Ryan Rutan: Welcome back to the episode of the Startup therapy podcast. This is Ryan Rotan joined as always by my friend, the founder and CEO of startups dot com. Will Schroeder, will we set out today to talk about how being a founder uh made us a better parent? But we also want to throw on the table like does being a parent make us a better founder.

Wil Schroter: Yeah, actually, now they think about it, it sort of does I like, OK, so let me put it this way prepared and I think of myself just as an employer and kind of kind of what a dick I was for for like maybe 20 years. And I'll give you an example. I just had no appreciation for what parents went through in order to also be in a startup. Like here, here's an example. And I hate to use this example. It's so bad. It makes me sound like such a jerk. But you, if you've been listening to me long enough or Ryan, you've known me long enough. You're just used to it and we used to work these insane hours and uh and, and I was used to working till midnight every night. And again, we talked about how it's a terrible idea. So, by all means, don't do that. Uh, but by 56 o'clock, a lot of the parents would have to go home to, like, either eat dinner or, uh, you know, see their kids soccer game or whatever. Right. Just do what parents do normal life and, and I didn't do this all the time and I regret it, but from time to time I would, I would kind of jokingly make a comment like, oh, cool Johnson taking a half day, huh?

Ryan Rutan: Right. When they're leaving,

Wil Schroter: she would laugh. Right. And, and, and comfortably. Right. And like, ok, cool. Glad he said that in front of everybody. Jerk. I, boy, I didn't mean it anywhere near, like it would have come out cetera and when I'm saying it now years later, I'm like, what was I thinking? And I'm in and out of jest. But I also, you know, I'm sorry, so consciously, I'm like, dude, it's five o'clock, you're going home. I'm gonna be here for another seven hours. Like it does feel like a half day for me. I think of how unappreciative I was of what it meant to be AAA parent in a startup. But now now that you, you flipped it, which I loved, uh I also realize how much being a parent has made me 10 X better of a founder. So, so one of the things I would say is to the folks that are listening that aren't parents, right? They're early in their careers or for whatever aren't parents. I'd see this episode is gonna actually have some really valuable nuggets because this isn't really about parenting. It's about being responsible for people and being damn empathetic to their journey and kind of how you develop them. So I think this is actually gonna apply to everybody across the board

Ryan Rutan: today. I, I think so too. Yeah, I don't, I don't think this is relegated to the, to parents. Uh either, you know, present or future to your point. There's gonna be some stuff in here that's germane to, to anybody. The, the irony too of, you know, you not understanding the plight of the parent is such a close analog to what we go through all the time as founders, which is that people don't get what it's like to be a founder, right? They don't have that empathetic muscle because they haven't been through it. They work their corporate job, they leave at five, they don't get it. They don't understand why, you know, we, we, we, we look the way we do, why we're haggard, why we're tired, why we're confused. The irony not lost on me

Wil Schroter: there. But for folks on, for folks that uh that, that don't have a lot of backstory. Ryan and I are both dads. Um We actually had kids almost at the same eras. Uh We've been kind of going through this journey, uh, together, uh, Ryan. You want to give inventory of your kiddos? Oh, my

Ryan Rutan: gosh. I've got so many of them. I can hardly keep track anymore. I've got a, I got a 10 year old, sixth grader. Uh, that one. I know for sure. Then there's the, the, the, the seven year old who the two oldest are girls. Right. So, I've got girl, girl and then, uh, and then tornado uh the, the male child uh at, at age four and we're not sure we're gonna let him to five yet where, where the, the jury is still out, whether we, we let him continue or not. Uh Now they're, they're a fantastic little bunch. But uh yeah, and, and yeah, man, it was at the same time. We, we have what, two months delta between uh between him and some. So, yeah, yeah, we've been uh we've been on this ride for a while now

