Building Meaningful Connections | Jason Smith (Dad of 2, Klue)

[00:00:00] Jason Smith: I was literally on a conference call at 7:00 PM at night and I’m looking at two pictures on my desk and one of them was my kids when they were born. And the other one was when they were just recently turned seven and eight. And I had that moment where your mind is fading from the conference call and you’re looking at these pictures and I’m like, “What am I doing?”
[00:00:22] 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. If you have a binary relationship with work and family, all in at work, then all in on family, then taking a break can be the greatest way to build connection with your kids. That’s exactly what Jason Smith did. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Klue, an AI-powered competitive intelligence product that helps you win more deals. He’s a five-time startup entrepreneur who has raised over $100 million for his companies and won Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award. But his most impressive and impactful achievement may be his year long trip around the world with his wife and daughters. Today, we talked about the inspiration behind this journey when he realized his daughters were growing up without a present father.
[00:01:17] Adam Fishman: The best parts of his adventures, the importance of connection, why you should lean into the things that go wrong, the importance of hardship, and what it means to practice united front parenting. We ended with a fantastic discussion on how his relationship has changed with his daughters as they’ve grown older and what he’s most excited about for their next 10 years. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to Startup Dad on YouTube or Spotify so you never miss an episode. You’ll find it everywhere you get your podcasts. Welcome Jason Smith to Startup Dad. Jason, it’s a pleasure having you here on the show with me today. Thanks for joining. Good to be here. And a shout out to past guest Lloyd Lobo for connecting us. So hat tip to Lloyd. Lloyd has been a great friend of the show. And gosh, I feel like I recorded his episode like a hundred years ago now, so might have to revisit that one.
[00:02:10] Adam Fishman: Okay. So I want to jump in. You have two daughters, 22 and 21. They are graduating or almost ready to graduate from college. So congrats, you’ve made it. But when they were eight and nine, you and your wife quit your jobs, pulled them out of school and traveled around the world for a year. And you were now the second dad that I’ve talked to who has taken this journey. That’s wild. So I don’t know, maybe I’m a magnet for this now, but I’m curious to start off, what was the inspiration behind doing this whole
[00:02:44] Jason Smith: Trip? Yeah, I think that’s an interesting starting point. First, I turned 40 and it was that moment where you kind of reflect on your life, you look forward, you look backwards. Are you doing what you want to do? It’s a take stock moment. I’m not sure I over index on a birthday per se, but it’s important at certain pivotal birthdays to kind of look forward, look back. And at the time I was seven years into building another company. I was not the founder at that company. I was a hired gun. I was president of it. And it had grown from a handful of folks to 500 people, but it was clearly not my business. And so you have this moment where for me, and this is probably relevant for your show, I was literally on a conference call at 7:00 PM at night and I’m looking at two pictures on my desk and one of them was my kids when they were born, like super baby, interesting.
[00:03:38] Jason Smith: They were 15 months apart. So one was a baby and the other was basically two year old. And the other one was when they were just recently turned seven and eight. And I had that moment where your mind is fading from the conference call and you’re looking at these pictures and I’m like, “What am I doing?” I have missed so many bed tuck-ins. I am seeing them now grown up. And it was like a dawning of age gap where you look at the same picture overnight, but something clicks. And that was a moment for me to say, “I don’t know if I should be doing my life the way it’s been done.” And the 40 kind of reflection was kind of a piece of that. And so got to talking with my wife and we were on a lake actually having tea in the morning.
[00:04:25] Jason Smith: And it was like this moment of serene surroundings and this like, “Maybe we should change things up.” And it was like this cavalcade of thoughts that ended up culminating in this like, why don’t we for the summer go away for a month with the kids while the kids are not at school, maybe six weeks and we’ll pick a destination. And once you start turning your mind towards what it could do, you’re like, “Well, I want to go see that place. It’d be cool to show them this place.” And so then you start to go, “Well, maybe we’ll do half a year.” And then before you know, you’re like, “Well, maybe we could do a whole year.” And then it’s like a sequencing. For me, it was not some big momentous we’ve made this decision. It was like this inching of a mind forward. And the real edge push was we looked at renting our house and we had just built a house.
[00:05:13] Jason Smith: And so we’re wondering, well, what we could rent it for? Could it fund the trip at all? And we looked at some of the rentals and there was certain price and we talked to this executive rental agency and we’re like, “Okay, we’re thinking about doing this. “ And they’re like, “Well, here’s what the price is you could probably get. “ And we’re like, “How about double that? “ And they’re like, “No way, you can’t.” And so we’re like, “Ah, you know what, just put it out there. Let’s see.” Because we’re like, “We’re not sure we want to go. “ And literally within a week, two families are dropping cookies and flowers off at our door competing to rent this house. And we don’t even have the pictures up on the website. And so it became this,
[00:05:51] Jason Smith: Is this just this larger purpose starting to move your mind? And so before you know it, they were offering us our asking ridiculous price. And so we rented our house before we had left our jobs. We had rented our house before we had told our kids or anybody. And suddenly we kind of did it and we signed it and we’re like, “So I guess we’re going. “ And so then everything kicked into gear and you resign and then you figure out what you want to do, how long you’re going to go for. And then you got to figure out the school logistics and how to teach them for that year and the rest of it. But that was the impetus. That’s how it started. It was inch by inch that led to before you know it, you’ve rented your house and now you’re going.
[00:06:33] Adam Fishman: Yeah. So you kind of didn’t have a choice at that point. It was a moment. Yeah. So do you think if the house hadn’t rented or if it never happened, do you think you would’ve not done the trip or found a different way to do the trip maybe?
[00:06:48] Jason Smith: It’s a really good question. I do think forcing functions are really important in life. And I think there’s a need for somebody to kind of push you in the water when you’re standing on the edge and you’re complaining it’s cold. And there’s a little bit of that. So I think we knew we wanted to go and I think we probably would’ve gone, but we might’ve delayed a year. And then who knows what happens in the year? I got to say, talking about this trip with a lot of folks, it’s really easy to come up with a reason to not do it this year every time, whether it’s kids schools, the friends, your work, your place in life, your financial situation, there’s always a reason not to. And so I actually think there was a high risk that we wouldn’t have if we didn’t have that forcing function, but we wanted it to happen and kind of like when you flip a coin and you want it to be heads and it turns up tails and you flip it again.
[00:07:39] Adam Fishman: I think it was a bit of
[00:07:39] Jason Smith: That.
[00:07:40] Adam Fishman: Yeah. My son did this with me last night. He was like, “Heads, I go to bed right now. Tails, I get another five minutes.” And then he flipped it and it took a long time. And then of course it landed on heads. And so I won and he was like, “Oh, we got to do that one again.” And I’m like, “Okay, I see how this works, buddy.” When you know what you
[00:07:57] Jason Smith: Want.
