He Brought His Potty to My Client Meeting | Mike Malloy (Dad of 1, Malloy Industries)

[00:00:00] Mike Malloy: there's five resources, time, attention, money, energy and effort. Spend money to buy time. Time is the thing. You can't get more, you can almost get more money like you can. Figure it out. And if you help enough other people get whatever they want in life, you can have whatever you want.
[00:00:12] 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. I've talked to a lot of parents looking for more flexible work. One of the paths they go down is the fractional executive path. Today I'm joined by Mike Malloy.
[00:00:35] Adam Fishman: He's the founder of Malloy Industries, which connects entrepreneurs and founders who are scaling businesses with vetted fractional executives. He's also a professor at Georgetown and is a husband and the father of Malloy Industries Chief Cuteness Officer. His three-year-old son, son Max. We talked about hilarious remote work interactions he's had with his son, the concept of being where your feet are, how he transitions between work mode and dad mode, and maintains his focus successfully.
[00:01:08] Adam Fishman: Frameworks around time blocking and nightly maps, and planning his family's meals with a custom GPT he built called Chef Jacques. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to Startup Dad on YouTube. Spotify or Apple.
[00:01:23] Adam Fishman: Welcome Mike Malloy to startup Dad, Mike, it is a pleasure having you here today,
[00:01:30] Mike Malloy: it is a pleasure to be here and I appreciate your mastery of the English language and the Irish, uh, perhaps as well.
[00:01:37] Adam Fishman: Excellent. I know that I have found the right guest for this podcast because when we were scheduling it, we received an out of office notice from you that read. I am out of office celebrating our Chief Cuteness Officer Max Michael Malloy's third birthday. congrats on two things. One is having a kid turn.
[00:02:00] Adam Fishman: Three, congratulations, you've made it. Pass the twos and onto the three major phase. And two, also, congrats on having a chief cuteness officer, that's pretty fun.
[00:02:11] Mike Malloy: highly recommended. They add a lot of value to company culture. They join a lot of meetings, kind of Kramer style, just like coming in that door. and it's been a pleasure working with him for the past three plus years as well.
[00:02:23] Adam Fishman: Awesome. And as I understand it, max has actually helped you close a couple of deals, uh, in your business. So tell me about remote work, toddler style, and how he's helped you close a deal or two.
[00:02:35] Mike Malloy: Yeah. So at this point, like I'm all in that remote work is the future. Like COVID happened, people know how to do things on the internet and it's also socially acceptable to have a two-year-old or a three-year-old kind of barge in and, you know, tell you that you have to go outside and play Frisbee with him.
[00:02:53] Mike Malloy: And if that's gonna happen, then I may end the call, but hey, I gotta wrap it up, you know, but have actually been able to close a sale because he pulled me out to go play with him and maybe a few minutes before we would've ended the meeting, they're like, yeah, alright, you know, we, we do need that fractional executive.
[00:03:05] Mike Malloy: Let's do the kickoff call on Monday. Send me the contract invoice, we're good to go. So, you know, having that second baseman assist, uh, which is not planned because you know, you can't plan when a toddler barges in and tells you it's playtime.
[00:03:18] Adam Fishman: You certainly cannot, and no lock will hold him, uh, keep him at bay, I'm sure. So
[00:03:23] Mike Malloy: be contained, uh, at all. And, I had another meeting a few weeks ago with a client, I'm at a standing desk here, and he's in the throes of potty training, potty learning, if you will, and, uh, comes in with this potty right as the call starts, puts it down right at my feet within three seconds, takes a nice poop, and then proceeds to sit there for the next 30 minutes throughout the entire meeting.
[00:03:45] Mike Malloy: Just, you know, playing peacefully and letting me enjoy the, the sense of my labor.
[00:03:49] Adam Fishman: I understand that he's also helped
[00:03:51] Mike Malloy: I
[00:03:52] Adam Fishman: some clients too with his, uh, executive summary CRAN skills.
[00:03:56] Adam Fishman: tell me about that.
[00:03:57] Mike Malloy: Yep. So he is a budding artist. Uh, you know, part of being cute is also being creative. And, I do some old school kind of printouts. If you could see my desk, there's stuff all over the place, which is at his height now that he can reach over, add his, uh, his markings to, uh, which we have then very thoughtfully sent back to the client.
[00:04:15] Mike Malloy: So they knew, you know, that we were taking their work seriously.
[00:04:18] Mike Malloy: you mentioned to me in our prep for the show that yesterday your son went off to camp for the first time and he's three
[00:04:28] Adam Fishman: so that was a new experience for you and your wife. Is that right?
[00:04:32] Mike Malloy: very much so. and even bringing this up, like I'm feeling all of the feels as we have been very blessed. we live here at the beach in Delaware, thanks to COVID migration. And since he was born, he's just been at home with mom and dad. You know, I was his primary caregiver for the first couple of years building my business, teaching at Georgetown remotely.
[00:04:50] Mike Malloy: And my wife had a, a full large business job, and couldn't have a, a chief puni officer and offer meetings. about a year ago when he turned two, he said, Hey honey, like business is going pretty well. Why don't you retire until he goes to school and you just be home with him? we've never had daycare, we've never like dropped him off somewhere and gone to work.
[00:05:10] Mike Malloy: And yesterday was the first time we, dropped him off at like 9:00 AM at a summer camp for five hours, you know, 15 minutes away and like. Cried a lot, at just like the moment of him growing up and like leaving the nest, you know, and that like he could be somewhere else and he's old enough that he doesn't necessarily need us and like processing.
[00:05:34] Mike Malloy: He's never gonna go back to what he was when he was two or one or an infant. And he's gonna continue to kind of expand and that's the goal of parenthood, right? Like, we're raising them to go out and be positive contributions in the world and play with other kids and learn and grow and fail and skin their knees and do all this other stuff.
[00:05:54] Mike Malloy: But I think it was way harder on me than it was for him. we went and picked him up at two and he was like, it was great. I don't wanna go home. This is so fun here. And I'm just like, you're coming home right now and we are going to play together for the rest of the day. these are raw emotions I will just say of like, the fact that he is not here all day, every day and isn't always gonna like come in that door.
[00:06:11] Mike Malloy: What was the decision? for him to go off to camp now, is getting ready for school in the fall? Like
[00:06:19] Adam Fishman: what was the rationale there?
[00:06:20] Mike Malloy: yeah, TBD about school in the fall. Um, we are on the wait list for some schools here, and we may just have another year, and I think after camp one day we're like, he's never gonna school. Like we will homeschool him until he is 18 and then I'll be his college roommate and that will be that. we do think socializing with other kids and, you know, getting some of those, those skills and not being as, you know, tied to our, our hands or legs.
[00:06:41] Mike Malloy: you know, we do a lot of like library story times and different play groups and stuff, but, for mom and dad to both leave is, is new.
[00:06:46] Adam Fishman: Yeah. What does a 3-year-old do at camp all day, by the way?
[00:06:51] Mike Malloy: great question. played with dinosaurs. There were some magnet tiles. They went to the gym and played with balls. There was bowling involved. and last night before bed, I learned that when he opened the teapot, there was a mirror in there and that was like super silly.
[00:07:05] Mike Malloy: That sounds like a really fun camp, by the way. Kudos to the two of you for finding it.
[00:07:08] Adam Fishman: So,okay. So let's talk a little bit about your company. 'cause I think there's a nice intersection between what you do professionally and how that works for parents. So
[00:07:17] Adam Fishman: your company, Malloy Industries named after you,
[00:07:21] Mike Malloy: my dad a a little bit of Tony Stark, Iron Man, Stark Industries, uh, referenced in there.
