Transcript of "Can I Be a Great Parent AND a Great Entrepreneur? Help!"

You know, there was this one time before I did my own money rehab, when I checked my credit score and I realized I had no idea what it actually meant for my financial future. That's when it hit me. It was time to get serious about my money. We've all had that moment, right? Whether it's saving for something big or finally paying off debt, we all get to a point where we need to make some real money moves. That's where Chime comes in. Chime offers a checking account designed to help you take control of your finances with no monthly fees, no maintenance fees, and fee-free overdraft to $200 with SpotMe. Imagine overdrafting and not having to worry about fees piling up. Chime's got you covered. Plus, Chime isn't just a financial tool. It's a community. You can get boosts from friends to temporarily increase your SpotMe limit. When you help someone out with their own boost, they can return the favor. Friends helping friends make progress. It's that simple. So why not make your fall finances a little greener? Open your Chime account in just two minutes at chime. Com/mnen. That's as in Money News Network.

Chime. Feels like progress. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bancorp NA or Stride Bank NA. Members FDIC. Spot me eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Boots are available to eligible Chime members enrolled in SpotMe and are subject to monthly limits. Terms and conditions apply. Go to chime. Com/disclosures for details. I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash, but I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full-time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high-quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work.

But sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host, so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at airbnb. Com/host. I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. Hey, guys. How are you doing? You're missing me? Of course you are. Well, during this guest Host Balooza, while I'm out on mat leave, I wanted one special guest host to make an appearance myself?

Kidding?

I mean, as you know, I co-host a career advice podcast with the entrepreneur editor-in-chief Jason Pfeiffer called Help Wanted. And even though Help Wanted is more work-focused, work and money are pretty inseparable. You need to work to make money unless you're doing something weird. So money comes up a lot on the show, whether it's asking for more of it, feeling like you're paying too much of it, want to create a new revenue stream. We talk about it all. So this week, I wanted to share some episodes of Help Wanted that I think will be pretty valuable for many rehabbers. So to kick that off, you're going to hear the episode where I actually told Jason I was pregnant. Yes, I told him on air while we were taping an episode because of course I did. But that conversation was about more than just me. We also talked about the trade offs that you need to make when you're trying to Excel at home and at work. And after it air, Jason got a ton of emails about this episode from parents who had never felt more seen. So as you'll hear, Jason really nails this one.

I mean, I've got a good co Host, guys. Here's our conversation.

This is Help Wanted, the show that makes your work work for you. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, Editor and Chief of Entreprene magazine.

And I'm money expert, Nicole Lappin. On Tuesdays, Jason and I answer the helpline and help callers solve their work problems.

And on Thursdays, I give you one way to improve your work and build a career or company you love.

And it starts now.

You can remind me of the details, but we were doing some work thing and one of your kids had some poopy problems. There's a lot of poopy stories from the Pfeiffer household, though.

Well, here's the thing. When you have kids, the first many years of your life as a parent is defined by poop management. And that's just the nature of it.

You're like, waste management.

I was actually just thinking about this recently because I have a nine-year-old and I have a five-year-old. The five-year-old just graduated pre-k. And in pre-k, the teacher can't wipe a kid's butt. Kids got to go wipe his own butt, which means that the kids got to start doing some wiping. It's probably not very good, but it's a half-assed effort at it. I know that Colin... I know that Colin... I know that you know that, Nicole, but for everyone else, Colin's- You have two kids. I have two kids, Fenn and Colin. I know that Colin is developing some skills at wiping his own ass, but I am still wiping his ass at home, and Fenn has long since taken care of his own ass. But I was wiping Colin's ass this morning, and I was thinking to myself, Will I know the last time that I have to do this? And can I capture it? Can I film myself right afterwards running out into the street and being like, I have wiped the last ass, which would That's what makes me so happy. I don't know. But that's the thing about parenting is you never really know when you're in or out of something.

It's all just a big mush.

