Normalizing Conversations About Parenthood for Dads with Paul Sullivan
In this episode of Good Enough for Now, we hear from Paul Sullivan, founder of Company of Dads, a community dedicated to men who are the go-to parent for their families. Paul is on a mission to normalize conversations at work about leveling the playing field for parents—at home and the office. Some dads want to be the Lead Dad, yet don’t feel comfortable talking about it at work and don’t feel welcome into primary-parent communities that usually cater to moms. Paul wants to change this starting inside the workplace.
At least some flexibility in work is important to all families, and many organizations are losing top talent because they’re trying to go back to pre-2020 norms. In this episode, Paul shares why the 9 to 5 construct doesn’t work and how to structure your day differently, why he doesn’t miss his former role as a New York Times columnist, why he’s chosen to focus on changing organizations from the inside, and how working parents, both men and women, can support one another.
Listen in to hear more, including a sad story of a top doctor who had to lie about work meetings to get to watch his kids play sports. We can do better.
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what we cover in this episode:
How parents who work from home can organize their day to avoid working 12 hours a day
Why striving for a B+ life is so much better than aiming for an A+ life
How Company of Dads is normalizing dads taking a lead role in parenting
Where organizations are missing the mark when trying to get employees to go back to the office
Why it’s so important to let go of gendered expectations of parent roles in the workplace and at home
Resources
The Company of Dads Newsletter
The Fair Play Deck: A Couple’s Conversation Deck for Prioritizing What’s Important
Parent Nation: Unlocking Every Child’s Potential, Fulfilling Society’s Promise by Dana Suskind, MD
What Good Enough For Now Means To PAul Sullivan
I think so many people want the A+ life in everything. I'm not advocating for a C- life but I think if we could be happy having a lot of our life be a B+, maybe an A-.
I have to think about how do we think not of ourselves. Not as the woman you were before marriage, the man I was before marriage. How do we think of ourselves as that unit? That's one of the things my wife and I think a lot about with our three daughters. What does that mean? Sometimes we don't get to do what we want to do as parents because we have something more important for one of our daughters and vice versa. Sometimes we're going to go someplace and do something that mom and dad want to do and that's okay. But not everything has to be A+ all the time. If we could aim if everything averages out to that B+ life, that would be an awesome life. It would be a better life than 99% of the people in the world today and I think having that more global perspective would help a lot of us.
ABOUT Paul Sullivan
Sullivan is the founder of The Company of Dads, the first platform media company and community platform dedicated to Lead Dads - those men who are the go-to parents whether they work full time, part time or devote all their time to their families, while also supporting their spouses or partners in their careers. Prior to founding The Company of Dads, Paul was a journalist for 25 years, the majority of that time at The New York Times.
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Stephanie Kruse 0:05
Welcome to get enough for now, a podcast aimed at dismantling perfectionism one conversation at a time. I'm Stephanie Kruse and along with my guests on the show, we share stories of false starts unexpected you turns in moments of reinvention that happen as we move through life. Thanks for joining me, my hope is that our conversations will help you stay grounded, feel a little less alone, and a little bit more together.
Stephanie Kruse 0:36
I'm really excited to bring you this conversation today that I had with Paul Sullivan, who's the founder of a company called the company of dads. Paul and his team are trying to take the opportunity presented by the disruption of COVID in the workplace dynamics that we've all known have existed for such a long time around, being able to bring your full self to work, whether your full self is a partner, a parent or someone with a pre existing illness, that makes it difficult to be a whole human when you come into the office wherever you office. What I really liked is that Paul understands how real these issues are, and how important it is to normalize the conversations around them, so that the workplace in our home lives will continue to evolve in a positive direction. Paul Sullivan is the founder of the company of dads, the first platform media company and community platform dedicated to lead dads, those men who are the go to parents, whether they work full time, part time, or devote all their time to their families, while also supporting their spouses or partners in their careers. Prior to founding the company of dads, Paul was a journalist for 25 years, the majority of that time was spent at the New York Times. Paul Sullivan, thank you so much for joining me today on good enough for now.
Paul Sullivan 1:51
Thank you, Stephanie,
Stephanie Kruse 1:52
I'm happy to be here. Well, and you and I have found that we have a six degrees of separation. We know some folks in common. And so as I started following what you were doing on LinkedIn, it just so happened, you actually knew a friend of mine. And so I'm happy to complete the circle by talking to you today. So thanks again.
