EP49: Looking Back and Ahead

Paul Sullivan Talks About What He Learned as a First-Time Founder and What The Company of Dads Has Planned

HOSTED BY PAUL SULLIVAN

We launched The Company of Dads in February, and our Paul Sullivan has told the story of how he came up with the idea many times. Now, for the first, he reflects on what went right and wrong in the first year, what still bothers him (and what still makes him smile), and what The Company of Dads has in store for 2023 and beyond. 

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Transcript

00;00;05;04 - 00;00;54;28
Paul Sullivan
Welcome to the Company of Dads podcast. I'm your host, Paul Sullivan, and today my guest is me. I'm going to talk about what the past year has been like, starting the company of that, going from a career that I loved, enjoyed as a journalist for 25 years, into founding media company Community Platform, to serve the dads, those those go to parents, who are men, whether they work full time, part time or all their time to their children and, and, many cases also support their spouses and what, they are doing and, talking about myself is not something that, I've often done as a journalist for 25 years.

00;00;55;00 - 00;01;22;10
Paul Sullivan
Your, your whole goal is to, to talk about others. But, I've been able to assemble, a great, team of four people. And, at our, weekly call, they encouraged me, to do this as a way to sort of, wrap up the year, as one of them said, you've told all of us a million times how you came to start, the company of dads, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00;01;22;10 - 00;01;55;22
Paul Sullivan
But, you know, what has this year been like? And, you know, what are your goals going forward? What is this thing going to become? So so that's what I'm going to attempt to do today. So no, I won't be so contrived that I'm going to actually ask myself questions, but I'll start off with, I guess quickly, that background story, essentially, you know, for 12 years, 13 years, I was a lead dad incognito, got the idea for the company of dad.

00;01;55;24 - 00;02;13;09
Paul Sullivan
During the pandemic, when I realized there was no other community out there. For this type of parent, every other type a parent as a community, your stay at home mom, turned to community. If your go to work, dad, you go out for work every day. Or used to at least. But you have your colleagues.

00;02;13;09 - 00;02;33;27
Paul Sullivan
You have the people you have grab lunch with, drink, travel. You've got your community, working moms, every school district in America reaches out to, working moms, every company, in America, even even some of the really bad ones have had programs, for working moms. But if you're the lead dad, there isn't anything.

00;02;33;27 - 00;02;51;19
Paul Sullivan
At best, you're the butt of jokes. You. Mr. mom, your house has been, You're retired. Which is one of my favorite ones, because unless you work for a hedge fund, how many people really retire? When they have kids? But that was the genesis. I talked to my editor at the Times in August of 2021.

00;02;51;24 - 00;03;12;27
Paul Sullivan
I, wrote my last Wealth Matters column in October of 2021, and was fortunate then to write a final column, called The Times Insider that talked about what it had been like to write 600 columns for the New York Times. More than a million words, in 13 years there. And what I was going to do next.

00;03;12;27 - 00;03;40;21
Paul Sullivan
And that was, really where this story is going to, to to pick up because that's when things, got exciting. For me at least. I got stressful. Very stressful. They got, exciting all over again. I'd say, you know, it's been 85% exciting, 15% stressful, which I count myself, lucky. So what happened? What happened when that last, column ran?

00;03;40;21 - 00;03;55;16
Paul Sullivan
Well, I went out and said, you know, look, I'm leaving. I'm starting a community for the dad. And in my mind, it was always going to be three things. It was going to be a media company, which had a podcast, newsletters, features. It was going to be a community. So we would have a private community group.

00;03;55;16 - 00;04;15;19
Paul Sullivan
We would have various events, knowing they'd probably be online at first and in person later on. And, and, you know, the biggest possible vision, you know, have national, events have, have sort of company of dads chapters, around the country have a, you know, one big national event, each year, maybe two. They'd be a lot of fun.

