] Adam Fishman: That’s a great — if you’re thinking about gifts for people with newborns — amazing gift.
[00:57:20] Adam Fishman: Okay. What is the most useless parenting product that you’ve ever purchased?
[00:57:25] Jamie Nacht: I would say it’s always been shocking to me — I don’t think they’re more parenting products as much as the toys that you think are going to be great for kids. I would say all those toys you think you’re going to need — you probably won’t need them.
[00:57:37] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Well, all she needs is toilet paper rolls and boxes from Amazon.
[00:57:40] Jamie Nacht: Boxes. That’s right. That’s it.
[00:57:42] Adam Fishman: And maybe markers and occasionally some of the Elmer’s glue with the glitter in it.
[00:57:48] Adam Fishman: Okay. What is the weirdest thing that you’ve ever found in one of your kids’ pockets or in the bottom of the washing machine?
[00:57:55] Jamie Nacht: Oh, I would say — I asked my wife about this, and we both agree — rocks.
[00:58:00] Adam Fishman: They just love rocks.
[00:58:00] Jamie Nacht: Rocks and pockets are a thing. I don’t know if it’s like, at the moment they put it in their pocket, they’re like, “I’m going to need this later.” But it’s fascinating.
[00:58:10] Jamie Nacht: And then as a second — shells. Shells end up in pockets.
[00:58:13] Adam Fishman: Rocks and shells. Hard, sharp things. True or false: wait for the inside — there is only one correct way to load the dishwasher.
[00:58:20] Jamie Nacht: True.
[00:58:21] Adam Fishman: Okay. Is it your way?
[00:58:22] Jamie Nacht: Yes. I’ve listened to a handful of the episodes, and it is so funny to find my people in those episodes because yes — I’ll say, it seems to be a male thing, but I don’t want to fully stereotype it. I will go in and just rearrange it. I’m like, what kind of animal — what kind of rabid raccoon — put this stuff in here in this way?
[00:58:43] Adam Fishman: Right. Okay. What is your signature dad superpower, aside from loading the dishwasher?
[00:58:50] Jamie Nacht: I would say there’s probably two. One is, I can make anything fun. It works — I would say 99.9% of the time. And the second is, I am solid on breakfasts.
And I will — this is like an extra bonus for your listeners — the best breakfast dad hack is: for your listeners, pause, go get a notepad, write this down — Dutch baby pancake.
All you have to do is, if you have a blender and you have a pan — ideally like a cast iron pan — you throw two eggs (good for the kids, get a little protein in them), so two eggs, half a cup of flour, half a cup of milk, pinch of salt, little bit of vanilla extract, two tablespoons of sugar — throw it in a blender and whiz it up.
Then take that skillet, throw a knob of butter in there, get it melted, preheat the oven to 425, pour into the skillet with some sugar and cinnamon, pop it into the oven.
[00:59:54] Jamie Nacht: You are good. And if you have a Vitamix, it’s like 10 or 15 minutes. All of a sudden you’ve got this great little pancake.
If you have a Vitamix, all you’ve got to do is put a drop of soap in, a load of water — that cleans it. With a cast iron skillet, you don’t wash it — you just wipe it out, put it away. You’ve got the best breakfast.
My kids — Saturdays, they always get it. Sundays, they usually ask for it. But it is the easiest thing. And if you want to impress your spouse, there’s no dishes. It’s the fastest, easiest thing.
[01:00:26] Adam Fishman: I think we may have just come up with the episode title for the show — “One Way to Impress Your Spouse.” There you go. Yeah, no, that’s great. I’m going to steal that maybe this weekend.
Okay. What is the crazier block of time in your house — 6:00 AM to 8:00 AM or 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM?
[01:00:43] Jamie Nacht: 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM.
[01:00:45] Adam Fishman: Okay.
[01:00:45] Jamie Nacht: Has anybody ever answered the morning for you?
[01:00:48] Adam Fishman: A few people, but I would say probably two-thirds say the evening — maybe three-quarters.
[01:00:53] Jamie Nacht: Yeah. I am fascinated by the chaos. It is as if a chemical gets released into their bloodstream at like 5:45, and they just go bonkers.
[01:01:05] Adam Fishman: Yeah. If your kids had to describe you in one word, what would it be?
[01:01:09] Jamie Nacht: Happy.
[01:01:09] Adam Fishman: Okay. What is your go-to dad wardrobe?