[00:07:57] Adam Fishman: Yeah, exactly. So the last dad that I talked to about this, who also did the same thing, his kids were a little bit younger than yours, maybe shifted earlier by, I don’t know, maybe four or five years each. For him, the conversation with his kids was a little bit different because they probably couldn’t comprehend quite what was going to happen. And they didn’t have as many established friend groups and things like that. But at eight and nine, especially girls, their maturity, they’re getting kind of social. They got a group of friends, I imagine at eight and nine. They’ve got a life established. And so when you talk to them about this, were they excited or nervous or were they sad about leaving their friends behind or did they just not give a shit and they were ready to rock?
[00:08:43] Jason Smith: No, I think they were hoodwinked, to be honest. I think they were a little bit like, “What? Just what? We’re not going home right away.” Literally, the funniest story was we were at a restaurant in Turkey and it was maybe six weeks in and Turkey was the second stop on the trip. And it was you’re now a blonde-haired kids in a world where blonde hair was not normal and you’re hearing the call of prayer and you’re hearing just different sights, different sounds, and they were kind of half overwhelmed, half like, “Whoa, I get it now.” And so over dinner sitting there, my eldest daughter is like, “Okay, I get it. “ And we’re like, “What do you mean? What do you get? “ And she’s like, “I get it. We’re very fortunate. You’ve proved your point. Thank you for showing me the world and it’s time to go home.”
[00:09:29] Adam Fishman: Right.
[00:09:31] Jason Smith: Second country in on the trip. Yeah. And we’re like, “It’s not how it’s going to work. We’re gone for a year.” And it was that moment where I think it actually dawned on them. Until then, it was actually kind of exciting. It was a sense of, okay, this is cool, but I don’t think the full weight of, I’m going to not have my friends for a whole year, I don’t know if they really were able to process it at that age. Everything felt more temporal. I do think between seven and 11 is kind of, in my opinion, the target zone for doing this. The reason why is they’re capable of walking and packing for themselves. They can swim. You’re less paranoid about them in a pool and what have you. They’ve got their wits about them, but they’re still up for snuggles and they’re still up for story time and school isn’t as critical at that moment.
[00:10:24] Jason Smith: If they’re smart kids, they could maybe skip a grade or depending on the school. In our case, they were at private school, we went to the headmaster and just said, “We’re buying iPads for their teachers and we’re putting maps up on the wall and we’re going to FaceTime back to the class and talk about bringing the world into the classroom.” And their whole ethos was like global citizentry. It became this connection for them understanding the world and bringing that back into their classroom. So they didn’t have to learn about the Amazon or the book. They could learn about the Amazon in the Amazon and then FaceTime back to the school and connect all the dots. And the school was very supportive of learning with that hands-on nature. And we still had to submit some assignments and the rest of it and do the work, but it wasn’t as strict as I expected it to be in grade two, three, four and what it was.
[00:11:13] Jason Smith: I think when you get higher up, seven, eight, it’s actually harder. Teaching your kids calculus is … I can’t. So there’s a moment when it’s like addition and I’m in my zone and subtraction and then it’s like social studies. So it’s really kind of the core stuff. And I think those grades, you can pull it off. And then socially there’s always a disconnect. There’s always a moment. There’s a challenge there. The reintegration that we could talk about was harder than expected, but their life skills were from a one to a 10 out of 10, their adaptability and ability to talk to adults, to find a way into groups, to not be offended if they weren’t into a group or not, and be comfortable with themselves. The social pressure dynamic disappeared and they were like, “Oh, okay. I’m not being welcome back into the group that I thought were my best friends.
[00:12:03] Jason Smith: I’m going to go play with the boys and I’m going to play soccer and cool.” A little bit of friction, but not like devastation the way that it could be in grade school for girls.
[00:12:13] Adam Fishman: That’s pretty amazing. And so it sounds like it wasn’t like full on homeschool. There was a little bit of connection back to the core school that they went to. And I saw, and you did a really cool 10 minute video of this experience that has quite a few views on YouTube actually. I will link to it in the show notes, but I saw one of the iPad sessions in that video where the girls were talking to their class or waving and pointing at stuff. And it was very cool. I was like, “What’s going on exactly?” But now I know. It was a big part of it.
[00:12:47] Jason Smith: Each country that we went to, we tried to have our kids understand what the currency was like, understand what some of the customs were like, understand some of the language pieces, key sites, background, like even Croatia and going to Debrovnik and understanding that there’s been multiple wars and those walls on the castles were kind of specific to defense. And what that meant was ships coming in or the more, I guess not as recent today, but the Serbian war and literally Croatians and Serbians fighting each other and there’s bullets. And that kind of like giving that back to the classroom where somebody’s there just makes it all more real. And then our kids feel energized by that and want to learn more. And it created a wonderful flywheel. So it really worked. And I think it was because it was a private school, we could actually propose something where we could get all of the course material loaded up on the iPads.
[00:13:42] Jason Smith: We went to a place in Chinatown that enabled us to scan things that we probably were not supposed to scan and put it all on there. And they were concerned about us sending back and submitting all of the pieces. They literally like, “You’re crazy A type parents. You’re going to push your kids.” And so just try and get them through these core things. And if they’re behind next year, we’ll catch them up. So that was like the handshake promise and true to our word as A- type parents, we would basically do schooling first thing in the morning until however long it took to get the core schoolwork done. And that was super frustrating because some days you’re in a city and you really want to see like, I don’t know, something in the Waddy Rum desert and you’re like, “No, we’re not leaving this tent until…” And they’re like, “What?” And so you had to sacrifice some of the joy of travel that you wanted to do in exchange for getting the schoolwork done.
[00:14:36] Jason Smith: And that was difficult. But you teach them a couple of those lessons and then the next time they’re trying to get it done by noon so we could have lunch and get out and do the afternoon version.
[00:14:46] Adam Fishman: Yeah, I was going to say it’s a valuable lesson for them. It’s like, “Well, we got to eat our broccoli before we get our dessert.” And the other piece of it that, as you’re saying this, you’re talking about the core stuff. There’s reading and math and spelling and sort of that stuff. You also don’t have to work in PE or phys ed or art because you’re going to walk to a museum or you’re going to be outside all day. So there’s a bunch of stuff that happens in the school day that is happening only because the kids are in the building or at the school. And the course stuff is actually kind of a smaller part of the day now that I think about it.
[00:15:22] Jason Smith: 100%. It was actually an awareness, an awakening of how many recesses, lunch, courses that probably aren’t going to make the difference. So you could definitely crunch, call it a six-hour school day into three hours without issue. The other awareness was how little your kids actually learned. So you get the exceeds expectations or whatever that seem like they’re doing well, and then you’re like, you don’t even know how to spell B. And it’s like, how did you get 10 out of 10 on stuff? Is this just a great inflation issue starting at grade three? But it was a real awakening of your kids actually absorbing the information versus doing well by whatever the school standard was. I think it was super beneficial, just even timestables to get them to understand some of that stuff that actually feels like, is it a waste of time today and even calculator in the AI dage, but it just helps them think and they can actually quickly do things.
