Interviews with Dads- Brian London Ep 8

All right, so we're in a livestream and Brian hasn't showed up yet. Oh, it's about time. All right, so we're already live because we've been waiting on you.

I hear you yet. Give me a moment here. Can hear you now. Can you hear me?

Yeah, super loud.

You got headphones?

You got headphones?

Oh yeah, now it sounds like you're saying things twice. Let me check for a pair of headphones.

All right, I muted you because the feedback was bugging me. All you had to do was show up, get some headphones, look good for the camera. All right, let's see, are there any comments? Is anybody actually watching this thing? So Colter was there earlier. Let me unmute you, Brian.

I changed my microphone setting also, that might help.

Great.

Did that help? Do I still need my headphones for you?

Colter, how's the audio sound? Sorry, I'm having to rely on comments now. Brian, say something smart.

Hey, Colter, thanks for being here.

Well, he's not answering, so you both not answer.

Colter Masters. Perfect.

Brian, how you doing, buddy?

Feeling good, doing good, thank you.

It's been a long time.

Too long, too long. It's my fault, my fault. My phone makes outgoing calls, and, uh, I'm gonna have to activate that feature one of these days.

Hey, is the, uh, is the screen clear? We're relying on Colter. Colter, is the screen clear? I know you can hear us now because I can hear it. We've been having an issue where the, uh, the screen is— it's recording fine, like it looks fine on my end, but then when it comes over, it's blurry on the other side. But good. All right, I think we're good to go.

Okay.

All right, so introduce yourself, whatever your name is.

My name remains Brian London. I am a 99 dad here, uh, Still looking after that elusive 100 dad that Townsend here has been able to capture. I'm honored and privileged to be on your show, and I hope I can deliver what you seek.

Brian, you're one of the funniest people I think I've ever talked to, so hopefully you can live up to that expectation and make me laugh and hopefully some other people laugh.

Great, well, I'll follow your lead here and we'll give Colter a good show.

Alright, how long you been married?

Great, let's see, November 12th, 2000— starting with the hard questions.

How long you been married? It's not that hard of a question.

Yeah, we've got 7 years, we're at the 7-year itch, coming up on year number 8. Uh, in November.

Nice. How many kids?

Uh, we have one kid and, uh, 5-year-old son, a few fur babies. And so my wife takes care of all those. Of course she takes care of me as well.

What do you do for a living? I don't even know. I actually tried to figure that out and I know you do something in the hotel industry. Yeah, that's all I know. Clarify it for me.

Perfect. Let's see here. Oh, perfect. It's— that's a perfect summary there. Yep, that's right. I work with destinations and hotels, help them figure out who's more likely to visit in the next 3, 6, 12 months kind of scenario.

So you must love the current state of things since COVID has destroyed your entire industry worldwide.

It's crushing to see what's happening. The visitor economy. There's a lot of waiting on the sidelines, a lot of smart people in position to do good things, just really waiting.

Yeah, so what does that mean for your business? I mean, does that mean like everything's come to a halt for you, or does that put you at an advantage where you're actually doing better because you're gonna be, I don't know, advising people how to get through this?

Yeah, that's right. A lot of advisory work, a on talking to people on how to get through this, just reminding them they have the skills, they have the resources, they know what to do next, and just kind of letting them know when the signals are gonna start appearing for what to do next. A lot of really economic forecasting and really back-to-basic work. You know, for the past 10 years, the industry's been real complacent, and, you know, it's been okay because, rising tide lifts all boats. Now that the, the tide has gone out a little bit, a lot of us are getting caught, and we're gonna have to go to work and put on our marketing hats and really fight for the business.

Yeah, what does the next few months look like?

Oh, very, very tough, very soft. You know, essentially two economies, you know, those that have income, a steady income, a paycheck that they've still received, and you know, this real ability, you know, a class that has the ability to spend discretionary money on leisure, and then a second class that lives paycheck to paycheck that might have traveled in the past, maybe charging their way through a vacation. However, now without that, that cash flow they just, they'll struggle even to make ends meet, meet basic necessities. It's, it's really heartbreaking.

And, um, yeah, no, that's gonna be a real scenario for people. Uh, we're just— we did a podcast, um, a couple days ago, uh, with The Budgeting Guy. We haven't released it yet, um, you know, but we kind of talked about how to work, work through a few of those things. But it's gonna be a real, a real struggle for some people. And hopefully they're being smart with their, uh, stimulus checks. Yeah, there was a big boom in, uh, e-commerce, uh, retail sales when the stimulus checks hit, which meant people were going out buying stuff instead of, you know, maybe preparing for what's coming around the horizon, uh, or, you know, kind of securing their future. So we'll see what happens with that. But all right, uh, so how you like being a dad so far? I, I remember being super excited Um, when you told us you were having a kid, I, I don't know if that's something you guys were planning for a while, uh, but I know in our social circle when you lived in St. Augustine, um, you know, a lot of us didn't even believe you were married. You know, you always said you had a wife, you always said you had another life, and we just— yeah, we never saw her. And so we just kind of thought it was this fictitious thing that you just made up as a joke. And then, then we thought, uh, you know, maybe this whole baby thing is, is fake as well. It's just some big practical joke Brian's doing.

The next iteration in the story actually couldn't contain the lie.

And yeah, I pulled a picture so everyone can see. Yeah, make sure we know who you are.

That's, that's pretty accurate.

I like this one. I never really thought of you as Zach Galifianakis before.

Uh-huh.

I'm not gonna forget. Is this your wife over here?

That's my sister.

Close enough.

Yes, my sister, my bigger sister.

Not the same person, right?

Uh, not the same. Say again?

Your wife is not your sister, I'm hoping.

This, this wife is not my sister, right?

Good.

And then, um, and then this part of this happy birthday joke was she, uh, my sister, she had seen this movie but she couldn't remember any of the actors' names to this movie. But she had it on the tip of her tongue that I reminded her of someone from a movie called The Hangover, but she didn't know the name of the actor. When I heard that, that I reminded her of somebody from that movie, immediately I knew right away who she was talking about because I do get that a lot. I told her, as I tell others, Bradley Cooper. Yeah.

I don't think so. All right, you did it. You made me laugh once, guys. I was about to fire you there. So I actually don't know, we haven't talked in years, so I don't know even if you're like— we might be bringing you on here to expose you as like this terrible dad. This just sucks.

