Parenting Products Are Anxiety-As-A- Service | Brian Holt (Dad of 2, Neon, Snowflake, Stripe, MSFT)

Startup Dad Brian Holt Final Edited Transcript

Brian: [00:00:00] You have all these like opinions and like all these like tips and tricks that work like really well on your child's. Like none of it's gonna apply to the second one. You have to get a whole new set of tips and tricks to interact with like no two kids of the same, right?

Like maybe I've taken for advantage that my son is a great eater. You give him food, he will always eat. And there's other like kids that like, just like will not eat anything, right? And you have to like force it down. And so, yeah, I'm trying to prepare with something like what if I not realized that I got to skip over with the first kid and what am I going to get to skip over that I didn't with my first kid, right?

Adam: Welcome to Startup Dad, the podcast where we dive deep into the lives of dads who are also leaders in the world of startups and business. I'm your host, Adam Fishman. One question I get asked an awful lot is how to prepare for the arrival of a second kid. There is no better way to find out than by asking a startup dad who is a few days away from that exact event.

Today's guest is Brian Holt. He's a staff product manager at Neon, a venture backed startup building serverless postgres SQL technology in the cloud. He has been a VP of product and product leader at companies like sql like Cloud, snowflake, Stripe, and Microsoft, and an engineer at companies like Netflix and Reddit, where he was one of the earliest employees.

He's also a husband and the father of a son, and soon to arrive. Daughter, by the time you listen to this, he'll be a tired dad of two. In our conversation today, we spoke about how to prepare for the arrival of your second kid, balancing work, side hustles, social life, exercise, and being a good parent and husband, and whether or not he'd recommend living a nomadic lifestyle with a toddler.

Something he tried for about six months this last year. We also talked about his love of the snoo and I learned about the magic of magnetic snap baby clothes. I hope you enjoy today's conversation with Brian Holt.

Adam: I would like to welcome Brian Holt to the Startup Dad podcast. Brian, it's incredible to have you here today. I can't wait for this conversation. Thank you for joining me.

Brian: Yeah, no. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Adam: Alright, well, I found you on one of the corners of the internet, buried deep in a Twitter thread about amazing dads. But before we go into you being an amazing dad and by the way, this was other people tagging you. So, so at least one other person out there thinks you're an amazing dad. So,

Brian: That’s cool.

Adam: Tell me a little bit about your professional background.

Brian: I've worked in tech for a long time. I started out as some smaller companies in Salt Lake. I ended up at Reddit. I was employee number 29 at Reddit, which was a rocket ship unto itself. Very exciting. Ended up at Netflix. All this time I was a more of like an engineer. At some point I ended up at Microsoft as doing Devrel and then decided Devrel life wasn't for me.

So I transitioned more into the product management chain, which is where I am now. I was PM at Microsoft, Stripe, Snowflake, another little startup, of the VP of product. And then now I'm a staff PM working on AI and backend services at Neon, which is a database of the service kind of company.

Adam: Wow, what a journey.

Brian: Yeah. All over the place.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah. And I imagine working at Microsoft was fairly different than working at Reddit, for example.

Brian: You can say some things at Microsoft and not Reddit and vice versa. Right.

Adam: That's awesome. Where did you grow up and what were you like as a kid?

Brian: That's a good question. I was born in Helena, Montana, which I imagine most of your guests are probably not from Montana. I was the youngest of four. And then I ended up moving to Salt Lake. For the most part, most of my childhood took place in Salt Lake. And what kind of kid was I I was the fourth and youngest child, so I fit many of those stereotypes.

I was a negotiator. I, like, I never took to my first, no, I always had to like, talk to my parents and to my parents' credit, it was like, if I negotiate pretty well, I was like, okay, Brian, you can do that. And they would, you know, you know, trade with me in that particular way. You know, made well for me as a, as an adult.

But yeah, I was always trying to like finagle my way outta trouble. I was always getting into trouble and trying to finagle my way outta trouble.

Adam: Okay. Okay. So I would say two things about that. One is those negotiation skills probably came in real handy as a product manager.

Brian: Absolutely.

Adam: That's all you do all day is negotiate with people.

Brian: Essentially. Yeah.

Adam: Yeah. And then two is what is a thing that you remember, like negotiating with your parents about because I'm wondering what the future's gonna look like for you when your kids start negotiating with you.

Brian: Oh my, my son has already started. It's like, oh my God you are a small me doing exactly what I did to my parents. What did I negotiate with my parents with? Like, I remember I really wanted to go to my friend's house when I was in Helena and I was grounded for something or another, and I basically convinced my parents that if they let me go to my friend's house, that I would come back and like do more chores than I was expected to do and that I could shift my punishment from being grounded to more chores.

My parents were like, well, okay, yeah, we can, you know, horse trade that. So they said yes, and I went.

Adam: Is that a thing that you would do with your kids? Would you let them shift punishment?

Brian: I suppose, I mean, if my kid can convince me that he thought through this and he thought through my perspective and he is offering me something equal in return, it's like, you know what, buddy? Let's go for it. Let's try it.

Adam: All right, we'll make sure he doesn't listen to this when he is older. So, okay, so one more question about your childhood. As a fourth child, do you ever remember being left anywhere? Where people just forgot about you, like Macaulay Culkin style in Home Alone.

Brian: Home alone. It did happen a couple of times. It happened at Disneyland. Eventually, like I found an a, an employee who found my parents, but the one that's probably actually funnier is I was at soccer practice. And my parents were the supposed to be the ones that picked up me and my friend up from soccer practice.

And they had something for my sister. They had something for my other brother. And my friend and I were just playing on the soccer field. After everyone had left for probably like 90 minutes before we realized like, oh shit, there's nobody here. And it is now dark and we cannot walk home.

So eventually I did like the thing where you call collect and you like say, hi, it's your son. Come pick me up. For your younger listeners, they probably don't even know like what collect calling was, but we didn't have a cell phone, so that's what we had to do. And then eventually was like all freaking out.

I was like, are you okay? I was like, no it's fine. We just gotta hang out for an extra 90 minutes. But

Adam: Yeah. And I love that, that you're just playing soccer the whole time and not until 90 minutes goes by. Are you like, oh, actually the sun has set, I was supposed to be picked up a while.

Brian: Yeah. This is problematic.

Adam: That’s the fourth kid. I love that story.

Okay, so let's talk a little bit about your family now. You have a partner and you have one son and another one on the way, which we'll get to in a second. But tell me about your family now.

Brian: Yeah. So, I married my wife Nikki. How many years ago? It'll be 13 years ago. This year we got married somewhat young as is Utah tradition. And, we met in college, we were neighbors. And we didn't have kids right away because we, one, we weren't really sure that we wanted to have kids.

And we wanted to travel. And so in my twenties and early thirties, we went to some 40, 50 countries. Did a ton of traveling, kind of crossed off like a lot of the bucket list stuff and, you know, established careers and did a bunch of stuff like that. And so it was a, I don't know if I'm gonna recommend my plan that everyone should do it this way, but it worked really well for us.