[00:16:23] Jason Smith: So yeah, an awareness. And the last thing I’d say is I have huge respect for teachers now in a way that they should be paid way more than those of us in the tech world. They are saints. I cannot believe how much work they would put in to just getting your kid educated, the patience that was required. The number of times I wanted to flip a table of going, how could this not? Yeah. And so it was just hat tip to all the teachers out there.
[00:16:52] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Which job is harder? Teaching like an eight and nine year old something or being the CEO of a company. I’m
[00:17:00] Jason Smith: Going to go a
[00:17:01] Adam Fishman: Teacher. Okay, awesome. So I’m going to rattle off the countries that you went to and then I have a question about that. So you went to Croatia, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Tanzania, South Africa, Australia, New Caledonia, Peru, the Galapagos Islands, and Costa Rica. I have been to two of those places. I’ve been to Turkey, I’ve been to Costa Rica, very different places. Of that list, which was your favorite place? I bet a million people have asked you this question, but I’m curious, what’s the favorite and why?
[00:17:35] Jason Smith: The nuanced answer is, do you want experiential travel? This isn’t a vacation. It was a real wake-up call from what you … Because right now when we take a vacation, we’re literally trying to check out. We’re trying to recover from the hard work that we’re doing, particularly in startup life. And so this was experiential travel. We were constantly on the move, constantly trying to find the next place, thinking about what you needed to do. You get to tour, you’re dropped in the middle of some chaos very quickly and you’re absorbing all of that and its sights and sounds are new. You’re like the newborn baby grown up, absorbing it all and being exhausted by the end of the day. So just caveat that, I would say the two most impressive places that if you could spend, call it two weeks in, if you could three, Turkey would be one of those.
[00:18:30] Jason Smith: And I think that mix of East Meets West and Istanbul and the history of that place and the foreignness of a call to prayer, a religion that our kids weren’t exposed to and understanding different cultures in a way that you’re now the minority and understand that there’s a huge chunk of the world that doesn’t understand you. And flipping that perspective, super great, obviously beautiful places to see the mosque, et cetera. But then also getting down to like Uladenes and Olympos and seeing the Olympic flame or kind of paragliding off the top of Uladenes you probably saw in the video and onto the Blue Lagoon, that’s super cool. And then the other place is Cappadocia, which is, if anyone here remembers the Travelocity gnomes, I feel like they all lived there. And it’s like these little basalt caves that actually there’s whole history and where the Christians were hiding from the Romans in these subterranean caves that you can actually walk through and they had fires and living conditions like five levels down hidden in these caves.
[00:19:40] Jason Smith: And you can walk all through those and then you hop in a hot air balloon and you can fly over it. It feels Star Wars style where you’re just cruising through this zone. And so just the diversity of Turkey and the people were amazing and the food is incredible and-
[00:19:56] Adam Fishman: I love the food in Turkey.
[00:19:57] Jason Smith: Unbelievable, right? Yes. Just amazing. So I have great things to say. And it’s funny because when I share Turkey, and you probably do too, people are terrified of the terrorism and the concerns and rightfully, but we also went to Egypt in the middle of the revolution. What I’ve learned is what you see on the news is not what happens necessarily in a city of 20 million. There’s a whole bunch of pockets that are just fine and you just have to avoid maybe Turier Square in the middle of Molotov cocktails, but you go four blocks over and you don’t know what’s going. There’s nothing. It’s like I live in Vancouver and Canada and we lost a Stanley Cup one year to the Boston Bruins and the city was basically lit on fire and I’m down the street from that and had no idea what was going on.
[00:20:43] Jason Smith: And so I think that’s true of a lot of these places that in the right areas you’re fine. The other place that I would say, I’m going to skip South Africa because my wife is from South Africa. We got engaged in South Africa, but if you haven’t been to South Africa, like a safari and Cape Town is top-notch. But I would say Peru. And the reason why I liked Peru, again, the diversity where you can hit the Amazon and we stayed in a hut that had one wall open to the jungle deep up the Amazon river in a research reserve and you’re just the sound of the juggle when you’re sleeping at night is so loud and you’re thinking, “I cannot believe I have a wall open to the jungle.” And literally wake up in the morning and there are like a possum in the top of your ceiling and you have mosquito netting and what have you, which weirdly makes you feel comfortable like you’re protected with some kind of mosquito net, but that is just an all senses experience and it’s incredible to get yourself out of the comfort zone.
[00:21:44] Jason Smith: You do see, you go for a night walk and you’ll see a tarantula that they’ll poke out of a hole and sounds freaky, but it’s all kind of part of this guided experience. And then on the flip side, you’ve got Machu Picchu, hiking the Inca Trail with porters that make you feel like you’re living some form of mini luxury where you carry nothing and you get popcorn and freshwater when you land at camp and everything’s set up for you.
[00:22:07] Adam Fishman: I saw those guys in the video carrying what looked like twice or three times their body size, like on their back. Well,
[00:22:15] Jason Smith: And that’s it. And then we all in the West claim, we did the Inca Trail and you’re like, you walked and they did everything. So again, diversity I think of Peru was amazing. And then Lima itself, we volunteered for a month in a afterschool shelter in Peru and that was a very notable experience. Part of the reason we went on this trip, our kids were growing up with a degree of luxury that I didn’t grow up with. And I wanted them to be grounded and be aware of the privilege that they had, the different cultures. And so volunteering at this afterschool shelter, which my wife’s family was the group that actually put it together. These are kids that lived in the hills in a shack, smaller than the podcast rooms that you and I are currently in and there’s five people in there and there’s no way that you could get out of that world if you didn’t have a place to study and do some schoolwork because people are trampling on you inside of that.
[00:23:10] Jason Smith: So they needed a place. And so these are kids that show up in the same T-shirt and shorts every day for the months that we’re there, smiling ear to ear, happy to have a place that they could use a computer, play soccer, do exercises, Montessori style. And our kids were just cemented in that. And we shared what Vancouver was like. Our kids were big into Justin Bieber at the time, which is kind of comical. And they taught them Justin Bieber songs and how to dance to Justin Bieber, blah, blah. And so they just integrated themselves. And my moment of clarity of where we as adults put our own views on our kids was asking them, “Hey, what do you think? How do you interpret all this with these kids showing up?” And they’re like, “What do you mean?” We’re like, “Well, did you notice they’re wearing the same clothes every day?” And you see the hills that they’re living in, there’s no water, there’s no trees, there’s nothing green, it’s all dirt and they’re in dilapidated corrugated steel shacks and they’re like, “No, didn’t see any of that.