Do it. Yeah, there's been no vetting process.

It really hasn't. I was just hoping for the best.

So you're probably thinking, who haven't I talked to on this contact list? In the, in the past 18 months.

I had to scroll really deep to find you.

Yeah.

So I guess, how present are you? What's your life like there? Um, uh, you know, are you going all day? Are you traveling a lot? Are you there all day? Uh, what's your, what's your life with your son, your wife?

Timeless. What was that last part?

Time-wise.

Time-wise. Yeah. Well, for me, I'm, uh, I'm essentially running two philosophies. The first is it's okay to lead by example. You know, it's okay to not hover, to not be present, not be there the whole time. In fact, I truly believe that, you know, a measure of your fatherhood and the impression that you're able to make is how they behave when you're not around. And you might say that of any sort of leadership position, especially in the workplace, where you say, well, We know how the staff acts when you're in the room, but how do they act when you're not in the room? And I really try to— I do think that that's appropriate here for family life as well with my son, of course.

So you dodged the question. Are you there or are you not there? What's your life? Are you traveling or are you working out of the house?

Total apologies here. I think I misunderstood the question. Yes, so clearly misunderstood it. So I'm here probably when I'm not traveling, I'm here 100% of the time working in a home office.

Of course.

Yeah, home office, doing school drop-off in the morning, pick-up in the afternoon, and bedtime as well. We really see this as the bedtime routine. That's probably the most important part of our relationship.

Why is that? This is where you have the most fun and you're just connecting the most?

Yeah, it's not always the most fun, but it is the most connected. It's really a part for him where he's starting to decompress from his day. He's had his— he's had whatever tantrums he's gonna have. You know, he's starting to think about the choices he made and kind of what the day for tomorrow wants to look like. And I'm the recipient. I'm able to see that, those emotions, those high points and low points. Um, I can be silly if I want to be silly.

You have a deep philosophic kid. None of my kids think about any of that stuff.

Oh no. Yeah, yeah, you can train them to be, uh, to be philosophical. And you know, over time you kind of learn, uh, what they like and, and and don't like, and it's fun to see their little personalities bubble. An example of something that we'll do for storytime bedtime is I'll take the book and I'll turn it upside down, and I'll start reading the book upside down to gauge his reaction. He just starts giggling. He thinks this is one of the funniest things in the world because he knows that's not how a book is supposed to.

There's nothing wrong with reading a book upside down.

Then the other part of your question, you know, well, when I'm traveling, you know, what happens there? Well, when I'm traveling, I'm essentially out of house for, you know, 2, 3 days at a time. And I have my game face on, right? I have my conference face on, the war paint's on, and I've got to go to work. I've got to do the work necessary to support the family. And for me, a lot of times that means no distractions. I have to learn to limit those distractions and that will come into play, you know, for checking in from time to time or making sure that I'm available to do a video call from time to time. And, you know, I always like to be available. I'm always reachable. But one of the things I struggle with is being proactive and making sure that, you know, I'm the one that takes responsibility to set it in my calendar. Okay, it's, you know, it's 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Now it's the time to dial and make the video call in order to check in. And if I don't do that, I could find myself just checking my phone and seeing, you know, missed calls or missed text messages from the family. And I'm just— because I'm just in the zone. Sure. And I think it's, you know, I think it's because I do work from home and I am always available when I am home. That occupies one end of the continuum. So when I'm traveling, I just naturally gravitate towards that other extreme. Definitely something I need to work on.

How often are you actually traveling? Is that a frequent occurrence?

Yeah, when— not taking the last couple months into account, on a general cycle, I'm traveling at least once a month. More likely 2 or 3 times a month, um, at least, you know, 1 or 2 overnights. And generally the overnights can be, you know, 2, 3, or 4 days.

And I don't think traveling as a dad now compared to like 20 years ago, so much easier, uh, not only because travel's faster now, but the technologies you have. I mean, you can just FaceTime with your kid with your phone at any point in time, so you can really— you get to see and interact and, and, uh, not miss out on much. I mean, you're obviously not there personally, but, um, I feel like, you know, if you're not going to be there, that's the next best thing. You know, you still get video, you still get audio, and, uh, it's better than the old days. You had to go to a payphone in the lobby of the hotel and, yeah, throw a nickel in and call for, you know, 15 minutes.

Yeah, that's right. It's, uh, you know, I guess one benefit is that it's cutting down on the number of trinkets I've had to buy at the airport because, you know, I'm not gone long enough for them to miss me. I'm always available and checking in.

So I'm sure that's helping grow the retirement fund.

Yeah, exactly.

So, uh, you guys budget? You're a Dave Ramsey follower, aren't you? If I remember right, you do the Dave Ramsey thing.

Yep, yep. We're, uh, we're, uh, we're Dave Ramsey, everything but the tattoo. And we think it's a great system. It works for us and we modify what we need to, but for the most part we follow.

So has your income come to a halt during this crisis?

Well, I'll say yes and sort of yes.

So significantly affected?

So it impacts our clients' ability to, uh, you know, to sign contracts for new business.

Okay.

And, um, but it doesn't impact, you know, clients' ability for past business that they've already signed contracts for.

Um, so you have some old stuff coming in, but you don't have stuff in the pipeline coming. Uh, so I was just trying to figure out how you're handling that because a lot of people are going to be in that boat of, uh, you know, either money's not coming in now or, or cancel orders or lack of projects to do. Yeah, I guess, how are you preparing for that?

Well, we, we have got 3 buckets that we look at in this scenario. The first bucket is following Dave Ramsey, we have our emergency fund, and that's essentially what this is. As, as income, that as revenue is slowing down or not coming in as expected, we're able to use our short-term emergency fund in order to essentially cash flow or to cover any gaps in our budget. So we still keep to our budget, just pulling the funds from the emergency fund. So that's the first thing to do. Second thing is we definitely take a look at, you know, what's essential, what's not essential, and cut back as needed. You know, for me, it's been something like not having that cup of coffee, you know, or —because I have fewer meetings out of the office, I have fewer lunch tabs that I'm picking up. Or because I'm not driving around all day, I'm not getting coffee, because I'm not traveling, you know, I'm not getting meals in the airport. There's little things like that that I'm not spending money on that add up that are able to help with our cash flow. I think the second thing that's helpful, going back to that budget standpoint, is, you know, just communicating on what is relevant. For us and taking things in, in 30-day chunks. Um, sometimes when talking about finance, it's easy to get caught up in it.

