EP8: How Do Spouses Speak When Roles Change

Interview with Alex McKenzie / Emperor of Ice Cream, Sobriety Advocate, Lead Dad

HOSTED BY PAUL SULLIVAN

Alex McKenzie was the Emperor of Ice Cream, a life-long food lover who created an ice cream business (named for a Wallace Stevens poem) that was thriving pre-pandemic. He’d done many other things in the food world. He’s worked in the fields and in restaurants. The fish business – he’s swum in that tank. He’s also produced rock music and public radio podcasts. The most challenging role, though, has been figuring out his current dynamic: part-time college professor, LeadDad to his daughter and husband whose wife’s career as an architect has taken off. Hear him talk about the need to define and re-define roles in a Lead Dad home.

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Transcript

00;00;05;10 - 00;00;26;17
Paul Sullivan
I'm Paul Sullivan, your host on the Company of Dads podcast, where we explore the sweet, sublime, strange and silly aspects to being a dad in a world where men often feel they have to hide, or at least not talk about their parenting role. I know this from firsthand experience as the lead dad to my three girls, three dogs, three cats, and some, remarkably, three fish who are still alive.

00;00;26;20 - 00;00;44;16
Paul Sullivan
I did all this while managing my career and striving to be an above average husband. One thing I know for sure about being a dad is it's not a normal role. You're not doing what dads have traditionally done. Going to work and leaving the parenting to mom or someone else. Nor are you always welcome into the world where moms are the primary caregivers.

00;00;44;18 - 00;01;09;11
Paul Sullivan
But here at the Company of Dads, our goal is to shake all that off. Focus on what really matters. Family, friendship, finance and fun. Today my guest is Alex McKenzie, He's a dad who has literally had the most interesting combination of jobs ever. He's worked in the fields and in restaurants. He's been a rock music producer. Names like Katy Perry and Eminem and a public radio producer.

00;01;09;13 - 00;01;22;20
Paul Sullivan
The fish business. He swam in that tank. He's also been known as the Emperor of Ice Cream. And now he's an adjunct professor at Montana State. A lot to unpack here. Welcome, Alex, to the Company of Dads podcast. How are you today?

00;01;22;22 - 00;01;39;04
Alex McKenzie
Paul I'm great. It's really great to be here. And I just want to say I've. I've so enjoyed your first few episodes. I don't know that, my research is up to par with Chris and Shockley, and I'm probably never going to be drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles, but hopefully, hopefully, I have something interesting to share.

00;01;39;07 - 00;01;47;12
Paul Sullivan
Fantastic. You know, Alex, he I don't know if he knows about it, but I'm a sucker for flattery. So whenever we start off that way, I think, oh, great.

00;01;47;15 - 00;01;48;16
Alex McKenzie
You're in good company.

00;01;48;18 - 00;02;01;06
Paul Sullivan
Before you became a husband and father and dad, you had a very diverse career. So chart me a path through the life of Alex and me. What connected one job to the next?

00;02;01;09 - 00;02;21;24
Alex McKenzie
Yeah. So in a nutshell, I always just pursued what was interesting to me and that could change, like, the wind at times. And money was never part of the pursuit. You know, I'm a little embarrassed to say that when I was younger, when there was more ego attached status was part of it, and the people that I could surround myself with was maybe interesting to me.

00;02;21;24 - 00;02;37;12
Alex McKenzie
That's a lot less interesting to me now. But I grew up in a house, with a recording studio. My dad was a musician, on the side of his of his day job as an addictions counselor. And, you know, we had a garden, vegetable garden growing up.

00;02;37;15 - 00;02;38;21
Paul Sullivan
Where it was this where you grew up.

00;02;38;23 - 00;03;02;05
Alex McKenzie
In Massachusetts, north of Boston. Gloucester. So fishing? Actually, a fishing community. I believe it's the nation's still oldest active fishing port. And, when I graduated from high school, I went into college initially, in Massachusetts for a music production, but I was a horrible student. I was really mixed up about what my interests were.

00;03;02;06 - 00;03;22;09
Alex McKenzie
Mostly my interest at the time was smoking pot. So I dropped out. And then I just kind of bounced all over the place for, like, ten years. I got really into this organization called what? It allows you to travel the world and work on organic farms in exchange for room and board. So I had some really amazing experiences in Italy.

00;03;22;12 - 00;03;28;12
Alex McKenzie
Some really bad experiences in Costa Rica, too little bit in Oregon and, ultimately. Wow.

00;03;28;14 - 00;03;32;04
Paul Sullivan
What were you doing on? What were you doing on the farms? Like, what was the type of work that they had you do?

00;03;32;05 - 00;03;51;22
Alex McKenzie
Yeah. So I worked on an olive farm, an olive oil, farm in Tuscany. I've gone there four times. And the farmer, who's a dear friend of mine, actually, unfortunately, just passed away a couple of weeks ago. And then in Costa Rica, I was working on a start up fruit farm in Oregon. I did a little bit of some vineyard work.

00;03;51;25 - 00;04;15;00
Alex McKenzie
And, you know, it was just really into agricultural labor. I found it very peaceful. It was really good for my, mental well-being. And I just enjoy the work, and I really wasn't thinking about it in terms of, like, a career or anything. What I wanted to do was be, a really successful music producer, but that is kind of a weird world to break into.

00;04;15;03 - 00;04;44;09
Alex McKenzie
And so I kind of bounced back and forth between, like, recording studios, and I dabbled in some music publishing and music promotions, and farms and farm to table restaurants and, did a lot of stuff that was not really noteworthy for a while. And then in 2005, I had been living in the Pacific Northwest. I moved back to Boston, started working at this high end, James Beard Award winning farm to table restaurant.

00;04;44;12 - 00;05;07;13
Alex McKenzie
And then on my days off, I would book these studio sessions and I would basically just pay for studio time to educate myself about how to make records. And sometimes I would work on my own stuff. Sometimes I would work on other people's stuff. And I was also writing for recording magazine at the time. And, I mean, I really worked seven days a week for, for almost five years.

00;05;07;15 - 00;05;21;25
Alex McKenzie
And one day I may be learning how to break down a whole pig or something, or make swagger or something like that. And, another day I might be in some really amazing recording studio in Boston or in Vermont or in New York City.

00;05;21;28 - 00;05;29;28
Paul Sullivan
I love the image of you like breaking down a pig and then, like, working with, like, a scar band called Three Little Pigs or something. Yeah, right.

00;05;30;01 - 00;05;39;26
Alex McKenzie
That's that's that's not too far off. Yeah. I mean, I dabbled I want to stress that, like, I could not break down a pig for you today. That's one of those things. It like I got.

00;05;39;27 - 00;05;41;18
Paul Sullivan
It's a big animal. It's got to, you.

00;05;41;18 - 00;05;42;23
Alex McKenzie
Know, it's a big animal.

00;05;42;24 - 00;05;44;28
Paul Sullivan
Think if you can pull the bacon out will be okay.

00;05;45;00 - 00;06;01;14
Alex McKenzie
Yeah, yeah. And, and, you know, I would work in the kitchen during the day, and then, during service, I would work on the floor as a waiter and made better money that way, and was able to put that into the recording studio thing. I met the woman who would become my wife working in this restaurant.

00;06;01;14 - 00;06;04;04
Alex McKenzie
She was just a grad student at the time, doing her job.

00;06;04;04 - 00;06;07;11
Paul Sullivan
Right. This is where this is a restaurant in Cambridge. This restaurant in Boston where?

00;06;07;13 - 00;06;20;03
Alex McKenzie
Yeah. Cambridge. Cambridge, Massachusetts. The original the first restaurant where we met was called Craigie Street Bistro that ultimately became Craigie on Main. And then I went on to work at some other, nice places after that as well.

00;06;20;05 - 00;06;23;02
Paul Sullivan
Cambridge. There's some like, colleges there, right. Like that's a good place.

00;06;23;03 - 00;06;24;12
Alex McKenzie
Yeah. One or 1 or 2.

00;06;24;13 - 00;06;24;28
Paul Sullivan
Yeah.

00;06;25;00 - 00;06;34;13
Alex McKenzie
Yeah, yeah, there's a few. And then in 2010, my wife got a job offer, when she got done with graduate school.

00;06;34;13 - 00;06;46;28
Paul Sullivan
Oh, hang on, we can't we can't just skip ahead, okay? Okay. Yeah. You know, this is all about, you know, the company. Today's podcast is all about being a dad. Tell me a little bit more about your wife. How you matter, you know? Yeah, yeah. Are you her? How I wooed.

00;06;46;28 - 00;07;21;26
Alex McKenzie
Her. She's Italian, so I moved her with cooking. She, she is still, you know, we've been together for, like, 14 years now. Just the greatest joy I've ever known. Prior to meeting her, I had been to a string of really dysfunctional, unhealthy relationships, and it kind of made a habit of, pursuing women who would make me feel better about myself because they needed some sort of, emotional, you know, support from me, very codependent.

00;07;21;28 - 00;08;01;22
Alex McKenzie
And, and that kind of reached a peak in 2005, when I was involved with the woman, and she was the victim of some, violent sexual trauma. And the way that that relationship ended was cataclysmic for me. And, and so I moved back east to be closer to my family and got involved in some therapy, some psychotherapy, and was was single and, you know, bordering on celibate for, for a few years intentionally because that had been a pretty, pretty radical shift for me.

00;08;01;24 - 00;08;25;06
Alex McKenzie
When I met my wife. I had never met anyone like her. She was so kind and, was not into playing games, was not into anything codependent. Was so fast, fascinating to me just as a person. She had had, really interesting life at that point already. Her father had worked for IBM, and they had she had lived all over the place.

00;08;25;06 - 00;08;46;26
Alex McKenzie
She had lived in Paris and, Connecticut, your neck of the woods and, North Carolina and she had gone to school for architecture and then urban planning. And I just really enjoyed hearing about her discipline. I knew nothing about it. And, yeah, to answer your question, how did I woo her? I cooked pretty well for her.

