EP96: How Did The Turkey Get On Your Table? This App Knows

Interview with Michael Perry / Creator of An App To Organize Families

HOSTED BY PAUL SULLIVAN

Michael Perry was living the tech founder's dream. He'd sold an app he created to Shopify, where he had a senior role. Then he and his wife started to have children, and the juggle became a struggle. It gave Michael an idea: What if he created an app to help families organize, delegate and communicate all the big and small tasks of family life? Listen to learn what Maple, the result, is looking to do to help with the logistics of life.

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Transcript

00;00;05;22 - 00;00;28;15
Paul Sullivan
Welcome to the Company of Dads podcast, where we explore the sweet, silly, strange and sublime aspects of being a lead dad in a world where men who are the go to parent aren't always accepted at work, among their friends or in the community for what they're doing. I'm your host, Paul Sullivan. Our podcast is just one of the many things we produce each week at the company of Dads have various features, including the lead dad of the week.

00;00;28;20 - 00;00;52;13
Paul Sullivan
We have our community both online and some in-person events as well. We have a new resource library for all fathers. The one stop shop to know about all of this is our newsletter, The Dad. So sign up at the Company of dads.com backslash. The dad. Today my guest is Michael Perry, founder of Maple, an app that helps families get on the same page and organize their lives.

00;00;52;16 - 00;01;17;14
Paul Sullivan
He's a successful technology entrepreneur who sold a startup called Kik, a virtual marketing assistant to Shopify, where he then worked for many years. It was during this time that he and his wife began having children, and as the juggle started, he struggled. Like many fathers and husbands, to keep it all straight. Enter Maple, which has tried to use technology to at least keep the logistics of life straight and orderly.

00;01;17;17 - 00;01;27;10
Paul Sullivan
The children are now two and four, and they are fully in the mix of parenting life. Michael, welcome to the Company Dads podcast.

00;01;27;12 - 00;01;30;05
Michael Perry
Oh, thank you so much for having me. Super excited to be here today.

00;01;30;08 - 00;01;42;23
Paul Sullivan
You know what was a moment when you thought, this is hectic? There has to be a better way to keep everything straight. And I think I might have an idea as to how to do it.

00;01;42;25 - 00;02;08;07
Michael Perry
Yeah. I mean, I very, very, vividly remember coming home from work. My son was probably 4 or 5 months old and, it was the my wife and I, prior to having children, had been together for, 13 years, longer actually, you know, 13 years. And, it was the first time in a relationship where I felt like we were living completely two separate lives.

00;02;08;07 - 00;02;41;05
Michael Perry
I had no idea what was going on. She was giving me updates when I come home from work about doctor's appointments. Visits, various things. It was going on, and, I was struggling deeply to manage a 200 plus person team at a company that had offices between the US and Canada, as well as just keeping my marriage intact and understanding what was going on with my young son's day to day life, and how I could be supportive and, and being an active participant in raising him.

00;02;41;07 - 00;03;13;11
Michael Perry
And so I actually started a journey of trying to find a solution that I thought, could kind of fill that void, kind of, you know, bridge that gap, so to speak, between my wife and I and just having a shared system in place and really didn't find anything. And then dawned on me, it was in that moment, after doing the research, that there was not really any great enterprise level tooling that allowed for parents to asynchronously, work better together to take care of their kids.

00;03;13;13 - 00;03;25;21
Michael Perry
And it was at that moment I decided to kind of leave Shopify and the work that we had been doing to try to simplify entrepreneurs ship, to kind of build maple and simplify the day in and day out job.

00;03;25;23 - 00;03;46;05
Paul Sullivan
Yeah, unpack some of that. For those of us who have trouble, operating our iPhones. When you say enterprise level solution. I know what that means from us talking to you, but explain to the listener what it means and why. It's important for what you're trying to achieve with Maple.

00;03;46;07 - 00;04;13;04
Michael Perry
Yeah. So I think we, you know, we all are living through, what will be seen as the great technology, revolution. And during this time, over the last 50 years, I think there's been to really large investments. One is consumer technology. That is from how we buy things on Amazon to how we use Instagram and keep in touch with our friends and family and anything that is, consumer centric.