Were you guys able to pause your rent or mortgage or whatever you have? Were you guys able to navigate that? Uh, yeah, that, uh, I haven't heard a lot from people, but I know people wanted to not pay their rent or mortgage. I didn't know how many people were actually able to not do it or just went ahead and found a way to do it because I know forbearance was a big thing where, you know, the, the mortgage company would let, let you not pay the next few months, but then it all came due in like 2 or 3 months, which is going to be impossible for everybody. Um, and so did you have to experience any of that?

Yeah, you've described, uh, what happens, uh, perfectly. That's exactly what happens with the forbearance. And so, um, the process is you can call and request a forbearance. Uh, you're not going to make the payment for that particular month, and they'll extend you that grace period for 90 days. And then on the 120-day, for month 4, you owe for the month and then you owe anything that was in arrears. And one of the pitfalls of forbearance is that if you don't then pay your obligation, it has the potential to accelerate a process which would call in your note and perhaps foreclose on your home. So kind of going back to that Four Walls of Dave Ramsey, one of the walls being your, you know, your domicile. As part of our emergency fund and part of our budget, we make sure that we can cover our mortgage payment. In, uh, in the '08-'09 recession, now that wasn't the case for us. This was of course before our Dave Ramsey plan. And we had our condo foreclosed on. We had gone through that forbearance program and gone through everything up to the legal procedure where the bank had to actually foreclose on our property. It's a very humbling experience to have the weight of the bank come down on you and to see that in action. That's one of those stories where you have this adversity, then you're stronger for it. You're able to tell that story afterwards. That's your reward for having gone through it. So now we're in a similar situation. We see all these stories about these rent strikes, and it's just really emotional. I could see, I understand how they're feeling, having felt the way they do in the last recession not that long ago. And here it is, you know, my fellow residents now going through the same experience. There's no easy answer. You know, those terms that they use related to rent strike, they're essentially acknowledging that we have a class of citizens that are working, you know, day to day and barely have enough revenue to cover their expenses. And when they miss a paycheck and they're not able to cover their expenses, and that has implications, you know, that trickle, that ripples throughout the economy. So for the time being, we're not gonna rent strike. We're gonna keep paying our mortgage, and then we're gonna use that, that countdown. You know, the emergency fund is only supposed to cover you through the time period of the emergency. A lot of people forget that. They think that the emergency fund is their retirement account. That's not the case. There are two different accounts here. The idea of the emergency fund is supposed to sustain you for a time until you're able to kick it into an extra gear and create some income so that you're not needing to rely on those emergency funds. And that's what a lot of people are really hoping will start to happen here in Jacksonville, Florida. That, that's gonna start happening as early as May 4th here, uh, over the weekend, as the mayor has signaled that some some businesses are gonna start to reopen, either at a limited capacity or at full capacity. I think that'll start, restart the engines and get some of the oil circulating.

If you get hit by a baseball bat tonight in our bed, you have a little advice?

Delete, you gotta delete my browser history if that's the case.

So I've actually, so I've heard of friends, we had a friend of a friend die, and they did that. They went and did a, they called it a buddy check. A buddy check, yeah. Yeah, I had never heard of before. I feel like just keep your browser history clean, then you won't have anything to worry about, right?

I watch— I'm a big conspiracy theorist. I love all those YouTube videos. I just— nothing, uh, it's— some people like horror movies, some people like comedies. I'm just— I'm a sucker for a good conspiracy narrative. And, uh, and I, and I like to participate too, you know.

I quit dodging my questions. Do you have a will in place?

Uh, do we have a will in place? We do have a will in place, and we have, uh, what's called a power of attorney if I'm incapacitated. And, uh, it's, it's a mutual, right? I have one, my wife has one.

And healthcare directives, you've done that? Say again? The healthcare directives, you have done that?

We do. Uh, I have checked the box that says pull the plug. I don't want to. Yeah, no need to keep me around. Don't, don't do any science projects on me. Don't poke or prod me. If you have, you can decide quality of life. But if, if you think it's not, not where it needs to be, I think being purged.

I think one of the most frustrating things or poorly thought out things a dad can do is not have a will in place. Oh, expect to die. It just creates such havoc on your family members after your death. It's just probate court is a pain in the ass. In the whole process, it's incredibly frustrating. And, you know, you end up leaving your wife and your kids. They go from sad to pissed at you because you left them in this just this clusterfudge of a mess. So it's just one of the things that is super cheap to get that just every dad just needs to take the hour and a half it takes to read through that form and fill in the blanks. And go get it notarized and you're done.

So we did, we did that. And then, um, of course that's coupled with, uh, our term life insurance policies. Good as well. And, uh, we started that maybe, uh, 7, 8 years ago. And, uh, yep, probably about the time we got married.

So now 7 years, uh, so 7 years, you know, it's a statistically high, uh, year for getting divorced. It's years like 7 and year, uh, I think 25. Okay, so you're in year 7, which means statistically you and your wife should be about to rip each other's throats out. Or maybe, maybe a year ago, maybe next year. Uh, are you guys experiencing any of that?

I'm trying to get to the real stuff. Yeah, no, we're very fortunate, um, and, uh, in, in that our opposites, uh, balance each other out. I think the, the easiest description is that I'm a— I'm— I have the disposition of a slow cooker, and my wife has the disposition of a pressure cooker. So when, when her valve is ready to blow, when she's had enough, she'll let off some steam. She'll let you know. And when—

do you know what makes for a really good TV show? Lots of drama. Drama. Yeah. And you're not giving me any. Oh. Everything's like even-keeled. Yeah. Lots of practice.

That's only because I have lots of practice engaging in dramatic effects. Maybe this could be a good transition to answer one of the chat questions here I see. I'll read it for our convenience. What do you use as a template to budget, as in before COVID-19? Well, I'll speak for the 99 dads and I'll let Townsend speak for the 100 dads. Yeah. We use 2 templates. First, we started with— we have a modified template and it looks like this. At the very top is the income for that month and we'll just say that that is $3,000. Then underneath there, we start listing the necessary overhead expenses. Here, watch this.