Thank you, Jason, for that. I will repeat what I've said many times to you because we talk a lot about these stories that you give great birth control through these stories. And I really love the way you honestly talk about it. I know authenticity has been totally bastardized, especially in the parenting social world, because authenticity is whatever. We can have a full episode about that. But you're not edited. You're not making these stories beautiful in your work life and in our working relationship, too. Like, your kids are part of it. They're running around while we're recording. They're interrupting stuff. Wasn't there a time where you also had a Zoom with some important fancy pants CEO and one of the boys came in.

Oh, that's happened so many times. Yeah. The one that I thought was funniestest was when I was interviewing the CEO of Zoom on Zoom, and my kid came in and interrupted us because that was such a classic Zoom moment. Everyone has been on Zoom and how their kids interrupt them. To do that with the CEO of Zoom was perfect. But yeah, I'm excited to have this conversation with you today, Nicole, because this has shown up in many of our conversations, and I'm sure I've even made reference to a bunch of this stuff on Help Wanted before. But we've never just looked at it So this will be fun is talking about what are the challenges of doing all the things that an ambitious, work-focused person wants to do while also having kids, which is a really hard balance. I have come to this belief, and I appreciate you recognizing it, that somebody needs to talk about it. I think that most parents are afraid of talking about it because there is this expectation that parents just love being parents and are grateful for the family and are feeling hashtag blessed. So much so that I even need to caveat at the beginning of this, whatever else that I'm going to say during this conversation.

I love my kids. They're great kids, they're great kids. But it's really hard. It's really hard and often very frustrating. And I am constantly thinking about all the things that I could have accomplished, either professionally or even just in the other things that I want for my life, personally, the amount of travel that I would love to do that I haven't done, the amount of time that I wish that I could spend with my friends, the way in which... Just before we were recording this, we were talking about your wedding and how I'm going to fly out from the East Coast to LA and back in the span of less than 24 hours because I really want to be there with you to celebrate, and I'm so excited to do it. But that's not leisurely. I would love to be there leisurely. I'd love to come out for multiple days, and I can't because I got kids at home. I think that to bottle that up and to act like that's not attention in my life is to make it worse. The thing that I have found that makes it better for me is to be open and talk about it.

What I found is that when I do, some parents get really uncomfortable because I think I'm saying things that they had trained themselves not to directly engage with or speak. Then other parents thank me because it's a conversation that almost no one else will start. I'm here to start it.

Is it because parents are nervous about even insinuating that there are things that they regret by having kids?

I don't think that there's any one answer here. There are friends of mine who are parents, and being a parent is the center of their identity, and they love it, and they won't relate to any of this. Then there are other people who fall at other parts of the spectrum. I don't want to say that anything that I'm going to say here is universalized, but I do think that what you just said there is relevant to a whole lot of people. You make a life choice, whatever that life choice is. And then you want to feel like it was a good life choice because otherwise, you're living with a lot of regret. And I think that a lot of parents get uncomfortable when being confronted with the possibility that their life choice wasn't perfect. I think that it's fine to acknowledge that maybe your life choice wasn't perfect. I saw somebody on TikTok say recently, they're like, A lot of people criticize me for not having kids or something like that, or say they don't understand me that they didn't have kids. But I want you, if you're a parent right now, to close your eyes and picture your perfect Sunday morning.

Now, let me tell you something. Your kids are not in that picture, are they? And it's true. Perfect Sunday morning, Nicole. Weekends are exhausting with kids. They're so exhausting. But your life goes inverse when you have kids, where weekends and summer used to be this flexible time, and now it is the inflexible time. Now it's the time where you're spending the most time on kid management, and it's actually work time and the school year where you have the most free time as an adult, with small kids, at least. My ideal Sunday morning does not involve my kids. It doesn't. Because to be spending Sunday morning with my kids is to be stopping them from fighting each other or running a restaurant in my kitchen and trying to get them food. My ideal Sunday morning would be going out to brunch with my wife and having a nice leisurely stroll somewhere or just catching up with friends or just doing something where I feel like I have a freedom of movement as an adult in the world, which is not what I have with my kids. But to say that is to indeed challenge some of the life choices that I've made.

