EP111: Want To Learn To Be a Better Husband?

Interview With Zach Watson / Fair Play Coach, Recovering Manchild

HOSTED BY PAUL SULLIVAN

Two words could change your married life for the better: mental load. It's a phrase coined by Eve Rodsky that has spawned a movement to rethink how work in the home is allocated. It's not so much about what gets done as who thinks of that what. Zach Watson, a star dad creator on Instagram and Tik Tok, has so fully embraced the teachings of Fair Play that he recently left his tech sales job to go all in on coaching men in the Fair Play method of being a partner. At the crux of it is discussing who carries the mental load for which tasks. Listen to learn how to improve your communication and happiness in marriage. 

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Transcript

00;00;05;07 - 00;00;24;22
Paul Sullivan
Welcome to the Company of Dads podcast, where we explore the sweet, silly, strange and sublime aspects of being a dad and 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 the company dads.

00;00;24;23 - 00;00;45;07
Paul Sullivan
We have various features, including the leader of the week. We have our monthly meet ups. We have a new resource library for all fathers. The one stop shop for all of this is our newsletter The Dad. To sign up today at the Company of dad.com backslash the dad.

00;00;45;09 - 00;01;11;23
Paul Sullivan
Today our guest is Zach Watson. Also known as Real Zach Pink Share on Instagram. A bit of a mouthful, but it's worth typing it in. He's a former math teacher turned tech salesperson who is now coaching other men to be better husband and father. He is, in his words, and by the pink shirt that he's wearing. For those of you watching this on video. A recovering man child. One throughline is his innate ability to communicate important ideas with an often light touch through video.

00;01;11;26 - 00;01;33;20
Paul Sullivan
He started doing this when he was a math teacher. Now a millennial dad of one with a wife, Alyssa, Zach has been creating content aimed at working moms and lead dads to help men realize the mental load of parenting that women often carry. He's doing it in a funny but insightful way, and his work has garnered hundreds of thousands of followers and a burgeoning coaching business.

00;01;33;22 - 00;01;37;11
Paul Sullivan
Zach, welcome to the Company Dads podcast.

00;01;37;14 - 00;01;39;17
Zach Watson
And that was a hell of an intro. Thank you.

00;01;39;19 - 00;01;46;13
Paul Sullivan
Hey. Welcome back. Whoo! When you were a kid who carried the mental load in your in your family.

00;01;46;15 - 00;01;59;29
Zach Watson
I think my mom did. And she still does. But I think more importantly, it. What am I anticipating? Part of your question is, is like, what influence did I have was that I think.

00;02;00;04 - 00;02;08;22
Paul Sullivan
Zach, the way this work, I ask a question, Zach. And then you answer, then you wait for that question. Okay? This is my podcast, not yours. I'm not on your Instagram page, which is so much. All right.

00;02;08;26 - 00;02;15;17
Zach Watson
I said, yeah, I, my mom definitely did. She almost the mental load.

00;02;15;19 - 00;02;31;05
Paul Sullivan
What was the setup like to in your in your family? Did both parents work out of the home. Did did you know was there a trade off? You're in your 30s, so that this wasn't super long ago. Tell a bit about that. That upbringing.

00;02;31;08 - 00;02;52;03
Zach Watson
Yeah. Both my parents worked. My mom was a teacher for 36 years. And, actually, this was the thing that I was going to bring it up is that she was the main breadwinner for most of my life. And my dad, has had a lot of different jobs, I think, throughout his life and never really stopped one career.

00;02;52;05 - 00;03;23;08
Zach Watson
They're both now, coaches at Dean College in Massachusetts. But, yeah, I mean, she then made breadwinner, and I think they're both super involved in my upbringing from from them telling tales of me as a child, infant and toddler. Sounded like they're very much like a team effort when it came to managing my puke and diaper training and potty training and all the different things that they had to learn along the way.

00;03;23;11 - 00;03;26;22
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. When did you meet your wife, Alyssa?

00;03;26;24 - 00;03;32;21
Zach Watson
2013. Just, we had our ten year anniversary of dating, two months ago.

00;03;32;24 - 00;03;50;08
Paul Sullivan
All right. And, you know, so you had a good period in which you were, you know, on your own. You meet Alyssa, you get married. Your daughter is two and a half. As you can tell, I'm very good with simple arithmetic here. So there is a period of time, you know, in which you were.

00;03;50;08 - 00;04;03;21
Paul Sullivan
You know, I look back at my own life, the sort of halcyon period of, a married couple doing all kinds of fun things that married couples do not. The kids aren't fun. But with the freedom of not having kids, did the conversation of mental load even.

00;04;03;24 - 00;04;04;22
Zach Watson
Come up.

00;04;04;24 - 00;04;12;10
Paul Sullivan
Back then? Or you just, you know, doing your own careers and enjoying spending time with each other?