Boom. So, uh, so Colter, we just had, uh, my last podcast that we haven't published yet, uh, it was a budgeting guy and he swore by this one. So I haven't used this one, um, but YNAB, um, I don't even know what that stands for, or you need a budget, I guess. Um, so he swore by that, that app on his phone. And it allowed him to create all the categories. And then if you went over in a category, you had to go— you had to pull the money from a different category so it wouldn't let you go beyond your budget. It's almost like you're working with cash envelopes in a sense. So I haven't used that one. But the budget guy we had on last episode said YNAB was like— he loved it. He was amazed by it. Dave Ramsey's got one too. It's called EveryDollar, uh, if you're on the Dave Ramsey plan, which I think Brian is. Uh, uh, like our family, we always use QuickBooks, um, just because we have multiple businesses. So we're using a more powerful, uh, desktop program, but, uh, that wouldn't be applicable for most people. And so we just use it for personal as well because we had it, and we're actually about to stop. So I'm actually exploring apps now, which is why we talked about it. So I've looked at, um, what I haven't looked at YNAB yet because we just had the conversation yesterday, but we've looked at, um, uh, EveryDollar, uh, FreshBooks, uh, and there's a couple more I just can't think of. But so anyway, so that's my two cents on that.

That's why you're the 100%, because you, uh, you have all the different options available to you. Our approach has been a little bit simpler. We, uh, at first when we tried to do it, we tried to do it with just a sheet of notebook paper Again, we just started at the top with what we had, then we started subtracting. When we got to zero or minus zero, right now you can go way past zero nowadays and they'll let you. They'll let you keep on going. Once we got past zero, we said, "Well, that's our plan for the month. If we don't like that, we're going to have to move some stuff around." Some stuff we could and some stuff we couldn't move. That's what we started doing. Now, I would have to admit, with our current budget for this month, we did everything by text message. We didn't want to sit down and go through the paper process or an Excel file, so we just did it by text. And I kind of, on my phone, I had the bank app open and I could see what the expenses are. And what was coming out and we just traded stuff back and forth. The reason we even had to do it was because we knew we were going to use the emergency fund, but we had some medical bills that came up past couple of months and we needed to start addressing those medical bills and working out a payment plan for those. Little Jacob, he had a tonsil surgery tonsillectomy.

And insurance didn't cover that?

And insurance doesn't cover all of that. And then a couple days after surgery, he had a blood clot come loose from the cauterization in his throat, and he got a little ambulance ride to— Those are pricey. Yeah, those are pricey. And after his ambulance ride, he got, of course, an ER visit, and then he got admitted And then he had a little overnight stay. And then all the different doctors came to check him out and poke him and prod him. And so we're still getting our bills for that. And so that affects our budgeting and just making sure that we're on the same page. And I think the biggest lesson that I've learned about budgeting has been it's not about the money. It's about the ability to communicate. And all right, so that's part of it, right? It's just knowing what to do. Of course, the hard part is doing it.

Sitting down and getting on the same page is a big deal. You know, husband and wife, 'cause otherwise one person creates a budget and the other person blows it. Yeah. That's gonna cause some friction real quick.

And what we did with our son is we give him a piggy bank and it's a clear piggy bank so he can see the coins stack up. And of course he probably doesn't understand the difference in the value of a penny or a quarter or a nickel or things like that. He just knows some are big and small and shiny and dull. We give him these things and at the last holiday season we took him to Target and he could pick out a toy, any toy he wanted with his piggy bank money. And we didn't count it out exactly. What we did was we had the cashier take the piggy bank and like pretend to enter it in and then I was able to put it on my card and on our debit, you know what I mean? Like I paid the cashier but the cashier—

Wouldn't it have been that hard of work just to sit there and count the cash out before you went to the store and just let him make the purchase? This is overacting if I've ever heard it.

No, that would have been too much work. I mean, he was only 4 at the time And it's hard to get him to sit down and count them all out.

Yeah, at 4, I get it, yeah.

But I did kind of nudge him, you know, like when he was looking at some of the pricier stuff, I said, "Oh, you know, are you sure you want that?" All the tricks my parents probably did with me. So we try to include our son in the budgeting process as much as we can by just letting him know, you know, like if he has a tantrum and he breaks something, or, you know, he wants to throw something during a tantrum, you know, we kind of say, hey, listen, you're gonna have to pay for that out of your piggy bank. So while he doesn't understand, you know, the actual numbers, he understands, you know, loss. You know, I'm gonna switch tracks here.

How did your family, or you and your wife, how did you guys handle, um, like feedings and, and the sleeping and diapers, uh, when you had your first kid?

Um, from a financial standpoint or an emotional standpoint? From?

Like, how did you, uh, practically go about it? I mean, is that something Mom took care of it all because Dad was running a business, or is that something you shared duties and you just were both exhausted? Um, is that something Dad said, Mom, you, you know, you created this baby, you did all the work, so I'll do all of this, you just sit there and relax? What was the, uh, how did it play out in your house?

Yeah, we were living in a, uh, a smaller apartment, 2-bedroom apartment at the time. And this was our first child, and my wife had postpartum depression. And I was unaware of this at the time, as you're in the fog of fatherhood. And I pitched in as much as I could and tried to identify as much as I could. But those first few months, it's all mom. I think the joke was, as dad, you know, you're lucky if you can see the kid at any time. Doesn't mean, you know, that should be the case, but, you know, the baby is attached to the mother at all times. What I tried to do, and probably one of some of the best advice that I got, was, you know, for an hour or even 2 hours a day to just take our son and go away into another room and make sure they had some of that one-on-one time. I was always an early riser anyway. That was just in my disposition. And so when it was time for early morning feedings or getting up with him or changing diapers, I always volunteered for that. That was kind of like, that's what I could do. So if he was up and screaming and needed a diaper change, I was right there, no questions asked. That was, that was the easiest thing for me to do, to be able to pitch in. Listen, all the props to you.

All the props to you on that. I did not do that. I, uh, and maybe I should have. There's an argument either way. I, every time we had a kid, I started another business and I just went full on into it and just had a, you know, that was the thing I kind of focused on, you know. And I think I just panicked having to provide for another, uh, another human. And in the Russell family, um, we just consume so much. Like, the cost of feeding a Russell human being, it's got to be 10 times the cost of every other normal human. It's disgusting. Uh, we had one of them that would, you know, we breastfed and it'd be like one boob, then the other boob completely drained, then we'd have to give them like 6 bottles of just like— the kid's got a stomach supposedly the size of a thimble, but gosh man, they could just pack some food away.