Wil Schroter: we have and, and we've kind of gone through the same catharsis, you know, as, as, as founders as people, as parents and going through it. So I've got a ten-year-old daughter summer who's amazing. Uh smart as can be got, you know, so buttoned up, she became a founder like, you know, she's, she's so on the job, right? It's unbelievable. She, she's a, she's a prodigy. Um And then there's will he just turned six. He and I share a birthday and just like your man, Jack, he is a tornado. I, I can't explain anything that he does. I don't even know why he does what he does. A kid just gets up in the morning doesn't

Ryan Rutan: seem to either. I would guess in Jack's case, it's very like, why did you do that? And it's just like he's already doing whatever the next thing is

Wil Schroter: it, we had this cool opportunity. Every parent does to basically reset the goal posts from maybe what your childhood has or, or, or, or wasn't or what the expectations are, et cetera. And I think that's such a phenomenal thing for founders or parents, et cetera. And one of the things for me when uh when will was born, uh I wrote this missive to him, right? It's this kind of a weird thing to do, but I had some time in the hospital, you know, Sarah was busy doing whatever she was doing, I guess having a kid or whatever. So it was time on my hands. She always reminds us. And so anyway, so I, I, I, I wrote a uh a letter to to my soon to be born son about what I thought the world would mean to him, what I'm trying to bring to him in the world, uh you know, where the world stands right now where it could be a better place, you know what his, his place is and, and, and what advice I would give to him and of all of it, there's one thing that I put in there that I remember being kind of most proud of. And I wrote question everything, especially me and, and I wanted to instill this and I wanna, I wanna beat this up with you this concept with my kids that I didn't want strict obedience. I didn't want that. I felt like as a founder that was so anesthetic to who I am. Like my, my one driving principle as a human that makes me a founder is I do not like being told what to do and I question everything, but I think it made me a good founder. Yeah, I

Ryan Rutan: mean, if, if we're not questioning things, I would argue like if you're not questioning things, you're gonna have a really hard time being a good founder, right? Or you'd ever even end up there in the first place

Wil Schroter: that DNA rhyme that very DNA that had me question everything is exactly what I want to instill in my kids. And of course, we're like, oh, you don't want them to question everything, you know, then, then you'll never be able to get a handle on them. I don't want, I don't want to be the parent that, that has to restrain my kids as a way of growing them, right? Like there's a certain amount of that. I don't let my kids run, you know, totally crazy, but I do want them to question things when I say, hey, this is the way things are and they say why I want to be responsible for that answer. I don't want to cop out and say, oh, just because I said so to me, that's, that's a bullshit answer. And that, that, that's, that's a, that's weak parenting for me.

Ryan Rutan: It's a, it's a completely lost opportunity both to connect to the child and to, to, to teach them something in, to learn something about the kid, right? The, the questions they asked, teach us so much about them. I

Wil Schroter: had uh one of our team members a while back come to me and said, hey, I just learned that somebody else actually makes more than I do right with, feels like we have similar jobs. Why do they make more than I do now as, as an employer, I don't have to answer that question. I don't have to, I can just be stoic and be glad you have a paycheck, you know Johnson and he like what, whatever, you know,

Ryan Rutan: since you're only working half days anyways. Right?

Wil Schroter: So true. But I want people to ask those questions again again. I'm veering back the other direction where I'm saying, you know, being a parent uh made me a better founder, I don't think I, I would have felt like I had to answer that question or, or said differently. I don't think I would have invited that question, but now that I have kids I do because it's exactly how I want them to think. I want them to question everything. You know, why do we do this? Why is that important if I can't answer the question? Isn't that a problem?