Paul Sullivan 2:09
100%. And as we said, you know, off camera, I did do a bit of due diligence and can confirm to all your listeners that you're 100% good person.
Stephanie Kruse 2:18
Awesome. We're done with the interview now. So tell me where you are in your life right now.
Paul Sullivan 2:27
Wow, that's an existential question, if ever, you know, after 25 years as a journalist a little over a year ago, I left my dream job at the New York Times, where as a columnist, feature writer, I ran some special sections wrote a couple of books, moderators, and panels had an amazing time. And I left it not because I was having an amazing time, I left it because I wanted to start something new that I thought could make a real difference as we entered what people are calling the next normal sort of the world of work after, after COVID. And that was to create the company of dads which is the first media company and community platform targeting men who are the dad, which I define as, as good to parents, whether they work full time, part time, to devote all their time to their family, while in many cases also supporting their wives in their careers. And the idea was, you know, my entire time at the New York Times, I was a LEED AP, but I was a secret lead data. I never say false all of them. The data is like a Paul Sullivan, New York Times columnist. And but I was the one you know, running the show with our three girls, my wife works and asset management. She didn't have control over schedule, and I had total control. As I say, you know, you either are desperate to talk to the New York Times, or you will never talk to the New York Times. And so it allows you to say, Could I talk to you at 315, which is, you know, right after you take a kid off the bus and they would say, Sure, I'll talk to you at 315. But the point of this is, was I realized during code that the way we work going forward was going to change and I wanted to be part of that change. And if you're a company that has senior female executives and you profess having senior female executives, well, then you need to also support the dads as their partners, whether they're the dads a different company, whether they're the dads at home, devoting all the time to their kids, or whether they're, you know, the dads as their as their superiors, because that's the only way you're gonna get gender equity that want to be part of that.
Stephanie Kruse 4:19
Yeah, I mean, there's there's so much to unpack here, then I'm gonna just take a couple key tacks because one of the things that really strikes me is is identity. Right? So saying lead dad, and that's different than I've heard you also use a different term which is event dad.
Paul Sullivan 4:39
Yeah.
Stephanie Kruse 4:39
So fatherhood in the workplace. Why is it so hard to talk about?
Paul Sullivan 4:44
Because masculinity is intertwined with money. And you are suppose your sort of the cultural norms are that you're going to be, you know, the breadwinner, which I say like, you know, so many of us are gluten free now. Anyway, so do we really don't want to have bread and like bringing them up? And I'm like, I just turned 50, I'm on a cholesterol drug, I don't need any more bacon, let's come up with a new word. No, it's like, you know, and it's, it's going against social norms. So at the heart of what we're doing, we also have a component of the company dajia, the beauty of that community, but also the workplace development is we're trying to normalize this role, normalize the role of, of the dad, and to do it in doing that, if we do it correctly, if we succeed widely, it's going to help, you know, working moms, because what are the two stigmas at work? The two stigmas is that well, the man is the breadwinner, bacon maker, whatever you want to call them. And you know, childcare is left as somebody else you and I were joking. You know, before you're in Greenwich, I'm in New Canaan. And these are towns that were most of the parenting is very traditional with moms are paid caregivers. And so how do you insert money? But the flip side of this, if you're the working mom, well, there's so much literature, you broadsky has written a lot about this, you know, blessing a decent has written a lot about this, it's all about the second shift, like you may be the managing director at XYZ firm. But as the working mom, you still have to come home and do all that second shift work. And chances are your husband who maybe you still love you love to at some point, is doing way less than than he could, and why. And the reason is, you know, societal norms. You know, these these ingrained gender roles, even though so many people are wildly educated, wildly successful in their lives, one only the best in their marriage and their kids and all of this stuff. But it's like, I you know, what I'm doing was super necessary in 2019. But it never would have worked. We needed this, this seismic shift that nobody could have predicted. Nobody knew what would come out to sort of say, Wait a second, we can work differently. You know, it's crazy talk to say you have to be in the office five days a week, it's crazy talk to say that the husband or wife can't do one thing over the other. But at the same time, nobody really knows what this is all going to shake out. It is so jumbled, so chaotic right now. And so, you know, in chaos is his opportunity. And so the company of dads is coming into that space to hopefully, you know, be an agent, not so Mr. Change, because change is already happening, but an agent to have have the dialogue to bring about consensus in the workplace, and at home to make things a little bit better.