Adam: Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that. Like, that's a lot of traveling. I'm somewhat jealous, but also sounds very tiring to me. What would your advice be to people about something like that? If they're like, oh, I've got the travel bug, but I wanna start this family. Like if you were to do that over again, would you do it in the exact same way or make some changes?

Brian: Certainly mixed feelings. I could certainly trade off here. What was amazing is like Nikki and I were able to do like, I don't know, two months on the road and it just wasn't that big of a deal. 'cause we never really, we had a dog when that was like the hardest thing was like making sure that the dog got taken care of.

And like, no regrets in terms of like, I've had some just phenomenal experiences in, you know, many different places across the world. And so a lot of this came through Microsoft and doing Devrel that I was speaking at all these conferences and meeting all sorts of interesting people. And a lot of my closest friends live abroad now. I do see the flip side of this where I look at some of my friends that had kids younger and like, they have older kids now. Like I'm gonna be an old dad or older dad. Right. And like that's a trade off, right? I'm not gonna tell you one's better than the other. I don't regret what I did, and I think it was right for me and my wife, but I certainly see the merits of doing it the other way.

Adam: Yeah. And so you have a three and a half-ish year old and then you have another kid that is due in just a couple of days. Is that right?

Brian: Like four days, like my wife was scheduled to be induced, so my wife's waters could literally break right now and we could end this podcast. Right. So if that happened, that, that's

what happens.

Adam: That would be a first, but also not surprising. So you've got this three and a half year old a son, right?

And you know, you've done a lot while you've had him. We'll get to that a little bit later, but I'm curious how you've been preparing him, yourself, the whole family for the arrival of another kid that's coming any day now?

Brian: Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I'm doing enough. Which is always, I think probably an evergreen thought of every father is like, am I doing enough? Am I doing the right things? We try and like remind him constantly that, you know, mommy is carrying a baby, that the baby's gonna come soon. That all of a sudden you're gonna have like, you know, divided attention.

'Cause he’s an only child so far. He has had 100% of two parents' attention, plus all the people around him that love him, right. and he's a mama's boy. He loves his mom. So I think that's gonna be super difficult for him that like. He's not gonna be able to go to bed with mommy most nights.

He's not gonna be able to have her attention. He's gonna get more daddy's attention, which like, you know, daddy's attention is cool, but it's not mommy attention. Right. There's a pecking order here and I know where I stand, It's like mom and then me and the dog are about even, right.

Which is fine. Right? I accept that.

So we're just trying to piece by piece, you know, reinforce, this is what's happening. It's coming, it's coming, it's coming. And so he understands somewhat that like a baby is about to be, he understands what a baby is that it's going to be here.

We've had him like be around other kids. Like you have to be soft with 'em and and then just recognizing that all of our planning is gonna go to total shit. And it's all gonna happen all at once and we're all, we're just gonna panic and deal with it. Right. Which is just our MO at this point.

Adam: Yep. Yep. And so do you have like the crib all set up and like the go bag ready and everything? Or are you winging it like second time kid?

Brian: All the above. I mean my go bag is back there. It's mostly packed. Like, there's a bunch of stuff I realized the other is like, oh shit, the car seat has to, the second car seat has to go in the car. So we went and did that. We finally got like all the cameras set up for all the various different rooms of like, so we can have on that watches the older kid, one that watches the younger kid.

We got the Snoo we, we bought a Snoo, you know, like the stupid bassinet that everyone unfortunately is worth it. So we got that back from my cousin who Ient it out to 'cause it's stupid expensive,

Adam: Oh yeah.

Brian: And got that all set up. Took some l lessons this time was like, here's stuff that we definitely don't need.

So we like stuff we left, we didn't buy rebuy a bunch of stuff. We bought other stuff like man, we wish we had, would've had more of these. Like I don't wanna say every, but many families are having way too much clothes 'cause everyone gives them clothes. I realized that the magnetic clothes are so much better, so I ended up just buying a bunch of stuff like that.

Stuff like that. Right. I am an idiot, but sometimes I do learn things and do better the second time. 

Adam: Did you say magnetic clothes?

Brian: Yeah. So it's like, instead of having like buttons or zippers on the front, you just like throw 'em together and like the magnets all stick together. It's,

Adam: Whoa.

Brian: It’s phenomenal. It's the best way to change a kid.

Adam: I don't know that this existed when my kids were babies. Maybe it did, but I have now, well I have a niece who's one and now I feel like I know what she's getting for the next like five years of her life.

Brian: Yeah. Magnetic. Magnetic me is the, brand that we buy.

Adam: Oh, that sounds like such a handy thing. 'Cause who wants to be like fumbling with snaps and buttons when you're sleep deprived and it's like 3:00 AM and dark.

Brian: You got it. That's exactly what I.

Adam: You also mentioned the Snoo. Which one, I'm glad you got it back 'cause it is very expensive. And two, the Snoo is probably. It's very polarizing, like it is. I would say it's probably in the top one or two of most recommended products on this podcast. But then there's also people who are like, it didn't work for me at all.

And the thing that did work was like putting them in a cardboard box, you know, which cost 50 cents. But I'm glad that it worked for you. 'cause that's an expensive thing to find out. Doesn't work.

Brian: The Snoo got lent out to several people that I know, and there's one person who's like, my kid actually actively disliked it and we couldn't use it at all. My son doesn't like to go to sleep. Still to this day. He just doesn't like going to sleep. But he sleeps amazing once he's asleep.

Our last house was next to a motorcycle bar, so it was just always motorcycles super loud at all times. So you can sleep through anything. You can literally walk up and have a conversation right next to him. He doesn't care. But the Snoo was great. Like, it felt like cheat codes, like, we would like put him down and then like within like a week, he would sleep through the whole night.

Like we'd have to actually wake him for feedings and stuff like that. So I, that's why I say like, unfortunately it was worth it. Don't get me wrong, getting him off of it at like the six month mark is a test unto itself. But I'm separating my problems out, that is a can I'm willing to kick down the road and like, you know, six months, Brian, fuck that guy.

I don't care about him. Today's Brian needs some more sleep,

Adam: That's amazing. That is amazing. And now is, the Snoo something that you planned for in advance? You're like, we're getting the snoo, we've heard a lot about this. Or was this like, kid's not sleeping, it's 2:00 AM I'm making a panic purchase and it's like surge pricing for Snoos online.

Brian: It was at the time. I got some good advice. In particular, one of my, good buddies Scott Moss who recently had, had a kid at the time as well. He, something just like a whole list of like, here's everything. And he is like, don't ask any questions, just buy everything on the list. And I would say almost everything on that list was just like, yeah, okay, ended up working. And so the Snoo was on there and I was like, you know what the, at the chance I might get more sleep. Yeah. We'll give it a shot.

Adam: Awesome. Well, as I said, I'm super glad that that worked out for you. So you recently moved from where you were living in Seattle to kind of down the road for me in Sacramento. And you did this with a toddler which is terrifying to me. I don't even have a toddler anymore and I get like anxiety thinking about this.

And you also were, you described it to me as kind of homeless for like five months, like bopping around to different places. So tell me about that. The experience of moving with a toddler and also being a bit of a nomad.