Ryan Rutan: Yeah. Yeah. And, and I think your point around question everything and especially me is, is extremely important and perhaps the most, the, the most on point in terms of how we connect this back to, to start up land. I remember having this discussion with my daughter. You know, we were having some fundamental philosophical level discussion about a year ago and, and then I was saying, you know, this is, this is what I believe he was like, but that doesn't mean that that's what you need to believe and, and, and you can, you can question that she was like, but, but, you know, more than I do and so like I should, isn't it easier? Just I was like, well, it might be easier just to follow. It was like, but what if I'm wrong? Right? I, I don't know, I just think, and I said it's really important for you to question, especially me because of this exact point. If you just accept everything I say wholesale because I'm your dad because I have been in control or at least, you know, managing massive parts of your life for your entire life. What you know, to the extent that there has been one, it's really, really important that you question me maybe above anybody else, right? For two reasons. One, because there will be more of a sense that you should just blindly follow. Right? And we can run the same thing as managers, right. I'm, I'm the CEO, I'm the founder, Ergo. People should just listen to me and people will. Right. And, and that can be a real problem if we don't get questioned as leaders, that can be a huge issue. Secondarily, I said, because I'm the person who's gonna care most about how that question gets answered for you, right? So not only right, should you question it? Because blindly following it's a bad idea. I'm going to care more about how fully you understand whatever this problem you're facing is, right? And I think as, as leaders, as managers, as founders, we have the same responsibility because the better job we do at first cultivating this, you know, creating the culture around being able to ask questions all the way to the top, questioning anybody and everybody not needlessly not senselessly, not constantly, right? But asking questions that matter and knowing that you're going to get a response because this is how we grow our businesses, right? We want good questions, we want to be pushed, we want to hear those questions and we want to get the answers, right? Because that's what's gonna help drive success with the business, right? Same thing with our kids.

Wil Schroter: How about the other side of it, which is I wanna teach my kids that you can lead and we're the leaders, you know, in our family that you can lead with some humility. If all I say is look, this is my answer and it's correct just because I said it, that is zero humility, right? Like how many parents stop and say to their kids? You know, I actually I'm not sure I know the answer to that yet, right? Other than can they buy a toy? In other words, like how many, like how many times will a parent stop in, in with humility? Say, you know, here's the direction I'd like to go, but I'm not sure that that's the right answer yet. And I'm still working through that. That's humility. That's the same thing that I now take, you know, in, in leadership and I know you do the same where I'm like, Kate, here's where I'm trying to go. We just did a whole episode of this. The culture is wrong, being ok with being wrong. I want my kids to see that level of humility right in me. I want to work that muscle. I want to get better at that level of humility and it starts at home

Ryan Rutan: helping them understand that that's a strength, not a weakness, right? The the ability to, to question yourself and, and to to be ok and to be open about questioning yourself and what your motivations are, how you're trying to get where you're going totally fine. Right. I think it's a great lesson both for, for parents, for the kids and, and of course, as, as leaders within startups or whatever organization kind of doesn't

Wil Schroter: matter, you know, and this willingness and this is again part of, you know, what I want to instill in my, in my kids, but also in an organization that I work and live in, I want to instill the, the this concept that the answer can change because we asked questions. So we looked at things and say, well, why were they always this way? I'll give you an example that it's been all the rage of the work from home. Well, why is it 40 hours a week? Why is it 9 to 5? Why is it, you know, you know, all of these things where people are kind of questioning the norms and the truth is after enough discussion, you might come back to some of these same uh answers. You might say it's 9 to 5, just given all of the other things in life that exist. Those are actually the most convenient hours for most people to work, right? If you're talking about everything from school to day care to what time it's dark and light, right? We might come back to those answers, but I'll give you another example. And then we've talked about this before. Maybe you don't, maybe you, maybe you come back to an answer. You're like, you know, what offices suck, like they're comfortable for no one. They're, they're actually a horrible place to be and, and, and we're a remote company. So, you know, we, we can say that with, with our own feelings. However, here's what gets interesting. I've had a bunch of founders over the past uh few months, debate the other direction they're saying, look, I'm not getting, I'm not getting the returns. I, I understand everybody thinks it's more productive, et cetera. I'm not getting the returns. I think that's a healthy, you know, question to ask and I get anxious when we build a culture of being so resolute that we stop asking those questions, which is exactly what I'm trying to instill in my