[00:24:09] Jason Smith: I just really enjoyed playing with Juan.” That was it. My complaint when we left was they were comparing media rooms in which La-Z-Boy was more comfortable and I thought these little wealthy kids are, it’s uncomfortable. So when you take them into an environment like that and you expect a wealth comparison, no. For them, literally, I think it was this La-Z-Boys more comfortable than the other. It is just their experience in the moment that they enjoyed those kids, that feeling of a connection and participating in that community, not caring about a socioeconomic difference at all. And so to me, that was a moment where they taught me.
[00:24:50] Adam Fishman: Oh, awesome. In a couple minutes, I want to talk to you about this idea of connection and you take kind of a binary approach to it. But before we get there, I have two more questions about this trip for you. One is I did see in one of the clips that you were in a steel cage being dropped into a water surrounded by alligators. So can you tell me that story? How did you find yourself in that situation?
[00:25:18] Jason Smith: So again, word of warning, you leave on these trips with one bag packed and you get used to doing things that you’re not used to. And so you’re constantly pushing your comfort zone. So as you say that out loud, I’m like, I wouldn’t do that right now. But you progress just like the inches to make the decision, there’s inches to get comfort zone with things that are outside your comfort zone. So this was in South Africa. Literally, my kids, there’s an ostrich farm where literally you ride ostriches, like that old video game joust and you are riding ostriches. And so you have to be under a certain weight, but they walk around. So we’d just done that and we’re like, “That was wild. What’s the next crazy…” And we’re driving out and we see crocodile diving cage and we’re like, “Let’s pull in and let’s take a look at it.
[00:26:07] Jason Smith: “ And so you go in and they’ve got these monstrous crocodiles swimming in these … It’s not a nature thing. It’s like designed semi-crocodile Disneyland and they lower you into this thing and you’re in a steel cage and you could put your hand out and they’re like, “This is what happens. These crocodiles float along like this and they don’t look like they’re doing anything.” And what they showed us was if you actually put something in the water, how quickly they will move and snap at that. And so you’re shown that before you’re dropped into the water and then they drop you into the water and every weird bone in your body wants to stick your finger out at some level and kind of like tempt it. And then you have that flash in your head. And so you’re just kind of looking around as these things are kind of like floating by you with these huge jaws and knowing in your mind that if anything happened, like you stick your finger out or the cage somehow opened, you’re done.
[00:27:09] Jason Smith: But exhilaration and it’s totally fine. And it was semi-Disney ride-ish by the time we were done.
[00:27:14] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Oh, and what a story too. So maybe I’ll have to do it sometime.
[00:27:19] Jason Smith: Yeah, head to South Africa.
[00:27:20] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Okay. So my second question, this is a little tongue in cheek, but so you have basically adult daughters now, and you have this YouTube video of them as eight and nine-year-olds. And it’s got little over 9,000 views and they’re like doing goofy eight and nine-year-old things. I was like, “Oh, that looks like what my kids would do. “ Are they embarrassed by this? Are you planning on showing this at a wedding at some point? How do they think about this when they reflect on it from 10 plus years ago?
[00:27:53] Jason Smith: Well, all of us dads have the right to hoard footage to pull out at a wedding later, just caveating that. Yeah. It’s funny you say that. I think my kids are maybe used to being dad embarrassed enough by now that they’re just accepting of it. Stop talking to the Uber driver dad. What I would say is at that time, my eldest daughter was probably a lot more tomboy than she was Princess. And so she’s wearing board shorts and shirtless and she doesn’t like that one. She’s like, “You know what? That’s not going to do me any favors getting boys right now, dad.” So there is a little bit of that. So I had to carve out some of that footage and just left it with her board shorts. But you could see in those pictures, there’s one, we’re walking through this in Croatia, this boardwalk in the middle of Claybitze Park and my one daughter, full princess, wearing full long dress, walking like a princess.
[00:28:48] Jason Smith: My other one, board shorts, t-shirt, hat on sideways looking for something that she can swing from, and they’re walking along. And just that moment of their identity in that minute, I think they both embraced and know that it’s not them. And so I think there’s a degree of embarrassment, but it’s within the dad acceptable embarrassment threshold.
[00:29:11] Adam Fishman: Which is a very real threshold that’s in the range, right? Yeah. Okay, cool. I just had to ask because I was like, I think at one point I saw maybe the beginnings of an eye roll or one of your daughters saying, “Turn the camera off,” or something like that. And I was like, “This can only get worse as it goes.”
[00:29:30] Jason Smith: So let me share that story because this is what we started to do … First, when you take a trip like that, what I realized is you’re off grid. When we’re here in our work environment, we’re on grid. And so we’re working all week and then on the weekends at some level too, you might get together with another family, you might have soccer or some kind of sport, you’re actually not connecting as a family anywhere near as much as you think you are because you get together with others. There’s obviously some connect But the minute you as a unit, family unit leave and get off grid, it’s just your family unit together twenty four seven. There’s no distractions. There’s no sports to go to. There’s no school to attend with other kids. There’s no other family that you’re going to see for dinner or on the weekend or birthday party.
[00:30:21] Jason Smith: It’s just you twenty four seven. So there’s a huge adjustment to that twenty four seven presence of one another. And I got to say, the first two months was really hard, an adjustment to be on top of each other for that period. And then you find the breaking points for each other. You understand where dad needs to go for a run, mom needs to do whatever this thing is. The kids need to do their Playmobile, whatever. There’s like, “We’re going to check out. We’re not going to talk to each other for a moment.” And it became this language that you now understood after two months of compression therapy that blew up multiple times. And so one of the things that we did that started to create some independence was, we called it independent dinners. And so we would go to the same restaurant and our kids eight and nine would get their own table at the restaurant.
[00:31:14] Jason Smith: And we would be ideally in a table that they would not be seen. And so they want independent dinner. And so we would go and we’d talk to the waiter ahead of time. I’d be like, “Look, those are our daughters. We’re going to pay for them. Let them order whatever they want off the menu, hold the alcohol, and just let them feel independent.” And they loved it because it was like this grownup moment where they could go to the restaurant on their own, but the parents were around the corner and in the same restaurant having dinner, kind of getting the messages relayed by the waiter. So what you see in the video is one of those where it was independent dinner. And of course I’m trying to get film footage of it. And filming it, I’m filming it and my daughter looks over at me and just like, “Okay, cut it.
[00:31:57] Jason Smith: This is independent dinner, dad. It’s my time.”
[00:32:01] Adam Fishman: This all makes so much sense now. I love that. You’re stealthily trying to get her picture. So that’s awesome. Okay. Let’s talk about connection. So obviously as evidenced by your one-year trip around the world with your fam, this is pretty important in your life. But you described this to me as taking kind of a binary approach where you are all in in one area and then you’re all in another area. Your trip around the world, you were all in on your family. Can you just tell me about this binary approach? Is this always how you’ve been wired or how did you develop this take?