Brian: Yep. So we lived in Seattle for six years. I loved it. Just, it's a beautiful place. Lovely people, a lot of good friends, but we got off a trip from Mexico, so my wife gets some more sun. My wife's from Southern California, so sun is very important to her. And I was thinking it was like charging her batteries that we could get back into the Seattle gloom and she would be fine.

We got off the plane and she looked at me and she's like, I can't do this anymore. Get me out of here. So at that point I was like, okay, well if you know, what's the point of, you know, living any of these places if you're unhappy with it. So we kind of kicked off a little search of figuring out where to live.

Back to Salt Lake was an option. Denver was high on the list. We looked at San Diego. We looked at going back to like East Face, like Orinda, Moraga kind of area. And like Park City, Utah and some other stuff like that. We landed on SAC just because access to the Bay area, access to Tahoe.

I'm an Olympic snowboarder, so that was high on my list. Good international airport. And then extremely sunny. It's like the seventh sunniest metro in the us. I actually found out for four months a year. It's literally the sunniest place on earth, which I I found that out is today, which is uh, bit of a curse because during those summer months, it's extremely hot here and I'm going to melt being from Montana, I'd much rather be way cold than way hot.

And I just lost all of the arguments. I'll put it that way. So, we decided that I went to my realtor, who was also my good friend and said like, Hey, we, this is kind of our plan. And he is like, you need to sell your house right now because you will get a way better price in the summer when Seattle beautiful people are looking for schools, all that kind of stuff.

Then you will, in like the dead of winter where everything looks like it's terrible in Seattle, it's like the worst time to be in Seattle. So we did, we put the house in the market. We bought a new construction here in, it's the name of the city's Granite Bay, California. So like on the far eastern side, close to Lake Folsom. But it wasn't gonna be ready until January. And so we had to be out of our house in August. We had to be in here in January. And at that point it was actually, could have been even February. We, because it was new construction, you just dunno. And so like, well, what are we gonna do?

We explored a bunch of options, but we ended up deciding to spend two months in Minneapolis. I have a really good friend from friend of masters that's out there, which is the platform that I teach like online courses for. So I stayed at his house for two-ish months, then we spent one month on Huntington Beach in California next to my wife's family.

And then we spent like the next six-ish weeks in Salt Lake City because I wanted to be close to the skiing and, and all that kind of stuff, because that was during winter and it seems very sane. Like, I have a pregnant wife. Let's go places where we have help. That was kind of the idea.

Otherwise I, like we would've just done like staying or something like that. Right. It's something kind of fun, but like, I was like, no, I am pregnant and I have an child. Please give me help. There's a theme here of me losing all of the arguments. It's, it will continue throughout the podcast.

Adam: Despite, by the way, despite the fact that you were such a shrewd negotiator as the fourth child. You have met your match.

Brian: Yeah. I, I lose everything else. that's accurate. I, so, on one hand, amazing to spend time with a bunch of people that like we love. On the flip side, it just sucks in being someone else's house for like six months, like to be a guest for that long.

Adam: Mm-hmm.

Brian: And then the other thing that I kind of realized and very obvious in retrospect, but not obvious when I did all those things is like kids thrive on routine, right? And doing the same things in the same order, in the same like day after day after day. And like them having a clear expectation of where they're going to go, who they're going to deal with, all those kind of things. And when you keep moving them like that, they just don't, right?

They just, they're constantly in flux. And ended up being pretty hard on him and like, he's a strong, resilient kid, but it was just, I could tell it was frustrating for him and it's like, not his fault. It's our fault, right? And so if nothing else happens from this podcast, please don't do that.

Just pick one spot that was absolutely the right choice. You should just pick one spot, maybe get an Airbnb, maybe get like a short term like business lease, as I think is what they call 'em. But I would've just done that and picked like either like Minnesota or Utah, just been there the whole time.

Adam: Yeah, I was thinking that as you were saying that you bopped around to like several different places. The first thing that came to my mind is. Oh man that would've destroyed us. 'cause our kids thrived on knowing the routine. But you know, not every kid is like that. There are some kids that are just like, I'm fine, go with the flow.

Even at that age. But it sounds like your kid is maybe more like a lot of other kids in that they like to know where, what am I doing today and where am I going? And like, who are these people?

Brian: Yeah. I mean, like, again he did pretty well, so he had any behavior issues over I, it honestly, it was harder on us just because he would just get like tired and frustrated and like, would have like a difficult bedtime and those kind of things.

Adam: Yeah. And at that age they can't quite communicate super well what's going on inside their head and their bodies.

Brian: They just yell and they expect you to figure it out. 

Adam: Right. So what are now three and a half years in about to have your second kid. What are some of the more surprising things that you've discovered as a dad?

Brian: Man, like one of the things is that if you find out, like for example, your kid has like a, I don't know, an earache or something like that. There's like, if you go Google, like my kid has an earache, you'll find out that your kid immediately has cancer and also they're dying. And also there's nothing wrong with them.

And also you are wrong. And it's like maybe you're an alcoholic and like you just like go down this list of like, oh my God, I just wanna know what to do for my child with an earache. Right. So I found out that the internet is actively unhelpful for raising children. And I say that as someone that's worked on two social networks.

I understand. Don't use the internet anymore. It's incredibly frustrating with everything to do with parenting of, for whatever stance or opinion that you want to have parenting or how to parent or anything like that. There is both a very strong and a very for against camp.

And either way you're killing your kid, you just dunno how you're doing it. Right. Which then kind of loops that background thing that surprises me is actually your intuition and instinct and, you know, consulting with your doctor is really, is the best way to raise a kid. Right? Because you can always pick these like various different, like methodologies or ways of thinking about parenting or, you know, I like these sources of parenting, but like at the end of the day, you kind of have to like, synthesize a lot of this into like your very unique and special case, which is your child.

Like I, I found out very quickly as like I am not an expert in parenting. I'm not an expert in kids. To be frank, like I was never a kid's person. Right. I was the youngest. Right. I didn't have anyone to take care of when growing up. But I'm a specialist in specifically raising Reed Holt the very narrow specialty that I exist in.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah. So would that be like, let's say you bumped into younger Brian from four years ago, you know, so Reid is. On the way he's coming but he is not here yet. And you saw your younger self is that some of the advice that you would dispense is like, ignore all the things on all the corners of the internet.

You will feel terrible if you don't.

Brian: Yeah. I mean, it's funny, it was advice I was already giving to, like young engineers that were entering the field is like, listen to everyone's advice and ignore most of it. It applies just in spades here. It's like, listen to everybody, like listen to your mother-in-law and your siblings and that weird person on Facebook, and then synthesize that down to like, everything you're telling me is either like wrong or steeped in survivorship bias, right? Like, this worked for you so therefore it must work for you. Right. And then just like distill down like what you think you should do and generally that's gonna be a much better choice than trying to wholesale adopt other people's advice.

Adam: Oh, I love that. That is fantastic advice for younger Brian. Is there anything in particular that you remember somebody dispensing at you or giving you advice wise where you were like, oh, that is just a horrible piece of advice. I gotta flush that one.