Ryan Rutan: kids. Yeah. And, and particularly in cases like this where we've just gone through fundamental upheaval in, in the thinking around something like an office, right? And the vast majority of people swung one direction and they were all like, yeah, offices do suck. Let's not go there. That doesn't mean that that is 100% the answer for 100% of the people or 100% of the companies, the prevailing wind seems to be pointed that way. But I think, you know, to your point, it is still valuable to, to question that, right? Still valuable question. Does that make sense for us? Does that make sense for us now? You know, I could, I could make a strong case that, you know, we do find as a remote company. Now. I have no idea what it would have been like. Had we tried to start as a remote company? Right. If we had, if we had begun our adventure, completely remote, no way of knowing. Right. And, and so, you know, for now works great. Right. We're very happy with it. But, right. You know, we'd have to question that if we were starting something brand new. Could we do that in a fully remote environment? Absolutely. We'd have to find

Wil Schroter: out in uh in a few weeks. Uh I start as a part-time teacher at my kids' school. Right. I'm so excited about it. Right. Uh My, my daughter summer is in fifth grade in her school. Uh fifth grade starts middle school. So I'm teaching entrepreneurship um every week in her school to her class, to a class uh in her school, it's a very small school. Uh The kids all often share the same classes. So I'll be teaching fifth through eighth graders uh in the same classroom at the same time. Super fun. Yeah. Well, so, so a couple of things, uh you know, I'm building out the curriculum and everything else like that. But what I really care about, I'm not trying to make these kids necessarily founders or entrepreneurs if that happens. Great. What I wanna do though is I wanna plant some, some stuff in their ear. I wanna be able to say what if, for example, even as the teacher, I'm gonna tell them, look, you guys can question me if what I'm saying doesn't make sense or you don't agree this, you have carte blanche to question me, but here's another side of it. I wanna plant the bug in their ear that they can be happy. Imagine that. Can you imagine if, if the theme across your parents, across your, um, and not just you, I just mean all your parents, your instructors, et cetera was, you know, what's most important is you have to start with what makes you happy with what you enjoy and then work backward from there. Can you imagine the population we would have if people were given that North Star

Ryan Rutan: different, right? Because the the narrative was entirely the opposite for us, right? It was you're gonna start at the bottom, right? I mean, we use, we use all these, all the conceptual languages, right? Like you're, you're in the trenches, you're at the bottom of the ladder, you're, you know, you, you start in the mail room, whatever it was, right. Yeah, it was just like pick a place that doesn't sound great. That's where you start and then the fire. Yeah. Right. So then you, you start there and then you have to work your way towards happiness, right? And then happiness was some amorphous uh future state that you weren't even clear that the path you were on would lead to, uh but that was how it was couched, right? You know, and you just got to do this stuff and then that, that stuff will eventually lead you to the point where you can be happy. Amazing, amazing to just flip that on its head and say, hey, let's start with that notion and, and work our way wherever we need to go from there, such that we maintain that state.

Wil Schroter: Let's build on that a little bit because I don't want folks listening to think that we're like some fufu, like, you know, it doesn't matter if you get paid or not, just be happy kind of thing. Yeah. It sort of matters if you get paid

Ryan Rutan: to just meditate in the street with a hat in front of you and hope it gets filled with cash. Right? It'll be fine. What we're

Wil Schroter: saying is, start with a, a career with something that you actually enjoy doing. Now, now here's, here's what it looked like for me and I'm sure I'm sure I'm not the only one who I talked to enough people about this when I was growing up. You basically got handed a menu of 12 careers, right? You were a doctor accountant, whatever, you know. Um, and you least one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny. Right. And it was like, oh, you're good at math. You're an accountant now. And I'm like, wait, what? I'm an accountant now. Like, how did that happen? Right. No one chose to become an accountant and we pick on accountants all the time. I'm our CFO I do actually enjoy accounting but not like that. Not like all I wanna do is accounting. What I think has happened is I think we've gotten conditioned to just basically get shoe horned into whatever might be a career without ever people asking us. Is that a lot of fun? We just like,