[00:07:26] Adam Fishman: You help people find fractional executives. In my mind, that means you're like, that's kind of what I do for work, outside of this podcast, which is more of a labor of love than it is a, a job. that means you're helping out a lot of parents, probably. a lot of parents are fractional executives themselves.
[00:07:45] Adam Fishman: They can't or don't want to do full-time work. they like the flexibility that the fractional executive lifestyle offers them. Maybe I'm speaking for myself only here, but I think it's pretty common. did starting this business or or founding this company have anything to do with you, yourself being a parent or the idea of
[00:08:07] Mike Malloy: Yeah,
[00:08:08] Adam Fishman: parents more flexibility or is it just so worked out that way?
[00:08:12] Mike Malloy: there's definitely a level of serendipity, but it also tied into like my lifestyle design and I'm a both a, literally a student of Cal Newport in that I went to grad school at Georgetown and he was my master's professor in computer science. But also love his book. Uh, so good they Can't Ignore You, which talks about career capital and like once you ha acquire these rare and valuable skills, you don't have to take a promotion and work 70 hours a week.
[00:08:37] Mike Malloy: You could actually say no to that. Say, actually, I'm only gonna be available 30, 80 or 20 hours a week for you and I'm gonna give you another client or two that I enjoy working with and I don't have to deal with the office bureaucracy and things that go into full-time employment. I'm just really smart and will get my stuff done.
[00:08:53] Mike Malloy: A lot of those fractional executives that are really smart and can do great things are actually not really great at sales and don't like selling themselves and doing the business development and finding the projects. And I personally have previous experience as a Deloitte consultant, a traveling sunglasses salesman, a startup CEO incubator program director and an adjunct professor.
[00:09:11] Mike Malloy: And I'm really passionate about being a relentlessly generous and enthusiastically fun force for good in the world, helping entrepreneurs buy back their freedom and time so they can focus on what matters most to them both professionally and personally. So during COVID, I migrated to the beach in Delaware from DC and I had been running incubator in DC when they said, Hey, Mike, April, 2021, come back to the office.
[00:09:34] Mike Malloy: I was kinda like, Hey, actually this background is not near you. I'm two and a half hours away, so I'm probably gonna take a, another entrepreneurial leap at 34 and married, which was different than 25 and single. I had financial projections and a whole presentation for my wife and everything, like, it's gonna be great, honey, trust me.
[00:09:48] Mike Malloy: and so that summer it was great. Uh, it was kind of Mike Malloy, the single shingle sales, marketing, fundraising, consulting, uh, helping a lot of clients, but to, to be vulnerable. in September, uh, my mom passed away and that was very unexpected and ties into this parent theme of like, you know, mom and dad had a big impact on who I am.
[00:10:07] Mike Malloy: And, that same week she passed away. My wife found out she was pregnant with our chief cuteness officer. So whole circle of life, a lot of feels. I took a month off to kind of grieve and was with my dad. And as I got back to Oregon October, I realized like I made $0 in September and that was okay for a month, but how do I take paternity leave in seven months and how do I make money if I wanna be with my son?
[00:10:32] Mike Malloy: And that I had a very clear single to Mayo. He came in April 29th, but like seven months to like build a business that wasn't reliable on me solely to make money. And I've done, at this point, more than 500 customer discovery interviews, like I'm all in the future of work is fractional.
[00:10:47] Mike Malloy: I can't be the change I wanna see in the world alone. I, I need to leverage the amazing people around me. therefore, like I'm now the CEO at Malloy Industries, and which creates more time and freedom for CEOs by giving their undesirable hats that like don't fit that well, that isn't their zone of genius to vetted fractional executives.
[00:11:05] Mike Malloy: We help them grow and scale from one to 2 million to 10, 20, 50 million in annual revenue, by bringing in these fractional executives who can lead their marketing or their sales or their operations or their finance function in about 10 hours a week, depending on the business.
[00:11:23] Adam Fishman: Very cool. And I saw, uh, a post that you had on LinkedIn a while ago that you and your dad were both working a trade show together.
[00:11:30] Mike Malloy: Yeah.
[00:11:31] Adam Fishman: similar shirt to what you're wearing now, but
[00:11:33] Adam Fishman: I was gonna say, I'm guessing that's sort of like your theme for, for attire.
[00:11:37] Mike Malloy: I'm a Hawaiian shirt guy and a dad joke guy. So let me just sprinkle one in here. what do you call a camel with three humps
[00:11:45] Adam Fishman: I don't know.
[00:11:46] Mike Malloy: pregnant?
[00:11:51] Mike Malloy: I have, if you can't see over that shoulder, an entire desk calendar of daily dad jokes. So maybe we'll get a couple in at the end here too. There's no reason Adam nor listeners, that you should have to wait till the end. I think we might sprinkle them in throughout, you know, like, Do you know why the the watch had to go on vacation
[00:12:10] Adam Fishman: I don't,
[00:12:11] Mike Malloy: to unwind?
[00:12:12] Adam Fishman: That's a good one. Okay. So, uh, man, I don't know how I'm gonna recover from that one. so your wife finds out she's pregnant, in the same week that your mom passes away, you running a business that's made zero money and now you're gonna have a kid. what was the conversation like with your wife about like, oh, we're gonna have a kid, this company's not
[00:12:43] Adam Fishman: doing anything yet.
[00:12:44] Mike Malloy: We were doing something, we'd made maybe like 40 grand, you know, so like, it wasn't nothing but like she was definitely winning the bread
[00:12:51] Adam Fishman: so I'm just curious about like the process of you starting your own thing in the first place
[00:12:58] Mike Malloy: Mm-hmm.
[00:12:59] Adam Fishman: the same time that you're doing family planning and you're expecting to,
[00:13:02] Adam Fishman: create a family. Like, what was the conversation like with you and your wife, about that whole dynamic and plan?
[00:13:10] Mike Malloy: a lot of it was around can I find profitable projects to have somebody else do the client service. You know, we're talking now, four years later, we've served over a hundred clients. We have a network of 400 fractional executives. I don't do any of the client service except for like three CEO coaching clients 'cause I really love working with them.
[00:13:30] Mike Malloy: but I am primarily built this whole. System and process and like SOPs and documentation and we got a core team of six besides me that are doing all this amazing work. But if we're going back to like when we got pregnant, it was just me working long hours trying to figure out how do I do this? What are the processes I need?
[00:13:50] Mike Malloy: Where do I find clients? Who are the people that I should be meeting with to, to be a fractional executive? It's like a supply and demand marketplace at this point. I've crushed the supply side. I have a flywheel going where like every day somebody emails me a new fractional executive and I will graciously catch them and say, you can join our network, but I can promise you zero work.
[00:14:10] Mike Malloy: 'cause I'm trying to focus on the demand side and how do we utilize a lot more of the, the capacity we have. and so it was trial and error. It was learning, you know, it was starting to ask the question who not how. That's a great one. From Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy's book I. and this is great for entrepreneurs, it was great for me.
[00:14:28] Mike Malloy: I think it's probably great for you too, Adam, uh, like who can help solve this problem? Challenge obstacle, not, how am I personally gonna find more hours in the 168 hours every week to do it brute force? 'cause that's gonna lead to burnout.