00;04;13;07 - 00;04;39;08
Michael Perry
And then there's other big bucket of work that's been heavily invested in in the last 15 years, 50 years, and really in the last 25 years. And that's software as a service and software as a service. Companies build tooling that make our 9 to 5 jobs easier and more efficient. So that's building CRM like services, database warehousing, anything that can touch our 9 to 5 industrial jobs.

00;04;39;10 - 00;05;16;10
Michael Perry
And it has really streamlined and made any sort of 9 to 5 job more efficient. Those investments have been taking place in our home. We have yet to find a company. My belief is Maple being the first, that has really focused on building grade A level technology. Not in a consumer centric way, but in an enterprise software as a service way that brings applications to our home to bring more efficiency and streamline to the nine to 5 or 24 seven job that is that is being apparent.

00;05;16;12 - 00;05;34;04
Paul Sullivan
And, you know, be, you know, unpacked. Maple's a great name. I want to know what it stands for. I know it's an acronym. I want no stands for. And then I want to know how does it work? How does it actually connect people? How does it actually make, what is difficult? Parenting. None of us know is going to be difficult if we get into it.

00;05;34;04 - 00;05;41;21
Paul Sullivan
Even our friends tell us that it's going to be difficult. We don't believe that's right. How does it make it less difficult? Or at least, you know, more efficient?

00;05;41;23 - 00;06;19;17
Michael Perry
Well, the name Maple is an acronym for Make All Parents Lives Easier. It was originally, founded in the deep purpose that, you know, trees play a critical role in giving us life and serve a very meaningful purpose in terms of shelter and, producing fruits and various things for us to thrive as a society. And so I really wanted to build a company grounded in that same purpose and function that provides us, the unique ability to care.

00;06;19;20 - 00;06;41;00
Michael Perry
You know, I think for parents, I've been on this long journey now speaking to thousands of parents of why it's not easy. What could make parents lives easier, why is it so incredibly hard? You know, there's different phases of raising a child, but the commonality is similar to entrepreneurship. Each phase of caregiving brings a whole new set of problems that you've never had before.

00;06;41;02 - 00;07;06;21
Michael Perry
And typically underneath each of those phases is a tremendous amount of disorganization. And today's world, parents are actively, in most cases, trying to care for their children. Some of them are caring for their parents. Some of them are trying to maintain a marriage. Some of them are trying to maintain and maintain a job. Some of them are trying to maintain personal, physical and mental health.

00;07;06;23 - 00;07;30;14
Michael Perry
And so you're doing more than you've ever done before without the support of technology. Or every other job has allowed us to take on more work without completely going off the rails. And so for Maple, when you look at, you know, working parents or people who work successfully or unsuccessfully co-parenting so much about where technology has shifted in the workplace is around cloud collaboration.

00;07;30;16 - 00;07;53;17
Michael Perry
And so Maple has built a platform that there's a lot of little apps that live on that platform. So if you're trying to use, organize the home, we built an app that allows you to put everything into folders, whether that's your kid's school schedule, planning a ski trip, or summer camp. The top five things people actually plan for in Maple are chores and household maintenance, their finances.

00;07;53;19 - 00;08;17;07
Michael Perry
Meal prep and grocery shopping. And then their kids and themselves actually personal as a folder is a very popular thing on Maple. And inside each of those folders, you can invite somebody to collaborate with. So if you have a kids folder, you can invite your spouse or your, your ex or someone you're co-parenting with, or a nanny or anyone in that orbit that you are working with to care for those children.

00;08;17;10 - 00;08;39;01
Michael Perry
And inside of that folder, you can collaborate with that person on a to do list, a shopping list, calendar, events. You can chat directly inside of it. We just launched a new expense sheet tracker so you can manage finances together directly inside of it. And we've also launched a weather tracker so that you can place wherever you're going or wherever you live.