Stephanie Kruse 7:19
So, so tell me about how the company of dads works. I know you have different aspects of the business to help to, you know, bring light to this change and move it forward.
Paul Sullivan 7:31
Yep, so we're exactly the Well, as of this recording, we're just about a year old. We launched in February of 2022. And we launched with sort of three things in mind. And so the three are media. So the weekly newsletter, weekly podcast, various features, we have a very popular thing called the lead data, the week in which you just try to highlight all kinds of different men doing in this role, whatever their socioeconomic background is where they live, you know, married single, whatever. And that's all about, you know, building awareness. Like this thing called the lead dad exists. It was I'd heard people use it before, but it was sort of an inside joke between my wife and me. And now I really leaned into popularize it because it's, it's proactive, it's positive. It shows it embraces masculinity, like we're here doing something where the dads men need to lead shit, even if they don't know where they go. There's the second part is the community and the community is how do we bring men together in a space where they can, you know, talk about this, you know, some of it is just, you know, basic griping about stuff. Some of it is, you know, the typical nonsense that men talk about when they get together this, you know, my my friends from prep school, we still have the same conversations as we were 14, you know, this still happens. But some of it is also really serious. I mean, there's some mental health challenges, that they go around being laid down. Because you're bucking the norm, you're going against what people do, you know, in the in the most basic, simplistic way, you can often feel isolated to me, not even don't even talk to me about you try to get on a Facebook moms group in one of the towns where we live, and it's impossible, like you've met a shot of getting into Harvard Medical School than you do getting on Facebook moms,
Stephanie Kruse 9:09
That's right, or getting the birthday invitation. They send it to your email.
Paul Sullivan 9:13
And that's the second part, right? Okay, they're not gonna let me in there. But why the hell doesn't the pediatrician call me? My name is first, why the hell doesn't the school Call me when my kid is sick. And so that community part and part of it is the online, there's an online component to the community, because we don't want there to be any economic barriers for people to be part of the company of dads. But we also have a whole host of events, you know, in person planned for this year, you know, all up and down the East Coast to bring people together. And then the third part is, is the workplace development. And that starts out with the most basic stuff is, you know, these are things I've seen is is the keynote talk going in there and raising these issues. And that's where we come in as an agent of change, because these are things that all the employees of the company are thinking about. These are things that all the managers at the company are thinking about, but nobody really wants to talk about it, why we have an aversion to having difficult conversations and This is a difficult conversation. So we go in as, as the person to start that conversation.
Stephanie Kruse 10:05
Yeah, I think, you know, it's interesting in the context of, you know, I found you on on LinkedIn, I started seeing some of your work pop up. And LinkedIn itself has changed quite a bit of the last couple years, you know, you see people telling more personal stories about an illness or a job shift, you know, lay off, or a child being born. And so we are beginning to see humanizing, you know, a humanizing activity around who we are, and work coming together. At the same time, there are stories of companies all the time that are having a really tough job of figuring out, do we allow people to stay home all the time? Do we make a come into the office, the systems that are there and are starting to pull apart? But maybe not? Tell me what you're hearing?