[00:14:41] Adam Fishman: I do like that framing who, not how, I'm not sure that I've ever heard that before, but it makes, now that I've heard it, I can't
[00:14:47] Mike Malloy: Yeah. it also works for like mowing your lawn or grocery shopping, you know, or picking up like you can pay people, especially with like different apps on your phone to do a lot of things, so that you can shuffle up to more impactful, higher leverage work or create systems that have leverage there's five resources, time, attention, money, energy and effort. Spend money to buy time. Time is the thing. You can't get more, you can almost get more money like you can. Figure it out. And if you help enough other people get whatever they want in life, you can have whatever you want.
[00:15:14] Adam Fishman:
[00:15:14] Mike Malloy: you can. Figure it out. And if you help enough other people get whatever they want in life, you can have whatever you want.
[00:15:19] Adam Fishman: you said something to me that I wanted to ask you about in the show, and that was with business or with parenting being where your feet are or be where your feet are. does that mean?
[00:15:35] Mike Malloy: So right now, my feet are sitting at my desk having a great podcast conversation with you. I am focused on this. When this is over, I'm gonna be where my feet are for 30 minutes with Monty and my ops manager, and then I'm gonna shut it down. I'm gonna go be in dad mode the rest of the day. when you are with your kids or with your spouse, be with your family.
[00:15:53] Mike Malloy: And one of the best ways I have found to do this is to take Steve Jobs greatest invention out of your pocket. So you can't touch it, so you can't see it. And by the way, there's research that shows, even seeing somebody else's phone on the table or nearby makes you think about the fact that you can access everything on the internet and Wikipedia and news span.com.
[00:16:11] Mike Malloy: And now is AI like. No, like take it away, get on the ground, build some trains, my son did learn this weekend. He can like flip his show over and make a shop so he can like, sell stuff. And I was trying to get him to eat some apples and peanut butter. So I dipped one in and I was like, max, do you accept Apple Pay?
[00:16:29] Mike Malloy: And he was like, yeah, I like Apple Pay I'll, and he gave me a piece of a rainbow. I was like, this is great. We're, we're gonna use this. And he also accepts avocado pay, you know, we're expanding, the different payment processing systems in, in his shop. but yeah, the idea of being where your feet are not worrying about the emails or meetings you have tomorrow.
[00:16:47] Mike Malloy: it's very healthy for me to have a shut down protocol where like I'm closing the windows, I'm shutting down the computer and like five to six, somewhere in the five to six range, like I'm done. I don't go back to my computer. I do the bedtime train. When I get spit out around nine o'clock, no matter what time we start the train we're getting out, training gets off around nine.
[00:17:06] Mike Malloy: So, I don't have the energy or the desire to work. Like I wanna wind down, maybe spend some time with my wife and then I'm gonna get up early before the house wakes up kind of guy. the earlier I can go to bed, then I can do some focused work, before the, the morning with my wife and the kid.
[00:17:21] Adam Fishman: Yeah. So you, you mentioned in that, uh, work mode, dad mode, a process. tell me a little bit more about like how you power down
[00:17:31] Mike Malloy: Yeah.
[00:17:32] Adam Fishman: mode and power up dad mode?
[00:17:34] Mike Malloy: I'm a huge fan of Ryan Holiday, so I've read his Daily Stoic for started maybe a decade ago as my sunglasses business. I went through bankruptcy and like, it was pretty sad and depressing, and Stoicism really helped me persevere through that. He has a great page of day book called The Daily Dad, which is over there on my stack of books, so I can't quite reach it, that is a phenomenal like 5 0 1 to read the one page.
[00:17:57] Mike Malloy: As I leave my office and go, go get max. For years he was taking a nap that he was getting up from in the fives. he has surpassed the nap stage of, childhood. So, uh, a little more frenetic in, in how I get that page in. But that has been a great way to, to make that transition. And, and it takes like less than a minute to read it.
[00:18:17] Mike Malloy: Reflect, oh, this is guy's a good dad story. Okay, how can I be this? Like, I would highly recommend that for, for all the dads out there. There's a daily dad.com, like newsletter. If you're an email kind of guy. I like the physical thing to uh, help kind of segue it. And then I also have a box that, uh, I bought on Etsy, a few months ago, and it says like, family time, put your phone in here.
[00:18:37] Mike Malloy: And it came in the middle. My wife's like, what is this? Are you trying to tell me? I gotta, I was like, no, no, no, honey, that this is just for me. I just know that I don't want it in my pocket. And I also will like take out my, my headphones present Play with empty pockets is one of my, my affirmations and, a big fan of Dr.
[00:18:52] Mike Malloy: Becky and her like good inside book and some of the principles there. So like, PNP time is play, no phone time. So like, can I be fully present and just play with my son without technology? and I think it's incredibly rewarding for him and it is for me as well. Like it's fulfilling. Like this is what fills me up after work.
[00:19:10] Mike Malloy: and I play old twin Frisbee for more than a decade and he's getting pretty good at like the chicken wing throw. So, you know, we go outside and throw for at least five minutes a day and, you know, we'll be there in no time.
[00:19:19] Adam Fishman: Very nice. Well, we'll make sure we end this show on time so that you can get back to it. I want to come back to some of that stuff you said in a little bit, but, um, I wanted to get in another quick story. 'cause you've got a ton of great parenting stories. Tell me about the great cheese stick negotiation.
[00:19:35] Mike Malloy: So this, this bedtime train it, uh, it leaves the station and it starts chugging along. Maybe, maybe we've taken a bath, maybe we've even brushed our teeth. without fail, there needs to be some additional nourishment, usually after we brush our teeth. 'cause that's the best time to continue eating.
[00:19:49] Mike Malloy: and we're pretty good at pretzels most days. Like Hey, this is our bag of pretzels. And I've learned to ration about three books worth of pretzels. Uh, you know, 'cause that's an order of a unit of time measure there. but one day he was just like, no, I want a cheese stick. I want cheese. I was like, I don't have any,
[00:20:04] Mike Malloy: And he is like, we need one. So anybody who has a kid knows, like, you never win these negotiations. I don't know, like they don't care. you wanna get better at business, just like take the toddler negotiation approach and just like tell them over and over and over and over and over again, which you'll get it.
[00:20:18] Mike Malloy: It's pretty easy. that is why the train never really, uh, lands at the station before 9:00 PM 'cause there's always, uh, another cheese stick or something that needs, uh, needs to be delivered.
[00:20:26] Adam Fishman: Yeah, but the secret is give him two cheese sticks, one for each hand,
[00:20:31] Mike Malloy: Hmm.
[00:20:31] Adam Fishman: can't actually play with the stuff, and so the only thing to do is walk back to the
[00:20:37] Mike Malloy: This is why you're the host and I'm just the guest.
[00:20:39] Adam Fishman: Well, I mean, we talk about cheese sticks on just about every show, so, uh, it's, it's a requirement. okay. Speaking of the bedtime train, what are, some of your favorite books to read to Max?
[00:20:54] Mike Malloy: so we've got a great one, uh, daddy and me about, like, these two bears that go on some adventures and ever since he was like a newborn, would read that one. And, uh, really love it. never touch a porcupine. All time favorite. There's a whole never touch a series, but like at least a hundred times have read.
[00:21:09] Mike Malloy: Never Touch a Porcupine. And then my chief of staff, Tina got him maybe for his first or second birthday. looks like a lunch pail with four little Thomas the train books in it. That thing has gone all sorts of places. I would say cracking the track is like our number one. Uh, you know that that towed in the road?
[00:21:26] Mike Malloy: Yeah. It's a whole called this calls the bus to unload and then whew. Yeah, Thomas and Percy go on some adventures there. and then, uh, this week's favorite 'cause we have a rotating, we have a whole library in his bedroom, is from the Lewis Library. It's called Fox is Coming. And the whole time you read the book, there's a very ferocious looking fox who's basically collecting little chickies to what you assume.
