I'll admit it. My phone is a problem. I know it's an issue, and I still reach for it.
That came up early in my conversation with Davis, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since.
Founding Fathers started when my kid was born and my whole brain went to one question: how am I gonna do this? Companies have stages. So does being a dad. So I'm sitting down with friends who are a few stages ahead of me on both.
Davis is the dad of two girls, one four and a half and one 16 months. For 10 years he worked as a trainer at a gym. After his second kid, he walked away and went out on his own. Here's what stuck with me.
Providing isn't the same as being there
Davis said the first big turning point after having a kid was a dilemma a lot of founders know. You tell yourself you have to work more to provide for your family. Then you realize that working more means sacrificing your family for your work.
His kids aren't going to thank him for the car. They want him there. They want him to listen to stories that make no sense and to play.
And he was honest about the part I needed to hear. Even when he's physically with his kid, if all his energy is in the business, he's not really there anyway. He's thinking about the schedule for the week, or whether he followed up with leads.
Present fathers
The tagline Davis keeps coming back to is present fathers. His belief is that the best thing you can offer anybody is your attention, even if they're four years old and telling a story that doesn't make sense.
He said four-year-olds start their stories about three-quarters of the way in. You understand the ending, but you have no idea how you got there. And when you actually pay attention, it's so fun.
Then he said the line I keep replaying. Picture yourself 20 years from now wishing you could go back and hang with your kid. "You don't have to have that wish if you were there in the first place."
Dark hours
This week Davis tried something simple. Dark hours. Phone off, in the other room.
Within five minutes he was wondering if he'd gotten messages. An hour later it was starting to make him feel a certain way. He called it almost like a drug.
That's when I admitted mine. It's that weird thing I know is an issue. Hearing a dad of two say the same thing out loud made it feel a lot less like a personal failing and a lot more like the actual work.
Leave space between the tasks
A buddy of Davis's told him about context switching. Your brain is good at focusing on one thing. But if you don't give it time to switch, it drags the last task into the next one. Go straight from texting clients to playing with your kid and you carry the work right into that time.
He called the discipline a constant repetition. A spiritual practice. Never perfect.
It reminded me of something simple. We only do one thing at a time anyway. So why not do the one thing really well?
Your kids are watching how you talk to yourself
This was the one that hit hardest. Davis said his kids have become the biggest mirror he has. All the frustration and self-loathing gets amplified, because you start to see it so clearly.
When his daughter makes a mistake and he reacts too fast, she'll ask, "Am I a bad girl?" He and his wife have never said anything like that to the girls. So where is it coming from? His honest guess was the way he talks about himself.
Kids are sponges. They don't listen to what you say. They watch you. And he pointed out it's the same in a company. Your team is watching the leader the whole time. If there's hypocrisy at the top, nobody buys in.
Take the hour
When I asked what advice he'd give a founder about to become a dad, he didn't hesitate. Don't take yourself so seriously. You're not going to run your family like you run your company. Your family needs love from you over everything.
He talked about the male lion. Everyone thinks ferocious. But lions also play around and lay around. Ready to be fierce when it matters, and playful the rest of the time.
Then the part he said he was speaking to himself. After kids, he put weightlifting and his silence practice aside. He got out of shape, his sleep got bad, and he wasn't present. So now his advice is to take an hour to yourself a day. You'll hear that it's selfish. Take it anyway, because you'll do a better job for everybody else.
The number
The flip side: what would he tell a dad thinking about starting something?
His own story. With his second kid, everything hit different. Twice the accountability, twice the bills. He'd been at the same gym for 10 years and nothing had changed financially. So he quit, set a number he'd never hit before, and gave himself three months to hit it or go get a corporate job.
The first month was horrifying. He hit the number in six weeks.
His takeaway wasn't that he's special. It was that he's not special, and he is, and so are you.
What I'm taking with me
I walked in thinking balance was the answer to "how am I gonna do this." Davis kept bringing it back to one word. Presence. With your kid, with your business, and with yourself first.
By the end, I'd forgotten we were on camera. That's usually how I know a conversation was real.
If you're a founder who's also a dad, or about to be, HMU.