Paul Sullivan 10:55
So I will certainly say, well, Barry, and I say that, you know, you've worked at big companies, I've worked at big companies, and the New York Times is an amazing place to communicate. But I worked at other places before the New York Times that were not so amazing. And I used to joke that one day, I would come in and somebody would be sitting at my desk, and they say, Oh, you didn't you didn't get the password. For mark, you really didn't know that. And so companies are struggling to figure this out. Because companies are not they don't, they're not asking the right questions. If they even know the right questions to ask. They're trying to figure it out, in a group of managers who are looking at you know, trends and other competitors and what they're doing. And that is the most ridiculous way to solve the problem. The way you solve the problem is, you do really hard work and you ask your employees, you know, what do you want? And I am in no way is a company of dads, an advocate of everybody work from home, five days a week, there's a key reason people need to be together, but people need to be together for a purpose. And so when you ask, you know, what am I hearing? The companies that are, you know, having? Well, the companies are famous deeply about this are companies that were distributed in the first place. So think of the big consulting companies, you know, what is the consultant other than a smart person with a computer and a cell phone? That's all Yeah. And too, you can give them a different bag or give her a different bag that says this consultants company that gets on it, but that is pre pandemic, that person would get on a plane Sunday night or Monday morning, fly, some were returned home on Thursday. They didn't, you know, and then maybe they'd go into their office on Friday, but maybe they're just if they're senior enough, they'd stay at their house because and see their family. Right. That's done. People aren't doing that anymore. And so if you're a consulting from what when they come to the company, dads are like, how do we create that culture? How do we keep people together? How do we show them that we have something else? Now the flip side of it, I have a friend who is a general counsel at a gigantic investment bank that everybody listening to this would know, and he cannot hire attorneys, right? Normally, he'd be able to hire a sort of mid career associate all bout to be partnered type attorney at one of the big white shoe law firms. And Pam more, given that security, get them off that treadmill of the billable hour. They don't want to go to that bank anymore. They don't want to go because those law firms are really smart. And they figured out Okay, how about I just have a day, how about every Thursday, you and your group, you get together in the office, no zoom meetings just work together and like, I can go in one day a week. And then you know, if you like it, it'd be kind of cool if he came in another two days, like, all right, well, this is a negotiation. So so I will. And it's working really well, because these law firms are now able to retain they're super smart, educated staff that they have trained, because they're going into being flexible. How did that come about, though, that didn't come about with a bunch of partners sitting together in the boardroom thinking what are we going to do? It came about because they they read the lay that they read the land, and then they ask people, What do you want? And that's what the best companies are doing? And of course, the flip side is the companies that are struggling, are they're trying to make policies and
Stephanie Kruse 13:58
yeah, yeah, and I think, you know, the pandemic certainly was pretty interesting. I mean, in my family, with both of us being able to work from home full time, during that, you know, 18 month period, let's call it the relationships, that my husband and I both were able to forge together and with our kids took on a very different dynamic than the typical, you know, he's, he's not ever home for dinner, because he's commuting on a train into Manhattan, or he can't, you know, he can only attend the parent teacher conferences, but never the PTA meeting because it was at nine o'clock in the morning, but now it's on Zoom or recorded, thank God. So you can actually keep up with what's going on. So your community of lead dads, I would imagine talks a lot about these dynamics together. How have you seen these relationships grow and become maybe hopefully more important to hold on to amongst the men that you know,
Paul Sullivan 14:57
it's great question, and so it's a sort of generation I'll answer, you know, I've seen, you know, I mean demographics is destiny and that our community is growing for 20 and 30 year olds, who are looking like they're not ever going to enter into the world that you and I entered to into their 2019 is an aberration to them, they're looking for it. And they're having those very proactive conversations with their spouses, the partners, and those are poring over into workplace but when you look at people, you know, in their 40s and 50s, for whom the pandemic you know, shook everything up. I mean, we used to be told that you couldn't, you know, work remotely How could you possibly work remotely and and where we live outside of New York City, people who were were traded or all the hedge fund workers like, well, we can't ever do that, you know, we need to go in the office, well, suddenly, they can still make billions of dollars from their bedroom, you know, there's still work that they can move all that equipment home and, and my daughter's best friend, her parents, they both work at Memorial Sloan Kettering. So for those listeners, not in our area, that is the leading cancer hospital in America. And they work remotely two days a week. I mean, literally one of the dads is ensuring the dad is curing cancer and saving people's lives. And he can work remotely. So like he can work remotely, I think the rest of us can. But for those in that 40 to 50 demographic kids are like, Wait, why don't we want to go back? I don't want to give this up. I'm not quite I'm not like saying I don't want to work at my company. I'm not a not a rebel or anything like this. I've just become logical. Like, yeah, COVID made me logical, like, I will 100% come in to me, but maybe I treat my commute as if I was traveling, not to, you know, not commuting into New York as if I was traveling to Boston, or I was traveling to Philadelphia, or I was going to Chicago for the day and I'll pack it full of meetings, and I'll have a very fruitful and then I'll come home. And I think the best companies have realized that they need to trust their employees. Because when we say the company, dads is, guess what? The top 20% they have options. And if you don't treat the top 20% And think really clearly about what they want, they're going to leave you if you can tell the bottom 30% whatever the hell you want to tell them, they're not going to go anywhere because nobody wants to give them a job. That's why the bottom 30% they're there. No, but no matter what's going on. Without naming names, you can see some of these high profile firms are shedding top workers, a lot of them are working moms are like, You know what, I'm not going to do this anymore. And I can go from here, there. Maybe I make the same amount maybe make more, but I have this this, you know, more human life when my work my spouse, my kids, and why would I not want that. And that was, you know, for those of us COVID was horrible, but for many white collar workers, it allowed this this rethinking of roles and norms and allowed us to go forward in different ways.