[00:21:48] Mike Malloy: What foxes do with chickies is he's, oh, I got two. I got, I got two this time. I got you all. And then he is like, and at the end everybody is on the next page laughing. Ha ha ha. You're so good at hide and go seek. Oh, it's just a hide and go seek game with Fox. Glad that one took a turn there at the end, because first time I read that I was just like, honey, what did you get from the library this week?
[00:22:11] Adam Fishman: Well, how very cynical of you, Mike, to think that that fox was gonna eat those chickens. Of course it's gonna play hide and seek
[00:22:19] Mike Malloy: Of course.
[00:22:20] Adam Fishman: what foxes do, right?
[00:22:22] Mike Malloy: Well, we are in a, a Zootopia kick right now. So, Nick Wild, the Fox room Zootopia and, and I will give a citation to that camel joke is from Nick Wild telling the sloth of the DMVA joke in Zootopia.
[00:22:33] Adam Fishman: Yes, I remember that. To make them take even longer, filling out the paperwork so that it's dark outside when they, uh, I, maybe I just spoiled it. Uh oh.
[00:22:42] Mike Malloy: it's okay.
[00:22:42] Adam Fishman: okay. You mentioned Never Touch a Porcupine, which I don't think I've read that one. I'm sure it's a classic of the genre of the never touch genre, but you mentioned you've read it like a hundred plus times.
[00:22:53] Adam Fishman: Have you reached the point where you actually have memorized this book and you can just recite while turning the pages? Like you don't even have to look at it anymore?
[00:23:01] Mike Malloy: So if we were doing this a year ago, absolutely. Like I had it nailed and I thought about reading the thing. I was like, huh, I don't have all of that in my short term memory. And you know, parents of toddlers don't have all the brain cells that non-parents have. So today I could not, but there definitely was, a period where like, Uhhuh and this is what's gonna happen next.
[00:23:17] Mike Malloy: Okay.
[00:23:18] Adam Fishman: That is it. For those who don't know with young children, you often read books quite a lot. That is a technique that I picked up, which was you memorize a book after a decent amount of reading it,
[00:23:28] Mike Malloy: Let me give your, your listeners another pro tip. Memorize the order in which you sing. Old McDonald had a farm, the animals and the order of which the wheels and the bus things are so that you can be completely exhausted in the middle of the night and need no decision fatigue energy to know that it's gonna go for me.
[00:23:47] Mike Malloy: It goes cow duck. Cat dog. Did he fall asleep? No. Okay. Pig horse. Did he fall asleep? No. Okay. Start at the top. by like month six, I learned that. I was like, I'm just going in the same order. I don't need to decide creatively what's gonna go next.
[00:23:59] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Oh, that actually may be the best pro tip that's ever been delivered on this show. I love that. I love that one. okay, I wanna talk about frameworks, uh, for work and family. So you've got a few. I want to talk about time blocking nightly maps. And we talked a little bit about the wooden box, but I'm curious about the inspiration for that.
[00:24:21] Adam Fishman: So first let's talk about time blocking. a lot of people on the show have talked about time blocking and everyone kind of has like a different take or a different level of success with it. So I'm curious how it works for you and what you've had to do in order to kind of make it successful.
[00:24:36] Mike Malloy: It is definitely an iterative approach. It is a personalized there. I can't give a prescription to every listener, but I can give you some questions to reflect on such that you can design your ideal day or week. Week is probably a better term, to be successful. First things first is like, when is your green zone?
[00:24:54] Mike Malloy: Like when do you have the most energy, that you can do creative, hard work and schedule? No meetings in that time. And for me it's mornings. So like I get up around six before the house wakes up and I do no meetings before 11 except for with my chief of staff if we need to check in on stuff. And so that gives me, that's five hours.
[00:25:11] Mike Malloy: Maybe I get three or four hours of deep work in there with some family time sprinkled in, a little bit of chief staff check-in. And then, having a theme for different days is very helpful. and so like. Monday mornings, my Georgetown, like I teach and I have to grade papers and all the assignments are due Sunday night.
[00:25:27] Mike Malloy: So if I just do it Monday morning, it's done. It's not like lingering all week. and then there's leadership team things, some HR stuff like working with our internal team. We have a, a couple coaches that I work with, I meet with on Monday, and then Tuesday is, is like sales days all day. and another piece of advice for the listeners is to do a calendar audit or time audit.
[00:25:48] Mike Malloy: Looking historically at the past six months, the past year, I tend to do this over winter break, over the holidays to look at the year and basically say like, who did I love talking to that like really energized me and I wanna work on more things with them. Who did I hate talking to and drained me and like sucked.
[00:26:04] Mike Malloy: And I spent a ton of time and energy and effort on this thing that never turned into a real project client gig, whatever. Okay, let's cut that. in December I looked at my calendar for 2024. My wife had been retired for seven months. I had forgotten that I used to only do meetings from two to five because I had max from like 10 to two.
[00:26:23] Mike Malloy: And we went to the library every Tuesday, Wednesday for story time. Like I loved that. That was awesome. It was also like a sense of community. Other parents who like had the bags on their eyes and like knew what we were going through. and so I deliberately rejiggered my schedule in January to take Wednesday mornings off.
[00:26:40] Mike Malloy: So like I don't work until one on Wednesdays. So I have from when Max wakes up, we go typically go to the library, although now it's sunny out and we start doing some beach time instead of uh, library to like that Max and dad adventure. Super valuable. I cherish it. My wife also cherishes it 'cause she gets some time to herself.
[00:26:59] Mike Malloy: and then the other thing is you think about when is your energy that highest? When is it the lowest? And like that might be a good time for some meetings. Because like a lot of times, especially there's other people and it's like a team meeting. You don't have to be in your peak flow, you know, most creative sense.
[00:27:17] Mike Malloy: And you can also then batch. Like if you have three direct reports, why don't you do all your one-on-ones with 'em on the same day? Back, back, back? You know, maybe there's a buffer in between to like do a little something, but like you don't get that much done in between meetings. So this concept of like maker time versus manager time, manager time is my meetings, boom, boom, boom.
[00:27:36] Mike Malloy: and we've gotta get 'em all kind of knocked out and I have a 30 minute, or even an hour in between meetings. I'm very different once the first meeting of the day has occurred. Then before it, like my first meeting was at noon today. I got a ton of stuff done from when Max went to camp till noon.
[00:27:53] Mike Malloy: And then I've kind of flipped it around. I had an hour between meetings, but I kind of prepped for stuff, and kind of go from there. I.
[00:27:59] Adam Fishman: that's really interesting. 'cause I, I have the same sort of feeling of accomplishment when I'm not in a meeting and I'm able to do hours of, deep work
[00:28:08] Mike Malloy: Yeah.
[00:28:09] Adam Fishman: like I'm able to check meaningful things off my list or my sort of list of things that I wanted to get done. and so I heard a few things in there that you said.
[00:28:17] Adam Fishman: One is, know when your energy is best and when it's worse and schedule. The day, schedule your deep work for when your energy is really go great and you're gonna be able to focus and, and do that. So for you, that's the mornings. The other thing I heard in there was day of the week. So think about time, chunking like activities into certain days.
[00:28:39] Adam Fishman: So you mentioned your sales stuffs all on Tuesday, for example. So you can kind of click into that mode and you're in sales mode for that day. Right. And that requires a certain type of energy that
[00:28:50] Mike Malloy: Yeah,
[00:28:50] Adam Fishman: a different day doesn't require.