00;08;46;28 - 00;08;52;25
Alex McKenzie
And I and, you know, I was emotionally available for her. I, I had come to a place.

00;08;52;25 - 00;08;57;15
Paul Sullivan
You didn't have some sort of line, like an a. Hey, you know, I worked on an olive farm, and.

00;08;57;17 - 00;08;59;06
Alex McKenzie
I probably, I know I probably.

00;08;59;06 - 00;09;00;23
Paul Sullivan
Used it. I would use it if I.

00;09;00;24 - 00;09;21;04
Alex McKenzie
Yeah. No, I just, I, I definitely use that. And I said, hey, do you want to see what a recording studio is like? I think I yeah, look, I think there was some mutual interest for, I think what if there's one thing we would agree upon? It's that our individual worlds were so different from one another.

00;09;21;04 - 00;09;43;28
Alex McKenzie
And I think that we recognized an opportunity to complement one another. Right. Like her experience was so different from anything I had had and vice versa. And we were just so fascinated by the things that we were into that the other was into on a day to day basis. And I just genuinely loved hearing about her day, the stuff that she was getting involved in.

00;09;43;28 - 00;10;02;00
Alex McKenzie
And I just had a million questions. And that that's still holds true. I just said, you know, it's, if my career is any indication, you can tell that I get I get bored with things and people easily, and I have yet to get bored with her. I'm just I find her endlessly fascinating, so that.

00;10;02;02 - 00;10;02;23
Paul Sullivan
That that's good.

00;10;02;29 - 00;10;07;22
Alex McKenzie
That's that's great. Yeah. It's worked out really well for me. Yeah.

00;10;07;24 - 00;10;18;06
Paul Sullivan
But, But I know that her job, Brian Montana. But before we get to that, you went back to school, right? And you finished up at Hampshire College, too? I make that up.

00;10;18;09 - 00;10;39;28
Alex McKenzie
That. No. That's correct. Yeah. So. So we moved to New York City in 2010. I was getting more recording studio work. I want to clarify, I did not ever produce anything that made it to, a Katy Perry or Eminem record. I was working regularly as an engineer and a songwriter studio for Sony ATV and EMI writers, and these are the people who write songs for those people.

00;10;40;00 - 00;11;06;24
Alex McKenzie
So I worked on a lot of those sessions, and I worked on sessions, where songwriters were working on material for those people, but I could never claim that I had any hand in a Katy Perry hit or something like that. The other interesting gig I had at the time was, converse, a shoe company. At the time, they had gotten into this whole lifestyle branding thing, and they were doing things like, starting recording studios, funding independent films, building skate parks and basketball courts.

00;11;06;24 - 00;11;25;24
Alex McKenzie
And so I had an ongoing gig as an in-house producer at the converse studio. And that was a really amazing situation, too, because, for me, it meant I got to work in a very clean, very professional, very high end recording studio. The work was just kind of served to me on a platter. I didn't have to go out and chase it.

00;11;25;24 - 00;11;47;06
Alex McKenzie
The people were awesome, and it was a really cool insight into what at the time was, new frontier in in marketing. Right? This, this whole lifestyle branding thing was really interesting. And the guy who, ran that whole program for converse, a guy named, Jeff Cottrill, he really had this vision that was really, really cutting edge.

00;11;47;06 - 00;12;12;25
Alex McKenzie
And they put a lot of money into it. And I think they made a lot of lifelong fans out of converse. But ultimately I was unfulfilled. That sort of work was feast or famine. I would work my butt off for three weeks, and then I wouldn't have a gig for a month. And meanwhile, my wife has just started her career in architecture, and she's starting to make some slow, but steady gains.

00;12;12;27 - 00;12;36;10
Alex McKenzie
There was stuff I was seeing on a day to day basis in the recording studio world that was, you know, definitely not G-rated was not stuff I could really share with my future in-laws. And then hurricane Sandy hit, and we got involved in the, relief efforts. And I just kind of had this awakening that I had I had gotten off track that I had lost sight of what my ideals were, what was important to me.

00;12;36;12 - 00;12;55;02
Alex McKenzie
And at the time, we were living in Cobble Hill in Brooklyn. And if you're not familiar, it is literally a hill. And, you know, we were watching water flow down the hill. We had all our lights on or cable on, and we were watching it go to the poorer neighborhoods at the bottom of the hill and just ruin people's lives.

00;12;55;02 - 00;13;13;23
Alex McKenzie
And, and I, you know, I just kind of felt like, what am I doing? So, yeah, I went back to college, I went to Hampshire College in Western Mass, which is a very progressive sort of design, your own major college. So I designed a degree in food policy. I wanted to get back to my agricultural roots.

00;13;13;26 - 00;13;34;07
Alex McKenzie
And I spent a lot of time working with both terrestrial agriculture, working with cows and pigs and goats and chickens, things like that. And then fisheries and aquaculture, what's called integrated multi trophic aquaculture. This is where you. Yeah. Right. You have these recirculating tanks. And the idea is that the fish eat food and then they poop and the poop floats down.

00;13;34;07 - 00;13;45;11
Alex McKenzie
And then these filter feeders are deposit feeders. Eat the poop and then they release the nitrogen, and then the nitrogen helps kelp grow. And you can use the kelp for biofuel or cosmetics or whatever.

00;13;45;11 - 00;13;48;01
Paul Sullivan
And are you really you're losing the listeners here.

00;13;48;03 - 00;14;14;19
Alex McKenzie
Yeah. I'm. I don't doubt it. I wanted to solve problems through food. And what I thought I was going to do was, you know, go work for Fish and Wildlife or maybe go work for some really sustainable agricultural organization. But what wound up happening was the college did like a Shark Tank style competition, and I threw together a plan for an ice cream company just totally off the cuff.

00;14;14;19 - 00;14;30;00
Alex McKenzie
This was not my life's dream. But to make a long story short, they gave me a check for $100,000 the week that I graduated college. And it was this thing. It was amazing. And it was the same week that, my wife got a job offer in Montana. So we said, well, let's go for it. Let's move out to Montana.

00;14;30;02 - 00;14;37;09
Alex McKenzie
We'll learn to ski. And, she could continue to develop her career, and I could try to start this ice cream company.

00;14;37;14 - 00;15;00;08
Paul Sullivan
I have this vision here because, you know, I do live in Connecticut now. I grew up in western Massachusetts, but we would go up to sort of southern Maine sometimes, for sort of vacations. I could go for a couple days or something like that. And there this place in Wells, Maine, and Wells is sort of like the poor cousin to Kennebunkport, where generations of bushes and walkers and everyone has gone.

00;15;00;08 - 00;15;04;23
Paul Sullivan
And there is this one ice cream shop there that had lobster ice cream.

00;15;04;23 - 00;15;07;07
Alex McKenzie
I've had it. I've had I've had the lobster ice cream. I've been there.

00;15;07;07 - 00;15;19;10
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. Ice cream. Absolutely. So did you have to ask? I say that because with the Empire of Ice Cream, did you combine sort of aquaculture and an ice cream? Could I get like, you know, a rocky salmon road or something like that?

00;15;19;11 - 00;15;23;04
Alex McKenzie
No, no, we didn't do anything that outlandish. We were. We were trying.

00;15;23;04 - 00;15;25;25
Paul Sullivan
To, you know, mint chocolate trout, nothing like. Oh, gosh.

00;15;25;25 - 00;15;50;27
Alex McKenzie
No, no, that's so funny that you mention the lobster ice cream. I've literally had that. It was awful. We were trying to do a modern update on the ice cream truck and create this synergy between, the grocery store aisle and an ice cream truck. And, you know, I ultimately raised $250,000 for that company through a variety of institutional investors, USDA loans, friends and family investors.

00;15;50;29 - 00;16;15;28
Alex McKenzie
We ran the company here for three years. The first two years went almost to the dollar, exactly as I thought they would go. The third year was really hard. I had two potentially large investors on the hook. We were talking about $1.5 million to go national. I couldn't get them on the same page about what the terms would be and what that cash injection was going to do for us, but meanwhile, we were operating as a small business.

00;16;15;28 - 00;16;32;19
Alex McKenzie
We had to keep the lights on. My wife and I are starting to get itchy. We want to have kids. We want to move on to the next thing. So we put it to bed. We just liquidated the assets. We paid everyone who we owed money to their money back. I never missed a payment and I just look at it as, DIY MBA.

00;16;32;19 - 00;16;42;20
Alex McKenzie
I like to say that I failed smartly. I was able to get out and keep my shirt. And then after that, you know, the next big events were my dad.

00;16;42;22 - 00;16;53;15
Paul Sullivan
Don't give the story away, okay? Okay. All right. So, but tell me a bit more. So it was sort of 2017 ish. Is that when it started in 2019 and wound down 2016? What?

00;16;53;17 - 00;17;04;14
Alex McKenzie
We started it in 2015. Yeah. And we ran it through 2018, and then 2019 was kind of like liquidating assets, selling stuff.

00;17;04;20 - 00;17;14;10
Paul Sullivan
What were some of the things that I was known for? Like what were some of the flavors you created? What were the things like people who were going and buying the ice cream? Yeah. And the Emperor of ice Cream, what were the what were the things that they really liked?

00;17;14;14 - 00;17;20;05
Alex McKenzie
Well, before we started making ice cream, we toured the country and we ate ice cream everywhere I went.

00;17;20;07 - 00;17;21;22
Paul Sullivan
I'm sorry. That must have been tough.

00;17;21;25 - 00;17;22;11
Alex McKenzie
It was so.

00;17;22;12 - 00;17;22;29
Paul Sullivan
Tarrytown.