00;08;39;04 - 00;08;58;23
Michael Perry
As a weather, tile directly inside of your maple folder. So if you're planning or packing or dressing your kids in the morning, you have a good pulse of what's going on. And these simple things that haven't been designed for parents that have been designed for the workplace make a huge difference on people's ability to work better together.

00;08;58;25 - 00;09;09;02
Michael Perry
And to really reduce the stress and overhead of trying to remember what everything that's going on. Maple plays a leading role in satisfying that desire that parents have to be organizing.

00;09;09;05 - 00;09;18;22
Paul Sullivan
You know, I'm still fixated on the grocery list part. So, like, can you guarantee that if we use Maple, I won't have like three bags of shredded cheese all the same, and no milk it hasn't.

00;09;18;24 - 00;09;25;00
Michael Perry
I mean, it's it's one of our most popular features. I mean, last time I checked, something like more sour cream.

00;09;25;00 - 00;09;28;07
Paul Sullivan
We only had mangoes once a week. I don't need this much, I know.

00;09;28;09 - 00;09;29;29
Michael Perry
Are you. Are you Taco Tuesday family?

00;09;29;29 - 00;09;32;19
Paul Sullivan
Just taco Thursday, Taco Thursday I.

00;09;32;19 - 00;09;52;20
Michael Perry
Go Thursday, okay? You're you're you're mixing up. You know, grocery listing is one of our most popular features. And obviously, I know you're connected to Eve. She has an incredible story about her husband being upset about getting the blueberries. Yeah. The actually, it was a conversation. A conversation with Eve that I had a long time ago.

00;09;52;23 - 00;10;09;16
Michael Perry
And, you know, similar to the material she puts out, this is actually, I think, even before I read Fair Play. You know, she said, like, how did the mustard get in your refrigerator? And that was just like, a simple thing that dawned on me that, yeah, my mustard is in the refrigerator. Likely because my wife realized we were out of mustard.

00;10;09;16 - 00;10;32;21
Michael Perry
And, you know, she ordered the mustard. And so a shared grocery list in a very weird way brings a tremendous on a harmony, to people who otherwise feel frustrated that they're the one carrying the load just for simply buying the shredded lettuce and, you know, sour cream, so to speak. So it's an incredibly popular feature. And we built it again in an enterprise best in class way where we do things to auto fill.

00;10;32;21 - 00;10;44;00
Michael Perry
So it's easier to type. You remember it. We do all kinds of features that, you know, you would expect in some sort of 9 to 5 job for technology to make your life easier. We apply that directly to parenting.

00;10;44;02 - 00;11;09;08
Paul Sullivan
You know, the eve that that you just mentioned is Eve Radtke. She's the author of Of Fair Play. She's a remarkable woman. She's she's advisory board member of the company dads. She's fantastic. But one of the things she talks about is the mental load of parenting, the mental loaded Citigroup phrase. And she talks about, you know, there's so much emphasis on on moms and what moms are going to do, the sort of silent labor.

00;11;09;08 - 00;11;34;09
Paul Sullivan
And it's a burden to some, there's obviously something that the company of Dads is working to unpack to work against, to show that men can can take on that mental load as well. But in in the case of maple, how does maple, you know, strive to bring fathers in more? And given that this is enterprise level software, do you have any data on how you know couples are using Maple?

00;11;34;11 - 00;11;44;13
Michael Perry
We do. Yeah, that there's a lot of different things there that I'd like to touch on, if that's okay. And I'll try my best not to take up the entire airspace answering it.

00;11;44;15 - 00;11;48;05
Paul Sullivan
I'll just interrupt you with more, you know, comments about sour cream and.

00;11;48;09 - 00;11;50;22
Michael Perry
Okay, that works because I totally sense.

00;11;50;24 - 00;11;51;20
Paul Sullivan
That.

00;11;51;22 - 00;12;11;15
Michael Perry
That's how that works. You know, what's interesting is we've now we're on our second version of Maple and the first version of Maple was a lot of prototyping, a lot of feedback. One of the largest things that people have struggled with is like, how do I get my husband to use this product? There's a couple of things that we did that I think make a huge difference.