[00:28:52] Mike Malloy: it's a type of energy and it reduces the context switching. And it's not like I had a sales meeting and then an operations meeting and then I have an investor meeting and then I have an interview for a new hire and then I have to do a podcast like, that is hard. the other thing that I'll throw out when you think about days is at least once a month have a crush it day where you do absolutely no meetings and you're just focused on like crushing it and no one can distract you.
[00:29:16] Mike Malloy: I really have found it is helpful to like leave the house and go to Panera Bread or somewhere and just like put my headphones in. I'm the kind of guy who brings my second monitor to Panera Bread 'cause that's me. And I am un unapologetic about it because I'm eight times more productive with two screens.
[00:29:32] Mike Malloy: And if I'm gonna crush it, I wanna really crush it. but that is not something you can just like do tomorrow. You gotta kind of schedule it weeks in advance. And I think I have like the third Monday of every month as a crushed day. I might the first and third, and they don't always work out perfectly, but maybe I'll move it to another day so that I can, you know, have that focus.
[00:29:49] Mike Malloy: Time for the high leverage activities that only I can do.
[00:29:53] Adam Fishman: Great. I love that. Do you also find yourself blocking non-work activities into your calendar as well? Like
[00:30:01] Mike Malloy: Yeah,
[00:30:01] Adam Fishman: I. Me and my wife are gonna go do this, or I'm going to, don't know, do something for myself or work out
[00:30:09] Mike Malloy: I'm not sure about those two last topics you talked about, but, but I do have, like five 30 every night, 5 30, 6 30 family time with a heart. And then I have bedtime routine, six 30 to eight. 'cause it's aspirational, even though it goes till nine. but then I tend to keep Saturdays and Sundays open.
[00:30:23] Mike Malloy: I am a very color coded schedule guy. I'm like looking at it now as we're talking, but it's nice to see some white space on the weekends. And then we have like a print calendar with the, you know, 30 days that my wife and I will put in pen and, we're getting better at doing like a weekly spouse check-in on like, Hey, what's coming up next week, next few weeks?
[00:30:39] Mike Malloy: you know, when are you doing things? When do I need coverage, et cetera.
[00:30:42] Adam Fishman: yeah. And you do that on a physical calendar,
[00:30:44] Mike Malloy: Yeah.
[00:30:45] Adam Fishman: not doing digital. Yeah. I'm team physical calendar too, for whatever reason. I just like it.
[00:30:50] Adam Fishman: okay. Tell me about nightly maps. That's another framework that you have. I.
[00:30:54] Mike Malloy: yeah. So I'm a big fan of personal development and, books, and one of the best ones I've ever read was, the Greatest Salesman in the World, uh, at part one and part two. and one of the affirmations or scrolls from it was, never again Will I greet the dawn without a map. And what that entails is before I, I lay my head to bed, I.
[00:31:13] Mike Malloy: And I use notion for a lot of things in my business, but I have a page that's like Mike's map and it's like, what's important now when, like, what is the thing I need to do when I wake up tomorrow first? Uh, and this is great, Adam, because my, my win for this morning was podcast prep for this conversation and reviewing our notes, making sure before I got ready for camp and everything with Max, like I sent you an email this morning and be like, Hey, you updated some of the notes.
[00:31:36] Mike Malloy: Like I hit send as Max was coming down the stairs with mom, and I was like, all right, I shipped that. I can go do some family stuff for a while and I can get into, you know, some other activities. but that prevents you from waking up and being like, I don't know, you check my email and scroll on Instagram and look at my dms.
[00:31:51] Mike Malloy: But guess what guys? Your email is just somebody else's to-do list that they shipped to you.
[00:31:56] Mike Malloy: So the longer you can get into the day without reading your emails, the more productive of a day you will have.
[00:32:03] Adam Fishman: I love that. I, I think, um, I had near I all on the show,
[00:32:07] Adam Fishman: probably almost a year ago now, maybe longer. and that's one of the things he talked about in, in Distractible is being intentional and knowing how you're gonna spend your time as opposed to kind of fumbling around because you waste so much time and then you end up working on the suboptimal thing.
[00:32:24] Adam Fishman: That's not what you really wanted to get done in that moment. So,
[00:32:28] Mike Malloy: guess what? If you wake up and there's like clean clothes on the couch or whatever, you don't have to put that away first thing in the morning. That's not a good use of your morning energy. Like, do that after the kids go to bed while watching some TV show or whatever. Like, I'm rarely one to prioritize household chores, you know, in, in the morning hours except for emptying the dishwasher.
[00:32:45] Mike Malloy: I'm pretty good. 'cause that's kind of my, my commitment.
[00:32:47] Adam Fishman: oh, I can't wait. We gotta, I got a dishwasher question later in the show.
[00:32:51] Mike Malloy: Okay.
[00:32:51] Mike Malloy: Adam, real quick, I actually had a, a footwear question for you. Um, do you know what kind of shoes that ninjas wear?
[00:32:58] Adam Fishman: kind of shoes ninjas wear. do not know.
[00:33:02] Mike Malloy: Sneakers?
[00:33:04] Mike Malloy: I,
[00:33:07] Adam Fishman: Oh man. Wow. We're for three maybe now. I don't know. Four for four. Okay. I love two things that you said about night. Well, I love the concept of nightly maps. There's two other things that you mentioned in that, that I love. One is notion, you mentioned that product.
[00:33:22] Adam Fishman: I am a big fan of that product. This entire podcast runs in that product. So, kudos way to go. Notion team. second thing that you mentioned, which I'm flattered by, is that I made the nightly map, and prepping for this podcast. So thank you for doing that.
[00:33:37] Mike Malloy: I will also make a, a plug for notion. Because I didn't use it before Max was born, but this was a fatherhood transition. I was a big Airtable guy and I got my master's in computer science. I liked databases. It was very good on the computer. Color coded great. Airtable is mobile app sucks.
[00:33:54] Mike Malloy: And if you have a small living thing, a sleep on you for many hours a day, you need a thing you can do with one thumb on a phone. And that is what led to Notion becoming the operating system of our business and really of my life. I have a team who helps set up all my events and I have agendas and things linked to folks.
[00:34:11] Mike Malloy: So like I have you right there at the time we're recording this and there's notes connected to it all in notion in this map for today, tomorrow, this week, previous events and like action items all flow through there. So we're able to be efficient. And I can also do it on my phone. 'cause again, I don't like to get it back on the computer after five 30.
[00:34:29] Mike Malloy: So the map is usually like, as I'm winding down, hey, do I know what the schedule looks like tomorrow? What's the stuff I gotta get done before the meeting starts?
[00:34:37] Adam Fishman: Okay. Awesome. Now, you talked about the wooden box, earlier in our conversation that the, the one that you bought off of Etsy, you put your phone in it, and other things, chapstick, headphones. and the idea there, is to, you know, really physically distance yourself from the distractions, what you said, no pockets play
[00:34:56] Mike Malloy: Yeah. p and P play? No phone time. Uh,
[00:34:58] Adam Fishman: play, no phone time.
[00:34:59] Mike Malloy: Okay. I,
[00:35:00] Adam Fishman: got that term from good inside or that
[00:35:02] Mike Malloy: yeah,
[00:35:03] Adam Fishman: did the wooden box come from something you read or were you just like, I know that I need to have this away from my body, therefore I'm gonna go hunting on, on the internet for
[00:35:14] Mike Malloy: it, it was the latter I wish it was something I knew earlier. it's from 2025, so it's not like I, I've had this for years and like, oh, I had it right. Like, nope. and part of it too is like, as a toddler starts moving around more, I'm on the floor rolling around more and like.