00;17;23;04 - 00;17;40;19
Alex McKenzie
Yeah, yeah. We had this ice cream in San Francisco from this place called Mr. and Mrs. Miscellaneous. That blew my mind. I don't know if it's still there, but, we wanted to emulate that, so we learned. Well, how do they make their ice cream so damn good? So what we ultimately came to was it was called that pasteurization.

00;17;40;19 - 00;18;00;24
Alex McKenzie
It's a lower, slower cooker of the ice cream. You retain a lot of the healthy bacteria. You have to add less sugar because you get the sweeter, and creamier mouthfeel just from the lactose. And we were just told all the time, this is the best ice cream I've ever had in my life. And yeah, I will say it's the best ice cream I ever had in my life.

00;18;00;25 - 00;18;19;07
Alex McKenzie
I hear that Britain and Paris might might give me a run for my money, although I have yet to try it. It was really good. Probably the biggest flavor we had was one called Grandstand Snacks, and it was like Cracker Jacks and ice cream, and it was basically it was it was pretty awesome. It was your teeth.

00;18;19;08 - 00;18;20;08
Paul Sullivan
Hurt at the end of it. Did you.

00;18;20;13 - 00;18;33;02
Alex McKenzie
Know? No, it was it was popcorn infused ice cream with, with, blackstrap molasses, caramel and roasted peanuts. And it was it was out of this world. Yeah. It was really, really good.

00;18;33;04 - 00;18;37;20
Paul Sullivan
So take us. Yeah. There was a flavor that you thought would have been great. And it nobody liked it.

00;18;37;22 - 00;19;00;02
Alex McKenzie
Oh, that's a good question. I'll tell you, a cheesecake was really, really hard to get, right? Like strawberry cheesecake. Or cherry cheesecake. I just bashed my head against the wall trying to get that right, to get it to not taste like cheese, but still be reminiscent of this cake. I couldn't ever get it. And people would try it and they would just say, no, this isn't it.

00;19;00;06 - 00;19;08;22
Paul Sullivan
I'm thinking of you differently now. I'm looking at you now. It's like, you know, the Willy Wonka of ice cream. Here is what you didn't like. The guy had the Johnny Depp Willy Wonka, not the Jack.

00;19;08;22 - 00;19;27;16
Alex McKenzie
Yeah, that. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I had I had a lot of kids. A lot of a lot of youngsters who knew who I was and, had a lot of, a lot of good friendships with, other parents because their kids got to know me and they felt like we were a safe place where they could send the kids and trusted their kids.

00;19;27;19 - 00;19;36;01
Alex McKenzie
We're going to be taken care of. And they're going to have a, they're going to eat something that was, you know, obviously sweet, but was not full of a bunch of preservatives or junk, you know,

00;19;36;03 - 00;19;39;23
Paul Sullivan
Where did the name come from? The emperor of ice cream. It sounds awesome. Where did that name come from?

00;19;39;24 - 00;20;01;03
Alex McKenzie
Yeah, it's it's a Wallace Stevens poem. It's a great Wallace Stevens poem. And while Stevens is something, his poetry is something that my wife and I connected on really early in our relationship. We had some Wallace Stevens poems read at our wedding, and we just saw it. It was kind of, it was kind of a bold name that set us apart from all the other companies.

00;20;01;06 - 00;20;10;01
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. All right, so the company winds down, and then we're, you know, 2019. That also coincides with when you became a dad, right?

00;20;10;03 - 00;20;40;10
Alex McKenzie
Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. So what had happened was, we had moved to Montana. My wife was working for this developer here. Her career is really starting to blow up, and she was, getting all sorts of nice perks, including, access to these very exclusive, mountain clubs and, we, you know, I was hanging out regularly with the the leaders of the world, right?

00;20;40;10 - 00;21;05;01
Alex McKenzie
And professional athletes and rubbing elbows with these people. And I had a real imposter syndrome because I felt like, I didn't earn it, so I don't deserve it. I never had any money. I didn't come from money. And so what I was doing was, drinking and smoking weed very regularly to kind of numb that pain, and to numb the failure of my business.

00;21;05;03 - 00;21;31;10
Alex McKenzie
And I had gotten really, really good at articulating and maintaining a mild buzz throughout the day without anybody knowing. And I could, you know, vape technology and Visine goes a long way, you know, and I would I would send my wife out the door and say, have a good day. And I would start, you know, I would hit my vape pen and then by 11:00 or 12, maybe I'm having a little drink or something.

00;21;31;10 - 00;21;52;25
Alex McKenzie
And, and had gotten just very sneaky with my usage. And if it's like if she was going to come home for lunch that day, I was going to I was going to take a shower so that she wouldn't smell like marijuana or liquor on me. But I was going to do it early enough so that then the the smell of my face wash would be gone so that she wouldn't come home and say, oh, that's weird.

00;21;52;25 - 00;22;08;22
Alex McKenzie
Why did you take a shower at noon or something, you know, and, and I had gotten so clever, and it got to the point that she could walk in the door at 5:00 and I'd be like, hey, look, I'm mixing us a drink, and this is my first drink of the day. But really, it was like my third.

00;22;08;24 - 00;22;15;01
Alex McKenzie
And I had been stoned since 10 a.m. or something. It was awful. And,

00;22;15;03 - 00;22;17;14
Paul Sullivan
When she. Was she pregnant at the time? Were you a dad? No.

00;22;17;17 - 00;22;41;05
Alex McKenzie
No, no. Yeah. Neither. Neither. And. Yeah, just just to single parents in my business had had failed. And I felt horrible about that. And I was very aware of this divergent earnings potential. She was starting to head towards the stratosphere, and I was just, like, floundering. So I decided to get sober. And there were a number of things that happened to lead me up to that.

00;22;41;05 - 00;23;00;24
Alex McKenzie
But one of the big ones was I ran into, you know, in this in this exclusive mountain environment, I ran into a real hero of mine. Mike McCready, who is the guitarist for Pearl jam. And he's been open about, being sober. And he's someone I've looked up to my whole life when I was working in the record industry.

00;23;00;24 - 00;23;21;12
Alex McKenzie
Was like my dream to work with him, and I never got to, And now here I was, just hanging out with him and talking to him, and I was a little hung over, and I was a little stoned and, another thing that he and I shared is, he's been really public about his struggles with, Crohn's and colitis and Crohn's and colitis are in both my family and my wife's family.

00;23;21;12 - 00;23;43;13
Alex McKenzie
That was something else that we had connected on really early on. And it just it just became really clear to me, like, this guy is here in this environment because he earned it. He's sober, he's here with his wife and children. He's very present in the moment. And I was the exact opposite of that. I felt like I didn't belong there, but I was there because my wife's employer basically let me hang out.

00;23;43;16 - 00;24;06;16
Alex McKenzie
I was not present, I was intoxicated, we had gotten off track from our hopes of having kids. So I decided to get sober. I went into a church basement. I heard stuff in that meeting that made my hair stand up on end. And, Paul, I shit you not. Ten days later, I found out I was going to be a dad, and I was like, well, that's it.

00;24;06;16 - 00;24;22;10
Alex McKenzie
I this is this is my life now. And, and I went really hard into both 12 step, and, dharma based recovery approach. And by the time my daughter was born, I had been sober for nine months and have been sober ever since.

00;24;22;13 - 00;24;46;21
Paul Sullivan
That's great. That's wonderful. Thanks. Congratulate. And when she was born, what was the discussion as to who would be, you know, the primary parent? Was it just always a sort of a parent that you would be the the lead dad, or was it something that, you know, because the other part is you've been working as a audio producer, for public radio, you, you adjunct professor at Montana State.

00;24;46;21 - 00;24;53;03
Paul Sullivan
So there's other stuff you got going on. But what was the conversation, or was there a conversation as to who would be the the primary parent?

00;24;53;05 - 00;25;11;13
Alex McKenzie
Yeah. If I'm honest, that conversation was had much earlier was when we found out that we were going to be parents. And the question was, do we want to have this child? And if not, what what are our alternatives and what are we comfortable with? But the, the big part of that was, well, what is the household dynamic?

00;25;11;15 - 00;25;29;10
Alex McKenzie
My wife's earning potential, you know, continue to look great. And mine at that point was kind of a question mark, more than anything, because the job market in Montana is, is really, really rough. So we felt tied to this place both by virtue of her paycheck and also just because we love it here. We really love the lifestyle, the outdoor environment.

00;25;29;10 - 00;25;51;13
Alex McKenzie
We love skiing. And we felt like that is an ideal place for us to raise a kid. For us personally, and, you know, there were some hard conversations really early on, but it was maybe two weeks of some, some really tough, tough soul searching. And, ultimately just came to this place that, yes, she would work.

00;25;51;13 - 00;26;09;27
Alex McKenzie
She would continue to work full time. Because we saw that as being really beneficial for our family and that I would work part time and be, full time dad. Of course, this was before the pandemic hit. Yeah. And at the time, we were thinking, oh, this is like a, you know, six months or maybe nine months proposition.

00;26;09;29 - 00;26;18;06
Alex McKenzie
It turned into more like a two year proposition before my daughter can actually start daycare. She's two and a half now. So yeah, I started.

00;26;18;08 - 00;26;27;13
Paul Sullivan
You know, the first two years, you know, coincides almost completely with the pandemic. There was an option, is that correct? For daycare? She was with you 100% of the time.

00;26;27;16 - 00;26;46;27
Alex McKenzie
Yeah. She was with. Yep. She was with us 100% of the time. With the exception of my mother in law who had moved here with her husband, my father in law, to be closer to her grandchild, she was able to help a couple of days a week, but she has, a preexisting health condition that made us have to be extra cautious around the pandemic.

00;26;46;27 - 00;27;05;18
Alex McKenzie
So we were extremely isolated for a couple of years. It I mean, we were it was just us. It was like myself, my wife, my daughter and my in-laws for two solid years. And, and I can say that my sobriety was a real asset throughout that. Yeah. Throughout that journey, you know.