I just don't think that should be a scary thing. We all make life choices, and it benefits us in some ways, and it subtracts something in other ways. As I'm talking about this, I'm talking about the things that I've lost, but I've gained things with having kids, too. We could talk about that. But I think it's just fine to live in the complexity of having lost things as kids and that the life choice that you made was complicated, and that's okay.

Yeah. Do you think there's a scale of regret? It's not binary. I regret having kids, or I don't, or maybe there are some days that you do, or some days that you resent your kids, or career opportunities that you can't do, or weddings that you can't really enjoy or whatever.

Yes. Anybody who has older kids wants to reach into this episode right now and say, It gets easier. It gets easier. Little kids are really, really hard. And that's true. And I've heard that over and ever again. Every time people tell me that, I'm like, I hear that. I'm waiting to see it. But it's also disingenuous because a nine-year-old and a five-year-old is way easier than a five-year-old and a one-year-old. So my life has gotten easier. I am able to move around more than I used to. I don't get woken up by screams in the morning, which is what happens when you have a kid that's just three. I suspect that when my kids are older and they're not exhausting in the way that they are now, and I have more freedom of movement as an adult in the world, maybe won't even have much of a memory of the kinds of things that were frustrating me at this point in my life. So, yeah, I think that it's a scale. You know what? My My wife, Jen, she always tells me, a lot of this comes down to the expectations that you set for yourself.

I always complain about family vacations because they're not the vacations that I like to take. I like to go to a city that I've never been to before, and I like to spend the entire day walking around and just discovering random things and eating random things and meeting random people. You can't do that with kids at all, zero %. You cannot do that with kids. What can you do with kids? You can go to the beach or you can rent an Airbnb with a pool I don't care about these things. I don't like these things. Then, of course, you're dealing with, you're going to fill the kids' time. You're going to entertain them. That's not to say that this is unentjoyable. It's fun spending time with the kids, but it's not the way that I would want a vacation. My wife keeps telling me, When we're going on these vacations, you have to understand that this is not the vacation that you would love. This is a different thing. This is family bonding time, and that's going to come with different roles and different outcomes. That's true. If I go down Sunday morning for my bedroom and I think, I'm going to get a lot of work done this Sunday morning, that's going to be great.

It's going to make me feel less stressed. And then I'm trying to work, and my kids are constantly interrupting me, and I'm frustrated by that because they want another bowl of cereal, and they won't get off their butts and do it themselves, even though they can, which is a constant conversation, then I'm going to be really frustrated. But if I went down and I was like, I'm not going to get any work done right now, so I'm not even going to try. And that is all true. Jen is completely right about that, and I'm working on that.

That's a really important perspective, and this is a much different example. But I remember when I launched my third book, I was very single at the time. And there would be times that I would shame myself for not going on dates. I was like, Oh, my God, I'm not making any progress in my personal life at all. But then I stepped back and said, I'm not focusing on that right now. That's not what I'm optimizing for. Right now, don't shame your sofa something you're not putting energy toward. And so, yeah, when you feel guilty about not doing work because you're fixing the kids cereal or whatever, then that makes sense because you framed it that way. But saying that you're focusing on making the kids cereal changes it. Yeah, it does.

And the challenge is I don't know. I'm hesitating on saying this because I don't want to sound like a bad person. But that's the whole thing about this straight parenting talk is that you keep walking this line of being judged. I'll just say that, and then I'll I don't know how to find joy in getting my kids the cereal. It is not a joyful task. It's an annoying task. It makes me feel like I'm running a restaurant in my house where I'm constantly being asked, Hey, can you get this? Push me in. I want another one of these. And that's not fun. There's nothing fun about that. And there's no way to make it fun. And I think that the answer is that you do it knowing that you don't have to do it forever. I don't know that there's another answer to it. They won't need that from me forever. They need that for a certain number of years. The thing that I have to remember is if this is not a joyful task for me, which is just constantly getting food for my kids, then I just have to make sure that I don't, in my head, equate my experience of parenthood with the annoying things that won't last forever.