00;04;15;19 - 00;04;49;16
Paul Sullivan
And the third part would be, talking to companies, talking to companies about what they're doing with their, the way, the way their employees work now in 2022, in what we're calling the next normal. But essentially, you know, that admission that nobody is going back to 2019, those of us who who were able to who had white collar jobs, who are knowledge workers, we had this moment where we were at home and we were working, and moms and dads, saw roles differently.

00;04;49;22 - 00;05;17;16
Paul Sullivan
And they saw that they could share more. They should share more that that people could step up, that people's careers became, you know, more fluid, perhaps, and, and that but we as humans may, may understand that, but I don't think a lot of companies have, caught on yet. And obviously there are a couple of examples of ones that are doing horrible things, to don't need to to mention, but the majority are trying to do the right thing and they're just not quite sure what the right thing or so.

00;05;17;16 - 00;05;38;22
Paul Sullivan
So those are the three, you know, tenets of it. And that that final column in October, as you might imagine, was super helpful. And all kinds of people, reached out to me, and that was exciting and positive. And I guess that, as I look back, that's probably the sort of first mistake I made because of that great enthusiasm.

00;05;38;22 - 00;06;00;18
Paul Sullivan
I had had a plan to sort of launch things gradually, to be in year 2022 and ramp up. But there was so much excitement and so much inbound interest from the three groups that I hope would be interested in the men who were the dads, working moms and HR executives who thought, you know, how can the company of dads work with me and so I had hired somebody to build out just the initial website.

00;06;00;20 - 00;06;22;10
Paul Sullivan
And then that person, you know, sort of created this whole team to sort of put everything together. And I didn't do my due diligence. I didn't, I didn't really, you know, delve deeply enough into what that person was, was, was promising me. And and that was a mistake. I was lucky that, you know, said force personality as as a sort of push through.

00;06;22;17 - 00;06;38;00
Paul Sullivan
But a lot of things I should have had early on, like a social media person, like somebody to sort of, you know, advise on, on how we're going to organize, you know, content stuff I had had of The New York Times for a long time and obviously, took for granted. I didn't have, this person promises things and it didn't happen.

00;06;38;00 - 00;06;55;09
Paul Sullivan
And, when I tell the story to other other founders in and I still struggle to call myself an entrepreneur, I call myself a founder and, running a media company. When I talk to other founders and tell them the story, they kind of roll their eyes and they're like, well, you know, of course you made a mistake in the beginning and they're right.

00;06;55;09 - 00;07;16;23
Paul Sullivan
You know, a lot of people make mistakes. And I was very fortunate to have the support, the backing, the both emotional backing and the financial backing of my wife and my family because, it was a costly mistake. It cost a lot of waste of money. Not a waste of time. Almost everything that that that group did, we've we've redone or undone, since then.

00;07;16;25 - 00;07;35;09
Paul Sullivan
And I know I'm supposed to take that as a valuable lesson. I was supposed to wear that as a badge of pride. And but I don't, because it was a bad mistake, and my wife always told me it was learning. You know, opportunity got a lot of stuff out of it. But, you know, that moment I was like, boy, I wish I had some of that cash back, but, you know, I can't.

00;07;35;10 - 00;08;13;29
Paul Sullivan
I can't get it back. So I move for it and and, you know, and in building, you know, early on, I said, okay, who else can get help? Because I never wanted the company of dads to be, just about Paul Sullivan. I wanted the company of dads to be about, you know, all the dads at first and then eventually about, you know, dads in general, dads in America, dads in in North America, dad, you know, globally, who could get together and hopefully change this, this dynamic, this dynamic around, you know, what role a father should play, what role a mother should play and, and just bring some sort of, you know, rational choice

00;08;13;29 - 00;08;40;01
Paul Sullivan
to, to to the discussion as to, you know, who should be the, the lead parent who should who should be the lead careerist, as it were. And so I was I had to bring on another group who were lovely, absolutely lovely. Everything about them. But, you know, I made this my second mistake. Not not on the same level, but, there are people who came from, big media companies that I had, and, we were simpatico.