Ryan Rutan: what other options are there? Right. Because you weren't kidding. When you said there were like 12 options. I remember taking that, that, that test if you can even call it that because I think it was like six questions long. And then it, it pulled the, the top two from a list of like, maybe it was 25 or something. I think I've referenced this before. Uh, my two were, uh, Forest Ranger or

Wil Schroter: for Ranger,

Ryan Rutan: I would be an amazing forest Ranger and, or an attorney. Right? And then I thought, well, maybe I should have gone into environmental law. Maybe that's what it meant. But I didn't know that was an option at the time. I started to follow the law path and thought, you know, because I had been convinced by my father who was a, a physician not to go down that path. Um, I thought, ok, well, then if I'm not going to be a doctor, then I have to be a lawyer. It's the other choice because, you know, we lived in Ohio and there's no forest. I would have been a, a cornfield ranger, uh less fun. We go down these paths and I, I realized through some exploration, uh that I actually didn't particularly like the attorneys that I was engaging with as I was doing internships and like, talking to them and seeing what they actually did. I was like, I would hate this. I would not enjoy any of this. And so luckily I, I, I realized the time, like, I, I didn't then immediately pick something starting with like, my happiness, but I at least avoided something that I was like, I'm pretty sure this is gonna make me miserable.

Wil Schroter: No one even asked the question the whole time. I was growing up all through college. No one even thought to say, well, what would you like to do or what would make you happy? It was

Ryan Rutan: always you'd be good at or you show signs of or, you know, you have the skills of a, a, right? It was never like, hey, does this interest you in any way, shape or form, uh, would you want to wake up and do this every day even when it gets really hard? Uh, and, and just keep doing it? Does that sound like, does that sound like fun? And the answer would be like, of course not. It sounds

Wil Schroter: awful. Do you care about doing systems implementations?

Ryan Rutan: Absolutely.

Wil Schroter: Me more. What I think is interesting. And what I'm trying to instill in my case in by way of that other kids, as, you know, as I'm teaching other people's kids is you don't have to just follow a path that was prescribed to you. Now again, I wanna be clear. Um, there are lots of jobs that people do and they do just fine and they make great careers out of them, but that, that doesn't make them happy. They're like, you know, I do this one thing I do systems implementation. It doesn't make me all that happy. I don't jump out of bed in the morning. So excited to implement a system, but it provides a great life and I love golf and I loved all these other things and I get to do those totally get it. But what I'm saying is to not even have ever asked the question.

Ryan Rutan: Yeah, I think that's dangerous,

Wil Schroter: super dangerous. And so with my kids, you know, as I sit down with them again, they, they're, they're very young as yours are. But that's the point I'm starting from saying, and what I'm gonna to, to teach in this class and these, and these kids are gonna go through high school as well. And, and we, we have a program in the high school that I've designed that also kind of carries this theme, which is what if, what if the things you love you could do for a living? What if that's all you ever did. And you started from a place of passion and passions come in a lot of ways that there are always things that like make me happy. I'm a creative by heart, right? Those are like, I enjoy writing. I love designing. I love like doing things that are creative. So if I get to do that, I'm in, I'm so happy. It's why I started companies because it allowed me to do creative things. I like creating things. But if you said, hey, you have to go work um in doing systems implementations, I'm a relatively smart guy. I could pull that off, but I would hate it, right? And so it's like, dude, if you know, I've got some sort of capabilities and, and you could put just as well put me in a place where I actually enjoy it. Yeah, I'm gonna be a better unit of society if, if, if that's the way you're looking at it, it

Ryan Rutan: wasn't that Michael Jordan couldn't play baseball, but that was pretty damn dumb, wasn't it?