Stephanie Kruse 17:33
Yeah, you know, as somebody who worked from home for 10 years before the pandemic started and struggled with, I have to do all of it at the same time, right, it's a different kind of do all illness, then having a corporate career. And the second shift, it was the shift happening in between everything else, you know, I worked probably harder from home, than getting interrupted by meetings in the office in the hallway, you know, going out for a coffee, having it, you know, I was probably more effective and more efficient, but I know it was on an hour per hour basis, working from home, but what was hard about that is being seen, right? So how do we you know, and even asking for help at home. I mean, I've read e rodkey stuff too, about, you know, default parents she fault parenting, she calls it and fairplay between parents you know, and spouses around dividing the tasks of parenting, and, and marriage together, right. But one of the hardest things about that is articulating and being seen for the work that is sort of just takes place without anybody knowing.
Paul Sullivan 18:41
Yeah.
Stephanie Kruse 18:43
Does that exist for men too? Or is that just a women's challenge.
Paul Sullivan 18:48
I think, you know, things have to be made visible. So Eve does something really great book fair play is really wonderful to credible story. But she also, you know, along with it created these cards, and the cards are great because they make something you know, tactile, like you're holding the card for the holiday gifts, you're holding the card for the school activity organization. So it makes it very real just says like, you know, all these studies show that if you pay your children and allowance, it's actually better to pay them in $1 bills, particularly when they're young than to just you know, Venmo them money because they get a sense of like, what is money? What here is what money is? And so one of the things we do it the company of dads, it's not quite the cards, but it's a different way because as I say, like resentment doesn't just spring, fully formed one day, 15 years into a marriage. Resentment is like the dust bunnies under your couch that has been in your family room for 10 years. Do you like you lifted up one day? Oh my god, this is terrifying. Get the leaf blower it's good to know. And so what we do one of the simple exercises that we advocated coming Hey guys, we just not the best branding ever, but we just call it the paper test. And what you do is, you know, husband, wife, or whoever you're arranging a spouse or partners, you get together in a moment of calm is not after a fight. This is not after you've been so angry about something I'm gonna call Saturday afternoon, Sunday afternoon and you're inclined to drink wine, have a glass of wine, be very relaxed, make sure your kids are gonna interrupt. And there's this simple. Partner one writes down everything he does. And then he writes down everything that he believes his partner does, then partner to an Arby's favorite writes down everything she does, and everything that she thinks her partner does. They take their time, and then they exchange. And the one thing that we guarantee, every time you do this is you will see things on the other person's list that you never imagined that they did, because they just do them. And unless you've married, incredibly horrendous person or a sociopath, most normal people will say, Hmm, that's not fair. Because when we have kids, we hear that all the time from our kids, that's not fair. And they'll want to make it fair. And that is the point of negotiation. But it only comes when you feel comfortable enough to have that conversation to do this exercise. And that's why I say we write it down, could you list all these things off, you could but then you interrupt each other, because it's a conversation. It's not a monologue, it's complicated. You write it all down, Trade Me, then discuss, and it's, the only thing I'll guarantee is that it will create change, and it will start moving you in the right direction. But it takes that intentionality to make it work.
Stephanie Kruse 21:38
Yeah, that's such a great example. Thank you for sharing that I am, I want to go back to your personal journey and how you came to, you know, you, you were at what you could arguably say was the top of your career, you written books, you had your own column in the New York Times, you're raising your, your daughters, you come to some epiphany I was doing that, you know, wait a minute, I want to do something else. Now you're an entrepreneur. What has been, you know, many, many people have gone through this journey and lots of different forms. But what's been really surprising to you or challenging in a way that you didn't expect?