[00:35:27] Mike Malloy: Alright. I love that on stuff in my pockets and rolling on them, you know, I've also learned, I have two pairs of glasses. They're the same, but like one got real beat up from playing with him. And those are my playtime glasses and these are my work glasses. just the concept of not being physically connected to technology and also not even seeing it, which includes like, playing in rooms that don't have a tv.
[00:35:47] Mike Malloy: 'cause if he sees it, he's gonna wanna watch Zootopia. or I wanna watch a movie, the one with the bunny and the fox, but if we're in the playroom that just has his little people and magnet tiles and kitchen like, all right, let's do this stuff instead. That,
[00:35:58] Adam Fishman: Well, and who could blame him for wanting to watch Utopia? It's a great film.
[00:36:02] Mike Malloy: speaking of, of animals, Adam, did you hear about the giraffe and the ostrich that had a a hundred meter race?
[00:36:09] Adam Fishman: I did not.
[00:36:10] Mike Malloy: Yeah, it was neck and neck the whole time.
[00:36:16] Adam Fishman: I should have guessed.
[00:36:17] Mike Malloy: You, you should have guessed,
[00:36:18] Adam Fishman: one of these times. I'm gonna get one.
[00:36:20] Mike Malloy: uh, lemme try again. Do you know what a giraffe's favorite fruit is?
[00:36:23] Adam Fishman: a giraffe favorite fruit. Something with a neck. nectarine.
[00:36:28] Mike Malloy: Yes. Yes.
[00:36:29] Adam Fishman: It's amazing that I got that. How would I even know?
[00:36:33] Mike Malloy: I'm, I'm so impressed.
[00:36:34] Adam Fishman: yeah. Okay. we haven't talked about your wife a ton, um, but you did mention that, you know, she was kind of carrying the weight to
[00:36:41] Mike Malloy: I.
[00:36:41] Adam Fishman: weight of the family for the first few years while you were with, with Max.
[00:36:45] Adam Fishman: now maybe that's reversed a little bit. but I'm very curious, Partnership's so important for a marriage and for raising a family. I always want to ask though, what is an area that you and your wife don't exactly agree on or see eye to eye on?
[00:37:02] Mike Malloy: I think the bedtime train is probably safe and clear, uh, answer here. You know, I know that it doesn't get to the station until 9:00 PM regardless of the time that it leaves.
[00:37:13] Mike Malloy: There are beliefs that if it leaves at six 30 and you don't go to the beach for an hour at six 30, that he'll go to bed earlier.
[00:37:19] Mike Malloy: But it's just more time wrestling, a toddler in a dark room trying to get him to go to sleep. So, I would say that that's a big one. But other than that, we are pretty highly aligned. I've also learned ask yourself, how much do I care about this?
[00:37:33] Mike Malloy: And if it's less than an eight, don't say anything.
[00:37:35] Mike Malloy: if I don't actually care if he wears that shirt or another shirt, that shirt's fine. You know?
[00:37:38] Adam Fishman: Yeah. I love that. I had somebody on the show who was talking about that in the construct of business, which is like, cares the most about this? That person gets to,
[00:37:48] Adam Fishman: have the say. if you don't really care, and a lot of people find that out in the midst of an argument. I actually don't really care about the outcome here,
[00:37:55] Mike Malloy: Yeah.
[00:37:56] Adam Fishman: go nuts. okay. We talked about technology a lot. We talked about putting your phone away. but we can't avoid ai. coming for us whether or not we want it to,
[00:38:08] Adam Fishman: And so on this show, we have a section that I call AI Corner,
[00:38:12] Mike Malloy: Ooh.
[00:38:12] Adam Fishman: relatively new. curious, you know, a lot of times talked about the latest and greatest AI tips and tricks, and how this helps people be more productive, et cetera. But for this show, I'm curious, do you have any interesting ways that you have leveraged AI as a parent?
[00:38:28] Mike Malloy: I do. In fact, I spent at least an hour or two on a Saturday, several months ago building a custom GPT, whose name is Chef Jacque, and he is a five star Michelin trained chef, obviously. or let me clarify to listeners, you can just say, act as whatever row you want. And this is always, he is acting as, who knows everything about the dietary preferences for me, my wife and my son, and is then a phenomenal resource to do weekly meal planning, to do food shopping recommendations, to introduce new recipes to help me when one or three of our family members are feeling hangry, I'm like, Hey, what's a, what's a quick snack to raise our blood sugar?
[00:39:10] Mike Malloy: gimme 10 recommendations. I'm like, maybe some of them we have in the house. and even this past weekend we went. to my sister. She had like a joint birthday party, a belated one for Max and for two of of her kids. and I was like, well, do you want Chef Jacque to help with the barbecue menu? She's like, what are you talking about?
[00:39:25] Mike Malloy: I was like, well, let me tell you about Chef Jacque. as we were on the phone, like typed in a couple things and sent it to her and she was like, oh my God, this is amazing. Like, I want to go to this guy's Mediterranean style family restaurant and like, yeah, we'll do some hummus, we'll do some veggie skewers and kebabs and some other good stuff that, that came out of it as well.
[00:39:41] Mike Malloy: yeah, I would highly recommend it. And like, you can use your names. You can anonymize it, you can check the box. So like ChatGPT is not trained on the stuff you're sending it however you want to. make it private.
[00:39:50] Mike Malloy: but it's super helpful to figure out how to feed
[00:39:54] Adam Fishman: how did you train it on your dietary preferences? You just put it in the instructions.
[00:40:01] Mike Malloy: it's a many, many prompt, like it asked me questions, I answered it. I uploaded a few files. I had like talked to a dietician. I had some like kid pediatric food things. I know what my wife likes. I know what I like. and one of the other pro tips for any ai, give it the whole prompt and then ask, what are five questions you want to ask me to do a better job on this task?
[00:40:21] Mike Malloy: Please ask them one at a time. 'cause it knows the things that it wants to know more about. But if you don't ask it to ask you, it won't ask it.
[00:40:28] Adam Fishman: I love that. I've also heard you can ask it to give you feedback on your prompt. How could I write this prompt better to get better information from you?
[00:40:36] Mike Malloy: you can also ask it to act like Matthew McConaughey and you'll get a nice little southern twang in the responses.
[00:40:42] Adam Fishman: oh, I love that. Okay. Well, on the topic of technology, how do you think about Max's use of technology as he gets older? What have you and, and your wife talked about there?
[00:40:54] Mike Malloy: Less tech the better for as long as possible. Like we we're not saints, like we do own an iPad. We do watch Zootopia on repeat at the moment, but not like all day. I think it starts with mom and dad modeling the behavior of not being on our phones all the time, especially when we're trying to do, play no phone time and like, I don't think he needs a phone until, I don't know, high school-ish.
[00:41:18] Mike Malloy: Like certainly if you're driving, I think you need one for safety and then maybe if we have to pick you up places. But my sister has six kids from college, senior to third grader. So there's a spectrum there, and I've seen what's worked well with them, and I've learned from other people too, that phones have to live in the kitchen.
[00:41:35] Mike Malloy: Like they can't have it in their bedroom at night. but ideally, like it's physical play. It's like, let's, we're Irish, like let's put on some sunscreen and go outside and we can play and and then when a lot of, some multiple applications, you know, spray is easier than the rub in for the little guys.