Brian: Man, like a lot of this, I'm trying to remember like some of this is repressed memories. In fact, we should talk about repressed memories here in just a second of like me trying to revisit all of the stuff with my second child coming, but a lot of the terrible advice I got around was sleep training because like when we got my son off of the Snoo and like, just like trying to sleep in a crib I dunno, it's not obvious how to get a kid to like sleep in their own crib and like be happy about it and all that kind of stuff.

And so I heard every bit of advice. One of them was just close the door, put in your headphones and just to straight up ignore the child. It was like, that doesn't feel right. That feels like borderline negligence. It's not even borderline. It feels like out and out negligence. Right. So there was that camp and like I, I'm sure that worked for some people.

It would've been negligence on my part to, to do that to my son. There's other people that like, you have to like, oh, I'm trying to remember exactly what this one person told me is like, you have to like be in the room. You have to be like, under a blanket so that they can't see you, but they see that you're in the room.

And I'm like, what the shit is this? This makes no sense to me. And so I, I, I heard everything. And so one of 'em, eventually, what someone told me is like, what's it called? Like graduated extinction. I think there's, I think it's cry it out method is with like the less nice way of putting that one, which is like going every one minute, then two minutes, then four minutes, then eight minutes, like that.

That made some sense to me and I'm sure we weren't doing our Perfect. What are those?

Adam: The Fibonacci sequence or something?

Brian: Thank you. I think that's what they recognized in Fibia. Like, I can't do fib like, well, okay, well it was five plus. Okay. Eight. Okay. Eight minutes. I can go in now.

Adam: Right.

Brian: I was just going there. Everyone's like, okay, this sounds like it's too bad. I probably should go in there now. Right.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah.

Brian: And eventually it worked. Okay. Like my son's still an okay sleeper, but you know, we're, everyone here is still surviving.

Adam: Right. Well, that's kind of the important thing, right? Like perfect is the enemy of good here, he's doing just fine. And everyone else is doing just fine too. So, but prepare yourself for that to be completely thrown back into chaos with the arrival of baby number two.

Brian: Well, and this is what something people have been telling me, which I'm starting to wrap my head around, is like, you have all these like opinions and like all these like tips and tricks that work like really well on your child's. Like none of it's gonna apply to the second one. You have to get a whole new set of tips and tricks to interact with like no two kids of the same, right?

Like maybe I've taken for advantage that my son is a great eater. You give him food, he will always eat. And there's other like kids that like, just like will not eat anything, right? And you have to like force it down. And so, yeah, I'm trying to prepare with something like what if I not realized that I got to skip over with the first kid and what am I going to get to skip over that I didn't with my first kid, right?

Adam: We'll have you back in like a year and we could do a compare and contrast episode where you like…

Brian: Sounds good.

Adam: Pit the two kids against each other and see which one does what, better or worse. So, I wanna talk to you a little bit about balance. This is gonna get much harder [00:27:00] as you have a second kid and now you're equally matched between adults and children in the household.

And so, you know, you have a pretty demanding job. You work for a technology startup. You have worked at some fairly intense companies Snowflake, Stripe, Reddit, even like, obviously that was before kids, but like, none of these places are cakewalks, right? They're all kind of known and startups in general are known for being intense and demanding a lot of people.

You do stuff on the side. You mention teaching in class. You've got a social life, maybe?

Brian: Sometimes.

Adam: You probably want to get some exercise. Oh, and by the way, you have to be a good dad, right? And a good husband. How, how do you fit all that stuff in? What stays? What goes? What have you prioritized as you've become a dad?

Brian: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, at the end of the day, I feel like the parent owes their kids the best life that they can give them. Like, I don't feel like I owe many people anything. I think for the rest of it's like, if you are good to me, then I'll be good back to you. It's kind of that kind of equal trade of value or maybe synergistic trade of value.

But like, no matter how shitty your kid is to you, I still feel like I brought you into this world. You rely on me, I owe this to you regardless of how you treat me back. And so that's always the thing that I try and prioritize highest in my lives is making sure that my kid's okay. And like that they have a safe environment to thrive and kind of constructing that, you know, safe garden for them to like, to grow up in.

And then everything else has to fit around that. Luckily I have a fairly flexible job it is a lot of hours, but it can kind of be done you know, on my time. And then I have a very supportive partner and luckily uh, generally when she is working that our schedules can kind of compliment each other.

And then I'm a pretty firm believer that, like, I don't remember where I heard this or read this, that like, it takes three people to raise a kid. That really two people don't have enough time and energy, I would say don't have enough time because obviously there's single parents out there that kill it, right?

So I'm certainly not saying that, but in order for every person to feel like a whole person and have enough time to themselves. And it takes, you know, more than just a companionship to try and do that. And so, being conscientious of that, the fact that we don't live next to my parents, nor my wife's parents we make use of things like nannies, babysitters, daycare, those kind of things.

'Cause I think whole people make better parents rather than, let me rephrase that. 'Cause I just wanna play that to myself. Like, me as a whole person makes for a better parent. That means if like, taking care of my body, having some fun to myself, I think it's important for my son to see that, like his parent is a whole person as well, that, you know, takes care of himself, cares about his body, cares about his family, has fun, right?

It's not this just like stone golum that goes to work and then comes back and, you know, you know, just, you know, reigns the manna from heaven and then goes back to his office to keep working or something like that, right?

Adam: Mm-hmm.

Brian: So it's always a, a flex in terms of like, sometimes you have more time to yourself, sometimes you don't, like, in addition to all that stuff I did, I also was doing my MBA for the past two years as well.

And so trying to fit all the stuff around, plus having the additional deadlines of trying to turn papers in and stuff like that it really took, like, my wife picked up a lot of that slack knowing that eventually that this would end and that I asked her, I was like, well, do I get a PhD now?

And she's like, I will kill you. So.

Adam: That's amazing,

Brian: Not getting a PhD. At least anytime soon

Adam: Right?

Brian: With two kids. But I don't know. It's something that I feel like, at least for me I strongly try to prioritize and recognize that I'm always gonna fall short of it.

Adam: Yeah. Are there any things from your pre-kids life where you've just resigned yourself that like, Hey, I'm not gonna do that anymore, or at least I'm gonna put that on an extended pause?

Brian: Certainly one thing is that I don't get to snowboard as much as I want to anymore. That'll change once my kids can get on the hill.

Adam: Mm-hmm.

Brian: Certainly that's the leisure travel has basically all stopped, right? So the, like as we were talking about earlier week when Mc and I used to travel everywhere we have a fairly long bucket list still places that we've never been that we would like to go.

And we just recognize that like, not until our kids are old enough to value that kind of travel, are we gonna try and do that again?

Adam: Mm-hmm.

Brian: And then something else that we, along the same lines, we used to travel a lot just to see friends, right? Live. Like, we'd go to Minnesota or we'd meet our friends in Mexico and just like, kind of like smaller trips and that kind of stuff.