Wil Schroter: I did the basketball thing. OK. All of us

Ryan Rutan: were way happier when he was playing basketball, right? It wasn't just

Wil Schroter: him, Tony should say that I, I was out to dinner last night with uh with Michael Red. You obviously uh didn't know Mike. Mike. Mike played uh with the Milwaukee Bucks. He was in the dream team with uh lebron,

Ryan Rutan: best three point shooters in the league. Yeah,

Wil Schroter: he was one of the best three point shooters in the league anyway. So we had dinner with you and his wife last night. And, uh, and I asked him, I said, Mike, if, if you didn't do basketball, what else would you have done? Zero answers? Now, here's what I loved about this. He's like, well, I didn't, there was nothing else. He's like, from the time when I was a little kid, it was the only thing I was going to do and, and I said, Mike, you're 66 now, but like you were, you know, not that big as a kid. How could you possibly know? Right. You were two ft

Ryan Rutan: six at the time. Yeah, I was

Wil Schroter: gonna say if, if you grew up and you were, my size would have, would have

Ryan Rutan: ended, yeah, it would have ended differently. Yeah.

Wil Schroter: Yeah. You'd be the NBA as a water boy. But what I loved was his answer. He said that's what made me happy. That's what I was passionate about and that's all I was going to do. That is exactly what I want to teach my kids. Little will is never gonna match the NBA. Sorry, son, your genetics won't, won't help you. Um But good luck with those dreams. I, I love that, that specificity of focus. That, that this is what I love. So that's what I'm going to do. Right. That's exactly what I'm looking for, you know, something that's really funny about everything we talk about here is that none of it is new. Everything you're dealing with right now has been done 1000 times before you, which means the answer already exists. You may just not know it, but that's ok. That's kind of what we're here to do. We talk about this stuff on the show, but we actually solve these problems all day long at groups dot startups dot com. So if any of this sounds familiar, stop guessing about what to do, let us just give you the answers to the test and be done with

Ryan Rutan: it. Yeah. And, and I love that. It started with that because you also hear and we're just sticking with, with sports for a second. You also hear the other case, which is again that they were talented in some way and that was discovered and then they were sort of pushed and groomed and made into and look, you know, they, they may be making great money now and whatever and they probably do enjoy it. But who, who was it? It was one of the tennis players maybe Andre Agassi said that he, I actually hate tennis and, and sorry, Andre, if that wasn't you and you love tennis. Uh But one of them was like, I hate, I was just really good at it and I could make a lot of money, but I actually didn't like it like I felt forced into it. I, I, I think it was Andre Agassi. It could be, uh, it could be somebody else just because there's this talent and predilection for like success within something doesn't mean that's the right reason to do it. So it makes me super happy to hear that. Mike ended up doing that because it was what he loved. Not because somebody pointed and said, uh, you look like you're going to end up being 66 and, and you've got a great three point shot. Like you have to go be an NBA star, right? Not the worst thing to be told. Yeah.

Wil Schroter: Right. Right. Right. But still something, right? Go make tens of millions of dollars in the NBA. But I guess my thought was he was aligned with what he enjoyed and he got to do it. That's exactly where, where I want to see my kids. I also think there's the probability that my kids are going to know what their whole career should be before they've ever had a career is silly to me. Uh But that, that's a whole other thing which is why I want to start with things that they do understand like passion and Proclivities. And I think we can develop those as parents. I think this is one of the things as a founder where I've seen what agency can do for you. I've seen when somebody takes the, the template off and says, hey, instead of the 12 jobs, what if you made your own. Yeah. What

Ryan Rutan: would you build?

Wil Schroter: Right. And you're like, wait, I can do that. Yeah. Yeah. Right. It helps if somebody actually tells you you can do it. Yeah, because that was definitely not on the menu.