Paul Sullivan 22:15
The most surprising thing to me. And I say this with deep love and affection for all my former colleagues is that I have not for a single day, Miss being a New York Times columnist, and to be incredibly honest, it was a part of my identity. And I gave this spiel, and I interviewed, you know, 6000 plus people, I wrote over a million words for the time. So it's 608 columns, I gave this spiel that I could give in my sleep, about the debt to debt. And, and it was, you know, I love what I was doing. I never lost sight of the importance of the column of but you know, it was part of my identity. And to do this, to leave that behind, I thought, you know, I wonder if I'll miss that and not for day. Have I missed it. And, you know, what has been the best part of this is that, I knew it was a good idea. But there are lots of good ideas out there. And what has been the most rewarding part is the number of people who have gotten behind me, you know, not just you know, the dads, but partnering with a lot of working moms that have companies that have reached out. We just opened a fundraising round in January, you know, I'd never done that before. And the people who are showing interest in it. I mean, that's been, you know, remarkable. I mean, one thing is, I think I'm kind of I'm wired in a weird, but I'll admit, my weirdness is that, you know, they say, you know, I've got, I've got two degrees in history. And I don't know why, because I haven't read a history book. Since I got my master's degree. I'm always somebody who looks forward. And so you know, when we had it was bumpy, bumpy couple months in the beginning where I did, you know, I just didn't know any better I hired a company to help me build this out. And it was wildly expensive, and way more than I needed to pay, but I didn't know. And there was this moment as a boy, this this kind of stinks. Well, what am I going to do? I guess I just keep going forward. And that was the one bumpy part. And then I've just been super fortunate that brought on really good people who share the passion for this. And, and, you know, the dumb luck part, which isn't so much doublex I kind of knew it, but it's the moments right. Like, I wouldn't have done this in 2019. I could only do this in 2022. Because
Stephanie Kruse 24:27
yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, you can have great ideas, but until the world is ready to receive them, you know, you're just pushing against a brick wall. Right. So you're, you're in a place of openness for this discussion.
Paul Sullivan 24:39
Yeah. I mean, look at where children are the 80s. You know, somebody created the DeLorean in the 1980s was like, What the hell is this thing now? Now, like Elon Musk has cars that open like this?
Stephanie Kruse 24:49
Exactly. They'll be flying soon as well. Just like just like the DeLorean and back to the future. But, ya know, I think that that's so important timing and thinking about time. Being in the space of your work and time and also the systems of parenting? How do you see? Whether it be rearranging how we all spend time together? Or your own metrics for success? How do you see it? You know, five years from now, we're looking back at this. And here's what the company of dads really helped to shift. What would you hope to see?
Paul Sullivan 25:25
Well, it brings about a lot more honesty and a lot more normalizing of this role. But I'm going to be an annoying former journalist and answer the question I thought you were going to ask me, and that was, how we should organize our day, that's where you are going. Because I think a lot about that, because, you know, pre pandemic, people work from home, as you were saying, you try to work doubly hard, because you had to prove yourself because you were, you know, you weren't in the office. And you know, we all worked in offices and the amount of wasted time, you know, I worked for the Financial Times for years, this is great British paper, but like they had this tradition of you go and drink wine at lunch and like bottom up, you know, how awesome but I'm not like, an afternoon, but I'm still in the office for another four hours. I don't know what I'm doing. And, you know, obviously, don't drink wine at lunch here. And we're productive. But it's like, how do we reimagine the day like we have this ridiculous construct of, you know, the nine to five, but nobody really works nine to five, it's like, you know, peak to six, or whatever it is, but how those are such crucial hours of the day. So how do we rethink instead of complaining about, I have to work early in the morning, or I have to work late at night? What if we started to look at those hours as a privilege for those of us who have what have we said, I am not going to work between three o'clock and eight o'clock when my children and my spouse are still have energy when they're home. And I'm going to organize my day in a different way. So the things that require the most thinking, perhaps I'll do those early in the morning, when I'm fresh, then I'll go through a series of meetings, when people are all engaged in meetings, and then at