[00:41:50] Mike Malloy: Yeah.
[00:41:50] Adam Fishman: as a fellow Irish person, I know, uh, I know a lot about what that's like. So, you know, I did hear one time about a family that had it as a house rule that when you came into their house, they had a box and your phone went into the box. When you walked through the threshold, it's almost like taking your shoes off inside someone desk.
[00:42:11] Adam Fishman: Anyone who came over
[00:42:12] Mike Malloy: Yeah.
[00:42:13] Adam Fishman: adults, kids, like whatever, phone in the box. I
[00:42:16] Mike Malloy: I love that. Yeah.
[00:42:18] Adam Fishman: And people thought it was kind of weird at first and then they were like, well, you can just be outside if you don't want to, if you don't wanna come in and do it. So,
[00:42:25] Mike Malloy: uh, real quick, Adam, there's a powerful thing you said there. It's a rule. It's not a guideline, it's not 98% of the time. So people try to negotiate, Hey, I'm the 2%,
[00:42:34] Mike Malloy: telling someone you have a rule is a great way to say no to a thing that ist hinging on your boundaries. the other, and I remember recently from, um, a book. Some lawyer named Jefferson in Texas. I guess I could cite it better than that, but, part of it was how to say no, and it's like bottom line, up front.
[00:42:52] Mike Malloy: Like unfortunately I can't be on your podcast, Adam. I appreciate the invitation. Hope you find a great guest for the next episode. Cheers, Mike. So like, it's no gratitude, kindness, no gratitude, kindness, no gratitude, kindness. Like that is the recipe to say no. And like somewhere in there you can sprinkle in.
[00:43:11] Mike Malloy: I have a rule and that's why I'm saying no. But like, if you're like, oh, I really wish I could, it sounds so great. Oh, but bummer, I can't make it. Then people try to ask you another follow up question and like invite you a different day. But like, you didn't ever wanna help them move, you don't want the follow up questions you want, this is a hard, no, I don't wanna get coffee with you.
[00:43:27] Mike Malloy: I don't have you move, whatever. So, you know, no gratitude, kindness.
[00:43:31] Adam Fishman: This sounds like a, thing that would be good to teach your son, uh, especially as he enters into the default, no phase for everything, which typically happens somewhere between the ages of two and four, I think.
[00:43:44] Adam Fishman: if you could rewind the clock to the time right before Max was born, what is one single piece of advice that you would give your younger self?
[00:43:56] Mike Malloy: so my wife and I had a lot of nap traps, where he is asleep and you, and you cannot move. You are there for the next 90 or so minutes. They're super duper precious at this point. I miss them tremendously. But at the time I was like, oh, I'm kind of stuck here. And I played a lot of games on my phone and I would probably tell myself to ditch it to like, be present, soak up the snuggles.
[00:44:18] Mike Malloy: I'm a little bit more okay with like doing work with him asleep on you. 'cause at least you're like progressing forward. It's leverage and you, you make some money for the family and provide, at this point, like, yeah, I'd be like, you don't need to play another game of, Star Wars game for, I, I had a few different games on my phone and like none of them meant anything or really added value to my life or my family's.
[00:44:38] Mike Malloy: One thing I, I will say that I, I did a good job at was I took a lot of selfies of those nap traps with a dream that at some point I will go through the hundreds of these photos and like, make a flip book or something.
[00:44:48] Mike Malloy: I don't know, maybe that when he gets to college or something,but just the, the recognizing of that, that those were special and the snuggle was real.
[00:44:57] Adam Fishman: Yeah, those are some of my favorite photos that I have actually is my kids just like asleep and me just maybe also in various states of sleep or just going, I can't move, you know? good advice. Thank you. I appreciate that. Okay, last question for you before our lightning round, sir, which is, how can people follow along on your journey or be helpful to you in any way?
[00:45:20] Mike Malloy: Appreciate that. Would love to connect on LinkedIn, uh, Mike Malloy with a little sunglass emoji, after it. our website is malloyindustries.com. M-A-L-L-O-Y-I-N-D-U-S-T-R-I-E-S.com. and my email is mike@malloyindustries.com. Would love to connect to listeners if you, I. Any thoughts on parenting if you or anyone you know could benefit from a fractional executive?
[00:45:44] Mike Malloy: That is our whole business. It is built on word of mouth referrals, podcast referrals. People who are like, oh, that's a thing there. And I know somebody's struggling with this hat that they're not very good at this guy. Mike's uh, not only does he tell great jokes, he's got this like awesome expert network that it could probably help.
[00:45:59] Adam Fishman: Well, we do have a lot of startup founders and entrepreneurs who listen to this show, and also parents. So
[00:46:06] Adam Fishman: there's gotta be a fractional executive or someone who needs one in there somewhere. So we'll send them your way. Thank you very much, Mike. Appreciate it. All right. Lightning round. Here we go. The rules are simple. I ask you a question, you say the first thing that comes to mind, and then we move on. It's a judgment free zone. are you ready?
[00:46:26] Mike Malloy: Yes.
[00:46:27] Adam Fishman: Okay. What is the most indispensable parenting product that you've ever purchased?
[00:46:33] Mike Malloy: oh, we got a standup thing for him. When he was a toddler. It was called a, like a boss play kit. So his legs went in it and he had like a computer and all and like a good play music. It was phenomenal. It was like $90 on Amazon. He was in there for a very long time.
[00:46:46] Mike Malloy: He has since out grown up, but like loved like a boss, workspace center.
[00:46:50] Adam Fishman: Okay, cool. What is the most useless parenting product you've ever purchased?
[00:46:55] Mike Malloy: I bought a thing of doorknob things so they couldn't turn and it's still in the package. And we don't even really have doorknobs at our house.
[00:47:01] Adam Fishman: We don't even have doorknobs on the house,
[00:47:03] Mike Malloy: We have like little latches, most of the rooms.
[00:47:05] Adam Fishman: it. Uh, well, that just goes to show you the, uh, parenting industrial complex is real
[00:47:10] Mike Malloy: Yeah.
[00:47:11] Adam Fishman: what is the weirdest thing that you've ever found in Max's pockets or in the washing machine?
[00:47:17] Mike Malloy: Oh, last week I washed a diaper, it went through the whole cycle and I took it. I was like, oh, who had like tissues in their pocket? Like, what is, and then I was, Nope. It was just a full diaper went through, so my bad.
[00:47:30] Adam Fishman: Did that shred in like a million
[00:47:32] Mike Malloy: Oh yeah. Yeah. On a lot of clothes and yeah.
[00:47:34] Adam Fishman: okay. I'm sorry. For your washing machine,
[00:47:38] Mike Malloy: Yeah.
[00:47:39] Adam Fishman: true or false? there's only one correct way to load the dishwasher
[00:47:43] Mike Malloy: False.
[00:47:45] Adam Fishman: multiple
[00:47:46] Mike Malloy: Multiple ways. My wife's way is the right way, but like I can do it too, but,
[00:47:50] Adam Fishman: Wow. I love that. you may be the first person who said false to that.
[00:47:53] Adam Fishman: question, what is your signature dad superpower?
[00:47:57] Mike Malloy: I have a dad joke for every situation in most topics, and we can just kind of connect to it, like what do you call a feline? Who likes to go bowling
[00:48:06] Adam Fishman: I don't know.
[00:48:07] Mike Malloy: in Alley Cat?
[00:48:12] Adam Fishman: what do you call a husky that is at the equator?
[00:48:18] Mike Malloy: I don't know.