And we just don't prioritize that anymore. Like a lot of stuff I still manage to fit in. Like you can see here in my background, I have like my computers and stuff, like I'll play computer games with my friends and we just do it after bedtime. And then I do prioritize like the time for I take for myself outta my day is exercise. I do make sure that I do that every day because things get a lot worse. So like, you get less energy, you can get less done unless you're staying on top of some of that stuff.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. I was gonna ask you if you had taken your son to the ski slopes or the snowboarding slopes yet, but it sounds like maybe not quite old enough for it, coming soon?

Brian: Yeah, three years old. Like if you are a hardcore skier, snower, which I'm not I. People will try at three years old and get it done. But four year old's a lot safer timed and so like, we bought my son an icon pass next year so that he can come with us to like, when we go to Tahoe or Sun Valley or Utah or something like that.

Adam: Yeah. That's awesome. I think we started my daughter when she was about four or four and a half. So as soon as they say like as soon as you can fit into the ski boots is when they're old enough to do it. And then it's just a matter of whether you as a parent are ready.

Brian: Yeah. To handle like all the falling over and the tears and the hot chocolate, like Yeah.

All the above.

Adam: I'm pretty much always ready for the hot chocolate, but I don’t know about the falling over or the tears.

Brian: Oh yeah, absolutely. There might be little Baileys in there as well, but we could just gotta make sure that you get the right chocolate, the right kid.

Adam: Right. right. Do you have a favorite book that you like to read to your son or does he have a favorite book?

Brian: My son loves to know the name of everyone. And so we picked up some like so wars books, just that were for fun. But he asked me every single page. He's like, who's this character? I wanna know this character's name. And it's like some obscure off like character from like fan, you know, Phantom Menace or something like that.

So I now know all of the Jedi councils. I know all of the different races. I will tell you that a huge blessing in my life has been ChatGPT, because you can just take a picture's like, who is this? Right? And ChatGPT would normally figure it out and get it right.

Adam: Wow.

Brian: And so like, my sense of the Alt, I was like, get your phone.

I wanna know who this is. It's like, okay. This is Kit Fisto, who is this Jedi Master from episode two that's on screen for 30 seconds, but yeah, we he does have a name.

Adam: That's amazing. All right. A myriad of Star Wars books is the answer.

Brian: There's like a Darth Vader and there's like the ABCs of Star Wars. There's Star Wars colors. There's all sorts of like my first Star Wars books that he just loves.

Adam: Okay, cool. I love that. Now I wanted to check on this one, 'cause you mentioned you lose the majority of the arguments in the house which that's totally fine. Welcome to the club. I know that partnership is super important when you have kids, you just mentioned, hey, it takes like three adults to raise a kid.

But it's also really hard to see eye to eye and be on the same page with your spouse a hundred percent of the time. So is there an area where you and your wife have differing opinions on stuff with your kid?

Brian: That's a good question. Like, for people that just like hop in right away and like don't have like a really stable partnership underneath them when they have kids. It just exacerbates all of the problems 'cause you're now, you have less time to talk about it. You're more sleep deprived and the stakes are higher.

Right? Because now she, little humans are involved in all these things. My wife and I have blessing of being, I don't know, married 10 years ish. I, I don't, math is hard at this point. So we had kind of already worked out like our ways of like tolerating tension in our relationship so that it was always like whatever the one person says, the other person just backs 'em up.

And then we talk about it later if that's exactly what we wanted to do. Just so that kids see this like consistency and, you know, respect for, you know, one parent has for the other, in terms of just like, do we have any big disagreements? My wife and I are both fairly relaxed people, so for the most part we don't pick fights unless we feel really strongly about them. And we're generally kind of on the same page with a lot of things. I don't care or, we agree enough on things that we're fine to compromise on things. I don't remember a place where we've really strongly differed on how to raise the kids. Yeah, I mean we, I guess we differ a tiny bit on like, the usage of timeout.

Adam: Mm.

Brian: Tons of research either way that it's like either, you know, healthy for kids as like a punishment or other kids that are like, you're murdering your kids if you put them in timeout. I, again, I really haven't figured it out yet.

Adam: Don't go on the internet to find the answer to this question.

Brian: Go on the internet. Exactly. And what we've eventually come to is like, we use them occasionally. Because it's like sometimes you just don't know what else to, like, something needs to happen, something needs to change and you don't know exactly what it is. So it's like, yeah, well, cool, we're gonna do a one minute time out and figure it out. Right.

Adam: Yeah. A lot of parents swear by that book. 1, 2, 3 Magic, which involves at the end, when you get to the three, the magic is some sort of a timeout or just kinda like breaks the situation, you know, and stops you from perpetuating whatever conflict or power struggle may be going on. So.

Brian: I’ve not read it, but like I do that. I probably picked it up from another parent that I saw that it was affected. I just feel like, you know, 1, 2, 3, and usually in the third, like one, I was like, okay. And once I say three, he just like, okay, no I'll do whatever you want. Just, I was like, I don't love this behavior, but you stop. So what am I gonna do?

Adam: That's right, that's right. You have built an entire career in technology. You start off as an engineer product person, now leading product teams. You mentioned using Chachi, bt and taking pictures of your son's star Wars book. Which that's genius by the way. Like, if that existed when my kids had questions about that, I would've saved myself an infinite number of hours.

Brian: Yep. I love it.

Adam: But when you think about, you know, your son's still really young and your next kid is not even here yet, is about to be here. When you think about the relationship that you want your kids to have with technology, the thing that you've built your whole career on how do you think about how that might be different or the same to your relationship with it?

Brian: Yeah. This is a really interesting question because I did not have restricted screen time as a kid for good or for worse, but like, I had a game boy, as a kid, we were in Montana, my brother played varsity sports, and so we were driving all over Montana. So I was on regularly on car trips that were four hours, six hours, eight hours, just because that's how things aren't close to each other in Montana. Right.

Adam: Sure.

Brian: And so I had a Game Boy, and then eventually, like, I had like a, my dad built like a little Nintendo 64 thing for me in the backseat of our car. And I would play that and my parents just acknowledged like, this is the way that we are, we're bringing a kid with us. That's not gonna freak out. So, don't really see at least, I mean obviously I'm talking about myself, but I don't really see too much downfall in, in the way that my parents treated technology and me, and like, on the flip side of it, like I learned how to code at a really young age because I needed to, for the, some of the things that I wanted to do.

It gave me a very intuitive sense of how a computer works. And my dad worked for IBM, that's probably bear's mentioning as well. So I grew up around computers. But on the flip side of this is like, I never thought I would find myself in this position, but like, just call like the iPad kit effect, that like, you give a kid an iPad and it's just like zombie mode, right?

Like there's just nothing going on between the eyes because they're not really interacting with it. They're just being like fed this like rapid loop of nothing, right? Like of engaging, visually simulating nothing. And so I'm finding myself in this weird position where it's like, I don't want to be the regulator of screen time and all that kinda stuff, but I find myself like, you need to be you actively have to fight for it comes for you. And so I'm trying to figure out, I don't know what that balance is. I still don't really, I honestly have a good answer to it. We just decided like, we're not gonna give our kid an iPad in the house if he wants to watch like screen time or anything like that. There's a big screen, you can watch it on the tv and there's some limits to it.