[00:32:37] Jason Smith: Yeah, I don’t know if it’s just an undiagnosed ADHD issue, but it has been all in my life. And I think, look, startups are a big part of your audience. And when you’re in a startup, you got to be all in. There’s no halfway. You got to believe in it. You’ve got to crank it. And particularly in the earliest embryonic stages of a startup. And so I came out of university and I didn’t know any better and went into my first startup and we built a company and it succeeded. And I didn’t know what 996 was, but I was like 997.
[00:33:14] Jason Smith: And you’re doing that because you’re 23, 24, you can burn the candle, you don’t know any … You just do it because you’re figured out. And so it was all in by nature of identity attachment to starting this company early in being told that’s a crazy thing to do. You’re going to fail. Entrepreneurialism when I started wasn’t cool. It was a fool’s game. Go get a job at a big company with your commerce business degree. And so part of it was like storming, forming, norming moment in that company being successful that imprinted. I think you got to be cranking in your startup. And so onwards with the next startup, the next startup, the next startup, you get a relationship while you burn maybe through something, and then you get your real relationship that you don’t want to sacrifice and then into marriage into kids and then figuring out how to raise kids.
[00:34:04] Jason Smith: And I found it extremely difficult to find the balance with my pre-programming of I got to be all in on this business to make it work. And every minute I don’t give it is adding a degree of some sort of probability that’s going to fail. And we all know the odds of startup failure. And so with that imprint and maybe personality kind of pre-programming, I knew that I couldn’t easily do weeknight tuck-ins and bedtime stories. And so pretty quickly I fell into the rhythm of I’m going to crank Monday through … Well, it was Friday and Saturday, Sundays would be my time with the family. And I started to kind of be quite binary on that and reflect and deflect most work issues on the weekend, but work till 9:10 PM on the weekdays. And so that became part of a pattern again and in my fourth startup.
[00:35:02] Jason Smith: And so that’s part of the impetus why I was like, I think the only way to break the pattern of not connecting, because you can’t connect with just a little bit on the weekend when you’re doing sports and you’re doing other things. You’re barely the edge of the pool. And so for the kids to touch while they’re swimming. Yeah. So that led to the impetus to go traveling and like leave the grid and be all in on the twenty four seven Family Connect experiential moments. I felt like it was a real success on the connection side, but it certainly reinforced the all- in nature. So now I’m back into the next startup and I’m all in on that. And the kids are witnessing that from the other end of the tale now.
[00:35:41] Adam Fishman: Yeah. One of the things we talked about before we started recording kind of builds off of this. And you said that your daughters obviously saw you grinding at a startup and kind of watched and probably absorbed some things via osmosis, right? It saw dad working really hard. And then at some point they were like, I don’t know if that’s going to be for me, but now maybe with them kind of coming out of university, maybe that pendulum has swung again. So what have you observed in that arc of their lives while they watch you be an entrepreneur?
[00:36:17] Jason Smith: Yeah. Speaking on behalf of dads that … I’ve seen the spectrum now from early age to one just graduated literally this year and the other is still in university. It was super interesting. I think when they … So there’s this moment where you’re looking at your kids selecting university and the pressure to get into a good school, and did you launch a rocket and land a person on Mars yet or not? Huge pressure to get into these schools. And so there was a lot of debate on what they wanted to take and all they knew about business was seeing their mom and their dad working a lot on a laptop in an office nonstop. And so to them, business was a screen and a laptop and unhealthy sitting behavior in an office nonstop. And that particularly came true in the COVID moment where you’re now home and they’re seeing it, but they knew that I wasn’t coming home from the office.
[00:37:20] Jason Smith: And so they knew obviously I was working and if they came to the office, they’d see a laptop. And so there was this connotation, this connection of like, that’s bad, and that was seemingly well ingrained in them. So both did not want to go into business as a result in university. And one at the end decided that, okay, they’re going to business, but they’re going to do it differently. They’re not going to be the laptop person. And I don’t think they’re going to do the startup thing. And fast forward now, the one that’s graduated with a business degree, all she talks about is new startup ideas. And I’m not calling her an entrepreneur, but she’s like, “ I wonder if I could do this. I wonder if you could do that. “And like, “ Hey, has anybody done that and how did you do that?
[00:38:03] Jason Smith: “And so she’s moved from entrepreneurialism is a laptop and you’re locked in a room to problem solving and what new ideas are out there that haven’t got a sufficient solution or a solution at all. And so she doesn’t know it yet, but I think she is moving towards this embrace of what we all do is look for problems to solve and then build something around it. The other one’s in drama and theater, and actually it’s interesting. She was a kid that loved to be on stage, loved to act, loved to be the center of attention. So I’m definitely not doing Business Dad. And she’s now in third year going, “ Why didn’t I go into business? “And is like, “ I’m surrounded by these awesome theater kids and they’re all like me. They’re crazy and fun, but I’m seeing all these business kids with their summer jobs lined up and thinking more.
[00:38:52] Jason Smith: And so she shifted and I don’t know what she’ll do after her undergrad, but I think there is just a reality of you rubbing off on your kids. And what I’ve had the pleasure of being able to do now is talk them through what it means. It’s not a laptop in an office. It’s an idea that you’re trying to bake and a laptop is part of the tool set that you do to kind of bake that idea. And in it, there’s a bunch of tools that help you. And that expansion of thought, it takes a certain level of intellectual readiness for them. And I think that it comes with time and universities generally where there’s that reflection of, “I’m going to solve the world differently.”
[00:39:34] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Well, it’s also really interesting to think about them graduating now or shortly and coming out into the world where AI is doing a lot of that sit in front of the laptop work for them. Your company makes an agent that does research for customer research, and that would normally be all the time that you’d be sitting in front of a laptop. But now the thing that the robots can’t really do is like human connection and the back and forth sort of engagement with other people. And so maybe there is an element of this that their definition of business will look differently than what ours looks like. I mean, who knows? So we’ll see. I agree
[00:40:14] Jason Smith: With you. And they’re using all the tools in school and initially it was the cheating advantage. Now it’s maybe a little more built into the program calculator style because you can’t escape it. What’s interesting, I think, about kids coming through this social media now AI era is it’s so natural for them to think that way, to use something that can be their collaborator and idea generation, their fixer of some of the issues. It’s a cleanup and collaboration tool more than it is a do tool. And they’ve recognized trying to do, having it do it for you, they’re like, “It’s not how I would do it. “ And so then like all of us, you get it and you’re like, “Dah, I’m going to edit it, change it. “ And then you’re like, “I should have just started from scratch.” And you go through that process of figuring out how to leverage AI best.
[00:41:02] Jason Smith: And I think they’re fortunate to be in school in that moment where there are tools being used to help you do it. And I don’t know, maybe they’re getting grades because of AI. I don’t know. We’ll see.
[00:41:13] Adam Fishman: Who knows? Time will tell. One of the important philosophies that you have is that you should really lean into things that go wrong. I would love to hear what you mean by that.