night, if I still have stuff leftover, that's when I'll send emails, I'll do the cleanup set for no scheduled meetings out. And we'll go from there. we reimagine the day and you could still be working, you know, eight or nine hours, I'm in no way advocating people work, you know, 12 hours, but you reimagine the day you get some of the life back because otherwise What have people done historically, they've lied. They've said, oh, yeah, this is what I you know. And there's this wonderful woman I did a podcast with early on Dennis Susskind, she wrote a book called Parent nation, she also happens to be this surgeon who does cochlear implants. So for kids who were born down, she may allows them to hear she's an amazing woman. But her husband who died. This is such a tragic story. But it shows what a person was, or has done as a doctor died pulling three kids out of Lake Michigan, there are the universe Chicago, but before that with their own kids, he was a star surgeon, and he would put on his calendar back then meeting with you know, so Department Chair of blah, blah, blah. And that would be his block, so that he could sneak out and watch their kids, fill in the blank, play soccer, do ballet or just be just go get an ice cream with a child who had a rough day. And one day one of his you know, the plebian, you know, surgeons and training, saw him at the soccer game and said, Oh, you know, Dr. So and so is this the crucial meeting with the chairman of blah, blah, blah. And he looked at him this famous doctor looked at him and said, you can't tell him you can't you can't tell anyone. We've moved past that a little bit. But I want to keep moving further. I mean, obviously this guy, the surgeon was at the top of his game, he was saving people's lives doing amazing work. And like a human being he wanted to see his kids and when a kids activities happen, they happen after school. So we have to say change the news, this disruption, to change the way we think of the work day and the work week, so that companies get what they need, you know, people have jobs that they want, but families are allowed to fulfill their full potential.
Stephanie Kruse 29:04
Yeah, I really liked how you just put that together. I, I feel like, you know, so much of what's profound is obvious, right? Is that we are not robots, we're human beings and making excuses for having a full human experience of a life. If we've chosen, you know, to have that experience as a parent, bringing our full selves to whatever it is we're doing should be okay. And, you know, not have to lie about it. And I think to his example, you know, some of us get these stories, and we're able to tell them, You're telling me, this is fantastic. What a company of dads you know, if you think about how big your megaphone can be, to normalize it is that the workplace piece of it for you.
Paul Sullivan 29:51
You know, our, you know, tenure, aspiration is to be the CNN of fatherhood. And our idea is that you come here for all kinds of Questions, we're starting out with the dads because that's who we are, you know, really dads as we know, this is a niche. And this is a group that needs to be normalized if we're going to move things forward. But, you know, I was a business journalist for 25 years. And I don't want to sound like a cynic. But I'm not somebody who's political. I'm not somebody who thinks that I can do something by going to Washington or a division of live in Connecticut going to Hartford, I don't. That's somebody else's role. And they would do it better if they chose to do it. I believe that I understand companies, because of my experiences, that type of journalism, I know that if I can get, you know, it's not going to be the biggest companies in the world to start, it's going to be those companies in the middle of trying to think more innovatively about how do we retain our workers? How do we use, that's where the change is going to start. And so it's not one or the other. But it's a huge component. And maybe it's a 15% component, 20% component, but we have to, it's all well, and good. If we have a whole bunch of the dads together, and fathers are coming to us for advice. But if that's not applied, you know, to the workplace, then we fail, because remember, as I said early on, I've got three daughters, you know, I've got three daughters, and I want the world to be better for them. I want them to choose whatever they want to do if they want to be the lead mom, awesome. If they don't want to get married, awesome. If they marry some guy who's going to be the lead that that's equally awesome. But I want them to have that choice. I don't want them to go out into the world thinking that they're saddled or some way by these, you know, gender stereotypes and know quite frankly, do I want their their friends who are boys to go out and be sound the same way? And so that's what we're really trying to push for is, is this sort of generational change that in a world that's not always great? Well, we'll make this one part of it a little bit better.
Stephanie Kruse 31:38
And how do you see that women and men can be good partners in this?