And then we will try and balance, like, playing with stuff. And, at the end of the day, I don't know we're still trying to figure out exactly what that is. As far as like AI and all that kind of stuff as well, like new worlds, right? Like, I'm trying to figure out what it is for my job, let alone how to raise a kid with all this stuff in the world.

The only thing that I know is that what I feel and what I know about is going to be wrong and it's gonna be different and it's gonna be on me, is like, do you wanna be this stodgy old person that just says like, no, back in my day we, you know, had, you know, cursive and penmanship and that kind of stuff.

Or are you just gonna say like, like, look, let's learn together. Let's try and figure out what this new world shapes out to be and let's try and equip you with the skills that this new world requires to be successful.

Adam: Yeah, I think that's a, I think that's a really balanced and great perspective to have. And like you just said, the only constant here is change and uncertainty, and so you kind of just gotta figure out how to navigate it as you go. Yeah,

Brian: Like I used to program like the quadratic equation into my graphing calculator so that I could like cheat on my math test by having the Quadra and I could have figured it out. I actually spent way more time learning about the quadratic equation so that I could, you know, generalize it into a program, and so like at that, definitely I could have done it way faster by home at that point.

But these kids now then, like, they have like, you know, smartphones and like the ability to Google things on the play. I'm pretty soon they're just being able to take a picture of it and say, answer all of my questions for me and never need to learn anything. And like that's scary from one perspective.

On the other hand, like. Maybe the utility of this is actually gonna be even more enabled be if they know how to use it correctly so, I don't know. Honestly, I don't know. I'm, you know, taking that I guess step by step.

Adam: Yeah, and the good news is you got a lot of time to figure it out with only a three and a half year old and a, a negative, a few days, year old. Um, What is a mistake that you've made as a dad?

Brian: I generally try not to like, dwell or remember these kind of things. Really I regret things when I do something that I know better, right? And like I did something and I was like, I know I should have done this other thing, but I did the other thing.

And I generally try not to live my life that way. And I generally not to try not to regret things if I just didn't know better. Right. And I was doing my best at time. I mean, I certainly could have like planned that trip better in terms of just speaking of that. But honestly I, I don't think I have too many regrets around raising my kid. Like I make mistakes all the time, but I'm the first person to go to my son's like, Hey I did this and I was wrong and I'm daddy's really sorry because daddy doesn't get it right all the time. And you know, I'm always here to listen to you.

If you think that I'm doing it wrong, please tell me and we'll talk about it, right? So, I don't know. That's probably kind of a boring answer if that's the truth.

Adam: No, but there was a real important nugget in there, which was, you know, you make mistakes all the time and here's how you recover from them and turn that into like a teaching opportunity with your own kid. So that's pretty amazing. I appreciate you sharing that. I wanted to come all the way back to a thing you mentioned early in our conversation, which is this idea of repressed memories.

And it just sort of reminded me of that, what you were just saying. So, you know, I always found this really funny that parents of older kids when I would ask them like, oh, what was it like when, you know, so and so Junior was really little? And they're like, I can't even remember. I can't even, I had no idea.

Has that already happened to you? I mean, your son is not that old, but it, yeah, but we, I guess maybe we process so much information when they're young and born and we're so sleep deprived that we just forget stuff. It goes down the memory hole. So that's happening with you right now?

Brian: I've had a couple of those just moments, like again, I had a friend uh, Scott Moss the other over the other day, and he has a newborn and like, his wife had to go do something, so she handed me the baby and I just like. Picked this kid out. I have a, Reed's pretty big. He's three and a half, but he is like 42 pounds.

He's a solid, yes. Solid chunk of human. And I picked up Iversson Scott's kid, and I was like, I forgot how light these are. Right? Like, I, it was just like a really weird moment for he is like, I'm about to do this again. I'm about to have something so light and tiny and like, feels fragile, right?

Whereas like, Reed, you could chuck and maybe he'd be fine, right? Like he, the, he just bounces off everything. And that it's just tons of, like, when I was setting up the Snoo and like looking, I was like, oh my God, I forgot what this, like, putting all the things in and like pressing the button and like all the sound machines and all that kind of stuff.

It's like, and then when I picked up like the newborn diapers, I was like, I forgot how small these are. And it's just like, thing after this, like, it's like a, I'm a frog that's been boiling for three and a half years. I just forgot what cool water felt like. Right.

Adam: Oh, that is an amazing analogy. Yeah. Well, it's all gonna come flooding back.

Brian: Very quickly.

Adam: Yeah. But I suppose, you know, and maybe it's helpful that we forget all these things because as you also mentioned, like each kid is very different from one another. So like, if you're expecting it to be identical to what Reed was like as a baby, you're actually in for a pretty rude awakening.

Um, so maybe, maybe there's some, maybe there's some genetic reason that we forget these things. Who knows.

Brian: I'm sure. I'm sure there's a bunch of stuff that you don't wanna take old bad habits into your next kid, right.

Adam: Yeah, for sure, for sure. Okay. What's a way that you recharge yourself or center yourself? With the chaos of parenthood and professional life?

Brian: Couple of ways. I mean, certainly one of them is that I, I try and sweat for at least 30 minutes every day, whatever that is. I was running when I was in Minnesota. I have a Peloton here and I just, you know, put on my basic man's kind of, hat and ride Peloton. So just getting out of that, like where you're just you're exercising.

The only thing that you can do right then is just think about is like, wow, I'm really tired. And I think that's super helpful. yoga is, is another good one that I used to do as well. I haven't done that as much lately, but just like, just make your body suffer a little bit in order, allow you to kind of space to kind of clear out and then we can come back to things with fresh eyes. Something else is just like, when you have those like moments of awe, like, which I didn't really understand until I was a parent where like you're just, I remember, I dunno why this is such a clear memory for me, but like, I remember when my kid came home from his first, like, I don't know, two weeks of daycare and he told me something that didn't know.

He like, Hey, this happened at school and I had this moment. I was like, that's crazy that he finally has told me something that I didn't know before. Right? Like before we'd had conversations, he's like, Hey dad, I ate this. I was like, yeah, no kid, I watched you eat that. Right? But like, I try and take like those moments of awe and just like really just like, like give him a moment, like give him some space to like really just kind of settle in there and it really recharges you for me as a parent anyway, to just like recognize that like you're along for this journey.

Like, these stories make sense to nobody else, right? Like where he is, like, Hey, I, my kid told me something that I didn't know my child was friends are like. Okay. Like, why do, why do I hear It's the dumbest story, right? It makes no sense to anyone but you. But just embracing it, leaning into it being like the dumb parent that takes way too much pride and like is way to invested in your kid.

Just living it, loving it, right? And like doing nothing for the grand and doing everything for like, just yourself, right?

Adam: Yeah. Yeah.

Brian: That really helps me a lot as well. And then just again, trying to be a whole person. Have hobbies. Even if you don't really get to them all the time. Still keep interest and passion in things outside of your kids, your spouse, your work, your side hustles, school.