[00:41:26] Jason Smith: Yeah. This is interesting. There were two lessons that I got from venture capitalists that I respect where I saw his relationship with his adult children going on trips, wanting to be together. And I’m like, “How do I make sure I don’t screw up my parenting enough where I’m teaching and not creating this bond?” And it’s so easy to fall into when you have limited time of, don’t do it this way, do it this way, teaching in a forceful parental sometimes way. What he taught me was the bond and the relationship is super important. My wife’s probably the best teacher of that. And seeing me being the disciplinarian, by the way, and her being the bond at all costs, I’m now like, “Damn, I wish I was more in her camp.” But what he taught me was stuff’s going to go wrong. And whether you’re traveling as a family or just with one of your kids, things that you think are going to work out don’t.
[00:42:27] Jason Smith: The tickets that you bought for the show actually end up being StubHub fakes or the trip that you go, you miss the flight or the room that you get is not what you expected. And those are all like first world problem issues. It can be much worse. Your car breaks down on the way somewhere and it’s snowing and it’s cold on the way to the mountain and you don’t have a change of tires and you can’t, your cell reception is limited. Those are moments that go from first world to challenging problems that it’s pretty easy to lose your mind and focus on the problem solution solving and forget that there’s somebody watching and learning how you react to those situations. And what he taught me was you’re not going to remember your 50th trip to Tahoe. You’re going to remember the one where you broke down and it was trouble and you ended up in a diner and somebody gave you a lift that was missing three teeth and you have a story.
[00:43:29] Jason Smith: And that’s the piece that is rich and that’s the stuff that’s going to come out at a wedding or a conversation later where there’s laughter. And if you lose your temper or your mind in those moments, they’ll remember that. But if you go along going, “Okay, this is just part of life and let’s embrace it. “ And we know it’s hard now, but we will hopefully laugh about it later. You keep a levity about it and an experience focus about it that is the thing that imprints in your brain and you’ll draw on that later. So that’s what I mean by lean in to the bad stuff as much as the good stuff.
[00:44:08] Adam Fishman: Do you have any particular favorite, fun stories about things going wrong?
[00:44:13] Jason Smith: I knew you were going to ask us.
[00:44:14] Adam Fishman: Your all time favorite.
[00:44:15] Jason Smith: Yeah. There’s a lot of micro, macro ones. I’m going to not share one that’s a little more macro, but a micro or mini, maybe a mixed one. Actually, Turkey is a good example of one. We had rented a place for the four of us that we thought was good and in all things in a place like Turkey, things changed. And so you move into this place and you’re like settled in and it’s great. And then somebody knocks on the door and is like, sorry, we rented this suite to somebody else and we’re like, “What do you mean? We got two bedrooms, this is what we asked for? “ And they’re like, “No, but we got a better one for you. “ And so, okay, here we go. So you bring all your stuff and it’s like 11:00 PM, you’re tired and you’re just wanting to get … We moved into this other place and it was across the street.
[00:45:03] Jason Smith: And you first walk into this room, you’re like, “This is really nice. This is great.” And it was four beds and one room, but it was a much bigger room. It looked nicer and there was a bathroom in there and it was a really nice place, a whole bank of windows in the back. And so we’re like, “Oh yeah, we’re happy here. Thank you. We’ll take this. “ And we’re like, “Ah, look at that. “ Things that happen to you that you don’t expect, it can work out. And so as we unpack and brush our teeth, crawl into bed, we hear this rumbling and it gets louder. And then it is so loud that we can’t talk and hear each other, actually scream and hear each other because it’s the train going by right behind your place. So those windows were actually a window onto the train tracks that because it was dark, you didn’t see it.
[00:45:57] Jason Smith: And so for the rest of the night, periodically, like every hour, there’d be this train and the whole windows would shake. And so you didn’t sleep at all. And so we laughed and are like pain. And the next day you’re disheveled and bitter and angry, but you’re like, “I can’t believe that. “ And so that’s an example of leaning into it.
[00:46:19] Adam Fishman: Okay. Love that. And also that sounds absolutely miserable. Oh, it was awful.
[00:46:24] Jason Smith: It was awful. Yeah.
[00:46:26] Adam Fishman: Okay. Another one of the kind of important philosophies that you have is this idea of practicing united front parenting. Tell me what united front parenting is.
[00:46:37] Jason Smith: Oh my gosh, I should have my kids on this show. They’d talk about United Front Parenting. It became a label because often you could run to mom or run to dad and get a different answer. And so the simple agreement that I have with my wife is if they run to one of us that we should have the same answer or at least not usurp one another’s opinion or view. And that’s all easy to say. It’s when you are like a dumb dad and you back yourself into a principal corner, I’m saying no to something where you probably shouldn’t have, but now you’re principled about it and your wife’s looking at you going, no, that’s a dumb thing. And it’s a test of like, is she going to be united behind your kind of principle probably wrong idea or is she going to be like, now we’re going to usurp what dad says, because frankly he’s an idiot.
[00:47:30] Jason Smith: He kind of knows it, but he’s not going to admit it right now. For me, it was important to have some degree of united front parenting where they couldn’t go to one and get a different answer or find a way through it. And I would say we were pretty good at that right through until maybe they became teenagers and then it all fell apart and it got a lot worse. But in the younger ages, United Front Parenting, we were united on our opinions and even if one of us were wrong, we’d back up the other.
[00:47:57] Adam Fishman: Well, sometimes it’s hard too because you’ve got the speed at which kids will ping pong between parents and the keeping up with the information that you need to have in order to make the right decision.
[00:48:09] Jason Smith: It’s tough. Well, and then they nerd the personalities. They know that if you’re the parent that is the hard parent, the disciplinary parent versus the one that’ll always be reasonable and hold the bond paramount, who are you going to go to?
[00:48:26] Adam Fishman: Yeah. I’m curious how your relationship has changed with your daughters as they’ve gotten older, right? You did this trip around the world with them over a decade ago now, and what has changed? They’re obviously not the same kids they were in that video. How have you noticed that that changes?
[00:48:46] Jason Smith: Well, I’d say a couple things on this one. I think there’s a natural arc of your kids starting to respect you more as they age, particularly from the business context now that they’ve been exposed to more business. And when their friends are like, “Oh, your dad’s the CEO of X, it’d be great to talk to them.” And suddenly you turn from loser dad that they don’t want to introduce to their friends to like, “Why do my friends want to talk to you? “ Well, because they see a business network potential. And so that is the beginning of a change of a lens, and this is university level where it’s like, “Oh, maybe my dad is as dumb as I thought he was. “ And then there’s a build on from there of like, “Oh, how would you approach this dad?” And now I find both daughters from a business standpoint are seeking me out more.