This is the good thing about kids versus a dog. A dog doesn't grow up But kids do. Eventually, I know everyone tells me there will be this time when they don't want to spend as much time with me or any time with me. I'll tell you one other anecdote, everything that I'm just saying here reminds me of, which is when my kids were in diapers and I would need to run into public restrooms to change them, which, as anyone knows, is just an at any time thing. You're in the airport, you're at a restaurant, you're walking down the street, and suddenly you got to find the nearest public this room and change this diaper. When I would be in public restrooms, larger public restrooms, so there's people coming in and out, this thing would happen all the time, which was that some older man would walk by me, and he would see me changing this diaper, and he would say, Enjoy every minute. I understand what's happening, which is that he's seeing... His kids are probably grown up and on to their own lives and years. He sees me, young dad, young kid, in this stage of life.

It makes him think wistfully back to the good times with his kids. He's telling me to enjoy every minute, which is what he would like to be able to go back and enjoy those times. I always want to turn to... I never did. I always just say thank you. But I always wanted to turn to him and said, If you enjoy this, then do you want to come change this diaper? Because I don't. I I think that it's okay to acknowledge that some parts of this phase are not satisfying. You can't enjoy every minute. There are plenty of moments to enjoy. There are plenty of minutes to enjoy. I just took Fenn, my nine-year-old, to a Pokémon Convention in Orlando. It was great. He had a blast It was very satisfying having that experience with him. It was great. I would like to do that, but I don't want to change another diaper in my life. I don't want to pretend like that was a moment to enjoy. Stick around. Help Wanted will be right back. Welcome back to Help Wanted. Let's get to it. This is the funny paradox of everything that I just said, which is that I spend a lot of time focused on and being stressed, like a lot of just internal monolog time in my life, focused on and being stressed by all the things that I can't do because I'm a parent.

I have a long list of them. Jen has heard it too much. And yet my career has accelerated, I would say, faster and stronger in the years in which I have been a parent than in the years in which I was not. Now, part of that is that you just get smarter as you get older. I was a parent on the latter parts of my life, not the earlier. But another part of it, I think actually, very interestingly, is that when you have kids, you are forced in a way that, at least for me, I never otherwise had to experience, you are forced to be incredibly rigorous about how you spend your time. Whereas I used to be a lot more leisurely about how I spent my time, I am now regimened. When my kids get out the door in the morning, I know exactly what I need to get done in the hours before they show up back home. And I obsess over that. Now, there's still a downside to this. Yesterday is a good example. I had a lot of work to do yesterday, and I really wanted to take a walk. I hadn't gotten out of the house.

I was anchored to the computer. Just taking a walk and listening to a podcast is a way to just feel calmer for me. I kept watching the time tick down. It was 3:00 PM, and I would say, Oh, I got to get a little more time I got to get a walk in, 4:00 PM. I got to get a walk in, 5:00 PM. And then I got to 6:00, which is when I'm on as dad. That's the rule here is 6:00 PM is when pencil's down. And I never got the walk in. Now, if I didn't have kids, I could have worked a nice full workday and put things down at 6:00 or 6:30, and then a lovely walk and maybe met a friend for dinner. And I can't do that. Instead, it's like, I'm on dad duty. And I was actually telling Jen about that. And she was like, Well, why don't we take a walk as a family? And that's what we did. And I'll be honest- It wasn't the same. No, because the kids were complaining like crazy the whole time. They were on their scooters. Colin, of course, fell halfway through, was screaming his head off.