00;12;11;17 - 00;12;53;13
Michael Perry
And it's really kind of a separating piece between us and maybe any other product that's out there. One is, you know, we have done a lot of messaging and communication and branding around the fact that some people have fallen into, I think, a very traditional mindset about what it looks like to be a man at home. And I think that that world, obviously, we continue to brand and market around the reality that what it takes to be a caregiver as a, as a man has changed many, many times, from, you know, being hunters and gatherers and having to chase down antelope to going to, work in a factory to bring home

00;12;53;13 - 00;13;22;19
Michael Perry
the bacon. You know, all of those things have kind of shifted. And I think that the number one thing that we as providers and caregivers to both our spouses and partners, where we are marching into an era where emotional care and support and involvement is the best form of fatherhood. Right? I have not one time in my 37 years of existence, had a run down the street with the bow and arrow and shooting antelope to bring home to feed my family, right?

00;13;22;20 - 00;13;24;22
Michael Perry
So like that definition of if.

00;13;24;22 - 00;13;32;16
Paul Sullivan
You if you lived in, suburban Connecticut like I do, there are deer everywhere. And there are moments where I'm sure if I had a bow and arrow spike.

00;13;32;18 - 00;13;53;10
Michael Perry
I sure got it on it. And by the way, I am not discounting. My wife is from Maine. There's a lot of her, her friends who hunt for survival. I'm not saying that that doesn't exist in today's world, but, you know, for the most part, most of us, at least in first of all countries, we are having the benefit of going to supermarkets and taking that even a step further.

00;13;53;10 - 00;14;25;15
Michael Perry
There's a lot of people are just ordering their shit on Instacart and not even going to the grocery store. And so I think what we've done is we've made it really, really cool in some weird way. And I think a lot of it is the fact that we have brought in working level software into the home that there's a familiarity, almost like slack, that just opening up the app, having everything color coded in a calendar, being able to connect your work calendar, being able to be the digital central hub of your house has actually been a very strong step forward in terms of that invite rate and that acceptance rate in the households, which

00;14;25;15 - 00;14;47;21
Michael Perry
we're now setting north of 20% on a weekly basis, to get their partner to collaborate with them. So, like, we have just level set this thing of like, let's try to remove the anger and the negative stigmatization around, you know, you're not doing this and I'm not doing that. And, you know, pitting people against each other and really making it about like, hey, this is our life's work.

00;14;47;23 - 00;15;16;28
Michael Perry
Raising children is our life's work. Raising children is our purpose. Caring for our kids is our purpose. And for a very long time, that purpose look like hunting and gathering. That purpose look like working 80 hours a week in a mill to make $2 a day. That purpose looked very different than it does in 2023, and I think that there's been a huge generational shift of people who are willing and want to be more active in the home, which is also been a huge blessing for us.

00;15;17;00 - 00;15;40;27
Michael Perry
From a data perspective. Yeah. I mean, I think that there's two things we think about, obviously, you being a pioneer, thinking about the mental load, which is like, you know, again, the mustard in the refrigerator, the kids needing a dentist appointment, all of those things that we have definitely seen a significant uptake in participation and the way that we measure that at Maple, obviously, it's by who's inputting what versus who's taking action on what.

00;15;41;00 - 00;16;05;10
Michael Perry
So I think that there's the actual mental load of things, and then there's the actual physical, work at home that is like, who's doing what? And Maple playing a key role by our to do list and seeing work naturally be divvied up, that we continue to monitor. And our hope is by the end of this year, actually publishing one of our first reports on household equality and staying organized and collaborative.

00;16;05;13 - 00;16;18;28
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. And so I want to unpack that. So the data it maybe you can see if you have you know, I don't have three people on a folder or something like that. Yep. You can see who is actually what inputting it. Inputting.

00;16;19;04 - 00;16;19;16
Michael Perry
Yep.

00;16;19;16 - 00;16;37;06
Paul Sullivan
And then can you also see is there a way to sort of check off the list after it's done. Yeah. And so then you can see that is checking off the list. Yeah. Let's say you don't want to give away the punchline here, but what what are some rough estimates as not just what the split is now. But are you seeing any movement toward, you know, when you launch this?