00;08;40;05 - 00;09;08;10
Paul Sullivan
We got along, really well. They worked really hard. We worked hard together. Everything was sort of right sized around, you know, expectations and and costs. But, you know, I realize that, you know, big media, I didn't need to make things, you know, 5% better. I needed to make things 500% better, 5,000% better. That's how I wanted to grow the company, dad, because of the passion that I have, I want to reach as many people as I can, as quickly as possible.

00;09;08;10 - 00;09;29;17
Paul Sullivan
And, you know, do I want to inform and entertain people with our podcast and our newsletter and our videos? Sure. 100%. But I also want to be in a part of the conversation that hopefully changes this this work life, dynamic. You know, my I've been dad to my wife, but I but I have three daughters and I want them to be able to make, you know, choices.

00;09;29;17 - 00;09;55;25
Paul Sullivan
And, you know, it was everything's going along great with that second group. And then, I happened to have this, this serendipitous meeting, in the spring that that really, changed things for the second half of the year, that serendipitous meeting. For those of those who know me, who've read a lot of my content was, was about, you know, around golf, I'm a degenerate golfer, I love golf, it's my only hobby.

00;09;55;25 - 00;10;11;03
Paul Sullivan
And, I'm passionate about it. Two of my three daughters play with me, and I have a lot of great memories on golf, and I still continue to write some golf pieces for the New York Times. And I was up at, up in Boston where the U.S. open, was played in June for the media day.

00;10;11;03 - 00;10;33;26
Paul Sullivan
And, I ran into this guy who who was, an inspiration, who's an inspiration for for the company of dad. And his name is Eric Anders Lang. And he started something called the Random Golf Club. And, on the face of it, they have nothing to do with the company of dads, but. But the random golf club essentially identified the 80 to 85% of people who love the game of golf, but will never play golf at a private country club.

00;10;33;26 - 00;10;56;02
Paul Sullivan
Like like Brookline, where the U.S. open, took place. They'll play it in different ways. And he was he's been wonderful at creating, the sense of community for that group. And we've done our research at the company dads. We know they're about 20, 25 million men, in America, out of 75 million followers and 125 million men overall, who, qualifies as lead.

00;10;56;02 - 00;11;14;10
Paul Sullivan
That, you know, a group of them are, you know, divorced, widowed, separated. And now the group, tell the U.S. census that they are at home. Dad. And the third group, you know, are in relationships where, their spouse earns the same or more than them. And, you know, they're ripe to sort of step up and be that.

00;11;14;10 - 00;11;39;05
Paul Sullivan
And so I ran into Eric, there and I started talking to and Eric had been super generous when everything was starting, in December of 2021 and invited me down to Austin, where the Random Golf Club is based. And he introduced me to a whole bunch of people, that worked with him. And he it was like a masterclass in how to start, a media company and community platform.

00;11;39;05 - 00;11;58;21
Paul Sullivan
And, I'm incredibly grateful to Eric. Saved me a lot of time, taught me a lot of things. And when we're there. Brookline. I sort of asked him how, certain people were doing and asked him how his partner was doing, and he said, you know, they had they decide to go their separate ways. And, you know, at first I said, hear this?

00;11;58;21 - 00;12;19;11
Paul Sullivan
And then I thought, boy, his business partner is an amazing guy. And partnered him, Evan Roosevelt. And so I reached out to Evan, and, we started talking. We'd hit it off in Austin, you know, whatever that was six months earlier. And, he kind of came on over the summer, to sort of be a consultant and come on more formally, in September.

00;12;19;11 - 00;12;36;09
Paul Sullivan
And he's really been, sort of right hand man. He's he's been able to handle all the business stuff, the whole business side of, of the company of dads, which, you know, I'm not, you know, well versed in, I'm I'm a storyteller. I'm a journalist. I'm, you know, an idea guy. And I'm not a, business guy.