00;27;05;18 - 00;27;27;28
Paul Sullivan
So yeah. And so then as you start coming out of it, you know, tell me about, you know, when you start combining, you know, the balancing act that, that every lead that does between, you know, being there for your wife, being there for your daughter, but also, you know, trying to fulfill your own potential, doing some of the stuff you're doing in radio, doing, you know, the entrepreneurship classes at Montana State.

00;27;28;01 - 00;27;30;16
Paul Sullivan
Talk to me about that, that juggling act.

00;27;30;18 - 00;27;56;28
Alex McKenzie
Yeah. It was a day to day process and no two days were the same. Prior to joining Montana State University, I was producing, podcast out here, for the Montana Free Press or nonpartisan nonprofit, political watchdog, journalistic outlet. And that was really hard. I absolutely loved the work. I absolutely loved the people I worked with.

00;27;57;00 - 00;28;22;20
Alex McKenzie
But, you're chasing headlines and, you know, you have a guest booked, and then all of a sudden, the guest has to bail because that guest is a senator or something and has something in DC that they have to go deal with, and suddenly we're scrambling to pull something together. It was really, really challenging for our household because my schedule was all over the place, and that was when we realized it made more sense for me to go work at MSU, or at least I could have more of a set schedule.

00;28;22;20 - 00;28;44;20
Alex McKenzie
It would be part time, and I could pick and choose the courses I wanted to teach. But that is a much better fit for us right now. And, you know, it really depends on the week. I think one really big benefit here is that my wife has, gone into a leadership position at her company, so she has a lot more flexibility.

00;28;44;20 - 00;28;57;26
Alex McKenzie
So there are days when she's on the road or in the office, and there are days when she's working home. Working at home. It's a constant. It's a constant conversation, you know, every single day is it's like a new program. No two days look alike.

00;28;57;28 - 00;29;16;09
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. I always found that when I, you know, all the editors at the New York Times said having a rigid schedule is what allowed me to be the dad. But at the same time, that rigid schedule, I just I love when things would get scrambled, you know, it's more exciting to have to not know what's going on.

00;29;16;13 - 00;29;17;06
Alex McKenzie
I mean, I agree.

00;29;17;10 - 00;29;35;29
Paul Sullivan
To plan a week in a week after week after week. Now again. Yeah, nobody wants to hear somebody complain about, being the business columnist of the New York Times. Everything about it was awesome. But, you know, you think back to like, I think back to like, before I was, you know, a father before I was married, you know, that was exciting.

00;29;35;29 - 00;29;55;19
Paul Sullivan
You just didn't know what was going to go on. And, you know, I always say, look, this doesn't last forever. At a certain point, however many kids we have, the last of them have have moved out of the house and they're living their own life. And then we'll we'll figure out that there's a period of time. But I've often found that, you know, some weeks were more challenging than others.

00;29;55;22 - 00;29;59;05
Paul Sullivan
I'm sure you probably found it somewhat similar in your role.

00;29;59;07 - 00;30;12;08
Alex McKenzie
Absolutely. There. There are some weeks that feel like a real gantlet others are a bit easier. What I've learned is that kids really need a routine and, it's to everyone's benefit.

00;30;12;08 - 00;30;18;06
Paul Sullivan
That's funny, because what I've learned is that kids only get sick when you have a busy day. But I've also learned that.

00;30;18;06 - 00;30;19;27
Alex McKenzie
Yeah. Yep. Yes.

00;30;19;27 - 00;30;25;24
Paul Sullivan
That random random Thursday you got nothing to do. They just go off to school like that. You're like, okay, right.

00;30;25;26 - 00;30;44;06
Alex McKenzie
But when you get something on the books, right, then. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, you know, look, my kid is high energy. Fortunately, I'm a morning person, so she and I pop out of bed at 7:00 and we're ready to go, and she's helping me make breakfast, and we try to let my wife sleep in a little bit.

00;30;44;08 - 00;31;00;02
Alex McKenzie
And then I. I joke with my wife that we should start our days with, like, the, the adrenaline syringe from Pulp Fiction. We should keep one at the bedside table and just, like, stab each other in the chest first thing in the morning, you know.

00;31;00;04 - 00;31;09;08
Paul Sullivan
See, I always thought that the explosion of that was a small child putting her face right next to your head and sleep and saying, daddy. Yeah, it's morning time.

00;31;09;09 - 00;31;11;19
Alex McKenzie
It's sweeter. Yeah, it's it's a lot.

00;31;11;19 - 00;31;21;00
Paul Sullivan
Sweeter, for sure. Either that or. Daddy, I just threw up. Know what it is, and then boom, you're out of the bed like that. That's that's the adrenaline needles at the chest, right?

00;31;21;00 - 00;31;43;17
Alex McKenzie
Yeah. Look, you know, this this question of juggling schedules. It's not like either my wife or I or in any sort of driver's seat. We're both beholden to a lot of other people. I'm beholden to a bunch of students, and colleagues. And my wife is beholden to, lot of development people, construction contracting people and homeowners.

00;31;43;17 - 00;31;57;28
Alex McKenzie
And, we have questions and demands and needs coming up all day, every day. And we're just constantly having to pivot or replan a day on the fly. It just feels like it never ends.

00;31;58;00 - 00;32;21;08
Paul Sullivan
You know what? They haven't, you know, kind of been a lead dad before the pandemic. And he continued via their dad through it. I've started to feel like, at least for me, people and for my wife, people are slightly more, understanding more. I say they've kind of the genie is out of the bottle. Like we're never going back to this world where work is over here and family is over there.

00;32;21;13 - 00;32;48;16
Paul Sullivan
They're going to be jumbled in some way. How is that? I mean, has your wife's employer made that, you know, realization and construction schedules are different? I'm wondering if, you know, because that's so much of what I'm trying to do with the company, dad, is to sort of, you know, normalize that. We have to balance, you know, work and family now and not just have it be you know, talk, HR, speak that that means nothing.

00;32;48;16 - 00;32;58;06
Paul Sullivan
And what if if, you know, as the pandemic has gone on, if there have been moments where you've been able to find a little bit more balance between the two?

00;32;58;09 - 00;33;20;27
Alex McKenzie
Certainly moments. Yeah. My wife's employer has been extremely supportive and understanding of that. And we're, we're so fortunate for that. And I'm not going to say that this hasn't been challenging, but my heart aches for people who have more kids and less money and, and, employers who are not is understanding because it's been really challenging for us.

00;33;20;27 - 00;33;43;04
Alex McKenzie
And we're in a very supportive situation. And, and, you know, my, my employer, has been as flexible as they can be, I think, to the extent that they can, obviously I have to be in class certain time, so that can't really change. But beyond that, there's been a high degree of flexibility with regard to office hours, team meetings, grading, things like that, you know.

00;33;43;04 - 00;33;53;25
Alex McKenzie
So, so that's been that's been wonderful. And my hope is that we'll just continue to see that become the norm rather than the exception. Right. Yeah. So.

00;33;53;28 - 00;34;20;04
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. Good. Alex, it's been really wonderful talking to you on the Company Does podcast. I always like to give the guest the last hope, the last hope, the last word. And I like to get the last. I'm going to leave that blooper in the last. Have the last word to us. When you think about, you know, what you've learned in the two plus years as a dad and sort of what lessons really stick with you, you know, share 1 or 2 of those lessons with with the listeners.

00;34;20;06 - 00;34;45;12
Alex McKenzie
Yeah. It can be really it can feel, really emasculating at times when your wife makes a lot more money than you and has a higher professional status in you. And that earnings disparity has been really difficult for me to wrap my head around what has taken me a long time to realize and to fully embrace and to be really, really proud to say, is it?

00;34;45;14 - 00;35;08;04
Alex McKenzie
My empathy is a real asset for my wife and my daughter. And that my sobriety, it supports my ability to empathize. And so I'm not here to proselytize to your listeners, and I'm most of my other friends who are parents, are enjoying drinks at 5:00 and by, like, by all means, do it. I personally could never have just one.

00;35;08;06 - 00;35;26;00
Alex McKenzie
If I was going to have one, I was going to have three. And if I was having three, I may as well have a fourth. You know? And I guess if you're listening and if that rings true for you, just just consider that, your children are young. They're they're little amygdala is are not fully formed yet.

00;35;26;05 - 00;35;42;03
Alex McKenzie
And the way that you show up emotionally and mentally in the way that you, have presents for your children and your partner, can be vital to their growth, their development, their health and their ability to succeed.

00;35;42;06 - 00;36;14;14
Paul Sullivan
Alex. That's great. Thank you. And I said, I give you the last word, but, I lied because you you brought up Sam. They're around money and masculinity. And by the time this podcast airs, another one will have already aired. And that's on Brad Clontz, in which he tries to unpack. He's a financial psychologist, and he tries to unpack this real challenge that we as men have, because it's and this is part of what the company dads is trying to do, is trying to normalize this idea that just because you're the man, you you have to be the breadwinner.

00;36;14;14 - 00;36;37;13
Paul Sullivan
Whereas I think a healthier, more 2022 version of this is let's find a way for, you know, both people to fulfill their, their potential. And that may mean that one person earns more money at this point. And, you know, may it may shift going forward. But to sort of, you know, normalize that, to sort of get rid of some of that shame that we as men carry if we're not not the breadwinner.

00;36;37;16 - 00;36;59;26
Alex McKenzie
Yeah, yeah. I, I look forward to listening to that. I totally agree with it. And what I found really has worked well for us. And, and I kind of got this from reading your book, actually, this in Green Line. But my wife and I agreed it would be beneficial for me to take on the management of our household finances.

00;37;00;04 - 00;37;25;04
Alex McKenzie
And that was huge, because suddenly I felt like I had some control in this and that I was in the driver's seat rather than in the passenger seat. And I'm helping manage, short term and long term savings are, you know, month to month budgeting. And I feel like I have a real active role now in how our financial assets, are managed and grow.