Um, the baby was good for us. It exposed a lot of the differences in philosophies and raising. You have the conversations about the kind of parent you're going to be, and then you become the parent, and you turn out to not always be the paper version of what you said you were going to do. And I think for like the formula mixing, for example, you know, it's kind of like, well, what's the mixture? And it's like, when you first started, the scoop was you know, if it said, uh, it said 100 granules, you had 100 granules and they were, you know, perfectly measured out. And then, you know, by the, by the second or third month, you're just, you're just heaving it, right? You're just scooping it out of the container and putting it in the bottle.

Wait, wait till you're at the second or third kid, you're just chucking the container at the kid and letting them feed themselves. You just— your priorities change so much from kid 1 to kid 3, just like, I mean, like you're saying, from month 1 to month 3. Yeah, your perspective's definitely changed, that's for sure.

But that was my contribution, was essentially to always be the one that got up and did it.

Now, with that being said— Listen, props for you.

You know, I know— Well, thank you. I was totally dense at times when it came to like just acknowledging what needed to be done. You know, for me, I always had to be prompted. You know, if I hear a cry, That's my prompt. I can probably— I need to go fix something. But absent of that, I probably have no idea of what was appropriate or what wasn't.

Are you and your wife— are you guys the same faith? I don't know if you're religious or not, but are you guys different faith, same faith, not religious? How does that work?

Yeah, we're in between same faith and a-religious. We believe in a higher spiritual power, and, uh, and we think that sometimes, uh, he hangs out in a, in a building where we can all see him, and other times he's just present wherever we are and we don't have to go to the building.

So you guys are on the same page on that?

We are, and we raise our son according to the same. Our son goes to a religious school.

That's a good thing. I'm only saying dang it because I want to find a dad that's raising like an interfaith kid. I just want to see how that works. You disappointed me once again.

Yeah, I'm constantly disappointing, but, um, your decision to send to a religious school, um, was a joint decision. Um, my wife went to a religious school growing up. Um, I went to a private school for part of my, my early years before I was politely asked to leave and, uh, find another school. And, uh, it was important to us that that tradition continues. We're happy we found something in the area.

The, the tradition of getting kicked out of schools? Yeah, that hasn't happened luckily yet.

Excuse me here. Uh, just a private school education, a little smaller class size, maybe one-on-one, uh, attention.

Cool. You guys, that kind of thing. Uh, so baby— it's interesting, I never thought babysitting was a hot topic, um, because we just let anybody that could fog a mirror watch our kids because we wanted to get out and and, you know, date our spouse, or for me, date my wife. Um, has that been a hot topic for you guys? Like, some, some, uh, parents, they don't want, uh, somebody else watching their kid. It's— yeah, they don't want to leave their kid. They have trouble stepping away. Uh, is that something you guys experienced?

No, not at all. It's been, uh, it's been the perfect, uh, parenting experience, except that we, uh, we have— we're in that camp that hasn't had any babysitters. Along the way. We don't have any family in the area, and at the time, I think some of our friends' circle, they weren't having kids themselves, so we didn't really have an exchange yet. We were the first of our friend group, first of my wife's friend group to be having children.

So how'd you do it?

We just did it. We just switched off. We got two things that were lucky in our favor. I say this very humbly, and even feel free to edit this part out. The first thing that happened—

Eddie, this is live. You can't edit it.

I very humbly will share with the audience that two things happened to benefit us. The first thing was, and again, I'm very sorry to say this, but our son had slept through the night from the very get-go. Just stop it. Are you serious? I know, I feel bad.

No wonder you got up and helped.

I know, even now I feel bad. That is stupid. He slept through the night. And the second thing that benefited us, um, that we're experiencing now— and again, I'm very humbly, uh, share this with the, with the audience— um, our son goes to bed very early.

I know, when we were preparing for this, I asked what time your kid goes to bed. You're like, up 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Yeah, no, no, what time did you go to bed? Yeah, yeah, 4.

He was, uh, I think he was in bed tonight. Tonight was a late night. I think he got to bed around, uh, maybe 5:30, 6 o'clock.

And what time does he wake up? He wakes up at midnight?

He wakes up, yeah, he wakes up, uh, he wakes up at 5:30. And, uh, but again, I'm up.

He wakes up pretty early then.

Um, it's pretty early. We used to have this rule. He's got to be in bed till the sun comes up.

And the sun's not up at 5:30. I hate to break it to you.

The sun's not up at 5:30, but he's smart enough. He knows it's not dark out at 5:30.

What if he figures out that he is a son of you and he's up? So the sun is up.

There you go. That's great. I look forward to that day. I might even kind of pepper that in and train him on that. Just yesterday, he figured out, we taught him that my dad is his grandpa, that the person he knows as grandpa is my dad. And so, that was nice. What has your kid broken lately? Oh, geez. As I, let me buy myself some time to think of lately. Oh yeah.

Let me tell you what my 3-year-old did like 3 days ago. All right, my wife's laptop. He folded it open like a, like a tent, like a V-shape, put it upside down, stood on it, yanked out the power cord so it snapped off. So the metal was still hanging in there. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, that was just 3 days ago.

So they know, they know how to hurt you, that's for sure. He, um, the worst thing he's broken in our opinion has been our Roku remote control. He's just, he's tossed this thing so many times that it doesn't work anymore. We have to use the Roku app now on our phone, which only means that he can't use the remote.

Yeah, first world problems.

It's a real first world problem. But when he broke that, we were crushed. Yeah, because for some reason you can't change the volume on the app on your phone. We can only do it through the remote. In any event, he's broken that. He's been pretty good lately because, uh, the new kind of— the new approach has been if you throw something, you're gonna lose it. And so we try to remove that, uh, opportunity to get dangerous.

Dangerous choice of words, because then now he's gonna start throwing his broccoli, throwing his beans, throwing his carrots. That's right, that's next. And chances are he's gonna throw them at you.

Everything in the house is like a projectile, or like My wife and I, we tell each other at night, we're like prisoners of war, we're supporting each other at night. At the end of the day, we're like, he didn't mean that. We're not stupid. We're not booty butts. He wasn't trying to hurt us. We try to encourage ourselves. But he hasn't broken too many things. Again, we've been fortunate. The biggest thing is that he throws stuff.