00;16;37;08 - 00;16;54;25
Michael Perry
We are seeing you know, we are seeing significant movement. Like I said, when we first started, you know, we saw an invite rate, let's say a participation rate, more so of like 3 to 5%, very, very, very low. Now, like I said, in a short period of time, less than a year, we're seeing that north of 20%.

00;16;54;28 - 00;17;19;26
Michael Perry
So by no means is it 5050. We are. We launched Maple with a campaign. It's not 1950, it's 5050. We are very much about building equity in the household and creating equal partnership. We try our best. And I think this has been a very interesting mental model. We try our best to, to even remind people that you wouldn't be in a workforce environment.

00;17;19;28 - 00;17;51;11
Michael Perry
You would have you wouldn't have a healthy workforce in your work, working environment. If you treated your colleagues the way that you treated your life partner. If you expected your colleagues to do everything, and you didn't show up in those relationships, that would create strife at work. And just reminding people that we have to treat our life partners as life partners, as co-founders to what you are building at home, and not just some subordinate spouse that you married and expect to do your laundry for you.

00;17;51;14 - 00;18;00;04
Michael Perry
And so, you know, our goal is to get that number to 50%. That is our company mission. That is our company goal to see better participation and equality in our app. And we're on our way.

00;18;00;07 - 00;18;21;26
Paul Sullivan
You know, again, I live in a part of the country outside of, of New York City where, so many people I know have either, MBAs from for business school, business school degrees, where part of it is you have to collaborate or they have, lotteries where you go in there. And this method is all about discussing things and, you know, sort of the coming up of what you just said.

00;18;21;28 - 00;18;27;00
Paul Sullivan
There's certain ways that people act in the workplace, you know,

00;18;27;02 - 00;18;27;27
Michael Perry
Virtual.

00;18;27;27 - 00;18;47;11
Paul Sullivan
Or in-person. That doesn't always carry, over at home. And we say at the company dads at that resentment, you know, doesn't did bloom fully formed ten years into a relationship? It it builds up. It's an accretion of little things in the workplace that that would happen because you'd have these discussions. You'd have these three, six year views.

00;18;47;14 - 00;19;21;04
Paul Sullivan
You know, Maple, I don't want to put too much pressure on you. It is a tool. It's an organizing tool. It's help, you know, to make life more efficient. But, I mean, what do you think? You know, a tool like Maple or just, you know, freely associate here? What do you think can be done to bring some of those the positive parts of the workplace, traits, collaboration, discussion in a rigorous debate to bring them into the home so that you're talking about things in the way that you would in your 9 to 5 job and not just assuming that somebody else is going to do something for you.

00;19;21;06 - 00;19;42;13
Michael Perry
Yeah. So, I mean, this is the problem that we are right now, now that we feel like we've built a platform and we built the right level technology and application to that platform, how do we build, efficiencies to bridge that gap in terms of the working relationship? Right. Because you can give people all the tooling in the world, or the good thing is you could bring a course to water, but you can't force it to drink.

00;19;42;15 - 00;20;06;07
Michael Perry
What can we do to actually increase, productivity at home? And relationship building at home and communication at home, and the working pieces of a household that are required to be successful in the workplace. So there's a couple different things, Paul, that I can definitely share. And some that we're going to you're you and your audience are going to have to hold off to until, you know, 2024.

00;20;06;09 - 00;20;31;05
Michael Perry
I have a deep, deep, deep, deep belief that may be, really popular. And that is, I think most men, not all men. I'm speaking specifically to heterosexual couples right now. I'm sure that things are very different in the LGBTQ, I homes. But in most heterosexual couples, most men believe that they're a better version of their father.

00;20;31;08 - 00;20;55;26
Michael Perry
Right? And that they are, you know, they saw what their father did, and they're now trying to do a better version of that. In most cases, that simply is not enough with the times. And so I think oftentimes with the data that we have inside of Maple, the calendars that we have inside of Maple, the insights of what people are playing for inside of Maple, there is going to be an investment that we're making right now.