Find time to do, for me, that's, I try and cycle where I can. I just try and snowboard where I can go to sports matches, have a good beer, you know, some of those things. Trying and even like, it's gotta shrink, right? It's the first thing to go when you have, you know, time constraints, but when you don't, trying to fit them back in.

Otherwise like you just sit on your phone. Phone and dooms scroll. That's actually probably good. A good thing to mention as well, I was like, I try and not be on my phone when I'm just sitting there by myself,

Adam: Yeah.

Brian: Because that will just eat all of your free time and you'll just, you'll end up doing absolutely nothing.

Adam: Oh, I love that piece of advice. Thank you for sharing it. You mentioned sports. I would be remiss if I did not call out that the former Oakland A's are now the Sacramento A's, have you taken your son or are you planning on taking your son to a baseball game this summer?

Brian: Absolutely. I am really excited they should be here for at least three, at most, four years. I have a hard role 'cause I actually don't care at all about baseball, but I have a hard rule that my favorite team is the one that I live closest to.

Adam: Oh,

Brian: So I am right at this moment in time, I am an As fan and in about three or four years, I will be a Giants fan again.

Adam: There you go. There you go. I love that. I love that.

Brian: So yeah, absolutely, we'll take him to some games. We'll take him to some Kings games. I have tons of fond memories with my dad going to Utah Jazz games. Still a huge Utah Jazz fan. I love events. I love spectacle. All the kind, we've taken my son already to a couple of like, kid it oriented concerts.

We, like, we went to like the pop patrol show and some of the other things, and just getting him out and having cool experiences.

Adam: Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Alright, well Brian, before we get to lightning round, how can people follow along or be helpful to you in any way?

Brian: I'd occasionally get on Twitter or Blue Sky or LinkedIn. Those are really the only three that I check these days. In general, I try and disconnect. I'm off all Facebook properties for actually, specifically for that reason now.

Adam: Yeah.

Brian: Otherwise just if I'm at an event or if you find yourself in Sacramento, a cup of coffee or a beer is always a welcomed inquiry.

Adam: Alright, well we will point people to Twitter, Blue Sky, and LinkedIn in case they want to socially, professionally connect with you in some way. Alright, well, are you ready for lightning round?

Brian: Strike me with lightning. I'm ready.

Adam: Okay. I think some of these we may have uncovered in the show, but we will see if the answer's the same now during the lighting round. Here we go. What is the most indispensable parenting product that you have ever purchased?

Brian: Unfortunately it probably is that snoo and I really wish that wasn't the case, but like, it made such a major difference in the early sleeping or read that I unfortunately have to say that.

Adam: Okay, well, let me actually challenge you on this. Is it the Snoo or is it the Magnetic Clasp clothing?

Brian: Oh, yeah. I mean, being able to change, like if like your kid has like a very smelly thing to, to deal with, being able to like rip it off and just throw another one on and every other class just kind of come together. It's quite nice.

Adam: Okay. All right. Well, well top two. We'll say that's a top two. What is the most useless parenting product that you've ever purchased?

Brian: The Owlet. Do you remember that one? It was like this like smart sock that you could put on a kid and it would tell you if they were dying. And fun fact, they are always dying. It was just false alarm after false alarm of like, oh my God, your kid stopped breathing. You go in there and your kid's fine.

Right? It, It was just anxiety as a service is really what this product was.

Adam: You've coined a new piece of software anxiety as a service? Oh my

Brian: Terrible. What? Nothing to do with that.

Adam: Amazingly, a sock doesn't actually tell you if your kid is breathing or not. Shocker.

Brian: Yeah. Who, Who could have guessed?

Adam: What is the weirdest thing that you've ever found in one of Reed's pockets or in the washing machine?

Brian: Oh man, the list is long there. Certainly one AirPod was surprising and not fun one to pull out of the laundry.

Adam: Oh, no,

Brian: And even more fun fact is, I don't think it was ours I don't, I have all of my AirPods. Right.

So that's probably what it is.

Adam: Okay. Someone else's AirPod in the washing machine.

Brian: Yep.

Adam: Amazing. True or false? There is only one correct way to load the dishwasher.

Brian: I would say false. I saw a meme that basically said that there's two types of people in this world. Like one is like a Danish HIG designer when they put in like everything and has like its perfect place or a rabid raccoon and there's nothing in the middle. And I am definitely the rabid raccoon is like, if it fits, it sits right.

If it goes in there, we're doing it. We're turning it on. And I might have to run it twice, but that's fine.

Adam: Yeah. I have always the best intentions in loading the dishwasher and then eventually it just goes to chaos.

So, yeah. What is your signature dad's superpower?

Brian: I don't wanna call myself the disciplinarian, but I'm usually the one that can come in and make some order out of the chaos.

Adam: Okay.

Brian: So I get brought in when like, everyone's both, you know, wife and child are unhappy about something and I was like, okay, what do we need right now so that we can stop with this, you know, pouting session and then, and go forward.

So it's probably just bringing things down a couple of notches.

Adam: You’re the mediator of all problems, the

Brian: I'm the hostage negotiator is probably closer.

Adam: Okay. What is the crazier block of time in your house? 6:00 AM to 8:00 AM or 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM.

Brian: Oh, it's the latter for sure. Before bedtime. That is, that's when peak negotiating lead comes out and he is like, well, if I do this, then I can do this. I was like, no buddy. That doesn't math. But that, those numbers don't add up. It's like, but if you watch two more episodes of Barney and I have one more chocolate milk and then I can go to bed.

And I was like, I appreciate what you're trying to do here. But no, none of those things work

Adam: Amazing. The ideal day with your son involves which one activity.

Brian: Eventually that answer will be snowboarding. We're not quite there yet. What do I really enjoy doing with Reed? He's really fun to get out and like, take him to the park or take him to like one of those like, you know, big kid gyms where they just climb around and have a great time 'cause he just runs around and just like a banshee.

And it's just really fun to watch him just at his like, peak of enjoyment and real like, realize like, man, I wish I could be that happy right now. I wish that all of my cares can just flow away and I could just like climb that up and just like, it's like Everest, right?

Adam: Yeah. If, Reid had to describe you in one word, what would that be?

Brian: The dad of me wants to say Dad, right? Just go for the full on dad joke. I hope that he says kind or loving or fair. Like one of those. I'm sure sometimes he says just Yeah, asshole or something like that, which probably also fits the bill. So if he said those like four words, then I think I'd feel pretty okay.

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

Brian: I get really frustrated when like, I'll like do, like, I'll set something up or like, we'll get him a toy or something like that, and then he is just pissed about it. That gets really frustrating really quickly of like, hey, like we actually this, like, really cool toy or I don't know. I remember I, I was traveling for work and I brought something back.

I think it was a, it was like a green dinosaur and he had seen the other version of the same dinosaur, like, I wanna do that dinosaur. Like, I don't care buddy 'cause this is the one that I have and this one, the other one's, you know, in Seattle and I can't go get it for you right now. I don't know, like, it, it kind of brings out like they're kind of being a brat and like, I don't wanna raise a brat.