Uh, tell me a dad joke. Oh, you've got to have like 10 of them lined up. You knew you were coming on here. That's true. What are your favorites?

Oh, my dad— my favorite dad joke is, um, guy goes to the zoo and he goes to the monkey exhibit and he says to the monkey, hey monkey, can I get a dollar? And the monkey says, no pockets.

That's it. That's it. That was terrible.

Yeah, that's my favorite. That's my little—

okay, I started this segment out saying, hey, Brian's so funny, this is gonna be great, everyone's gonna be cracking up. Complete failure is what this has been. Failure belongs. You disappoint me. Hey, uh, did you and your wife do, uh, uh, pre-marriage counseling?

No, post-marriage counseling.

That was my next question. Did you guys ever do any after you got married? Yeah.

Oh, we loved it. Probably should have done the pre-marriage. Would you recommend it?

Yeah. Uh, was it because you guys were fighting or you guys were just drifting apart? What was the— I guess, what was the driving reason you went in?

Neither of us could understand why we were unable to get the other person to change. Yeah.

If only the other person would change, they'll just fix everything.

It seems so simple. Yeah. And yet so elusive. And it worked out. It worked out well for us. And And it wasn't forced upon us, but we also had an open mind to it. And similar to the budget, with the budget not being about the money, just being about the ability to communicate. The counseling was— it's not about the counseling. It's about the ability to listen to each other and to communicate.

My wife was just telling me a couple of days ago, she wanted me to change a couple of things. And I said, of course I'm not going to. This is who I am. Yeah, she subtly reminded me that Carole Baskin's husband didn't change either.

Oh, that's very subtle, very subtle.

Yeah, so if we're gonna do what she says, if we find a bunch of sardine oil in the kitchen pantry—

well, Townsend, I'll remind you, there's freedom in your obedience.

Hey, um, you're boring me on the dad stuff, so can we just talk about me for a while? Because please. I would like it. Um, did you get the picture of the RV I sent you?

I did get the picture of the RV you sent, and then I called my legal counsel and they've got to call in to Ryan to make sure that she's getting all the royalties that are due to her. Yeah, for your use of her image. This thing. How did you decide what kit to pick?

To hold? Uh, I just picked my favorite one. Okay. Yeah, I think it's gonna be dope. We were supposed to leave a couple weeks ago, uh, but we didn't. So you're the travel guru, um, yeah. So we're going on an extended family vacation, um, we're supposed to go up to Northeast first and into Canada, so that's all been canceled. We're gonna go, uh, we're actually gonna leave Thursday. We're gonna go up into Georgia first, cross over into Alabama, and our goal is to get up to, uh Uh, north of Yellowstone, what's a really cool park up there?

Glacier or something? There is a Glacier National Park. Glacier National Park.

So that's— we're trying to get—

has the, has the, the quarantine and the stay at home, has that given you good practice for what it will be like to be in the RV together?

Our home is 5 times bigger than the RV. Okay, yeah, we can still escape, and our neighborhood really kind of quarantines itself, so like The entire time our kids have been playing with the other kids. Oh, like across the street. So we have like 15 kids that are in 3 different houses at any point in time. Uh, you know, there's a pool, they jump in, and, um, you know, we're all homeschoolers.

So, you know, so here's a good dad question, uh, for you then. Like, what's the acceptable level of risk for, uh, for your kid engaging in an activity but you are not there to watch them?

100%. Yeah, why would they not be able to engage in activity if you're not there? Who cares if Dad's there?

So your kids just, you know, running from your house to another house. They could be in the pool, they could not be in the pool.

Oh well, I mean, we know where they are, and we know that the other houses have responsible parents that, um, start drinking at 5, so we know by 6 or 7 we need to get over there just to make sure the parents are still conscious. But other than that, I mean, they're not going like across I-95. I mean, it's like a— we're in the back of a neighborhood. It's safe. We know the parents. We know a lot of— almost all the neighbors. So yeah, they've got free rein.

Do your kids know your real name, or do they think your name is Dad? Hey, both. What— when did they know your real name?

I, I think they've just always seen my name on things, so, okay, yeah, I mean, they, they read the mail, um, I don't know, but other people call me by my name. I mean, I feel like just in the normal course of life, what kid doesn't know his parents' name?

Do they ever call you that name in public?

Not in public, but they tried it once or twice and I shut that down real quick. Yeah, I'm definitely Dad. Joe says it might be worse if Dad's actually there. Yeah, I will say I, I do encourage them to take risks they probably are too scared to take, or tell them they'll be okay. Like, you can jump off that 6-foot wall, that's fine. And then, you know, no one's actually broken up. I'm super surprised, and knock on wood, that, uh, uh, we haven't had any broken bones yet, which is really nice.

No broken bones?

No, because I had a ton as a kid. I don't know if I just didn't drink enough milk or what, but yeah.

I tell Jacob all the time, I say, if you're gonna get hurt, make sure you do it when you're with your mother.

Yeah, yeah, I would get the blame for it. I— yeah, I'm probably gonna get the blame for it because I'm always encouraging them to be wild. I mean, I don't mind if they climb a tree and go 20 feet in the air. Uh, we've got like one of my hunting stands is in the back of— uh, I took it out of our hunting property because we're leaving, so I just put up a tree in our backyard. Like, they're climbing up that thing. Like, even as a hunter, as an adult, when you climb up in a tree stand, you're supposed to be secured in with a safety harness. And our kids are just climbing up there willy-nilly. It's barely even secured to the tree because it's just there for storage, not for hunting. So it's like leaning to the left. And, um, like I said, no one's died yet. You know, they have a lot of fun on trampolines, and they jump in the pools, and, uh, they hit each other with sticks and Um, no one's died yet.

What's the home policy then towards guns? Your children know, uh, firearm safety?