Ryan Rutan: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's one of the, one of the most important things we can do is give our kids permission. Right. In the same way, give our teams permission to push outside the templates to, to try a new sales tactic, right? To, to try coding that page in a slightly different way to bring a new front end technology to bear, right? It's it's the permission to do what wasn't obvious necessarily right to get outside of what the template says I have to be or do or become uh or the way I have to execute it, right? And that's how you end up an unhappy systems implementer, right? You don't want

Wil Schroter: that. I developed this, this new thing that I didn't have at the same level of scale, which was empathy where I really cared, not just uh was concerned, I genuinely cared obviously how my kids were feeling and why they were feeling that way. And again, this is actually the more we talk about it, the more I'm realizing that being a parent actually made me a better founder. But, but I'll try to stay on topic when my kids say there's something's wrong, they're crying about something, et cetera. I no longer look at what they're crying about because I've come to learn, it's never what they're actually upset about. There's always something behind it said differently when they're at Disney having the time of their lives. They're rarely melting down. Right when they're at home. That's what the car ride home is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they didn't get what they wanted at the store. But my whole thing is I've kind of created this new ability if you will to just triple click on everything. So every time I see something that's a little off and we just did an episode about this, you know, where there's smoke, there's fire. I've really built this kind of this, this, this muscle where I've been like, ok, something's wrong. I've got to go way deeper than what's on the surface. I'm learning that with my kids again. I'm, I'm going in the opposite direction how these kids are basically making me a better founder. But you've got to be seeing the same thing. Right.

Ryan Rutan: Sure. And, and, and look, it's, it's not just with the negative behaviors, it's the positive behaviors and, and, and the happiness too. Right. So, uh, you know, in, in the same way when, when I see one of them is upset about something, it's never the thing, right? It's, oh, you know, Aria will come to me or, you know, stomp into my office all upset and like, you know what's going on, she's like, Hannah said something to me and I'm like, ok, so it's obviously not the thing that Hannah said. Uh, so let's dig in, let's figure out what it is. Right. And so then you start to ask some questions, you start to probe a little bit, but in the same way when they come and they're, you know, magnitudes happier than usual. They, they're, they're really, you know, enthusiastic about something I love to dig in there too. Right? Because in the same sense as that, when there's smoke, there's fire. Sometimes when you see something glittering, there's some gold there, right? And digging in and kind of getting past the, the obvious superficial like, OK, you're, you're happy right now because you have an ice cream cone in your hand, you can find some really, really amazing insights about what actually motivates them, what, what does drive their happiness, right? And, and this is just as valuable within, within our teams, right? We talk, we talked in that, that episode where there's where there's smoke, there's fire about, you know, when you see a small problem, take a closer look, right? Because you're, you're always going to scratch the surface, there's gonna be something else there. Uh But in the same ways, you know, it's so important when we see, you know, outsized performance or we see somebody just getting really enthusiastic about something digging in and understanding why, right? Like when somebody comes, starts coming to you with, with ideas, you know, one of, one of the marketing team, uh, has been presenting stuff, kind of like every week there's a new idea, a new tactic, a new thing and it's been really fun to kind of dig in and understand the motivation behind that. Right. I mean, there's the obvious which is just like it's your job. Right. But it wasn't an expectation. It wasn't something I told them they had to do and yet they're coming with these suggestions of these ideas. And it's because there's this innate drive to discover something that's gonna work really well and, and just wants to be able to do that. Right? And so that's awesome. You find that it allows me to cultivate that and to reward that, uh, and to drive more of that type of behavior that we want. So, you know, I think it's a two sided coin. Yes. Any time that we see like these negative behaviors or bad emotions, whatever dig in, find out what's behind the curtain that's really driving that and figure out how we can impact it at the same thing when we see something positive, you know, tug on that thread too, right? You never know what you're gonna find until you go looking, right? So, stay curious,