00;20;55;27 - 00;21;19;13
Michael Perry
Brides, I don't want to say coaching because that's not the right way that we're looking at it. Guidance and suggestions on ways that people can work better together, or how households can create more equality at home. That is what we're working on right now. We can see based on behaviors, based on machine learning, based on time and day usage of the app, based on a lot of different factors.

00;21;19;13 - 00;21;46;19
Michael Perry
How we can make suggestions on things that an individual might want to consider doing. I think that where a lot of shortcomings are taking place inside of the home is that the bar has been set so phenomenally alone, I don't. I am someone who does not think that husbands, most husbands, are malicious. I think that the bar has been set so low that they believe what they are doing their wives should be thankful for because their wives have it easier than their mothers have it.

00;21;46;21 - 00;22;12;20
Michael Perry
And that's just not the right way to approach the problem. And that's not going to be the right solution, for the future. And so we are, addressing this very heads on and we are super, super, super excited about some of the things that we're working on right now, to be able to provide the 360 feedback and the things that you talk about that oftentimes, some someone else is able to give guidance on.

00;22;12;22 - 00;22;30;05
Paul Sullivan
Yeah, that's great. You know, all the debate is, is, is raging over, you know, people are going to return to the office, they're going to work remotely. What what's going to happen? We're not going to settle it on this podcast. But, you know, not all fathers can be there all the time, even when they want to be.

00;22;30;06 - 00;22;35;23
Paul Sullivan
And I know you have to travel, to fundraise and create interest in Maple. Last time we talked to you were traveling.

00;22;35;24 - 00;22;36;09
Michael Perry
Yeah.

00;22;36;11 - 00;22;54;16
Paul Sullivan
That takes, the, you know, we talk about the mental load, but that's an emotional tax, on fathers. But, you know, having talked to other people, Maple, I know that there are certain features that some more long term planning that allow, all parents to sort of buy in, you know, we can, you know, we can be in our hotel room where we are.

00;22;54;16 - 00;23;31;23
Paul Sullivan
We can load it up with, all those great nights at Trader Joe's that we want. But that's not really as helpful as, you know, taking out some of the longer has it talked to us about not the sort of more immediate like scheduling and, grocery store run type features, which are very important, obviously, but some of the longer term planning that perhaps the parent and it could be the mom, could be dad, who's traveling, who's not always in the house, can can take on and share, you know, some of that, mental load to sort of counteract for, for the emotional tax that, that being away incurs.

00;23;31;25 - 00;23;54;04
Michael Perry
Yeah. I think first you touched on something that's really, really, really important. And I think about this a tremendous amount. I think parenting actually, in today's world is very much kind of like the remote workforce. I have a team of people that I work with to build a company, and we're not physically sitting in the same spot once in a while.

00;23;54;04 - 00;24;13;24
Michael Perry
We're in the same physical spot. We come together for a offsite. And, next week we're having a physical get together with a couple of teammates who work in a particular department. But for the most part, day in and day out, we're trying to make it happen from different locations. You and your life partner right now are trying to make it happen from different locations.

00;24;13;24 - 00;24;36;11
Michael Perry
Me and my life partner are trying to make it happen from different locations. And I think historically speaking, so much again, about how parenting has worked before was that it was very much parenting was very much tied to a physical location. Caregiving was very much tied to a physical location. Are you inside of your house? Are you physically inside of a grocery store?

00;24;36;17 - 00;24;58;12
Michael Perry
Are you able to cook a meal? Right? Yeah. Parenting in the future is very asynchronous. 90% of kids ideal working parents. So that the yeah, I'm on the road for fundraising. It's emotionally, up. I'm not going to like being away from my kids for seven days. And they're young and they're growing almost every single day. And my two year old is becoming more conversational every single day.

00;24;58;12 - 00;25;17;09
Michael Perry
I left and I came back, I felt like ten years had gone by. It's awful. Most parents are going to work every single day. And so I think that the larger thing is, yeah, I want to actually center the conversation. I'm make sure if you're a working dad or a working parent, you're on the road. How can you still be an active participant?