[00:48:19] Adam Fishman: A hot dog.
[00:48:22] Mike Malloy: I like that one.
[00:48:23] Adam Fishman: Alright. What is the crazier block of time in your house? I think I know the answer to this already. 6:00 AM to 8:00 AM or 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
[00:48:31] Mike Malloy: Definitely 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM Yeah. Yeah. Mornings are fine.
[00:48:36] Adam Fishman: Okay. The ideal day with Max involves What one activity?
[00:48:41] Mike Malloy: Beach
[00:48:42] Adam Fishman: Beach. All
[00:48:43] Mike Malloy: Dad adventures to the beach are the best. Mom's invited always, but yeah, gets some saved.
[00:48:48] Adam Fishman: had to describe you in one word, what would it be?
[00:48:51] Mike Malloy: Silly
[00:48:52] Adam Fishman: Okay. I also think I know the answer to this question. What is your go-to dad wardrobe? I.
[00:48:57] Mike Malloy: Hawaiian shirt, gray pants.
[00:48:59] Adam Fishman: Great. How many parenting books do you have in your house?
[00:49:02] Mike Malloy: At least 15
[00:49:05] Adam Fishman: How many parenting books have you read cover to cover?
[00:49:10] Mike Malloy: one.
[00:49:11] Adam Fishman: Good. Gets better than most.
[00:49:13] Adam Fishman: do you have a go-to Bribe for good behavior for Max?
[00:49:18] Mike Malloy: I don't, but my wife would say a cookie.
[00:49:21] Adam Fishman: Oh, cookie. Okay. I just made some cookies last night with my daughter. Also a
[00:49:25] Mike Malloy: There you go.
[00:49:26] Adam Fishman: okay. we may not have an answer to this actually. How many dad jokes do you tell on average each day?
[00:49:34] Mike Malloy: Well, it depends how many calls there are to my database. it also depends on how many meetings I have and how many people are around town I interact with. Because like every restaurant in town, the library, like they know me as a guy who, if I'm gonna come in, I'm gonna have a joke. I do celebrate, the dad joke calendar as an input.
[00:49:50] Mike Malloy: I have a few other sources and books and things. Somewhere in the one to 10 range per day. Uh, yeah.
[00:49:56] Adam Fishman: number. Do you have like an absolute favorite one or no?
[00:50:00] Mike Malloy: Why did the chicken fall in the, well,
[00:50:03] Adam Fishman: I don't know.
[00:50:04] Mike Malloy: because the chicken couldn't see that well.
[00:50:09] Adam Fishman: That's a good one.
[00:50:10] Mike Malloy: that joke real quick, last Father's Day that was featured on the Lewis Library Facebook page with a photo of Mia Max with that joke because they're like, Hey, it's Father's Day. Like, do you have a dad joke? I was like, of course I do.
[00:50:21] Adam Fishman: Of course I do. Uh, what is the most absurd thing that Max has ever asked you to buy for him?
[00:50:29] Mike Malloy: we talked about a blue jeep for a long time. We don't have a blue Jeep, but we did yesterday in the mail get like a yellow bento lunchbox, which my wife told me, oh, we were talking about getting one of those for Woodstock Snoopy's friend, and Max apparently ordered it himself on her phone. So
[00:50:48] Adam Fishman: That kid is wise. He's
[00:50:50] Mike Malloy: yeah,
[00:50:51] Adam Fishman: is the most difficult kids TV show that you've had to sit through?
[00:50:55] Mike Malloy: we're at a good era right now with Zootopia Muppet babies. we did Mickey Mouse Clubhouse for a long time, which I, I celebrated. I don't have like a, a suffering story. Yeah. Cars. I like that era. We did, uh, super Wings for a long time. They're all good. Yeah.
[00:51:12] Adam Fishman: Okay. Is. Zootopia your favorite kid's movie or do you have another one?
[00:51:19] Mike Malloy: Zootopia is his right now. My all time favorite toy stories in there, but goofy movies in there should watched recently was awesome. I also recently watched, blank Check, with my nieces and nephews. That was good. Yeah.
[00:51:34] Adam Fishman: Amazing what a million dollars used to buy you that no longer does.
[00:51:39] Mike Malloy: also, because I know you are on a Macintosh computer right now, underrated that Apple paid them some amount of money to make the rich guy be Mr. Macintosh and he prints out the blank check on the Macintosh computer, which I didn't realize was a kid, but I saw, I was like, that is product placement in the nineties.
[00:51:53] Mike Malloy: And they better made a bunch of money off of that.
[00:51:55] Adam Fishman: it sure was,
[00:51:56] Adam Fishman: what nostalgic movie? Are you just like dying to get Max to watch or rather force Max to watch with you? I.
[00:52:05] Mike Malloy: yeah. Empire Records, number one, all time. He did watch it when he was like an infant asleep on me, but when he's moderately appropriate for a PG 13 movie, I've seen that hundreds of times. Would love to get him into that.
[00:52:17] Adam Fishman: Okay. That's great. Empire Records. What is your worst experience assembling a kid's toy or a piece of furniture?
[00:52:25] Mike Malloy: So for Christmas, he got a pretty legit. Kitchen set, which we built Christmas Eve. We watched Santa Claus one. We watched Santa Claus two and we made it halfway through Santa Claus three while assembling the kitchen set. It was a labor of love. They are good movies, but that was a long time to assemble that.
[00:52:44] Adam Fishman: have a feeling that you and I purchased the same kitchen set because I too had an identical experience attempting to assemble a kitchen set. except it wasn't Christmas, it took like three days of sustained, like in the evening
[00:53:01] Mike Malloy: Yeah,
[00:53:02] Adam Fishman: the tiny pieces, there were hundreds of them. Flat pack furniture. It's the worst. okay, What is your favorite dad hack for road trips or flights?
[00:53:12] Mike Malloy: I just learned this from my, my best friend, uh, Dr. Mike Kic for Max's birthday. He gave him a set of, mini magnet tiles. there's 26 pieces. They fit in a little pencil case thing that's a magnet. They are phenomenal for flights, for car rides. It's not a huge thing you're building with you and like you can just kind of do it in the car seat.
[00:53:28] Mike Malloy: So would recommend, I just gave it to my niece and nephew for the birthday this weekend.
[00:53:33] Adam Fishman: Mini magnet tiles. Okay. Finally, what is your take on minivans?
[00:53:39] Mike Malloy: They're great spaceships if you need them, but if you only have one kid, we're probably good in our Subaru Outback and Nissan Rogue.
[00:53:46] Adam Fishman: Okay, you're a fan, but no need for it.
[00:53:49] Mike Malloy: If you have six kids you can have too many fans like my sister.
[00:53:51] Adam Fishman: Does your sister have a minivan?
[00:53:54] Mike Malloy: Two. Yeah.
[00:53:57] Adam Fishman: I wondered where that was coming from.
[00:53:59] Adam Fishman: Mike, thank you so much for joining me today on Startup Dad. I loved learning about you, Max, your family, Malloy Industries. I wish you and everyone else all the best, hopefully I can talk to you again soon and get a dad joke here or there.
[00:54:15] Mike Malloy: Sounds good. I have 'em on demand, uh, whenever you need 'em. We even have a dad joke, a day daily newsletter. Uh, we started a couple years ago.
[00:54:21] Adam Fishman: Awesome.
[00:54:22] Adam Fishman: Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Mike Malloy. You can subscribe and watch the show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:54:31] Adam Fishman: Visit startupdadpod.com to learn more and browse past episodes. Thanks for listening. See you next week.