[00:49:34] Jason Smith: How could I write this email to introduce myself to so- and-so for an informational interview? Is there a better way to frame this? How could I go do research? How should my LinkedIn be? And I’m getting sought out for things that I don’t think I would’ve been sought out for before. So I think university, particularly from a business standpoint, it creates a new level of respect for maybe what you’ve done, whether it’s accomplishments or the work ethic or there’s enough podcasts that we’re on or speeches that we’ve given or news articles or things that they’re like, oh, but mostly it’s about their friends going, “I’d love to meet your dad if they could, because I’m interested in starting blah, blah, blah.” So that’s one. I think the other thing, just that foundation that you get off grid from that trip is something that we still talk about a decade plus later.
[00:50:23] Jason Smith: And so there’s points of laughter of like, do you remember riding out of the desert in Jordan on a camel? And remember that cut that you got there that it looks a lot like that one. And there’s just a reference point of some of the humor or remember when mom yelled at you at one of the temples in Egypt and it ruined the entire tour and we had to go sit in the tour bus. And these are just things that randomly kind of pull up again. And whether it’s a picture that pulls up on your Apple TV and it creates a memory or song or some conversation at a dinner, there’s a connection and there’s a warmth and a glow that comes from that deep only off grid connection that I think you can get that is really beneficial. And so I would say that’s a connection point.
[00:51:15] Jason Smith: The last thing I’d say is that deep understanding that came from that trip of where the hot buttons are as it’s the same hot buttons that you’re going to have. So they know exactly what the hot buttons are. They can choose to hit them or not, but they really know them. There’s no inadvertently bumping into them. And so that was, came into focus, I think, on the trip and continually sharpened through the teenage years.
[00:51:37] Adam Fishman: I love that. That’s a pretty nice way of putting it. Okay. I have just a couple more things for you before lightning round. I had another dad on this show recently and he was talking about the importance of hardship, making sure that kids experienced hard things, which is something that, at least in the United States, we’ve kind of drifted away from this a bit. The pendulum moves back and forth. I know that this is a philosophy that you believe in as well. I also subscribe to the theory that kids can do harder things than we think. And so I’m just curious to, how did you develop this thought? Is this sort of steeped in company building or your own life lessons or something else?
[00:52:20] Jason Smith: It’s interesting. I’ll start by the systemic fear that drives that behavior. I think I’m hyper sensitive of my kids feeling entitled to something. I’m hypersensitive to the feeling that they won’t work for something because it’s right there, that they won’t appreciate that there’s fruit in the bowl that they could have whenever they want. And so that’s probably like a deeply rooted issue that I never want them to take something for granted. And so I’ve got to acknowledge that as a driving force for part of it. The other piece is just, again, the startup experience that if you put the work in and you really, really drive at it, like every day, one foot in front of the other, often you can make it through, most people will give up. And so how do you make sure that the success that you’ve had that gives them the indulgences of the trappings of wealth, of like going to a private school, of living in a nice house, of having a place in Whistler that they can go to with friends that also have places in Whistler, and a ski pass is a given, and new skis are a given.
[00:53:30] Jason Smith: And all of this stuff that creates this sense of like, “Well, that’s what life is like. “ And you spit them into the real world and we all know that life isn’t like that. And so they have two choices at that point. They run back to you and go, “Where’s the spigot? I’m used to this life. I don’t want it to change.” Or you’re prepping them through that period and saying, “You got to earn this. “ For me, it’s entirely self-earned. Nothing was given. I support my parents. That is, it’s a very much a self-earned thing. So there’s this built-in desire for them to understand that before they hit the real world. And now that they’re hitting it, we long talked about paying for their education, but once graduating, they’re on their own. And like my daughter, we’ve had this conversation very recently of like, in her terms, I’m cut off now.
[00:54:24] Jason Smith: I’m cut off. And I think for her to try to get her head around what cutoff means, you’re not quite cut off. We just bought you a plane ticket to Sydney, Australia. But in her mind, your cutoff means I can’t just automatically get what I want anymore. The ski pass is going to be bought by you now.You’re going to do save and find a way to do it and think about money in a different way. And obviously all the budgeting stuff that you do throughout their youth, you’re trying to create this understanding of money, but it’s a delicate balance between giving them the luxuries that you fought to afford and not overindulging them. And I think one of the biggest challenges is depending on the area you live and the school that you go to, you’re surrounded by others that have probably more wealth, some less, some more.
[00:55:11] Jason Smith: And the bar that they look at is whatever the higher bar is. And they’re like, “Are we poor?” They have a plane. You’re like, “What is going on? “ And so just understanding that it can’t just be handed to you is really important to me. And so it’s little things that we try and teach them of like, “You’re going to have to figure that out on your own.” Both my kids did exchanges and when you are suddenly in Europe on your own needing to figure out train schedules and where you’re going to stay and your parents aren’t booking your plane tickets and figuring out all that, you grow up and you got to make your own food and all those stuff that happens when you hit university. One of my daughters did that at her last year of high school and it just accelerated her confidence in learning that she could do it.
[00:55:57] Jason Smith: And so I wouldn’t call that hardship, but I would call it leading towards doing stuff on your own and then knowing that some of the outcomes that might be negative, like you work really hard, you don’t get what you think, you didn’t make it enough money as you went tree planning and it was hellish and you spent three months getting bitten by mosquitoes and you made less than somebody who you know that stayed in town and worked as a waitress. But you somehow figured out how to do it and get up every day and work 10 hours in a bush and plant a thousand trees and do things that were hard. And the more that they accomplished those things and get through them, and even if there’s failure, they’re like, “I still got through it. I’m still on the other side.” And I think prepping that for the real world is critical.
[00:56:42] Jason Smith: So to me, I’m trying to do that within the reality of the bubble that we all live in by giving them the indulgences that we can afford.
[00:56:51] Adam Fishman: When you think about your daughters starting their 20s, what are you most excited about for them for the next decade of their lives?
[00:57:01] Jason Smith: I would say quick failing. I really am excited for them to quick fail. And so my advice to them in their 20s is like, nothing is locked in. It is a time to go explore. It is a time to fail. It is a time to learn. It is a time to not be afraid of the failure of the rejection piece. And that’s what I’m most excited about. My eldest daughter on the rejection piece wanted to be an actress. And my younger daughter probably had more God-given talent, but my elder daughter was the one that was driven and has spent nine years being rejected on trying to audition and getting nothing. And she’s like, “Dad, it’s the best thing because I want to do it. I want to breakthrough and I know that if I keep going, I’ll find a way to breakthrough.” And so you get used to the rejection, you were used to the failure.
[00:57:52] Jason Smith: And once you can normalize that, you become way less afraid of taking steps. And so quick fail is what I hope for.
[00:57:59] Adam Fishman: Okay, cool. This episode’s going to drop in 2026, the beginning of the year, which is wild to think about, although we’re almost there. What is something that you’re really excited about and optimistic about for 2026?
[00:58:14] Jason Smith: Having an Android robot do my laundry and my dirty work in my house that is apparently a 25 grand down payment right now.
[00:58:22] Adam Fishman: A neo robot. Yeah.