00;25;17;11 - 00;25;38;16
Michael Perry
But I think the larger thing, which, is the most important thing when we think about the use case of Maple, is that you should be ongoing in asynchronous way, caring for your children so that where you are at has zero bearing on your ability to contribute to the mental load, whether that's planning a camping trip or planning swim practice or planning a dentist appointment.

00;25;38;19 - 00;25;55;23
Michael Perry
You don't need to be physically in your house or dependent on your wife for those things to get done. You should be able to participate in raising your children and do that from everywhere. And Maple is a unique tool that really allows for that to kind of happen and to exhibit, you know, things that we are working on in the future.

00;25;55;23 - 00;26;16;12
Michael Perry
And, you know, it's still some time away, but we look at Maple as a full stack super application that you would be able to make purchases inside it from top to bottom, from planning to executing. Everything should be able to take place in Maple, whether that's for a camping trip, a birthday party, or Christmas shopping, or grocery shopping, or planning a dentist appointment.

00;26;16;14 - 00;26;40;03
Michael Perry
You don't really have to leave the app because the app is the digital hub of your home, because that is what asynchronous work looks like. So I think it's so much about what you're doing, which I think is so important, is bringing to light this conversation that there's many forms of parenting and just the previous way that we have done everything across many aspects of our life, is no longer that great a standard anymore.

00;26;40;06 - 00;26;49;15
Michael Perry
And so we have to be willing to lean into these new roles and these new responsibilities and these new opportunities as parents and working individuals.

00;26;49;17 - 00;27;06;24
Paul Sullivan
Michael Perry, founder of Maple, thank you for being my guest today in the Company Dads podcast. Last question for you. Look at the phone. Look at the app. What's the top thing you have to do once we get off this podcast.

00;27;06;27 - 00;27;08;11
Michael Perry
In Maple or in Life.

00;27;08;18 - 00;27;16;00
Paul Sullivan
In Maple? Is it maple life? It's it's kind of. Okay. I actually at Ted Lasso. Maple is life. Life is maple. Come on.

00;27;16;03 - 00;27;49;06
Michael Perry
I actually have two top things, and I can share both of them. Yeah. One is time sensitive. I need to buy Halloween costumes for my kids and myself. That is on my list of things today to do. And that won't be after business card. They'll be during lunch. And the second thing, which I'm sure every parent can relate with, that my wife has actually put in Maple that I took off of her plate because Maple is designed to do things like that is to proactively support your partner, is to finish my school's kindergarten application that is due by the end of this month.

00;27;49;08 - 00;27;56;18
Michael Perry
Oh yeah. So I am working on a school application that is going to. Those are the top two things for me. Maple by Halloween costumes. Finish my son's school application.

00;27;56;26 - 00;28;05;20
Paul Sullivan
And just make sure on that application you put down that you discipline your child in three different foreign languages. That's the way to ease the path. And you know what?

00;28;05;23 - 00;28;08;27
Michael Perry
That's it. That's what's missing. I'm gonna be sure to put that on there.

00;28;08;29 - 00;28;13;09
Paul Sullivan
Michael Perry, thank you again for joining me on the company. Dad's podcast. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

00;28;13;11 - 00;28;15;17
Michael Perry
Thanks, Bob.

00;28;15;20 - 00;28;35;26
Paul Sullivan
Thank you for listening to another episode of the Company Dads podcast. Really appreciate you tuning in week after week, trying to use this moment here to thank the people who make it possible. Number one, of course, Elder Mira, who is our podcast editor. We also have Skip Terry home to many of you know, for lead diaries. He's taken over our social media.

00;28;35;26 - 00;28;56;16
Paul Sullivan
Terry Brennan is helping us with our audience development. And Emily Serban is there, each and every day helping with the web development and can't do any of this without, an amazing board, of advisors. So I just want to say thank you to all of you who help. And I want to say thank you to everyone who listens.

00;28;56;22 - 00;28;59;28

And, hopefully you'll tune in again next week. Thanks so much.