Jen and I can't have a conversation, but the kids are constantly coming back and forth. I physically walked, but I wouldn't say that it was the relaxing experience that I wanted, but it's made me more efficient. I am a more focused person than I was before. Number two, having kids allows you to relate to other people who have kids, which is actually a really useful business skill. Because talking about your kids is just a thing that comes up. I found that to be useful. I am sure that it has created in me some of the things that people say that parenting does. It makes you a more patient person, more understanding, something. I don't know. I don't know how to evaluate or identify that. Having kids does introduce you to other interesting people. My friend Matt, Matt Al Blanc, who's also my book agent, I met him on a playground because our sons had become friends. I've met a whole bunch of other people who I really, really like, who sometimes are very useful, both personally and professionally, and I don't mean useful, whatever, good friends, and they become good colleagues through having kids. So yeah, there are upsides, but it's upsides that live inside of attention.

So there could be some correlation beyond just your age being the correlation. When you started having kids, you were also hitting a stride in your career.

Yeah, sure. I was. Like anybody, I think you are more refined in your talents, you have a stronger network, just like however much older you get. But having kids certainly didn't hold me back from... I feel... I don't even know how to say it. Maybe a life in which I was able to say, Yeah, I have no kids to come home to, so I will just fly around the world doing speaking engagements nonstop. Maybe I wouldn't like that life. Maybe the bigger life is not one that I would actually enjoy or appreciate. There's no way to know. This counter factual thinking is not actually helpful, but it's certainly a tension that I live with.

To be clear, you wanted kids?

Yeah.

You both wanted kids.

I wanted kids, but I don't think, in retrospect, that I had really spent that much time thinking about what it meant. I think that I just grew up in a healthy family with two kids knowing a lot of other healthy families with kids, and having kids was the only vision I had of a life. Jen is literally texting me right now, We need more bread so we can make the kids' lunches. This is just the things that you got to think, right? Can't I just focus on my own lunch? No, can't make the kids' lunches? I don't know what to think about this. I don't know what to think about this thing that I'm about to say to you. Maybe you'll have some thoughts. When we decided to have kids, I had a different idea of how my life was going to turn out. I was a magazine editor and only a magazine editor. To me, all the things that I wanted to accomplish could be mostly accomplished by sitting in front of a computer. I just dreamed of writing things that people read. The idea of starting multiple companies, flying around the world, and being invited to the incredible event, that wasn't on my radar.

I didn't have that. That didn't show up until I had two kids or one kid or something, until I had kids. And so I almost wonder what would have happened if I had a different set of career opportunities at the time when we were making decisions about kids and whether or not I would have wanted to sacrifice those. Maybe the answer is that you just are never fully satisfied, and it doesn't matter what life decision you make. I was just reading, I don't know if you saw this, but Michael Strahan, a former football player, is now on Good Morning America and on every television show. Michael Strahan is now talking about retiring from television because he's done a lot of it and he wants to spend more time with his kids. Mark Cuban is leaving Shark Tank to spend more time with his kids. These are not like, politician excuses where you're stepping down from something, but because somebody's forcing you. But these are genuinely like, they did it and it was great, and now they're done with it and they want to refocus on this other thing. That's another thing I have to keep reminding myself.

I don't know what another parallel version of my life is like, but I can also pretty much guarantee that if I, at this moment in my life, cannot recognize and be satisfied with the successes that I do have, then I don't think some other set of successes would have made me feel feel any more satisfied. It probably would have made me just feel like there's something else to accomplish. My kids are great. We spend almost no time talking about that in this conversation. And that's fine because that's boring. Everyone talks about how great their kids are. It's so boring. Just trust me, they're great. They're great kids. They ask interesting questions. We have fun experiences. They're great. Getting them cereal in the morning sucks. I never want to do it. I definitely never want to wipe an ass, ever. But they're great. It's the dialectic.

It's both things can be true.

The things that come out of their mouth are usually great, even though I don't want to deal with the things that come out of their butt.

That's completely fair. I think the emotional aspect is recognizing those emotions when they come up. High resentment, high regret. What's up? Nice to see you again, instead of suppressing it is probably a healthier way. What advice would you give to someone who's expecting and maybe is in an entrepreneurial career and wants to keep up the pace, be an awesome parent with an awesome kid?