[00:58:23] Jason Smith: Exactly. It’s hard as a startup entrepreneur that’s deep in the AI world not to be excited about what’s happening. I started my first business in the world of internet, the dawn of the internet. And man, was it ever exciting? And I look back at that kid and I’m like, “You should have just registered domain names, buddy.” And so I think of me now going, “What would I tell me 10 years from now to go, what are the domain name registrations of the AI era?” And so I’m loving and really excited about this. Everything’s up in the air all over again. There’s huge questions about what’s going to happen. Nobody can really predict even a year out, it seems. And so there’s this huge degree of uncertainty which brings opportunity. And so I’m most excited about that exploration and having my kids, frankly, lean right into it.
[00:59:20] Jason Smith: So bringing it back to my daughters, one of the side hustles that my daughter’s doing is like, “Dad, I don’t think many people know how to use these AI tools. What if I went to real estate folks and could take their blueprints and take their images and give them virtual walkthroughs of their stuff for five grand instead of 50?” I’m like, “You should try that. “ And so she spent two weeks learning every AI tool to try and actually do that and finding the gaps. And that’s why I mean my quick fail. Some of those tools didn’t work for her, some did. Now she learns the limitations of them. So to me, getting them ingrained in this AI revolution, in this opportunity, and understand where the Edges of those opportunities are with today’s model or today’s tool and knowing two weeks later there could be a new iteration.
[01:00:07] Jason Smith: That’s what I’m most excited about.
[01:00:08] Adam Fishman: Okay. Well, now I can’t wait for 26 with that pep talk. How can people follow along or be helpful to you?
[01:00:16] Jason Smith: I’d say I’m on LinkedIn. I try and post a lot about what it’s like to be a startup entrepreneur, less so a startup ad. Maybe I need a post on that. You can look for Jason Smith. Klue with a K is the company name. Or you could slash onemore Smith, O-N-E-M-O-R-E S-M-I-T-H, which is what my domain was, onemoresmith.com where I did all my posting.
[01:00:39] Adam Fishman: I love that, by the way. I saw that that was your LinkedIn profile and I was like, oh, this is beautiful. Adam Smith was taken. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Okay. Do you have a couple minutes for lightning round? I’ve created a special condensed lightning round for you. So here we go. What would you say is the most indispensable parenting product that you’ve ever purchased? The jolly jumper that you could put your kids into in the doorframe. Okay. What is the most useless parenting product that you’ve ever purchased?
[01:01:08] Jason Smith: The jolly jumper.
[01:01:14] Adam Fishman: That may be a first on the show. Yeah. I love that. Okay. True or false, there’s only one correct way to load the dishwasher.
[01:01:22] Jason Smith: Oh, 1,000% true and every dad on this show agrees with
[01:01:27] Adam Fishman: Me. You’re very right. It is the majority. The vast majority of dads are in the camp. We’re going to all have to teach our AI robots how to do that.
[01:01:36] Jason Smith: Undo, because we know our wives are never going to learn. So our only shot are those AI robots.
[01:01:42] Adam Fishman: Yes. Okay. What
[01:01:43] Jason Smith: Is your signature
[01:01:44] Adam Fishman: Dad’s superpower?
[01:01:46] Jason Smith: Oh, it’s a sad admission, but it’s going to be literally the power to grind through
[01:01:53] Adam Fishman: Things. Okay. All right. Across 20 years, 20 plus years of parenting, what would you say your least favorite parenting task is?
[01:02:03] Jason Smith: Being the disciplinarian, being the one that has to hold the principal line. My wife likes to say, “There are no lines.” And I’m like, “We agreed to a line.” So being the enforcer of the line as the lone parent is not ideal.
[01:02:20] Adam Fishman: Okay. If your daughters had to describe you in one word, what would it be?
[01:02:25] Jason Smith: Entrepreneur.
[01:02:26] Adam Fishman: Okay. What is the most embarrassing thing that you’ve ever done in front of your daughters? Or what would they say is the most embarrassing thing?
[01:02:36] Jason Smith: I should really ask them this one. That is a great question. I’m trying to think of what the worst one is. I’ll tell you what the repeat offender is. I have no bones about telling a server or a driver or any service person what’s wrong. And so if I’m in a Uber with them or I’m at a restaurant with them, they’re like, “Dad, just let it go. Just it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.” I’m like, “Well, you did this and there’s a better way to do it. “ And they’re like, “I’m the type of dad that would go into McDonald’s and figure out a way how to try and make it more efficient and tell the front cashier person.” And they’re like, “Dude, do you want a happy meal? Get out of here.”
[01:03:18] Adam Fishman: This reminds me of my very best friend’s dad who used to get up in diners and go get his own coffee if it wasn’t happening at the speed that he liked.
[01:03:29] Jason Smith: Am I ashamed to admit that I’ve done that way too many times? Introduce me to your best
[01:03:34] Adam Fishman: Friend. Yeah, I will. I will.
[01:03:36] Jason Smith: Okay.
[01:03:37] Adam Fishman: What is your favorite kids movie?
[01:03:40] Jason Smith: Wow. Kids movie. That’s an interesting one. I can’t say The Matrix then, obviously.
[01:03:45] Adam Fishman: No.
[01:03:46] Jason Smith: I’m going to have to go with Frozen because I have two daughters.
[01:03:48] Adam Fishman: Okay. So The Matrix may be the answer to this next question then, which is what is the first nostalgic movie that you forced your daughters to watch with you?
[01:03:57] Jason Smith: It was The Matrix. It was The Matrix. Okay. And they did not find it as interesting as
[01:04:03] Adam Fishman: I did that first kit. But it is fascinating. Okay. How often do you tell your daughters back in my day stories?
[01:04:13] Jason Smith: Come on. Every startup dad listening to this right now is like way, way too often. Yes. And you try not to talk about how the snow cliffs are 10 feet and you walked in bare feet to school and the rest of it. But man, when did we become our dads? We all did. It’s true. And we all have of like, this is how we did it. And the unfortunate reality is all the lessons, all the lessons of the hardship piece are grounded in the, “Look, I didn’t have that opportunity.
[01:04:39] Adam Fishman: You
[01:04:39] Jason Smith: Should beat that.
[01:04:40] Adam Fishman: Okay. Final question for you. I know you’re pseudo empty nester now, but what is your take on minivans?
[01:04:51] Jason Smith: I love them. Okay. I know my wife would violently vehemently at least disagree. I’ve always thought minivans are ideal. You can fit so much stuff in them. And I’ve always loved minivans. And weirdly, before I had a family, I’m like, minivans are cool. I’d like one.
[01:05:07] Adam Fishman: They are the perfect vehicle for a lot of people. Okay, Jason, with that, we have survived Lightning Round and this interview. Thank you so much for taking all the time with me and best of luck to you and your family. Thanks for having me. Take care. Thank you for listening to today’s episode with Jason Smith. 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.