00;37;25;04 - 00;37;31;14
Alex McKenzie
And that has really helped to diminish that sense of emasculation quite a bit. Yeah. Okay.

00;37;31;16 - 00;37;34;26
Paul Sullivan
Alex, thank you again. I enjoyed talking in the company of Dan's podcast.

00;37;34;28 - 00;37;36;06
Alex McKenzie
Thank you for you to be well.

00;00;05;10 - 00;00;26;17
Paul Sullivan
I'm Paul Sullivan, your host on the Company of Dads podcast, where we explore the sweet, sublime, strange and silly aspects to being a dad in a world where men often feel they have to hide, or at least not talk about their parenting role. I know this from firsthand experience as the lead dad to my three girls, three dogs, three cats, and some, remarkably, three fish who are still alive.

00;00;26;20 - 00;00;44;16
Paul Sullivan
I did all this while managing my career and striving to be an above average husband. One thing I know for sure about being a dad is it's not a normal role. You're not doing what dads have traditionally done. Going to work and leaving the parenting to mom or someone else. Nor are you always welcome into the world where moms are the primary caregivers.

00;00;44;18 - 00;01;09;11
Paul Sullivan
But here at the Company of Dads, our goal is to shake all that off. Focus on what really matters. Family, friendship, finance and fun. Today my guest is Alex McKinnon. He's a dad who has literally had the most interesting combination of jobs ever. He's worked in the fields and in restaurants. He's been a rock music producer. Names like Katy Perry and Eminem and a public radio producer.

00;01;09;13 - 00;01;22;20
Paul Sullivan
The fish business. He swam in that tank. He's also been known as the Emperor of Ice Cream. And now he's an adjunct professor at Montana State. A lot to unpack here. Welcome, Alex, to the Company of Dads podcast. How are you today?

00;01;22;22 - 00;01;39;04
Alex McKinnon
Paul I'm great. It's really great to be here. And I just want to say I've. I've so enjoyed your first few episodes. I don't know that, my research is up to par with Chris and Shockley, and I'm probably never going to be drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles, but hopefully, hopefully, I have something interesting to share.

00;01;39;07 - 00;01;47;12
Paul Sullivan
Fantastic. You know, Alex, he I don't know if he knows about it, but I'm a sucker for flattery. So whenever we start off that way, I think, oh, great.

00;01;47;15 - 00;01;48;16
Alex McKinnon
You're in good company.

00;01;48;18 - 00;02;01;06
Paul Sullivan
Before you became a husband and father and dad, you had a very diverse career. So chart me a path through the life of Alex and me. What connected one job to the next?

00;02;01;09 - 00;02;21;24
Alex McKinnon
Yeah. So in a nutshell, I always just pursued what was interesting to me and that could change, like, the wind at times. And money was never part of the pursuit. You know, I'm a little embarrassed to say that when I was younger, when there was more ego attached status was part of it, and the people that I could surround myself with was maybe interesting to me.

00;02;21;24 - 00;02;37;12
Alex McKinnon
That's a lot less interesting to me now. But I grew up in a house, with a recording studio. My dad was a musician, on the side of his of his day job as an addictions counselor. And, you know, we had a garden, vegetable garden growing up.

00;02;37;15 - 00;02;38;21
Paul Sullivan
Where it was this where you grew up.

00;02;38;23 - 00;03;02;05
Alex McKinnon
In Massachusetts, north of Boston. Gloucester. So fishing? Actually, a fishing community. I believe it's the nation's still oldest active fishing port. And, when I graduated from high school, I went into college initially, in Massachusetts for a music production, but I was a horrible student. I was really mixed up about what my interests were.

00;03;02;06 - 00;03;22;09
Alex McKinnon
Mostly my interest at the time was smoking pot. So I dropped out. And then I just kind of bounced all over the place for, like, ten years. I got really into this organization called what? It allows you to travel the world and work on organic farms in exchange for room and board. So I had some really amazing experiences in Italy.

00;03;22;12 - 00;03;28;12
Alex McKinnon
Some really bad experiences in Costa Rica, too little bit in Oregon and, ultimately. Wow.

00;03;28;14 - 00;03;32;04
Paul Sullivan
What were you doing on? What were you doing on the farms? Like, what was the type of work that they had you do?

00;03;32;05 - 00;03;51;22
Alex McKinnon
Yeah. So I worked on an olive farm, an olive oil, farm in Tuscany. I've gone there four times. And the farmer, who's a dear friend of mine, actually, unfortunately, just passed away a couple of weeks ago. And then in Costa Rica, I was working on a start up fruit farm in Oregon. I did a little bit of some vineyard work.

00;03;51;25 - 00;04;15;00
Alex McKinnon
And, you know, it was just really into agricultural labor. I found it very peaceful. It was really good for my, mental well-being. And I just enjoy the work, and I really wasn't thinking about it in terms of, like, a career or anything. What I wanted to do was be, a really successful music producer, but that is kind of a weird world to break into.

00;04;15;03 - 00;04;44;09
Alex McKinnon
And so I kind of bounced back and forth between, like, recording studios, and I dabbled in some music publishing and music promotions, and farms and farm to table restaurants and, did a lot of stuff that was not really noteworthy for a while. And then in 2005, I had been living in the Pacific Northwest. I moved back to Boston, started working at this high end, James Beard Award winning farm to table restaurant.

00;04;44;12 - 00;05;07;13
Alex McKinnon
And then on my days off, I would book these studio sessions and I would basically just pay for studio time to educate myself about how to make records. And sometimes I would work on my own stuff. Sometimes I would work on other people's stuff. And I was also writing for recording magazine at the time. And, I mean, I really worked seven days a week for, for almost five years.

00;05;07;15 - 00;05;21;25
Alex McKinnon
And one day I may be learning how to break down a whole pig or something, or make swagger or something like that. And, another day I might be in some really amazing recording studio in Boston or in Vermont or in New York City.

00;05;21;28 - 00;05;29;28
Paul Sullivan
I love the image of you like breaking down a pig and then, like, working with, like, a scar band called Three Little Pigs or something. Yeah, right.

00;05;30;01 - 00;05;39;26
Alex McKinnon
That's that's that's not too far off. Yeah. I mean, I dabbled I want to stress that, like, I could not break down a pig for you today. That's one of those things. It like I got.

00;05;39;27 - 00;05;41;18
Paul Sullivan
It's a big animal. It's got to, you.

00;05;41;18 - 00;05;42;23
Alex McKinnon
Know, it's a big animal.

00;05;42;24 - 00;05;44;28
Paul Sullivan
Think if you can pull the bacon out will be okay.

00;05;45;00 - 00;06;01;14
Alex McKinnon
Yeah, yeah. And, and, you know, I would work in the kitchen during the day, and then, during service, I would work on the floor as a waiter and made better money that way, and was able to put that into the recording studio thing. I met the woman who would become my wife working in this restaurant.

00;06;01;14 - 00;06;04;04
Alex McKinnon
She was just a grad student at the time, doing her job.

00;06;04;04 - 00;06;07;11
Paul Sullivan
Right. This is where this is a restaurant in Cambridge. This restaurant in Boston where?

00;06;07;13 - 00;06;20;03
Alex McKinnon
Yeah. Cambridge. Cambridge, Massachusetts. The original the first restaurant where we met was called Craigie Street Bistro that ultimately became Craigie on Main. And then I went on to work at some other, nice places after that as well.

00;06;20;05 - 00;06;23;02
Paul Sullivan
Cambridge. There's some like, colleges there, right. Like that's a good place.

00;06;23;03 - 00;06;24;12
Alex McKinnon
Yeah. One or 1 or 2.

00;06;24;13 - 00;06;24;28
Paul Sullivan
Yeah.

00;06;25;00 - 00;06;34;13
Alex McKinnon
Yeah, yeah, there's a few. And then in 2010, my wife got a job offer, when she got done with graduate school.

00;06;34;13 - 00;06;46;28
Paul Sullivan
Oh, hang on, we can't we can't just skip ahead, okay? Okay. Yeah. You know, this is all about, you know, the company. Today's podcast is all about being a dad. Tell me a little bit more about your wife. How you matter, you know? Yeah, yeah. Are you her? How I wooed.

00;06;46;28 - 00;07;21;26
Alex McKinnon
Her. She's Italian, so I moved her with cooking. She, she is still, you know, we've been together for, like, 14 years now. Just the greatest joy I've ever known. Prior to meeting her, I had been to a string of really dysfunctional, unhealthy relationships, and it kind of made a habit of, pursuing women who would make me feel better about myself because they needed some sort of, emotional, you know, support from me, very codependent.

00;07;21;28 - 00;08;01;22
Alex McKinnon
And, and that kind of reached a peak in 2005, when I was involved with the woman, and she was the victim of some, violent sexual trauma. And the way that that relationship ended was cataclysmic for me. And, and so I moved back east to be closer to my family and got involved in some therapy, some psychotherapy, and was was single and, you know, bordering on celibate for, for a few years intentionally because that had been a pretty, pretty radical shift for me.

00;08;01;24 - 00;08;25;06
Alex McKinnon
When I met my wife. I had never met anyone like her. She was so kind and, was not into playing games, was not into anything codependent. Was so fast, fascinating to me just as a person. She had had, really interesting life at that point already. Her father had worked for IBM, and they had she had lived all over the place.

00;08;25;06 - 00;08;46;26
Alex McKinnon
She had lived in Paris and, Connecticut, your neck of the woods and, North Carolina and she had gone to school for architecture and then urban planning. And I just really enjoyed hearing about her discipline. I knew nothing about it. And, yeah, to answer your question, how did I woo her? I cooked pretty well for her.

00;08;46;28 - 00;08;52;25
Alex McKinnon
And I and, you know, I was emotionally available for her. I, I had come to a place.

00;08;52;25 - 00;08;57;15
Paul Sullivan
You didn't have some sort of line, like an a. Hey, you know, I worked on an olive farm, and.