00;12;36;09 - 00;12;56;12
Paul Sullivan
I've never pretended to be this guy. So it's been wonderful to have him. And, you know, with the two of us, we have this this really excellent team. And I want to give them, a shout out now, have Helder, who's, who's been helping me since the very, almost the very beginning, or at least the beginning of when we started having podcast.

00;12;56;15 - 00;13;23;11
Paul Sullivan
And he's produced, every single podcast, and he's amazing and he's a friend and, he's even taught me about bourbon, which I'm not sure if that's good or bad. But, I love bourbon even more now because of Helder, so I'm grateful to him. We have Emily. Emily does all of our, web development. And I found her in the most classic way for late dad, which was by, hijacking my wife's, iPhone.

00;13;23;13 - 00;13;49;00
Paul Sullivan
I hijacked it because my wife has access to something, in our town. That is really the sort of repository of all information. And that is the Facebook groups for our time. There's a Facebook moms group. And then there's a Facebook working moms group in impersonating my wife with her knowledge, but impersonating my wife, I had sought people to help, with the development.

00;13;49;00 - 00;14;14;09
Paul Sullivan
And we found Emily, and she's been, absolutely first rate, as just the real, the pros pro, happily doing the tedious stuff that has to be done, week by week and also reimagining, a lot of the structure of the site and making it, so much better. Like thousands percentage point better than it was, in February when it launched.

00;14;14;09 - 00;14;38;26
Paul Sullivan
And then we have Kelly. Kelly is our social media person. His awesome, and direct. And I love that she is so direct. And, I met Kelly through, my college roommate, youngest brother who, runs a great coffee company called Rise Brewing, and she had done social media for them, and he recommended her highly. And he was right.

00;14;38;26 - 00;15;12;06
Paul Sullivan
And she sort of taught me, you know, taught me to be much, much better at it, social media. And so we're sitting here now, at the end of the year, and I'm feeling sort of team wise, structure wise, awesome. So, so that's the first part, of this, that's the sort of, you know, journey and, you know, the second part, I'm gonna I'm going to talk about some of, you know, the content that we did this year and, you know what that meant, to me and, and hopefully to the community.

00;15;12;08 - 00;15;33;05
Paul Sullivan
I mean, one of the things that I loved doing as a journalist was talking to people who don't, you know, really get into being a journalist. If you're not interested in people's stories. And with one of the first regular pieces we created was a podcast, was a company of that podcast. Now, there's a long in the beginning until we realized that people stop listening in about 25 minutes.

00;15;33;08 - 00;15;57;12
Paul Sullivan
So then we made them about 25 minutes. But they've been, we've we've done 46 original ones. This year, two more, compilations, that are running, over the holidays. And then this will be the 49th one, of the year. And we've had some, you know, great, great people. I mean, I did a podcast with Naji Good, who's become a friend.

00;15;57;14 - 00;16;28;28
Paul Sullivan
But energy won a Super Bowl playing for the Philadelphia Eagles. He did the podcast with me in his car outside of the ballet studio where he's waiting to pick up his two daughters. And, such a generous, thoughtful, insightful guide out of, obviously a hilarious one with Jay Craven, who won eight Emmy Award, writing, for The Daily Show, whose delivery is amazing and had me laughing throughout, but also was incredibly insightful.

00;16;29;00 - 00;16;51;00
Paul Sullivan
And one that I really connected with was with Mike McGee. And it may be the first time where I've interviewed both a husband and a wife in two different roles. His wife is Annika Sorenstam. The greatest female golfer of all time. And I had interviewed her years ago, for the New York Times. Right before she won.

00;16;51;02 - 00;17;18;05
Paul Sullivan
Senior U.S. Women's Open. And I knew that Mike was the ultimate lead that, like, super, super supportive. They've got two kids and he's there. And I had just such a wonderful, warm, conversation with with Mike. Bruce Filer is somebody that I, idolized and followed for for years. He's a wonderful writer who's had a varied career, but he wrote a book called The Council of of Dads Not Coming to Dads, A Council of Dads.