Wil Schroter: you know, to that end, the stay curious, you know, we talked about this just a minute ago when we were saying like, hey, question everything. I think when my kids watch me dig deeper they learn how to dig deeper again. If you don't see someone else do it or do it effectively, then there's no reason you would do it when, when we get into something, when my daughter unpacks her day or my son's talking about his day or something like that. And he says, well, I did this and, you know, I wasn't happy or whatever. I always question isn't, oh, that's bad. It's why, so this person upset you? Why? Well, because, you know, they said something that I didn't like? Cool. Why do you think they said that when I get into that, like, put yourself in their shoes, it starts to get a little bit more psychological than they're usually ready for. And again, they're 10 and six. I, I, I understand there's certain places that are not ready to go, but here's what I like about it. It started to be some, something where they start asking the question themselves without having to me ask it. So my daughter summer who's crazy, smart now when she comes to me and she says, hey, somebody said something that bothered me today. She knows I'm gonna ask why? Right? Or, or how did she knows I'm gonna trouble click. She starts preparing her answer, right. As you tend to do with your parents because once you start to learn their behaviors,

Ryan Rutan: how can I head off the questions of the past by just answering them up front? Right.

Wil Schroter: It's great because she's starting to learn how powerful that discovery is. She's starting to learn that sometimes when her friends say crappy stuff, it's because they have a problem. Not because she has a problem. I gotta tell you, man how cool that would have been at 10 years old if somebody told me that some, some useful information

Ryan Rutan: it is. It is. And it's, it's sad that we didn't have that necessarily. It's great that we can pass this on now. And I think it's such an important skill to have, right? It goes back to the questioning everything too. And I think it, you know, something else that we talk about a lot, which is just permission. Number one, it may not even occur to you that you could or should question why I feel this way, right? You get wrapped up in the, I feel bad. I want to rant and Raver, I feel happy. I want to do cartwheels, right? You get caught up in the emotion itself, right? At the young age. We're not introspective enough, we're not self aware enough to question. And, ok, well, why did that happen? Why did I get upset? And so I think by asking them, we're, we're showing them that one, it's possible to do so it's worthwhile to do so and you have full permission to do so and that there are benefits in doing it. Uh And, and again, I think that that is another one of these lessons that extends uh to, to our teams. Uh you know, they go beyond our family, giving our teams permission to question how certain things make them feel, what motivates them, how our actions impact them. And that it's OK to question that, to talk about it, to feel certain ways about it and to look for solutions is a great, great culture to cultivate.

Wil Schroter: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that sort of thing like even within our team, like, and we'll take it back the other direction, kind of how this affects us in the business. Let's say somebody, we're going through our analytics, right? And we're looking at uh conversions and what people aren't buying now, we could look at that and say, oh, the price is too high, is it? Because if we say you get all 200 of our people for $100 you know, people may go, oh, it's all those people. And then yes, I'll absolutely do it. Or if we say we're gonna guarantee that you get funded, which we don't, uh We're gonna guarantee that you get funded is $100 too much then no, it's not a price problem. It's a value problem. It's always a problem. It's, it's always a value problem. But that's my point. We've gotten condition because we're founders because we know a lot of this stuff hasn't been discovered before. We've gotten conditioned to dig deeper. And it's such a powerful thing. To have. And so now we get to instill that in our kids at an age where they absorb it so much faster at an age where we can baseline them out so that they are being more empathetic, they are asking harder questions that they are doing things that puts them light years ahead of their peers, right? And I think all of those things that, that we learned that we've developed as founders, as we're channeling all of that to our kids are making them 10 x better kids. So in addition to all the stuff related to founder groups, you've also got full access to everything on startups dot com. That includes all of our education tracks, which will be funding customer acquisition, even how to manage your monthly finances. They're so much stuff in there. All of our software including Biz Plan for putting together detailed business plans and financials launch rock for attracting early customers and of course, fund for attracting investment capital. When you log into the startups dot com site, you'll find all of these resources available.