Oh, well, so I have a ton of guns, um, so they know firearm safety. They, they are not allowed to handle the guns. Like, my kids don't— they aren't packing at age 3, 6, and 9. They have their own BB gun, their own .22 rifle, and, you know, we occasionally shoot it. Um, but the taboo is not there for them. Like, guns aren't like an exciting, cool thing that they've never seen or touched before. They've been around them, they've seen them, um, you know, they know about them, uh, they know not to touch them. And we did have a scenario when I, uh, when my oldest son was 3 or 4, uh, we were at our farm in West Virginia, and my grandfather always had a cowboy gun. So he had the cowboy belt with 45s in the belt, and it's a revolver. Um, it was Colt 45, and he had it hanging on his bedpost because he's, you know, he's, he's 60-some years old, and okay, he hasn't had kids at home since, you know, the '50s or '60s. Uh, so he just had it hanging on a bedpost. It was our first time being there with the grandkid, and, uh, we didn't see Levi for a little bit, and Ryan found him upstairs, like, within a foot of this gun at eye level. You know, that could have been a really dangerous situation. But I mean, he's seen our guns before and we always trained him, if you see it, don't touch. At that age of 3 or 4, don't touch, don't touch, don't touch. You know, get daddy, get mommy. And so when Ryan saw him, she said, Levi, what are you doing? He said, don't touch. And they just walked away. So thankfully, I do that with all my kids now just to make sure that they know, don't touch them. And then, but I also take them out and let them handle them and shoot them. Not the big ones, 'cause they'd get knocked over, but they can be there while we're shooting them. So it's just less taboo for them, which I just remember when I was a kid, we had one gun that was decoration and my family was not a gun family. And I, every time my parents were gone, I was left alone. I would pull it out of the cabinet. I'd play with it. I'd look at it 'cause I wasn't allowed to. And so you had to do the thing you're not allowed to do. Um, so yeah, we, we preach firearm safety, uh, really heavy, really hard, uh, but mostly because we have them. And, you know, the, the— they're, they're in a safe, but, you know, it's a very real practicality they could come across it one day within the house. So, uh, we want to make sure everything goes smooth.

Good. The best dad. You're You're the best dad.

Uh, yeah, probably. Yeah, not the hum— not the most humble. Ah, maybe.

Do they call you dad or something else? Daddy?

Father? Father? Yeah. No, you make your kids say yes, sir.

It's been that.

Listen, all right, so we're going— you distracted me. We're going up to, uh, where am I going?

Uh, Glacier National Park.

So between Alabama and there, we've got like a 2-month span. We want to stay about 10 days in each place. Like, what do I need to see between there and, uh, Alabama and Glacier National? Have you done this before? It's good for families. No, I've never even seen the country. I know from Maryland to Florida and only the I-95 corridor. That's, that's my knowledge of this country.

Oh, that's fantastic. No, that's not— I would—

I'm going out to see the rest of it.

Yeah. Wow. Well, here's, here's two things that I think are most important. Number one, if you're gonna stay in a national park, make sure you have a reservation. Okay.

And number two, um, this is the world's worst advice. I'm asking like, where would a dad take his family? Somewhere between Alabama and again wherever I'm going. Uh, Montana. I, I want—

I want to plan it. I'm not the planner. Oh, my wife is the player. My dad involvement is saying we're gonna be in this RV for 45 days, you're gonna like it, we're gonna make the best of it, we'll stop. So We'll eat when we're hungry. We'll pee when we're—

you're the absolute worst. You're— all right, so do you have a brother?

No brothers.

Uh, if you had a brother and he was about to have a kid, what advice would you be giving him?

Uh, to, um, always be the first to wake up and, uh, change a dirty diaper in the morning without being asked.

It's horrible advice. Yeah. I mean, it's actually good advice. I couldn't follow it. I would do that.

And to make sure you got some one-on-one time with your kid every day, you know, for an hour so that mom feels like someone else is gonna be responsible for that hour. You know, she doesn't have to worry. One less thing to worry about. Giving mom that mental break. Give mom that mental break.

Especially when they're really young and they're just screaming and crying and it's just, you know, your brain never gets a chance to decompress.

Probably the most important thing is not to lose your sense of self. What do you mean? You are a person with goals and ambitions, and you should continue to pursue the things that are important to you. Having a family or having children is fuel for the tank. You know, it's not, it's not cargo. It's not weighing it down. It should be energizing, should help you get further along to where you want to go and do the things you want to do. And, you know, don't be afraid to, to remember that, you know. If you're interested in hunting, you know, make sure you carve out time for yourself to continue pursuing that hobby. If you're interested in working out or running or, you know, anything, whatever the case may be, make sure you do that. That's one of the important lessons that you want your, you know, your children to grow up learning, is that it's okay for them to pursue what they're interested in as well. Now, you know, here's an example of something. When you ask children what they want to be and they give you all these fantastical answers, right? You know, like, I want to be an astronaut, you know, or something like usually big and grandiose.

You know, astronauts, they don't know any better.

They don't know any better, right?

So they just know what they've read in a book somewhere.

Yeah, they read this in a book. This is an idea that they've latched on to. It's like, well, do you want to be an astronaut or do you want to develop pivot tables from an Excel file all day? You know, they're like, hmm, I'm not sure just yet, but for now I'll be an astronaut. And then when you get older, you know, if People ask me, you know, what's your— because at a certain point, right, nobody asks you what do you want to be. At a certain point they ask you, you know, what do you do? And then if you deviate from that script, if you say, well, today I'm working with hotels, but 10 years from now I want to, you know, be an astronaut, you know, people kind of look at you funny.

I'm going to start asking people what they want to be when they grow up. I'm not going to ask people what they do anymore. What do you want to do when you grow up?

Exactly. So I'm glad I could, uh, could save this.

So I actually feel differently on the hobbies. I— if you can do the hobby, I think you absolutely should. Um, but there's a time, uh, there's a time for that, or I guess a place for that, and it's not always. And there's sometimes you need to sacrifice your wants and your hobbies, or maybe even your dream for a little bit, because you need to make sure you're, um, A, providing the basics for your family, uh, and B, also spending time with them, because there's a lot of dads out there that are, that are most certainly pursuing their hobbies. They're doing a lot of golf, they're doing a lot of social activities. Yeah, really going after their career hard, and their family's paying the price for that. Um, you know, they're neglecting their kids in a sense. Um, or at the same time, if you're not providing the basics for it, you have no— there's no way you should be doing anything but getting your butt to work and making sure you're providing Those are my feelings on it.