00;04;12;12 - 00;04;35;10
Zach Watson
It's a great question. I think it did. And I don't know quite how it was articulated. Couple months ago, Alyssa and I were trying to figure out how do I make my content more palatable to send to the not yet dads, but the main children that aren't even willing to say that their main children or recovering mid children.

00;04;35;12 - 00;04;46;25
Zach Watson
And she's like, you know, back in 2020, before I was pregnant in 2019, like I had a hard time talking about this with you that I was like, damn cold out.

00;04;46;27 - 00;04;57;03
Paul Sullivan
But you're not you're not putting that on your Instagram page, right? I don't want that. I don't I don't want that on Instagram page. I don't want to know that you were flawed at some point.

00;04;57;06 - 00;05;19;28
Zach Watson
Yeah. I think the fact that, the I was at one point, one of those people that was defensive and it was really hard to hard to hear feedback. Was definitely something that I went through. I think it was there's an article that should sound about mental or domestic labor that spoke more about its invisibility.

00;05;20;00 - 00;05;35;16
Zach Watson
And she, like, I don't know if she actually sent it to me. We tried looking back in into our text from a couple of years ago and couldn't find it, but she remember seeing it and be like, oh, I wish that I could understand this and was scared to share it with me. And I think if you.

00;05;35;16 - 00;05;38;18
Paul Sullivan
Ask her, why did you ever ask her why she was scared to share it with you?

00;05;38;20 - 00;06;04;29
Zach Watson
I think she was mostly afraid that I was going to get defensive and like, feel attacked about it. We don't know what the actual article was for sure, but it was pretty much validating a lot of the experience that she had in the household around managing a lot of the things that go on. I think she probably close to 90% of the mental load that she's owned throughout a lot of our, our marriage to other.

00;06;04;29 - 00;06;24;14
Zach Watson
Even when we would talk about our wedding, I think a lot of guys take a step back and let you know their their wives manage the wedding. And I always remember being proud of the fact like I had I had three preferences that I articulated and one is I wanted cupcakes. I wanted bow ties, and I wanted the color purple.

00;06;24;16 - 00;06;46;10
Zach Watson
And I got those things. And it was funny how for a while I was so proud of that. I was like, yeah, like, I, I had a say in my, my marriage and in the wedding itself. And like, looking back, there were so many things I could have stepped in. I could have I could have looked for so much more mental load that I could have put onto my plate.

00;06;46;10 - 00;06;56;06
Zach Watson
I think there was a lot of preference that she wanted to own, and I think there was also a lot that I could have. I could have found easier ways to be a part of that.

00;06;56;08 - 00;07;10;08
Paul Sullivan
I love this image that because you are a recovering man child, you've seen the error of your ways. But I have this vision of you in full manchild mode being like cupcakes, purple bow tie.

00;07;10;10 - 00;07;12;12
Zach Watson
Yeah, they're all good choices.

00;07;12;13 - 00;07;29;02
Paul Sullivan
I think they're solid choices. I mean, a cupcake is in particular, you know, now that you have a daughter, a cupcake is probably the best delivery vehicle for a sweet treat. You know, you don't have to cut it. You don't need a fork. You can just bite into. It's kind of like the way a hotdog delivers, you know, relish and mustard to our system.

00;07;29;02 - 00;07;45;07
Paul Sullivan
It's just sort of optimally designed. What's the moment, in your marriage, in your life when you started thinking differently about, you know, not just, you know, division of labor, but actually ownership.

00;07;45;07 - 00;07;46;05
Zach Watson
Of.

00;07;46;07 - 00;07;52;04
Paul Sullivan
Labor within your within your family, within your home.

00;07;52;06 - 00;08;18;18
Zach Watson
I think the a huge defining moment for me was when I did, when I read the Fair Play book, I had already been making videos talking about being a father. I already had a bit of an audience on TikTok and over that year, I was slowly discovering how much more there was to motherhood, and there was to parenting and and partnering that I was not owning.

00;08;18;18 - 00;08;44;29
Zach Watson
And I, I was talking about being on parental leave, and I took three months of paternity leave and a lot of people were really amazed by the amount of time that I was putting in and how much I was trying to be equitable in that time. And I thought I was the shit like I thought I was, I thought I was carrying a huge load of parenthood that a lot of other guys were.

00;08;45;02 - 00;09;07;18
Zach Watson
I, I saw myself above a lot of other guys, and it wasn't until the following summer in 2022 that a couple other mom creators that I followed and like salt, like colleagues, what they said, yeah, you should really consider fair play. They didn't. Because as I think the way that I talked, they would not have thought that I needed help in that area.

