The Importance of Fathers with Paul Sullivan

george grombacher 0:02
Paul Sullivan wrote The Wealth matters column for The New York Times for 13 years before founding the company of dads. It’s the first platform dedicated to creating a community for lead dads. Welcome to the show, Paul.

Paul Sullivan 0:14
George. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

george grombacher 0:17
Yeah. And as I say that I know that a couple years ago, you were on the show already. So welcome back, remind us tell us a little about your personal lives more about your work and what motivated you to start the community for debts?

Paul Sullivan 0:31
Well, there’s a little shout out for you here first year, because the first time around, you invited me on in my role as a New York Times what matters columnist and then I kept following the podcast. And so this time around, I invited myself on like that nervy crazy on to comes over for Thanksgiving and doesn’t leave. And the reason is, you know, I left I ended my column at the times and 21 to start the company of dads because there was a huge gap, I’d been what I call a lead dad, for years, a lead dad is a go to parent, whether he works full time part time does it all the time to his kids, and in many cases is there to support his wife, spouse or partner in their career and always being an ally, to parents caregivers at work. And I realized that there’s nothing like that existed during COVID When I said, Hmm, I need a little help here. And so it’s something that I created to fill that void. What are we We’re a media company, we’re a community platform. But we also do a lot of workplace education. So on the surface, you see the you know, the newsletter, the podcasts, the features, you have the meetups, but really, we’re trying to create some change through changing corporate culture and being part of the whole well being offering that some of the top companies in America have.

george grombacher 1:42
And how is it how it’s been received thus far. Three

Paul Sullivan 1:45
years in so far, so good. We’ll be announcing a big partnership. Shortly with the national chain of childcare companies, we have a partnership to take what has been keynote talks and seminars and turn it into a course of b2b course that will be delivered over tax delivered over SMS to realize I’m really excited because I’m seriously I mean, that’s the way to reach a lot of people, keynote talks, a lot of fun. But to get to 10 people in a room, you get a company that has 30,000 people, you need something different. And that’s what we’re developing now hopefully launch it around Father’s Day.

george grombacher 2:17
And what is Tell me a little bit about the content, but more so what is what is the desired impact? What’s what’s what’s the point?

Paul Sullivan 2:27
You know, one of our taglines is, you know, we’re here to help families fulfill their full potential. And the company dads works at home, and it works in the office or the virtual office, you know, at home, it’s helping them become equal partners, it’s helping men step up and relieve some of that, you know, mental burden that historically, you know, moms have have had to shoulder and it helps men feel more comfortable being deeply involved as fathers and to push back against stereotypes like, you know, Mr. Mom has been or what do you retire dude, and to really sort of bring men into, you know, 2024, and the workplace, you know, men have been penalized when they put their hand up and said, I want to be a be Dad, I want to be a full parent, anybody, any company, that would be an event, that event that you’re not going to go to a recital, I gotta go to a game, that lead that is fully involved, apparent, but coming out of COVID. You know, so many men in had been driven by millennials, but but certainly guys in their 40s and 50s, too, who saw a change, they say, like, I want to be more present. So why does this matter? It matters because it’s really good for the men really good for the dad so that they’re more fully involved, they’re not going to leave, they’re going to feel more understood at that company. But it’s even better for the working moms, because now they have an ally. Now, parenting is not something that’s gendered. Now parenting and caregiving is something that, you know, men and women are doing together. And thirdly, it’s great for those people, managers, because what is this, you know, what we offer is really a retention tool. We offer tools to companies to help them be better with some education, some tweaks to policies, and when they’re better, people don’t want to leave. And that’s the key. Everyone knows that, you know, replacing a worker, even a mediocre worker is really expensive. So let’s keep them let’s you know, get the most out of them. Let’s show that we trust them. And that’s really the company dad’s mission, you know, to work both at home and in the workplace.

george grombacher 4:17
A lot. It makes a ton of sense. Do you have Is it is it knowable? How many like dads that we talked about Millie? Yeah.