I think every kid has just some brat tendencies in them, so you just kind of have to kind of, you know, prune those as they come up.

Adam: On the opposite side, what is the funniest thing that your kid has ever said in public?

Brian: Oh man. My wife has like a journal of these and so maybe I'll have to message you some of the funny ones later. Trying to think of one off the top of my head.

I'm blanking on this one.

Adam: That's all right. I love that your wife has a journal of these, by the way. This is pretty amazing. Yeah.

Brian: I mean, we're not journaling people, but she does it for certain things. She does like try and keep like track of like all the funny things that he does say.

Adam: That's awesome. Well, we'll follow up on that one. We'll include it in the show notes or something. How many dad jokes do you tell on average in a given day?

Brian: I try and get my wife to roll her eyes at least once a day.

Adam: Do you have a favorite?

Brian: I think the best dad jokes were the spontaneous ones. Were like, you're pointing out like, like I, I didn't just a couple of moments there so I, I don't gravitate towards the obvious like knock, knock jokes or something like that.

It's more like, you know, hi Dad, I'm hungry. Is like, hi, hungry. I'm dad. Right?

Adam: Oh, that's a classic. Classic of the genre. What is the most absurd thing that your son has ever asked you to buy for him?

Brian: He's asked me several times to buy him a car. And I was like, I got a bigger car when we moved to California for the second kid. And he's like, okay, dad, can you buy me a blue car? And I was like, I mean, no, that's not really how this works. It's like, but you got a silver car? I get a blue car, again, buddy.

That's not really how this works.

Adam: That's amazing. It's gotta be a blue car. Just like the red dinosaur.

Brian: He's obsessed with what the colors of things are and it's important that you have to get it right. And the silver car was not to his liking.

Adam: Oh, I see. I, but I understand. I understand. What is the most difficult kids TV show that you've had to sit through?

Brian: I'm, every day that I'm not watching Paw Patrol is a blessed day. it's a, It's a victory. That's the one that she latched onto that I liked the least. I've been warned away from several TV shows, like the one with the bald kid, I can't remember what his name

Adam: Caillou.

Brian: Caillou. I've heard. He is like, that kid will ruin your kid's behavior. So we get 0% of that in this house.

Adam: Yes.

Brian: So yeah, Paw Patrol is just, it's just mindless. Like, it's fine. There's nothing really truly harmful about it. I guess the other thing that actually more than anything is just like putting your kid on like unfiltered YouTube kids and just watching all the stuff that they click through.

That's the worst. That's the stuff that actually, like, I think this might be actually harmful for his like, attention span.

I don't turn off Paw Patrol if he wants to watch it, by all means we can watch an episode here or there. But with like the YouTube kids thing, it's like you get like five minutes of crack and then we are done.

That is all the crack you get today.

Adam: On the flip side, what is your favorite kid's movie?

Brian: Kids movie. I mean, it's really fun that it like reads finally old enough to like be interested in the properties that I was interested in and slash still are, still am interested in. So like, Star Wars has always been like one that I liked as a kid. He liked Sonic the Hedgehog a lot. Like I left Sonic as a kid or Super Mario.

He liked that one for a while. So actually probably the one that we watched the most together that we both liked would be the Super Mario Brothers movie.

Adam: Okay. Great film. Great film. What is the worst experience you've ever had assembling a children's toy or a piece of furniture?

Brian: Generally I'm smart enough to these days to not buy IKEA furniture 'cause I just know of what a promise and, or I just get a TaskRabbit to do it for me these days. Oh, what was the one that we put together where I was just like cursing? It was some like Batman, large scale, like bat cave thing that had like 400 pieces to it and it was all flat pack.

And I was like, why did I order this? Who thought this was a good idea? Who hates parents this much? Right?

Adam: Oh, that's amazing. Always the flat pack, like houses or kitchens or whatever. What nostalgic movie can you just not wait to force your son to watch with you?

Brian: It's probably Tron Legacy.

It's a terrible movie in terms of like, there's no plot of a, of worth any sort of description, but I just love the soundtrack and like the aesthetic and the vibe of it.

Adam: Okay.

Brian: And, I watched it a ton as like a, I dunno, whenever it came out I was probably 18 when that movie came out.

But I certainly like the old, like eighties comedies as well. Like, or I guess they'd probably be early nineties, like Tommy Boy and Happy Gilmore and like all those stupid Adams Sandler movies. I'm looking forward to the days when he enjoys the fart jokes as much as I do.

Adam: The good news for you is that they're making a sequel to Happy Gilmore, from what I understand. So

Brian: Have, having worked at Netflix during the time where we signed those Netflix contracts I have no faith that they're gonna be any good.

Adam: I'd say they probably weren't good at the time, but we

Brian: Yeah, Yeah,

Adam: two last ones. Do you have a favorite data hack for road trips or flights?

Brian: Oh man. Like, I remember when Reid was young enough, 'cause Reid is flown enough that I think he's almost full of medallion 

Adam: Whoa.

Brian: On Delta. So he certain, he's certainly silver. So. you run the, the nap schedule so that they sleep on the flight.

That was always a successful hack for, so now that he's old enough we only let him have iPad, the, like mostly unfiltered iPad time, either in restaurants when we're eating or on flights. That's it. So that's been successful. He also really likes when you bring like the vinyl stickers that stick on glass and you let 'em like put it on the airplane window.

I think my wife's got that off of Instagram or some terrible source of parenting hacks, right?

the other one is that you go to the dollar store and you get like five really cheap toys and you just kind of pull them out one by one. Once they finally get bored with the stupid toys, then you just get rid of all of them at the end.

Adam: Progressive reveal, progressive discovery, something like that.

Brian: That's it. That's it.

Adam: Yeah. Okay. Last question for you. Save the best for last. You were one of four kids but you only currently have one kid. You said you just got a new car. What is your take on minivans?

Brian: I used to be like every, you know, red blooded young American male, like, no, absolutely not, right? And man, now I'm just like, anything that makes moving kids around that much easier. Hell yeah. I'm super into it. Like, I drove my sister's mini, I don't have one yet, but I drove my sister's minivan by happenstance.

And then the thing in it that I like to call the Voice of God mode, where you just, there's like a little microphone just like knock it off and like, it just like rings it out throughout the entire car because you're like, oh my god, what it? Right. That I'm super into that. Like, that kind of stuff like really appeals to me.

So like, if you have, I have no judgment for anyone that chooses to drive a minivan. If there was like an EV minivan, I would've strongly considered it.

Adam: All right. Well I didn't know two things on that. I didn't know about that voice of God mode, but that sounds really nice. And two, if you do get a minivan, make sure it's a blue one.

Brian: Absolutely that. Otherwise my son will outright reject it.

Adam: That's right. And with that, Brian, thank you so much for joining me on Startup Dad today. It was a pleasure having you and learning about you and your fam, and best of luck with the new pending bundle of joy.

Brian: Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah, this was super fun. Thanks for having me on.

Adam: Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Brian Holt. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, share, and leave me a review on Apple or Spotify.

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