00;08;57;17 - 00;08;59;06
Alex McKinnon
I probably, I know I probably.

00;08;59;06 - 00;09;00;23
Paul Sullivan
Used it. I would use it if I.

00;09;00;24 - 00;09;21;04
Alex McKinnon
Yeah. No, I just, I, I definitely use that. And I said, hey, do you want to see what a recording studio is like? I think I yeah, look, I think there was some mutual interest for, I think what if there's one thing we would agree upon? It's that our individual worlds were so different from one another.

00;09;21;04 - 00;09;43;28
Alex McKinnon
And I think that we recognized an opportunity to complement one another. Right. Like her experience was so different from anything I had had and vice versa. And we were just so fascinated by the things that we were into that the other was into on a day to day basis. And I just genuinely loved hearing about her day, the stuff that she was getting involved in.

00;09;43;28 - 00;10;02;00
Alex McKinnon
And I just had a million questions. And that that's still holds true. I just said, you know, it's, if my career is any indication, you can tell that I get I get bored with things and people easily, and I have yet to get bored with her. I'm just I find her endlessly fascinating, so that.

00;10;02;02 - 00;10;02;23
Paul Sullivan
That that's good.

00;10;02;29 - 00;10;07;22
Alex McKinnon
That's that's great. Yeah. It's worked out really well for me. Yeah.

00;10;07;24 - 00;10;18;06
Paul Sullivan
But, But I know that her job, Brian Montana. But before we get to that, you went back to school, right? And you finished up at Hampshire College, too? I make that up.

00;10;18;09 - 00;10;39;28
Alex McKinnon
That. No. That's correct. Yeah. So. So we moved to New York City in 2010. I was getting more recording studio work. I want to clarify, I did not ever produce anything that made it to, a Katy Perry or Eminem record. I was working regularly as an engineer and a songwriter studio for Sony ATV and EMI writers, and these are the people who write songs for those people.

00;10;40;00 - 00;11;06;24
Alex McKinnon
So I worked on a lot of those sessions, and I worked on sessions, where songwriters were working on material for those people, but I could never claim that I had any hand in a Katy Perry hit or something like that. The other interesting gig I had at the time was, converse, a shoe company. At the time, they had gotten into this whole lifestyle branding thing, and they were doing things like, starting recording studios, funding independent films, building skate parks and basketball courts.

00;11;06;24 - 00;11;25;24
Alex McKinnon
And so I had an ongoing gig as an in-house producer at the converse studio. And that was a really amazing situation, too, because, for me, it meant I got to work in a very clean, very professional, very high end recording studio. The work was just kind of served to me on a platter. I didn't have to go out and chase it.

00;11;25;24 - 00;11;47;06
Alex McKinnon
The people were awesome, and it was a really cool insight into what at the time was, new frontier in in marketing. Right? This, this whole lifestyle branding thing was really interesting. And the guy who, ran that whole program for converse, a guy named, Jeff Cottrill, he really had this vision that was really, really cutting edge.

00;11;47;06 - 00;12;12;25
Alex McKinnon
And they put a lot of money into it. And I think they made a lot of lifelong fans out of converse. But ultimately I was unfulfilled. That sort of work was feast or famine. I would work my butt off for three weeks, and then I wouldn't have a gig for a month. And meanwhile, my wife has just started her career in architecture, and she's starting to make some slow, but steady gains.

00;12;12;27 - 00;12;36;10
Alex McKinnon
There was stuff I was seeing on a day to day basis in the recording studio world that was, you know, definitely not G-rated was not stuff I could really share with my future in-laws. And then hurricane Sandy hit, and we got involved in the, relief efforts. And I just kind of had this awakening that I had I had gotten off track that I had lost sight of what my ideals were, what was important to me.

00;12;36;12 - 00;12;55;02
Alex McKinnon
And at the time, we were living in Cobble Hill in Brooklyn. And if you're not familiar, it is literally a hill. And, you know, we were watching water flow down the hill. We had all our lights on or cable on, and we were watching it go to the poorer neighborhoods at the bottom of the hill and just ruin people's lives.

00;12;55;02 - 00;13;13;23
Alex McKinnon
And, and I, you know, I just kind of felt like, what am I doing? So, yeah, I went back to college, I went to Hampshire College in Western Mass, which is a very progressive sort of design, your own major college. So I designed a degree in food policy. I wanted to get back to my agricultural roots.

00;13;13;26 - 00;13;34;07
Alex McKinnon
And I spent a lot of time working with both terrestrial agriculture, working with cows and pigs and goats and chickens, things like that. And then fisheries and aquaculture, what's called integrated multi trophic aquaculture. This is where you. Yeah. Right. You have these recirculating tanks. And the idea is that the fish eat food and then they poop and the poop floats down.

00;13;34;07 - 00;13;45;11
Alex McKinnon
And then these filter feeders are deposit feeders. Eat the poop and then they release the nitrogen, and then the nitrogen helps kelp grow. And you can use the kelp for biofuel or cosmetics or whatever.

00;13;45;11 - 00;13;48;01
Paul Sullivan
And are you really you're losing the listeners here.

00;13;48;03 - 00;14;14;19
Alex McKinnon
Yeah. I'm. I don't doubt it. I wanted to solve problems through food. And what I thought I was going to do was, you know, go work for Fish and Wildlife or maybe go work for some really sustainable agricultural organization. But what wound up happening was the college did like a Shark Tank style competition, and I threw together a plan for an ice cream company just totally off the cuff.

00;14;14;19 - 00;14;30;00
Alex McKinnon
This was not my life's dream. But to make a long story short, they gave me a check for $100,000 the week that I graduated college. And it was this thing. It was amazing. And it was the same week that, my wife got a job offer in Montana. So we said, well, let's go for it. Let's move out to Montana.

00;14;30;02 - 00;14;37;09
Alex McKinnon
We'll learn to ski. And, she could continue to develop her career, and I could try to start this ice cream company.

00;14;37;14 - 00;15;00;08
Paul Sullivan
I have this vision here because, you know, I do live in Connecticut now. I grew up in western Massachusetts, but we would go up to sort of southern Maine sometimes, for sort of vacations. I could go for a couple days or something like that. And there this place in Wells, Maine, and Wells is sort of like the poor cousin to Kennebunkport, where generations of bushes and walkers and everyone has gone.

00;15;00;08 - 00;15;04;23
Paul Sullivan
And there is this one ice cream shop there that had lobster ice cream.

00;15;04;23 - 00;15;07;07
Alex McKinnon
I've had it. I've had I've had the lobster ice cream. I've been there.

00;15;07;07 - 00;15;19;10
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. Ice cream. Absolutely. So did you have to ask? I say that because with the Empire of Ice Cream, did you combine sort of aquaculture and an ice cream? Could I get like, you know, a rocky salmon road or something like that?

00;15;19;11 - 00;15;23;04
Alex McKinnon
No, no, we didn't do anything that outlandish. We were. We were trying.

00;15;23;04 - 00;15;25;25
Paul Sullivan
To, you know, mint chocolate trout, nothing like. Oh, gosh.

00;15;25;25 - 00;15;50;27
Alex McKinnon
No, no, that's so funny that you mention the lobster ice cream. I've literally had that. It was awful. We were trying to do a modern update on the ice cream truck and create this synergy between, the grocery store aisle and an ice cream truck. And, you know, I ultimately raised $250,000 for that company through a variety of institutional investors, USDA loans, friends and family investors.

00;15;50;29 - 00;16;15;28
Alex McKinnon
We ran the company here for three years. The first two years went almost to the dollar, exactly as I thought they would go. The third year was really hard. I had two potentially large investors on the hook. We were talking about $1.5 million to go national. I couldn't get them on the same page about what the terms would be and what that cash injection was going to do for us, but meanwhile, we were operating as a small business.

00;16;15;28 - 00;16;32;19
Alex McKinnon
We had to keep the lights on. My wife and I are starting to get itchy. We want to have kids. We want to move on to the next thing. So we put it to bed. We just liquidated the assets. We paid everyone who we owed money to their money back. I never missed a payment and I just look at it as, DIY MBA.

00;16;32;19 - 00;16;42;20
Alex McKinnon
I like to say that I failed smartly. I was able to get out and keep my shirt. And then after that, you know, the next big events were my dad.

00;16;42;22 - 00;16;53;15
Paul Sullivan
Don't give the story away, okay? Okay. All right. So, but tell me a bit more. So it was sort of 2017 ish. Is that when it started in 2019 and wound down 2016? What?

00;16;53;17 - 00;17;04;14
Alex McKinnon
We started it in 2015. Yeah. And we ran it through 2018, and then 2019 was kind of like liquidating assets, selling stuff.

00;17;04;20 - 00;17;14;10
Paul Sullivan
What were some of the things that I was known for? Like what were some of the flavors you created? What were the things like people who were going and buying the ice cream? Yeah. And the Emperor of ice Cream, what were the what were the things that they really liked?

00;17;14;14 - 00;17;20;05
Alex McKinnon
Well, before we started making ice cream, we toured the country and we ate ice cream everywhere I went.

00;17;20;07 - 00;17;21;22
Paul Sullivan
I'm sorry. That must have been tough.

00;17;21;25 - 00;17;22;11
Alex McKinnon
It was so.

00;17;22;12 - 00;17;22;29
Paul Sullivan
Tarrytown.

00;17;23;04 - 00;17;40;19
Alex McKinnon
Yeah, yeah. We had this ice cream in San Francisco from this place called Mr. and Mrs. Miscellaneous. That blew my mind. I don't know if it's still there, but, we wanted to emulate that, so we learned. Well, how do they make their ice cream so damn good? So what we ultimately came to was it was called that pasteurization.