Paul Sullivan 4:27
Oh, yeah. So this, this is how it all started off. I’m like, you know, maybe I’m wrong here. Maybe when I went online, and there was nothing for the dads. I’m like, I’m not like Steve Jobs inventing an iPad. I’m like, I’m a moderately smart guy, but not that smart. And I was like, How come this doesn’t exist? And so you know, you go to the US Census, you go to Bureau of Labor Statistics, you go to Pew, and there are 25 million men in the United States who hardly dads are could call themselves the debt. That’s a third of all fathers. And the growth has been driven by millennials who want to live and parent differently. But as I said, like guys in their 40s and 50s, you know, COVID was a wake up Call particularly knowledge workers, like, oh, wait, we can we can work in a different way we can be more present. And so it’s a huge number of dads and this is huge whitespace that just hasn’t been been filled. And so we’ve we’ve stepped into it. And I think that’s really why so far, so good. It’s gone really well, because there is this desire. And you know, one of the things we say, George, is that it brings dads together in a way that other things want. And so what do I mean by that? I mean, you know, one of our members of our community is a guy who won the Super Bowl plan for the Philadelphia Eagles, another guy won a bunch of Emmy Awards ready for The Daily Show. But then we have, you know, guys who are what we call the dads who devote all their time to their kids their full time dads are there all the time, we have single gay dads, we have, you know, divorced dads. And when I have these community meetups, we just talk about, you know what it’s like to be that fully present, father, and it’s not like, oh, yeah, hey, you know, tell me more about when you sack Tom Brady. Now that doesn’t that comes up sometimes, because that is pretty cool. But for the most part, you know, we come together as the dads not as what we are, outside of that, that space,

george grombacher 6:06
I’d see immense value in that. And I’m always curious, you’re that it didn’t exist, you are working to change behavior of organizations. And then you bring a bunch of guys together on a zoom call or in an actual physical room. And they have this bend towards being a lead dead. But they’re not necessarily comfortable or accustomed to talking about how they feel about things. And that’s also a stereotype. But how has that been?

Paul Sullivan 6:35
Yeah, it kind of opens it up. To be honest, that was one of my fears. Because there’s this this kind of clever phrase that, you know, women socialized face to face, and men socialize shoulder to shoulder and you can kind of see it, you know, we’re watching a game, we’re doing whatever, we’re giving each other shit, and you know, this, but once you get in this group together, and the men know that they can be comfortable talking about what it’s like to be a lead dad, you know, the barriers come down. I mean, I used to joke like, in my pre, you know, when I was a lead dad or not the founder of the company, dads, when I was just a, merely a New York Times columnist, if I had ever played around a golf and sat there afterwards with my buddies, while they’re like, you know, texting for work and planning about the whys, whatever. And if I looked down at my phone, and I said, Did you guys have any idea how hard it is to get a five year old into ballet in this town? It would look at me like Solomon, what were you doing on the course? Would you like pop a couple gummies. I thought this is your first beer. And now I you know, coming out like doesn’t die. But this it’s changed the dynamic. And you know, we’re still very much only two years into it, it’s still very much that stage of early adopters. So the guys are coming to us really want to be here. But I mean, sometimes what do I get excited when I pat myself? On the back? It’s when I see how diverse the group is when I see that they’re coming together? Because they want to be super engaged. And that’s, that’s immensely rewarding. And so far, you know, there’s a revenue model that that works. People want IT companies need it.

george grombacher 8:01
I’m glad to hear that in terms of in terms of the working with organizations, there you thinking it as as an employee benefit is just employee education. How do you how do you think about that,