00;17;18;05 - 00;17;38;05
Paul Sullivan
And it's when he thought he was going to die, he had cancer that I was going to die. And he assembled this council. And coincidentally, I'm on a council of dads, for friends. Daughters, whose dad was one of them had passed away and talked to Bruce and how he thinks about fatherhood, but also how he thinks about a new way of work.

00;17;38;07 - 00;18;01;06
Paul Sullivan
He was a sort of deep thinker and very generous with his time. David Newsome was a brother from another mother. He lives in Portland. He's a chief marketing officer for a financial services firm. But the two of us feel, so similar about the power of our our calendars and the power of calendars to sort of bring about, equity, and change.

00;18;01;06 - 00;18;23;03
Paul Sullivan
And as a partner in his firm, he puts, a block every day of two hours to be with a son, to get his son ready for school, which is a big deal, because he's on the West Coast and his firm is based on the East Coast, and he's leading by, example. Eric Arthur l, a long time Deloitte consultant, done all kinds of research on the changing nature of work.

00;18;23;03 - 00;18;44;19
Paul Sullivan
He shared some of these findings with me. He had some international, lead dads. Mark Tom Hanna in Australia. Father of six. Completely embraced being a dad. And his kids are sort of in two tranches, three and three. And and his insights from, you know, what he learned from the first and how he applies it to the second.

00;18;44;22 - 00;19;24;23
Paul Sullivan
Said, incredible. Ian Dinwiddie funny, funny guy, friends with all the members of Coldplay, which is a complete non-sequitur, but I thought is pretty cool. And, you know, he's really working as I am, with businesses to help them, you know, change the way, they, they, interact with working parents. But, you know, I've also been, you know, lucky that I've met some remarkable men who reached out to me, from some of the earliest ones, Dave Andrews, from a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot, Alex McKenzie, also known as the Emperor of Ice Cream, Fernando Finn's dad.

00;19;24;23 - 00;19;49;03
Paul Sullivan
And Nick Brophy, two lead dads who met through their spouses. Who work on Wall Street. And both were just, you know, really honest with what it's like to be that, you know, go to parent, particularly in a world where their wives, their wives work in, in Hypermasculine world. And they were, you know, super thoughtful. We had some great experts talk about the research behind the changing roles of parents, with parents.

00;19;49;09 - 00;20;13;28
Paul Sullivan
But the pandemic had done to parenting what companies can do better. We opened up, a conversation. We helped tell some great stories. And probably one of the most compelling stories was around, Marvyn villas, elite dad, who I met 15 years ago playing poker in New York City and then kind of came back to his story on Facebook and then was sort of baffled.

00;20;13;28 - 00;20;38;20
Paul Sullivan
It was literally like I, you know, flipped 150 pages ahead in the book. And Marvin had been on an and then the Odyssey, a six, seven year odyssey to get parental rights to be part of his daughter's life. And it took him from New York, to London during the pandemic, cost him a small fortune, in legal bills, caused him to change his kid's career.

00;20;38;22 - 00;20;57;14
Paul Sullivan
But ultimately, he was victorious in this, you know, end to 2022. That's going to be the first holiday season, where he's not fighting to see his daughter, where he's he's just he's just with her, you know, but as I look at the year, on the whole, what I benefited most from is people who are willing to support me.

00;20;57;17 - 00;21;19;05
Paul Sullivan
Erotic author fair play was really early in reaching out to me and gave me, a lot of confidence, a lot of confidence to, to sort of keep chugging along in my lane and, and to make the company of dads, hopefully a meaningful partner, to what so many, working moms are doing to bring about, you know, equity in the home and equity at work.

00;21;19;07 - 00;21;39;10
Paul Sullivan
Two other groups that really stand out for me are Echo Mundo and Mother. Honestly, both invited me to their conferences this year and allowed me to participate and share the story and whatever inside the Company of Dads has. I also want to thank the board. The advisory board that I've put together. They're deeply knowledgeable.