00;09;07;21 - 00;09;35;17
Zach Watson
But I read it and did like kind of pretty real time reflections. I would read a chapter and jump on a TikTok and make a video about it. And in that time, I remember thinking how hard it was to swallow a couple of the ideas in there, like all time is equal, and that even if you're not getting paid for it, like there's some sacrifice happening, like there's always prioritization happening.

00;09;35;19 - 00;09;44;28
Zach Watson
I think. I think fair play is the most replicable thing that I went through that like all guys could experience.

00;09;45;01 - 00;10;04;05
Paul Sullivan
You know, for listeners, you're wondering, what are we talking about? Fair play. It is not a video game. It is not a, yoga retreat. Fair Play is a remarkable book written by Everett Key. Everett Key is a friend of mine. She's an advisor to company dads. She's a Harvard trained attorney.

00;10;04;07 - 00;10;04;25
Zach Watson
Who.

00;10;04;25 - 00;10;25;29
Paul Sullivan
Was thinking about a lot of things in her own life with her. Her husband, her three kids. And the book has, it really gripping intro in which, she's in a car and gets a text from her husband saying, you didn't get the blueberries. She loses it. People like, violently losing it over blueberries.

00;10;25;29 - 00;10;41;14
Paul Sullivan
And the term that Zach and I have been talking about, mental load, is one that she is really popularized. And that was she was, you know, wildly successful on a career. Her husband is very successful in his career, but she was carrying the mental load of the house. And all the other the kids and everything else.

00;10;41;14 - 00;11;03;15
Paul Sullivan
And it spawned a movement. It spawned spawned, you know, coaching. I know Zach, you're certified as, a fair play coach. When you were going through that and reading the book, did did your wife Alyssa read it at the same time? Yeah, I know you said you make it to videos, but were you discussing some of these issues at the crux of the book is, is it's very actionable, a lot of tips.

00;11;03;15 - 00;11;17;09
Paul Sullivan
But but he was also created a series of cards. So you can sort of gamify the discussions, you know, so that people can have, more robust conversations. Is that what you and Alyssa were doing? Are you were meditating more of it, you know, on your own?

00;11;17;11 - 00;11;28;18
Zach Watson
Yeah. So fun fact, she still hasn't read the book. She, she's kind of relied on my understanding of it to have it be implemented into our lives.

00;11;28;20 - 00;11;41;15
Paul Sullivan
So she's trusting you because the book is called Fair Play, that you'll be fair and not, like, skew things like. No, no, no, it says here, the recovering manchild needs to sleep until ten on Sundays. No.

00;11;41;18 - 00;12;04;11
Zach Watson
Yeah. I mean, I think I think she's seen a significant amount of changes that we've, So the cards, I think a lot of people have a misconception that it's a card game. I see it more as like, conversation starter and structure. We've done we've done a couple, like, sessions of using the cards to, like, get that conversation kicked off.

00;12;04;12 - 00;12;30;16
Zach Watson
I remember the first time we sat down with them. So it's it's a list of 100 household responsibilities that she recommends that over that time in her research, seem to be like the a pretty good like spread of the responsibilities. So you identify how many exist in your home. You identify kind of what what you guys want to take accountability for.

00;12;30;16 - 00;12;58;26
Zach Watson
And you fully define the tasks, like when you sign up for a job offer, right? You read what are the the job responsibilities. And in our partnerships, in our parenthood, there's no there's no job requirement section that we read through. Like, I'm going to manage all of the appointments and everything around our pets, and there's no job description that talks about like, okay, you have to manage the portal and the login information for that.

00;12;58;26 - 00;13;21;28
Zach Watson
You have to, make sure that their vaccinations are updated and that when we moved to a new town, that you make sure that the rabies shot gets, you know, sent into like the town hall or something. And so I think there's a huge part of, especially when you're finding inequities and there's issues in the house around like.

00;13;22;00 - 00;13;49;23
Zach Watson
Typically mom being upset that dad is not putting his caring his fair share. It's an opportunity to really define what Sarah Sherrell looks like. To define what? What the load is on a given responsibility. So if he's mowing the lawn, he's like, yeah, I own all the long Carol outdoor and she's owning all the laundry. It can be really easy and a bit too simple to say, oh, she has one chore.

00;13;49;23 - 00;14;08;19
Zach Watson
He has one chore. But let's look at the frequency. Let's look at the amount of thinking that's required. Lawn care. You have to keep an eye on it. Maybe you just have a weekly cadence period. Sometimes you're a little bit more paying attention. Now, when the grass grows, if it rains extra, you have to wait an extra day to to do it.

00;14;08;21 - 00;14;30;12
Zach Watson
Laundry? There's a good amount to and probably a significant amount more. There's a higher frequency. The domestic labor itself is just a larger amount. But there's also more thinking, like, oh yeah, one of our kids has a thing on Thursday. We need to make sure that the laundry is done in time for that. And we have to there's a two step process to make sure that actually makes it to the dryer.