Paul Sullivan 8:13
we come in through the learning and development component at a company, but it’s, I think of it very much as a well being benefit. And you know, some of the top companies out there, you know, PwC is one that we’ve talked to a lot, PwC is amazing. They think of well being, you know, holistically, it’s not just physical health, it’s not just mental health, it’s financial well being it caregiving, it’s equal, you know, parental leave, and then it’s guess what, you know, we all have kids, it’s not like you give somebody six months off when they have a baby. And that’s awesome. But it’s not like six months in the day, parenting gets easier. And so these companies that think differently, and I equate what we’re doing at the company, that they’re what companies were doing 2025 years ago, around mental health, that back then it was a really progressive company that thought we’re going to take care of somebody’s both their physical and their mental well being today, you wouldn’t work for a company that didn’t offer some form of mental health benefits. It just would be inconceivable. And so we’re very much at the beginning of this, you know, do certain companies get it? You know, more so than others and see the benefit of this 100%? Are others still, you know, digging their heels? Yeah, you know, but but I don’t have to convince everybody on day one. And you know, one of the analogies we use is and I’m sure this was one of your favorite movies last year during the Barbie movie. And I talked about like right now, if you have a parenting group, and 100 people, you know, 100 people show up 98 are going to be working moms. The two men who show up are going to be the Alan’s from the Barbie movie and the Allen Allen is the only non kin in the Barbie movie to get the name and nobody really likes Alan he knows everything is you know, you know and in the workplace that Allah now is the guy he’s doing everything right. And he’s telling me he’s doing every thing right and that’s good for him. But when we come in you know we want to get some of those kids who are in the Mojo Dojo Casa house now of course everybody’s favorite scene in Barbie the, the Pinkus frat house anybody’s ever seen in their life, get those guys out of the Mojo Dojo Casa house and call them in. And companies have seen that this works. And so instead of having you know, 100 people 92, you get another 40 5060 men who are the candidates who are, you know, they want to do this, but they’re not comfortable talking about it, because they’re afraid they’re going to get called out for not doing enough, they’re afraid they’re gonna get mocked. Once they’re in there, you have this much more powerful parenting group, because you have men and women working as allies, not as adversaries at work. And that becomes a much more powerful argument to the people managers to see like, Okay, this is how we get the most productivity out of our employees. And again, this is not a feel good benefit. This is a raw, capitalistic naked profit motive here, like retain people, make them productive, go forward, produce whatever you’re gonna produce.

george grombacher 11:03
And it makes all the sense in the world what a huge difference maker it is, if you are a lead dad, and you feel like the organization that you’re working with, there’s no way that you can say I need to take time to do this, or I need to be coming in a little bit later. But if the organization says no, that’s, that’s great, we, we want you to do that. And we will support whatever schedule that you need, because we know that you’re doing great work, you’re gonna keep them forever.

Paul Sullivan 11:31
Yeah, and one of the tricky things, George is you can create the best policy you want, you can have Paul Sullivan, the company does come in, do a seminar, buy the course, whatever. And it looks great. Unless you have senior leaders who are also modeling this behavior, it doesn’t work. You could offer somebody you know, can we use vacation every single year. But if a senior leader says oh, you’re gonna, you’re gonna take that when I was at your level, I never took more than three days off. That’s where it backfires. And that’s been the problem that companies have had around parental leave. They’ve not modeled it in a proper way. So you know, men who want to take an adequate amount of time off, have often been shamed into not doing it with, you know, with managers who said, Yeah, well, you know, when I was at your level, I took a day off when my child was born, when I was at your level, Man, I miss so much I miss so much. I just hear at the office. And I say like, they’re not saying it in a remorseful way. They’re saying it in a boastful way. And so we need people, we need leaders, we need to teach leaders how to model this. And at the same time, why do we want to do this beyond the retention part, it’s also equitable. Like, if you’re a woman, you’ve just given birth to a child, you’re not going back to work on day three, you need to heal, you need to recover, you need to take care of the baby. And if we want to sort of promote people equally, or give people an equal shot and accompany to achieve whatever they are meant to achieve, we need that level of, you know, leveling the playing field. And it often starts with parental leave. But as I said before, it doesn’t end there. Because as you’re finding out, as your kids get older, as I know, my teenagers, you’re gonna have a day when they need you, in a way different way, in a much more time consuming way than the newborn does. Yeah,

george grombacher 13:13
well said. I appreciate all that it makes a ton of sense. What is if you’ve gotten pushback?