00;17;40;19 - 00;18;00;24
Alex McKinnon
It's a lower, slower cooker of the ice cream. You retain a lot of the healthy bacteria. You have to add less sugar because you get the sweeter, and creamier mouthfeel just from the lactose. And we were just told all the time, this is the best ice cream I've ever had in my life. And yeah, I will say it's the best ice cream I ever had in my life.

00;18;00;25 - 00;18;19;07
Alex McKinnon
I hear that Britain and Paris might might give me a run for my money, although I have yet to try it. It was really good. Probably the biggest flavor we had was one called Grandstand Snacks, and it was like Cracker Jacks and ice cream, and it was basically it was it was pretty awesome. It was your teeth.

00;18;19;08 - 00;18;20;08
Paul Sullivan
Hurt at the end of it. Did you.

00;18;20;13 - 00;18;33;02
Alex McKinnon
Know? No, it was it was popcorn infused ice cream with, with, blackstrap molasses, caramel and roasted peanuts. And it was it was out of this world. Yeah. It was really, really good.

00;18;33;04 - 00;18;37;20
Paul Sullivan
So take us. Yeah. There was a flavor that you thought would have been great. And it nobody liked it.

00;18;37;22 - 00;19;00;02
Alex McKinnon
Oh, that's a good question. I'll tell you, a cheesecake was really, really hard to get, right? Like strawberry cheesecake. Or cherry cheesecake. I just bashed my head against the wall trying to get that right, to get it to not taste like cheese, but still be reminiscent of this cake. I couldn't ever get it. And people would try it and they would just say, no, this isn't it.

00;19;00;06 - 00;19;08;22
Paul Sullivan
I'm thinking of you differently now. I'm looking at you now. It's like, you know, the Willy Wonka of ice cream. Here is what you didn't like. The guy had the Johnny Depp Willy Wonka, not the Jack.

00;19;08;22 - 00;19;27;16
Alex McKinnon
Yeah, that. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I had I had a lot of kids. A lot of a lot of youngsters who knew who I was and, had a lot of, a lot of good friendships with, other parents because their kids got to know me and they felt like we were a safe place where they could send the kids and trusted their kids.

00;19;27;19 - 00;19;36;01
Alex McKinnon
We're going to be taken care of. And they're going to have a, they're going to eat something that was, you know, obviously sweet, but was not full of a bunch of preservatives or junk, you know,

00;19;36;03 - 00;19;39;23
Paul Sullivan
Where did the name come from? The emperor of ice cream. It sounds awesome. Where did that name come from?

00;19;39;24 - 00;20;01;03
Alex McKinnon
Yeah, it's it's a Wallace Stevens poem. It's a great Wallace Stevens poem. And while Stevens is something, his poetry is something that my wife and I connected on really early in our relationship. We had some Wallace Stevens poems read at our wedding, and we just saw it. It was kind of, it was kind of a bold name that set us apart from all the other companies.

00;20;01;06 - 00;20;10;01
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. All right, so the company winds down, and then we're, you know, 2019. That also coincides with when you became a dad, right?

00;20;10;03 - 00;20;40;10
Alex McKinnon
Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. So what had happened was, we had moved to Montana. My wife was working for this developer here. Her career is really starting to blow up, and she was, getting all sorts of nice perks, including, access to these very exclusive, mountain clubs and, we, you know, I was hanging out regularly with the the leaders of the world, right?

00;20;40;10 - 00;21;05;01
Alex McKinnon
And professional athletes and rubbing elbows with these people. And I had a real imposter syndrome because I felt like, I didn't earn it, so I don't deserve it. I never had any money. I didn't come from money. And so what I was doing was, drinking and smoking weed very regularly to kind of numb that pain, and to numb the failure of my business.

00;21;05;03 - 00;21;31;10
Alex McKinnon
And I had gotten really, really good at articulating and maintaining a mild buzz throughout the day without anybody knowing. And I could, you know, vape technology and Visine goes a long way, you know, and I would I would send my wife out the door and say, have a good day. And I would start, you know, I would hit my vape pen and then by 11:00 or 12, maybe I'm having a little drink or something.

00;21;31;10 - 00;21;52;25
Alex McKinnon
And, and had gotten just very sneaky with my usage. And if it's like if she was going to come home for lunch that day, I was going to I was going to take a shower so that she wouldn't smell like marijuana or liquor on me. But I was going to do it early enough so that then the the smell of my face wash would be gone so that she wouldn't come home and say, oh, that's weird.

00;21;52;25 - 00;22;08;22
Alex McKinnon
Why did you take a shower at noon or something, you know, and, and I had gotten so clever, and it got to the point that she could walk in the door at 5:00 and I'd be like, hey, look, I'm mixing us a drink, and this is my first drink of the day. But really, it was like my third.

00;22;08;24 - 00;22;15;01
Alex McKinnon
And I had been stoned since 10 a.m. or something. It was awful. And,

00;22;15;03 - 00;22;17;14
Paul Sullivan
When she. Was she pregnant at the time? Were you a dad? No.

00;22;17;17 - 00;22;41;05
Alex McKinnon
No, no. Yeah. Neither. Neither. And. Yeah, just just to single parents in my business had had failed. And I felt horrible about that. And I was very aware of this divergent earnings potential. She was starting to head towards the stratosphere, and I was just, like, floundering. So I decided to get sober. And there were a number of things that happened to lead me up to that.

00;22;41;05 - 00;23;00;24
Alex McKinnon
But one of the big ones was I ran into, you know, in this in this exclusive mountain environment, I ran into a real hero of mine. Mike McCready, who is the guitarist for Pearl jam. And he's been open about, being sober. And he's someone I've looked up to my whole life when I was working in the record industry.

00;23;00;24 - 00;23;21;12
Alex McKinnon
Was like my dream to work with him, and I never got to, And now here I was, just hanging out with him and talking to him, and I was a little hung over, and I was a little stoned and, another thing that he and I shared is, he's been really public about his struggles with, Crohn's and colitis and Crohn's and colitis are in both my family and my wife's family.

00;23;21;12 - 00;23;43;13
Alex McKinnon
That was something else that we had connected on really early on. And it just it just became really clear to me, like, this guy is here in this environment because he earned it. He's sober, he's here with his wife and children. He's very present in the moment. And I was the exact opposite of that. I felt like I didn't belong there, but I was there because my wife's employer basically let me hang out.

00;23;43;16 - 00;24;06;16
Alex McKinnon
I was not present, I was intoxicated, we had gotten off track from our hopes of having kids. So I decided to get sober. I went into a church basement. I heard stuff in that meeting that made my hair stand up on end. And, Paul, I shit you not. Ten days later, I found out I was going to be a dad, and I was like, well, that's it.

00;24;06;16 - 00;24;22;10
Alex McKinnon
I this is this is my life now. And, and I went really hard into both 12 step, and, dharma based recovery approach. And by the time my daughter was born, I had been sober for nine months and have been sober ever since.

00;24;22;13 - 00;24;46;21
Paul Sullivan
That's great. That's wonderful. Thanks. Congratulate. And when she was born, what was the discussion as to who would be, you know, the primary parent? Was it just always a sort of a parent that you would be the the lead dad, or was it something that, you know, because the other part is you've been working as a audio producer, for public radio, you, you adjunct professor at Montana State.

00;24;46;21 - 00;24;53;03
Paul Sullivan
So there's other stuff you got going on. But what was the conversation, or was there a conversation as to who would be the the primary parent?

00;24;53;05 - 00;25;11;13
Alex McKinnon
Yeah. If I'm honest, that conversation was had much earlier was when we found out that we were going to be parents. And the question was, do we want to have this child? And if not, what what are our alternatives and what are we comfortable with? But the, the big part of that was, well, what is the household dynamic?

00;25;11;15 - 00;25;29;10
Alex McKinnon
My wife's earning potential, you know, continue to look great. And mine at that point was kind of a question mark, more than anything, because the job market in Montana is, is really, really rough. So we felt tied to this place both by virtue of her paycheck and also just because we love it here. We really love the lifestyle, the outdoor environment.

00;25;29;10 - 00;25;51;13
Alex McKinnon
We love skiing. And we felt like that is an ideal place for us to raise a kid. For us personally, and, you know, there were some hard conversations really early on, but it was maybe two weeks of some, some really tough, tough soul searching. And, ultimately just came to this place that, yes, she would work.

00;25;51;13 - 00;26;09;27
Alex McKinnon
She would continue to work full time. Because we saw that as being really beneficial for our family and that I would work part time and be, full time dad. Of course, this was before the pandemic hit. Yeah. And at the time, we were thinking, oh, this is like a, you know, six months or maybe nine months proposition.

00;26;09;29 - 00;26;18;06
Alex McKinnon
It turned into more like a two year proposition before my daughter can actually start daycare. She's two and a half now. So yeah, I started.

00;26;18;08 - 00;26;27;13
Paul Sullivan
You know, the first two years, you know, coincides almost completely with the pandemic. There was an option, is that correct? For daycare? She was with you 100% of the time.

00;26;27;16 - 00;26;46;27
Alex McKinnon
Yeah. She was with. Yep. She was with us 100% of the time. With the exception of my mother in law who had moved here with her husband, my father in law, to be closer to her grandchild, she was able to help a couple of days a week, but she has, a preexisting health condition that made us have to be extra cautious around the pandemic.

00;26;46;27 - 00;27;05;18
Alex McKinnon
So we were extremely isolated for a couple of years. It I mean, we were it was just us. It was like myself, my wife, my daughter and my in-laws for two solid years. And, and I can say that my sobriety was a real asset throughout that. Yeah. Throughout that journey, you know.

00;27;05;18 - 00;27;27;28
Paul Sullivan
So yeah. And so then as you start coming out of it, you know, tell me about, you know, when you start combining, you know, the balancing act that, that every lead that does between, you know, being there for your wife, being there for your daughter, but also, you know, trying to fulfill your own potential, doing some of the stuff you're doing in radio, doing, you know, the entrepreneurship classes at Montana State.