Paul Sullivan 31:44
Well, I you know, it's interesting take. I was at this event, prior to working moms in Brooklyn, I was one of five guys there. And I told the story now the guy and he said you were three of them, baby guys. And I said, Yeah, they were. And this woman came up to me and said, You know, I really give you a lot of credit for being here. And I said, why? And she said, you want to you want to five, five guys in a room of 200 women I said, I said, you know, look around here, these are all bunch of you know, successful working moms who are trying to figure out a different way of life to try to make things better. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna get out of here without getting mugged. But how does it start? It starts with normalizing this. And it starts with, you know, the acceptance that you know, the guy on the playground, the kids is not some guy that is going to be sleazy, though he may be sleazy, we need to give him the benefit of the doubt what he is as a parent, what he is, is a parent, and he's trying to figure out the best thing for his or her for his son or daughter. And we have to look at this as as parent, and it's kind of shedding off like, Okay, we have a rule that company dads, we don't do dad jokes. We don't do dumb dad jokes that play into the stereotypes. And I would ask pay, that's where he moms to do the same to try to get past the stereotypes of well, you know, guys don't do that. Or well, husbands never do that. Because what that does is it reinforces this narrative. And honestly, guys are not inclined to do this. It gives them a free pass, like, oh, he doesn't think I do anything, well, anything. So I guess I won't do anything. And then you don't make any progress. So again, I keep coming back to COVID. I'm trying to get us like if we were able to figure out so many things in those 18 months to two years without any guidebook whatsoever. If you have a little guidance from the company of dads, many of the other, you know, groups of moms that are doing this, we can figure this out. But the only way we're gonna figure this out is we dropped some of those, you know, stereotypes and really that that lazy thinking that we heard about, you know, what men do what women do with moms do with dads do why dad, you know, do this, why Mom will do that. That's we got to just forget that and move forward.
Stephanie Kruse 34:02
Yeah, as you said it, I mean, you're somebody that looks forward. So let's keep doing that. So I could I could go in 20 directions with this conversation, Paul, but but in the interest of your time, I want to ask you the final question that I ask every guest because the name of the podcast is going to be for now. Which is when you heard that phrase good enough for now and all of its positive, you know, implications. What does that evoke for you?
Unknown Speaker 34:31
Man, you know, I've thought I thought I haven't thought about that. But I've thought about this a lot. And I think so many people want that A plus life and everything. And I'm not advocating for like a C minus life. But I think if we could be happy with having a lot of our life be a B plus, maybe an A minus and a great inflation around here. Yeah. But if we could like appeal and go Yeah, so it might be plus what is he talking about? I went to the University of Chicago. About people, I got good grades. All right, I know. All right, I got a Don't worry. But like having that like, because what is important in that moment? You know, what do I really want to do? Like, what is my, you know, I have a great friend who has worked at Google works all these great companies, and he hates working. What he really loves him too, is fishing. But it's been a real struggle for him. And he's a great dad, he has to be good husband, but he's had these wonderful jobs. And he never, I want it to be like, okay, not everybody needs to be a master of the universe. And I have to think that how do we think not of ourselves not as, as the woman you were before for marriage, the man that was before marriage? How do we think of ourselves as that unit? And that's one of the things my wife and I think a lot about, with our three daughters. And, you know, what does that mean? Sometimes we don't get to do what we want to do as parents, because we have, something's more important for one of our daughters, and vice versa. Sometimes we're gonna go someplace and do something that mom and dad want to do. And that's okay. But it's being not everything has to be a plus, all the time. If we could aim, if everything averages out to that B plus life, that would be an awesome life. And to put in perspective, it would be a better life than 99% of the people in the world today. And I think having that more global perspective would help a lot.
Stephanie Kruse 36:14
well said, Well, I really appreciate your time. How can people learn more about company of dads and about you?
Unknown Speaker 36:21
Yeah, easy. Go to thecompanyofdads.com. Or even better, go to thecompanyofdads.com/thedad and sign up for our weekly newsletter, which is the one stop shop for everything that follows.
Stephanie Kruse 36:33
Best of luck to you, and I'm definitely cheering you on.
Paul Sullivan 36:37
Thank you, Stephanie. This was wonderful.
Stephanie Kruse 36:39
Thank you, Paul. Thank you so much for joining me. Please share the show with your friends by word of mouth, send them a text and maybe leave a rating and review. It really helps people find good enough for now. Don't forget to also follow us on your favorite podcast player like Apple or Spotify. So you can get new shows automatically each time they're released. You'll find show notes at goodenoughfornowpod.com And you could connect on Instagram at goodenoughfornowpod. See you next time.