Paul Sullivan 13:22
Have I gotten pushback? You know, the funny interesting thing is, I’ve gotten very little pushback from women who I’ve spoken to in the HR suite in the learning and development suite, they get it. I mean, they’re working moms, they 100% get it. I’ve gotten pushback, prior from two to two people, really two types of people really stick out one, we have this thing that we call care days and care days are in addition to sick days, in addition to bereavement days, they’re certainly not vacation days. They allow people to be honest and declare a care emergency. Now, this could be for your kids, this could be for your spouse, this could be for a parent, you could be any that you get to use it everyone but allows you to be honest and authentic about why you’re not there, why you’re not there for half the day. And this one pretty senior guy pushed back and said, Well, I give people five days of care days, in addition to all the other PTO I give them, they’re going to abuse it. And now I’ve just given them more time off and I said well, did you manage your company for the bottom? 30% No, of course I would manage our high performers. And I said well, right, like your bottom 30% are always going to abuse things and you need to manage them out your top 30% the top 30% They have the ability to leave they have the ability to get other jobs whenever they want that will pay them as much or more and give them what they need you know in their personal lives. That’s what you want to target for you want to target you know these added benefits for people like that, who, who you trust who you know will work at the top of their abilities who want to do a good job but but they’re human. They have things come up. That was one push back And the second pushback is on the phrase itself, you know, lead dads and I’ve had some, some some moms who identify as a stay at home moms, they said, you know, why do you get to call yourself a lead dad? You know what, what’s a lead dad? Why come up with that title? And I said, Look, if you want to call yourself a lead mom, you know, have at it. That’s not I didn’t start the company moms, I started the company dads. And let’s be clear, being a lead dad is not the same thing as being a stay at home dad. You know, most of the people in our community, most of them in our community. They’re working. But they’re just stepping up and being the go to parents. Sometimes they get minor pushback on the name, but but those are the only two things. And if there’s one thing I learned from 13 years at the New York Times, they learned how to have a really thick skin because at least now when I open up my emails, most of the time is like this is great. I’m so happy to know about this. I want to be part of it. How can I help? Whereas when I open up my emails at the New York Times, it usually begins something like, Hey, stupid. Thanks for writing another stupid piece coming out of your stupid head from your life in stupid Ville was so stupid. So I don’t get that anymore. So there’s a benefit there.

george grombacher 16:07
Oh, my goodness, that is so funny. Do you think that’s funny? Or I bet you know, after? How long did it take for you to think that that was funny.

Paul Sullivan 16:16
So during the financial crisis, I started my column in 2008. During the financial crisis in 2009. People really reacted negatively to a column I written and at the time, I my mom’s embarrassed to say this because of this association now. But at the time, I, my photo on the New York Times website had me in a bow tie. And the this group had a field day with it. And they were debating whether or not you could hang somebody with a bow tie? And I think the answer is no, I think it would break but I didn’t really want to and they went on and on and on and the time, the way the times email where you just get ping, ping, ping. And it was sort of reflected to your and my wife looking at this on a Saturday morning and she’s like, Are we safe? Are we going to be okay? And I said, Look, I think we’re going to be fine. Who even knows what these people are. They’re just venting their venting because they’re not angry at me. They’re angry at the broader economic situation. I happen to rise up there. So once you start with that, and there was this one guy, and in my final column, I gave him a shout out his name is Harris Lurtz Minh, and Harris alerts, Minh had a job and in New York State, like the Bureau of Economic Development or something like that, and, and for years and years and years, he would write me an email, and it was began like that, Hey, stupid, you know, you’re so stupid. And he hated my column. And I would say it I said, you know, I said, Eric, it’s my column runs on a Saturday, Saturdays are joyful days, read the sports section, there’s surely something in the Art section that would do just don’t even read my column. And at one point, I hadn’t heard from him in years, and he emailed me and I was like, Harris, you’re still reading? Let’s get a cup of coffee. And he didn’t get a cup of coffee. But so now you have all the pushback I get with the company dads. It’s usually benign and nowhere near as harsh for me and is what you get as a New York Times columnist.

george grombacher 18:06
Yeah. Well, you have to promise to let me know if Harris gets a hold of it’s a whole other new endeavor and see how he feels about that.

Paul Sullivan 18:15
Maybe I can see it now is like, you sound even worse on a podcast than you do on the written page. Like stop talking. I thought I got Harris. Even stupid or more stupid or this stupid is the most stupidest.

george grombacher 18:32
That is that is pretty fantastic. Thank thank you for sharing that. Paul. Thank you for coming back on where can people learn more? How can how can companies learn about the the Wellness Benefit? How do individuals take advantage? Yeah,

Paul Sullivan 18:45
the one stop shop is just go to the website, the company dads.com If you want to stay abreast of everything we do sign up for the newsletter, the company dads.com backslash, the dad, it’s called the dad. And of course like everybody else in the universe right now, all the social media channels are the company of dads. Excellent.

george grombacher 19:03
If you enjoyed as much as I did, or if you’re curious as to whether or not you are a lead dad or if your significant other husband, whoever is a lead Dad, just want to learn more, go to the company of dads.com. Learn more about it. See about bringing it to your organization. See about you get involved as an individual. Sign up for the newsletter at the company of dads.com/the Dad and then find them on social media. I’ll certainly list all those notes the show

Paul Sullivan 19:30
Thanksgiving, George, so good. Come back on. Thank you very much.

george grombacher 19:35
Till next time, remember, do your part doing your best

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.