I would say- A great parent with a great kid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, everybody's life circumstances is going to be different. As you were saying that, the first thing I thought of was, make sure you have great communication with your partner. But not everyone has a partner. I have friends who are single parents and they're making it work and are entrepreneurs. You can make anything work. I think that my advice is simply to tell you, you can make it work. It just requires a lot of thinking and communication and gritting your way through things. There are parts of it that are going to be hard, and they're going to get easier. You're not even going to recognize that they're easier because there are other things that are hard. This is my life right now. It's actually really useful for me to see someone who has an 18-month-old. My least favorite time. Here's my advice. Hang on. One to two and a half is my least favorite time. And the reason is because that is when they are mobile but incoherent. So that's when they're walking around, but they don't understand anything, and they're grabbing it everything, and they have zero survival instincts.

They're trying to stick things in sockets, and they want to... Anything that could be brought down to the ground. But it's awful. You cannot sit down anywhere because they will not sit. Try going to a restaurant with a one to two and a half year old. Not possible. They want to walk around the restaurant. Try flying anywhere. They want to walk up and down the aisle. I hated that time. And then you know what? They grow out of it. Then they grow out of that time. Then they're not that anymore. And now they're able to focus and and have and play, and eventually ask you interesting questions. And it just changes. And you have signed yourself up for a life of change. And if I've learned anything My whole thing about my career, the thing I've actually based all of my speaking on and my writing, is all about how change doesn't have to be bad. It's not bad. Change is just different, and it is what you make of it. And so So make the best of it. But do not, for a second, think that you're doing something wrong. If you are standing in a public restroom, you're changing a diaper, and some old person walks by you and thinks that you should be having a great time, and you're not, don't think that you're doing anything wrong because you're not.

Dude, you changed this fucking diaper.

Tell them to change that fucking diaper themselves.

That's really good advice, Jason. And I think having communication with a partner, if you have one, makes sense. What about communication with a work husband or wife? Or let's say you had a podcast and you had the co-host.

Yeah. Let's say you had a podcast and you had a co-host.

Somebody was expecting. And how would you talk to them about that?

Are you telling me something?

Yes. You know, sometimes they don't listen. Are you telling me something? I know that we disagree a lot, and you really tried to give me all this birth control, and I just haven't taken it.

It didn't take?

It just didn't take.

Holy fucking shit. Nicole, are you serious right now? Yes. Did I get walked into an hour long of parenting advice without realizing this?

Yes, you did.

Oh my God. This is wonderful. Nicole, I didn't talk you out of it.

You You didn't talk me out of it. We're well baked. We're four months.

Well, you're four fucking months. Oh my God. So you're going to be an uncle. Yes.

Uncle Jason.

Nicole. Oh, my God. I'm so happy for you. What I'm happy for is that I spent the last hour talking about how difficult parenting is, and you have a big smile on your face, and I did not ruin your life by talking about this, which means that you're as ready as you possibly can be. I love you. I love you guys. This is great. To go into something eyes wide open and know that the thing that you're going to do is hard and you want to do it anyway, that is literally as much preparation as you can have. Everybody, before you have kids, should sit down with someone like me and just talk to them for an hour and have them bitch and moan.

If you still want it, you definitely want it.

If you still want it, then you want it. If you still on it if you're like, great, got it. It's going to be really hard, but I can manage and I've processed all this. But the only thing that you can do as a parent is to have eyes wide open. And that's it. That's the whole thing. So I declare you ready. Not that you needed me to do that. Thank you. And I'm glad because, holy shit, if you were four months pregnant at the end of this, you were like, I have made a terrible mistake for myself. Help Wanted is a production of Money News Network. Help Wanted is hosted by me, Jason Pfeiffer.

And me, Nicole Lappen. Our executive producer is Morgan Lavoy. Do you want some help? Email our helpline at helpwanted@moneynewsnetwork. Com for the chance to have some of your questions answered on the show. And follow us on Instagram @moneynews and TikTok @moneynewsnetwork for exclusive content and to see our beautiful faces. Maybe a little dance?

Oh, I didn't sign up for that.

All right. Well, talk to you soon.