[01:01:14] Jamie Nacht: Oh, jeans and t-shirt.
[01:01:15] Adam Fishman: Yeah.
[01:01:16] Jamie Nacht: Jeans, t-shirt, flip-flops.
[01:01:17] Adam Fishman: Okay. How many dad jokes do you tell on average each day?
[01:01:24] Jamie Nacht: I would say not as many as some of your other guests. What’s funny is, my kids — they like good jokes, but they also, when they find something, they just go for it.
And there was a car ride from where my parents lived in Vancouver to our place, and Jovi was just, “More jokes.” So for three hours, we were just making up dad jokes.
[01:01:50] Adam Fishman: I’m sure your wife loved it.
[01:01:52] Jamie Nacht: Oh yeah. I think at one point she pretended to be asleep. She was like, “I can’t.”
[01:01:58] Adam Fishman: “I can’t.” Okay. We’re in the home stretch here. What is the most absurd thing that one of your kids has ever asked you to buy for them?
[01:02:05] Jamie Nacht: Well, for a while, Jovi wanted her own house.
[01:02:08] Adam Fishman: Purple, rainbow walls and a pink roof, right?
[01:02:11] Jamie Nacht: Pink roof, rainbow walls. She also has repeatedly wanted a treehouse. We live kind of on a cliff, and she’s like, “I want a treehouse on the trees.”
[01:02:23] Adam Fishman: What is your favorite kids’ movie?
[01:02:27] Jamie Nacht: I’m trying to get my kids more into it. I don’t know why, but I love the original Sword in the Stone.
[01:02:33] Adam Fishman: Oh yeah, that’s a great film. The wizarding duel and all that stuff.
[01:02:37] Jamie Nacht: And the music in it — I just felt like it was fun music, and it kind of has that concept of anything’s possible, and you don’t have to be big and strong. So for me, that’s it. I think my kids are all about the Pixar things.
[01:02:49] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Well, the answer to this next question may be the same, but is there a nostalgic movie that you just can’t wait to force your kids to watch with you when they’re old enough?
[01:02:58] Jamie Nacht: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
[01:02:59] Adam Fishman: Okay.
[01:03:00] Jamie Nacht: A hundred percent. Yeah.
[01:03:01] Adam Fishman: Alright, last two for you. What is your favorite dad hack for road trips or flights?
[01:03:08] Jamie Nacht: It’s something that I’m stealing from my parents. So we go across the Canadian border fairly frequently — I’m a dual citizen. When you’re going, you don’t want your kid saying something wrong when you’re dealing with a border agent.
[01:03:20] Jamie Nacht: And I never realized it in the moment, but as an adult now, I see the brilliance of it. My parents would convince us — they would say, “Do you think you could trick the border agent into thinking you’re asleep?” And so we thought we were so funny — my sister and I, I’m sure, had grins wide across our faces — but we would be totally silent.
And I realized all my parents were doing was like, “Do not say a word.” But it was such a good hack because for years, I think I probably didn’t realize until I was like 10.
[01:03:53] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Okay. Last question for you: what is your take on minivans?
[01:04:00] Jamie Nacht: This is going to be contrarian, or this is going to anger some people. I totally see the appeal. I can’t. And I asked my wife — we have a Kia EV, and we love it. The EV9’s really big, fantastic vehicle. And I can see — the doors on that thing are aggressively heavy.
And when I see the fact that in minivans, the kids that open them can’t swing them into another car — like, oh, that sounds very nice. But I asked my wife, I was like, “Would you ever?” And she’s like, “I will never.” I was like, “Okay.”
[01:04:36] Adam Fishman: At least you have an aligned front on this, I guess. This is good. This is good. Yeah.
Alright, well, on that note — thank you so much, Jamie, for joining me today. This was an epic conversation — learned a ton, loved your philosophies and lessons and all the stories. I wish you and your family all the best — and your company too — for the rest of the year and beyond. Thank you.
[01:05:01] Jamie Nacht: Thanks, Adam. Well, thanks for having me. This was a delight, and I have really enjoyed listening to the other episodes of your podcast. So please keep up the good work.
[01:05:08] Adam Fishman: Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to today’s conversation with Jamie Nacht. You can subscribe and watch the show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Visit www.startupdadpod.com to learn more and browse past episodes. Thanks for listening, and see you next week.