00;21;39;10 - 00;22;05;16
Paul Sullivan
People care about the company that they're giving of their time. And, it means a lot because they're they're busy people who have gotten behind me. Now, as for the future of the company of dads, you know, I've never been one to tell people what I'm going to do. You know, I've always preferred to to sort of put my head down and, and let my work show what I, I've done, what I've accomplished.

00;22;05;16 - 00;22;26;16
Paul Sullivan
I mean, that that's a central tenet of being, during a show, don't tell. And it worked well in my previous life. But now I know people want to know where things are going. And so I'm going to do my best here. You know, as I said, I'm used to being on the other side of the microphone, not interviewing other people, not interviewing myself.

00;22;26;18 - 00;22;49;09
Paul Sullivan
So, you know, next year, first and foremost is about continued growth. We're adding a second podcast in January. We've already recorded, ten, 11 episodes. So we're going to let that fly. I see how it goes. You know, we're looking to bring on more contributors. We we've benefited from, private, you know, a half dozen dozen people this year who've come on board and shared their stories, and they've been crucial.

00;22;49;12 - 00;23;09;09
Paul Sullivan
And it's more crucial to have even more of them, because the company of dads is never, never about Paul Sullivan. It's about the dads, and it's about working moms and it's about families. And to tell those stories, we need as many different types of dads from as many different perspectives and backgrounds as we can to to tell the complete story.

00;23;09;12 - 00;23;36;11
Paul Sullivan
And on the financial side, the big news is, is early next year, we're going to open a seed round to raise capital to to grow the company of dads, to, to hire more staff, to bring on more contributors, to be able to do, some, some longer pieces, to be able to, you know, record a bunch of, the corporate work that we're doing, to, to be able to, to make it more accessible to a wider group of people, almost sort of like a subscription model, to sort of learn from.

00;23;36;11 - 00;23;58;19
Paul Sullivan
But you know, what doesn't change, in 2023 is our, our first principles. We want to bring all the dads together. There are 25 million of us, out there. You know, I talked about three different groups. We fall in, but, like, we're a big group of people, and we can be a positive group of people that can help lead to change at home.

00;23;58;21 - 00;24;19;17
Paul Sullivan
Change in the workplace, change in schools. You know, how many how many dads volunteer in schools? It's it's wonderful. It's joyful. I've been able to do it a lot. And and it's some of the best time, you know, that I get to spend in my day when those days come up. Second, we want to continue to partner with working moms to figure out what companies can do to adapt to the next normal.

00;24;19;19 - 00;24;49;12
Paul Sullivan
Third, we want, continue to help families fulfill their full potential. I mean, that's our goal. This is, Lee dads a part of part of a unit, and we want that unit to function at at the highest level, you know, but our ultimate guiding principle, for 2023, 24, 25 and beyond is we want to become the go to resource for everything to do with fathers, fatherhood, family support, working moms, kids who are loved and care for.

00;24;49;12 - 00;25;13;01
Paul Sullivan
We want to be the place that you go when you have those questions. We want our community dads to grow and thrive, but we also want that community to inspire other fathers to to do more, and to to be a bridge to working moms and corporate HR department. So they see the company of dads as a go to place, for doing what they need to do in their lives and at work.

00;25;13;01 - 00;25;36;21
Paul Sullivan
And, you know, as we said, you know, early days, we're all in this together. You know, this is not something that we're doing, you know, in, in a silo. We we are all in this together. And we know that together we can we can make things better. So thank you for 2022. Thank you for tuning, in in 2023.

00;25;36;21 - 00;25;47;09
Paul Sullivan
And I look forward to just, to so much more and to being part of the conversation, and to hopefully bringing about some, some positive change.

00;25;47;09 - 00;25;51;07
Unknown
At home and at work. And, I'm just very grateful.