Those are good feelings. And that's a fair approach. You know, there's this idea that there's a time and a place. And what ends up happening, and my, you know, what I think ends up happening is it gets easier and easier, you know, you create a new pattern, a new habit. And the habit is that You're not taking care of yourself. And in the same way that you gotta carve out some time so mom can have her time to regroup and self-care, dads need that time for themselves as well. Perhaps you can do it with your son. I see plenty of posts online of dads playing video games with their kids in their lap, enjoying the time. Or if you're going to golf, bring your kid. To the golf course with you to do that. If you're going to hike, bring them with you, things like that. Very—

I think it's very important. Yeah, absolutely. All right, so we're winding this down. We got like 3 minutes left. Uh, is there anything like, uh, I guess dad-wise, anything really cool you've learned lately or anything you're, you're struggling with as a dad? I'm trying to get you to relate to the audience or a future audience when we put out the recording. Oh yeah, I'm very relatable.

And I haven't seen that. Well, for instance, I'm like the latest person to be verbally abused by you, which puts me in the— So I think like, can you repeat the question? I'm so enamored by your character.

Is there anything you've learned Yeah, lately, but in the fatherhood realm that you— that just really cool or was surprising to you?

Yeah, I think from a personal development standpoint, being a father has allowed myself to have a stronger relationship with my father. Really? Sure. I find myself hugging him more. You know, the value of a hug and a firm embrace. I find myself doing the things to him that probably my son does to me. I find myself asking him questions that maybe I know the answer to, but I just want to hear it from Dad. I just want to be reminded of it. I owe most of my tool collection to hand-me-downs from Dad. And so yeah, from time to time I give him a call and I tell him that I used one of those tools, or, you know, I asked his advice on, you know, how would you go about fixing this, or what, you know, whatever his interest might be in it. That's, that's been something that's— that I've noticed a lot more. Um, so you become more appreciative of your father now that you are one? More appreciative, sure, of course, now that I am one.

I'm assuming your father's still alive, you're not just hugging a corpse.

Yep, still alive and, uh, not hugging the corpse. The biggest surprise, or one of the more interesting things, kind of cerebral, has been watching how our son interacts differently with me than with mom. Oh yeah. And, you know, some of that is— you could probably already anticipate, you know, he'll ask mom something and not get the answer he wants, and then come ask me, and, you know, he doesn't realize that, you know, mom's in the same room or one room over. And can still hear, but just the way they interact, you know, if I don't take him to school and he rides with mom, they have a different routine in the morning. They listen to different music, you know, I hear the updates, they listen to different music, they have different conversations, um, and it's a totally different relationship.

Yeah, it is.

It's a totally different relationship.

And is there anything you guys are struggling with, uh I guess as a father right now?

Well, you know, the biggest struggle is appreciating that you're not done with them. You know, you want the lesson. It's a struggle. You say, well, you know, I just said it's bedtime and we're working on listening. How come you're not in the bed? You know, if that's the case, or a nap or something, or whatever the case may be, you know, how come you're not listening? And, and it's just making sure you don't, you know, get too frustrated at the prospect that in this instance they're not listening. But the goal isn't always to get them to listen in this instance. The goal is to build, you know, routine with them and get them to learn to respect themselves and to make good choices and to know the reason they're listening is because they want a better outcome. You know, they're not just listening to be compliant. They're listening so that they can get all the things that they want to happen, um, you know, for themselves. And when you're 5 years old, that, that doesn't always register right away. It takes a lot of time. I know a lot of adults, you know, they even don't make good choices from day to day. You know, they, they do things that are against their, their own self-interests.

For example, makes you, makes you wonder who their parents were.

I know they, they were— they didn't have, you know, podcasts like this. For you. You know, tell them how they react. But, you know, on that topic of, you know, struggles and kind of approaches, and I think the biggest overarching struggle is, is how, you know, I relate to my wife and how that relationship then gets filtered down to our son. There's always a desire for the grown-up to want to instill their will on the situation. The idea of being a united front sometimes doesn't work out. Sometimes you don't want a united front. Sometimes you just want to be left alone to handle the situation the way that you think it's best to do. Just learning to be humble and checking your ego and knowing when to tap out, knowing when to bring in reinforcements.

As those things happen, you you kind of fine-tune it with mom and dad, because then you can have that moment of, you know, inserting your will or doing what you think is right, uh, and, and not wanting the input of the spouse. And then, you know, later that day you're going to have that discussion whether you like it or not. That's going to come up of, you know, why'd you do that? I mean, we've had that a bunch, and then we're just kind of fine-tuning, um, you know, why we're parenting that way or why we decided this one that way, or even why we let it go. Yeah. That's been a lot of things lately, Ryan. I've been doing that. I've been letting a lot of stuff go just because, uh, I, I want them to have independence and freedom. So they've been, they've been overstepping their boundaries, and we're gonna have to rein it in kind of here soon. But I've been kind of letting them explore, um, further and harder and push boundaries a little bit more, um, really because we're about to go on this, this tour. So everything's going to get real tight real quick, and, uh So I'm kind of letting them go out a little bit before we reel them back in. But also just kind of almost that boys will be boys sense. If I just remember how wild and crazy and destructive I was as a boy, and it's not intentional, it never was intentional. I wasn't trying to break that thing. I wasn't trying to piss mom and dad off, or I wasn't trying to go too far, you know, when I went exploring. You know, it was just a boy and I was having fun and I wasn't thinking of those consequences. So I know the the intent's not there. And so I've been kind of— I've been a lot easier on them where Ryan kind of wanted to drop the hammer on them, or I've been kind of saying, you know, let's just let it go for a little bit. Um, yeah, but you know, we're about to go into a 300-square-foot tin can, so that's— we're gonna have to reel certain things in, um, real quick. It's just gonna be a new world for them.

Yeah, I think what I got from that story is that Ryan should listen to you more.

I've been telling her that for 13 years. Yeah. So we'll see how that goes. Thanks for getting me in trouble.

You two are high school sweethearts, I believe, right?

Yep, yep, yep, yep. I met when she was 14 and I was 22, and it was love at first sight. Yeah. All right, let's go. I think we're boring people. So, uh, unless there's a comment that pops up about a question, we're gonna go ahead and call this a successful podcast. Not a funny one, which I was really hoping it would be, but you did not become, uh, or come prepared. Thanks, Brian. Here to serve. Yeah, I'm gonna call you here in a minute just so we can chat off camera. Okay. But I appreciate you coming on. Thank you. All right, so that was 100% Dad Podcast with Brian London doing tourism stuff. I still don't really know what he does for a living, but, uh, we enjoyed having him on. Good night.