00;27;28;01 - 00;27;30;16
Paul Sullivan
Talk to me about that, that juggling act.

00;27;30;18 - 00;27;56;28
Alex McKinnon
Yeah. It was a day to day process and no two days were the same. Prior to joining Montana State University, I was producing, podcast out here, for the Montana Free Press or nonpartisan nonprofit, political watchdog, journalistic outlet. And that was really hard. I absolutely loved the work. I absolutely loved the people I worked with.

00;27;57;00 - 00;28;22;20
Alex McKinnon
But, you're chasing headlines and, you know, you have a guest booked, and then all of a sudden, the guest has to bail because that guest is a senator or something and has something in DC that they have to go deal with, and suddenly we're scrambling to pull something together. It was really, really challenging for our household because my schedule was all over the place, and that was when we realized it made more sense for me to go work at MSU, or at least I could have more of a set schedule.

00;28;22;20 - 00;28;44;20
Alex McKinnon
It would be part time, and I could pick and choose the courses I wanted to teach. But that is a much better fit for us right now. And, you know, it really depends on the week. I think one really big benefit here is that my wife has, gone into a leadership position at her company, so she has a lot more flexibility.

00;28;44;20 - 00;28;57;26
Alex McKinnon
So there are days when she's on the road or in the office, and there are days when she's working home. Working at home. It's a constant. It's a constant conversation, you know, every single day is it's like a new program. No two days look alike.

00;28;57;28 - 00;29;16;09
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. I always found that when I, you know, all the editors at the New York Times said having a rigid schedule is what allowed me to be the dad. But at the same time, that rigid schedule, I just I love when things would get scrambled, you know, it's more exciting to have to not know what's going on.

00;29;16;13 - 00;29;17;06
Alex McKinnon
I mean, I agree.

00;29;17;10 - 00;29;35;29
Paul Sullivan
To plan a week in a week after week after week. Now again. Yeah, nobody wants to hear somebody complain about, being the business columnist of the New York Times. Everything about it was awesome. But, you know, you think back to like, I think back to like, before I was, you know, a father before I was married, you know, that was exciting.

00;29;35;29 - 00;29;55;19
Paul Sullivan
You just didn't know what was going to go on. And, you know, I always say, look, this doesn't last forever. At a certain point, however many kids we have, the last of them have have moved out of the house and they're living their own life. And then we'll we'll figure out that there's a period of time. But I've often found that, you know, some weeks were more challenging than others.

00;29;55;22 - 00;29;59;05
Paul Sullivan
I'm sure you probably found it somewhat similar in your role.

00;29;59;07 - 00;30;12;08
Alex McKinnon
Absolutely. There. There are some weeks that feel like a real gantlet others are a bit easier. What I've learned is that kids really need a routine and, it's to everyone's benefit.

00;30;12;08 - 00;30;18;06
Paul Sullivan
That's funny, because what I've learned is that kids only get sick when you have a busy day. But I've also learned that.

00;30;18;06 - 00;30;19;27
Alex McKinnon
Yeah. Yep. Yes.

00;30;19;27 - 00;30;25;24
Paul Sullivan
That random random Thursday you got nothing to do. They just go off to school like that. You're like, okay, right.

00;30;25;26 - 00;30;44;06
Alex McKinnon
But when you get something on the books, right, then. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, you know, look, my kid is high energy. Fortunately, I'm a morning person, so she and I pop out of bed at 7:00 and we're ready to go, and she's helping me make breakfast, and we try to let my wife sleep in a little bit.

00;30;44;08 - 00;31;00;02
Alex McKinnon
And then I. I joke with my wife that we should start our days with, like, the, the adrenaline syringe from Pulp Fiction. We should keep one at the bedside table and just, like, stab each other in the chest first thing in the morning, you know.

00;31;00;04 - 00;31;09;08
Paul Sullivan
See, I always thought that the explosion of that was a small child putting her face right next to your head and sleep and saying, daddy. Yeah, it's morning time.

00;31;09;09 - 00;31;11;19
Alex McKinnon
It's sweeter. Yeah, it's it's a lot.

00;31;11;19 - 00;31;21;00
Paul Sullivan
Sweeter, for sure. Either that or. Daddy, I just threw up. Know what it is, and then boom, you're out of the bed like that. That's that's the adrenaline needles at the chest, right?

00;31;21;00 - 00;31;43;17
Alex McKinnon
Yeah. Look, you know, this this question of juggling schedules. It's not like either my wife or I or in any sort of driver's seat. We're both beholden to a lot of other people. I'm beholden to a bunch of students, and colleagues. And my wife is beholden to, lot of development people, construction contracting people and homeowners.

00;31;43;17 - 00;31;57;28
Alex McKinnon
And, we have questions and demands and needs coming up all day, every day. And we're just constantly having to pivot or replan a day on the fly. It just feels like it never ends.

00;31;58;00 - 00;32;21;08
Paul Sullivan
You know what? They haven't, you know, kind of been a lead dad before the pandemic. And he continued via their dad through it. I've started to feel like, at least for me, people and for my wife, people are slightly more, understanding more. I say they've kind of the genie is out of the bottle. Like we're never going back to this world where work is over here and family is over there.

00;32;21;13 - 00;32;48;16
Paul Sullivan
They're going to be jumbled in some way. How is that? I mean, has your wife's employer made that, you know, realization and construction schedules are different? I'm wondering if, you know, because that's so much of what I'm trying to do with the company, dad, is to sort of, you know, normalize that. We have to balance, you know, work and family now and not just have it be you know, talk, HR, speak that that means nothing.

00;32;48;16 - 00;32;58;06
Paul Sullivan
And what if if, you know, as the pandemic has gone on, if there have been moments where you've been able to find a little bit more balance between the two?

00;32;58;09 - 00;33;20;27
Alex McKinnon
Certainly moments. Yeah. My wife's employer has been extremely supportive and understanding of that. And we're, we're so fortunate for that. And I'm not going to say that this hasn't been challenging, but my heart aches for people who have more kids and less money and, and, employers who are not is understanding because it's been really challenging for us.

00;33;20;27 - 00;33;43;04
Alex McKinnon
And we're in a very supportive situation. And, and, you know, my, my employer, has been as flexible as they can be, I think, to the extent that they can, obviously I have to be in class certain time, so that can't really change. But beyond that, there's been a high degree of flexibility with regard to office hours, team meetings, grading, things like that, you know.

00;33;43;04 - 00;33;53;25
Alex McKinnon
So, so that's been that's been wonderful. And my hope is that we'll just continue to see that become the norm rather than the exception. Right. Yeah. So.

00;33;53;28 - 00;34;20;04
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. Good. Alex, it's been really wonderful talking to you on the Company Does podcast. I always like to give the guest the last hope, the last hope, the last word. And I like to get the last. I'm going to leave that blooper in the last. Have the last word to us. When you think about, you know, what you've learned in the two plus years as a dad and sort of what lessons really stick with you, you know, share 1 or 2 of those lessons with with the listeners.

00;34;20;06 - 00;34;45;12
Alex McKinnon
Yeah. It can be really it can feel, really emasculating at times when your wife makes a lot more money than you and has a higher professional status in you. And that earnings disparity has been really difficult for me to wrap my head around what has taken me a long time to realize and to fully embrace and to be really, really proud to say, is it?

00;34;45;14 - 00;35;08;04
Alex McKinnon
My empathy is a real asset for my wife and my daughter. And that my sobriety, it supports my ability to empathize. And so I'm not here to proselytize to your listeners, and I'm most of my other friends who are parents, are enjoying drinks at 5:00 and by, like, by all means, do it. I personally could never have just one.

00;35;08;06 - 00;35;26;00
Alex McKinnon
If I was going to have one, I was going to have three. And if I was having three, I may as well have a fourth. You know? And I guess if you're listening and if that rings true for you, just just consider that, your children are young. They're they're little amygdala is are not fully formed yet.

00;35;26;05 - 00;35;42;03
Alex McKinnon
And the way that you show up emotionally and mentally in the way that you, have presents for your children and your partner, can be vital to their growth, their development, their health and their ability to succeed.

00;35;42;06 - 00;36;14;14
Paul Sullivan
Alex. That's great. Thank you. And I said, I give you the last word, but, I lied because you you brought up Sam. They're around money and masculinity. And by the time this podcast airs, another one will have already aired. And that's on Brad Clontz, in which he tries to unpack. He's a financial psychologist, and he tries to unpack this real challenge that we as men have, because it's and this is part of what the company dads is trying to do, is trying to normalize this idea that just because you're the man, you you have to be the breadwinner.

00;36;14;14 - 00;36;37;13
Paul Sullivan
Whereas I think a healthier, more 2022 version of this is let's find a way for, you know, both people to fulfill their, their potential. And that may mean that one person earns more money at this point. And, you know, may it may shift going forward. But to sort of, you know, normalize that, to sort of get rid of some of that shame that we as men carry if we're not not the breadwinner.

00;36;37;16 - 00;36;59;26
Alex McKinnon
Yeah, yeah. I, I look forward to listening to that. I totally agree with it. And what I found really has worked well for us. And, and I kind of got this from reading your book, actually, this in Green Line. But my wife and I agreed it would be beneficial for me to take on the management of our household finances.

00;37;00;04 - 00;37;25;04
Alex McKinnon
And that was huge, because suddenly I felt like I had some control in this and that I was in the driver's seat rather than in the passenger seat. And I'm helping manage, short term and long term savings are, you know, month to month budgeting. And I feel like I have a real active role now in how our financial assets, are managed and grow.

00;37;25;04 - 00;37;31;14
Alex McKinnon
And that has really helped to diminish that sense of emasculation quite a bit. Yeah. Okay.

00;37;31;16 - 00;37;34;26
Paul Sullivan
Alex, thank you again. I enjoyed talking in the company of Dan's podcast.

00;37;34;28 - 00;37;36;06
Alex McKinnon
Thank you for you to be well.