00;14;30;12 - 00;14;53;29
Zach Watson
And we have to rewatch the clothes ahead of time so that conversation really look, dive deeper into what are the responsibilities that are causing us the biggest problems. We identified dishes at night were the first one. We really attacked that in trash. They're really simple. I was doing it the majority of the time, but she was still owning a ton of the mental load of it.

00;14;54;01 - 00;15;13;29
Zach Watson
So we much further defined what it looks like to have like a clean kitchen at night once the dishes are done. In the frequency and way that we go about unloading the trash. And does it mean that we put it out on the porch right outside of our door, or does it mean I carry it all the way down?

00;15;13;29 - 00;15;31;15
Zach Watson
If there's snow on the ground, do I get a free pass and I get 24 hours to get it to the trash? If we just had a large meal where we used five extra pots and pans and the baby just went to sleep, and I know I can be kind of loud with that, do we take do I get an extra 12 hours to clean those?

00;15;31;17 - 00;15;47;27
Zach Watson
So having a lot of those minute conversations that bring up upsets because we have expectations of each other around how it should be done, but we never talk about it. And so that's that's a huge part of what I coach families to have that conversation for.

00;15;47;29 - 00;16;06;05
Paul Sullivan
You know, one of the things you talk about a couple of dads is we sort of equate resentment in a relationship to the dust that accumulates under your couch. You don't really know it's there until you either buy a new couch or you move and then you say, oh my goodness, this is disgusting. How did they get to be so much dust?

00;16;06;08 - 00;16;26;01
Paul Sullivan
Under my couch. And as I say, most people, kind of don't marry a sociopath or they don't marry, and then have children with a sociopath to make marriage and divorce a sociopath. So people are inherently good. You're in love. And then things just build up. Over the years, there's sort of an accretion of dust as accretion of resentment in a relationship.

00;16;26;01 - 00;16;49;06
Paul Sullivan
You guys got to this, you know, pretty early on in, in your marriage. But when you think about your coaching and you know, the men that you're working with who've gone perhaps further along, perhaps are sensing the resentment, perhaps are not, you know, owning the mental load of, of some pretty, you know, banal, but, you know, frequent and necessary tasks in their house.

00;16;49;08 - 00;17;03;07
Paul Sullivan
How do you begin that coaching process with them to sort of, you know, unwind all these things, things that they think surely they think they were doing their fair share, but turns out they weren't really. So how do you begin that process?

00;17;03;10 - 00;17;28;07
Zach Watson
So, within your question, you kind of did step one, which is identifying what is like one of those things that keeps coming up, that keeps building or is, I mean, where is the dust that we want to identify first? And I think it's you. They, it's either creating, direct arguments or it's like one of those moments where the guy is finding himself saying, God, I can never get this right.

00;17;28;07 - 00;17;54;13
Zach Watson
She's just always kind of critique it. So I think those are like two markers that you can say, or we continuously getting in arguments, are we getting passive aggressive around that? Same like, are we leaving an extra dish out after the dishwasher's been sold to like, piss? The other one was like identifying the first one and then from there talking about who is currently doing 51 or more percent of it.

00;17;54;13 - 00;18;15;20
Zach Watson
So with dishes for us, we recognize I was probably doing 70 to 80% of it, and she was either reminding or asking me to do it often. And so I said, let's stop the the actual of the amount of her asking me to do it, especially when I was about to do it, was so painful to me because I was like, goddamn.

00;18;15;22 - 00;18;32;16
Zach Watson
Like I was going to go do the dishes. Now I feel like I don't even have I don't even want to do it because you asked me to do it, because I now no longer feel like I'm doing it with free will. And so having that conversation up front saying, like, I want to own 100% of it. So you never ask me again.

00;18;32;16 - 00;18;51;26
Zach Watson
You never remind me again. And we're really clear about what it looks like when it's done. So choosing it and then identifying what percentage is already there and then defining what 100% looks like. So for dishes with us, it looked like having everything in the dishwasher. If they're big pots and pans that don't fit in there, they're cleaned.

00;18;51;26 - 00;19;15;07
Zach Watson
If it's a cast iron pan, then we are seizing it and making sure there's no water in it, lest, with the sink, making sure it gets a really quick scrub, making sure there's no slip left in the little net. So it's getting really granular about like what it's job looks like. So that like, you could like a teacher could like grade it on a rubric almost.

00;19;15;10 - 00;19;38;20
Zach Watson
Because they think when we have that granular level of detail that we both agreed on, then it gets much easier to not be resentful to each other because we can also see and I think, yeah, actually, you're right, I didn't do 100%. And I know that because we talked about it, rather than being held accountable to something that we never talked about.

00;19;38;22 - 00;20;01;00
Zach Watson
And I think just when people are starting to see a little bit of momentum with one responsibility in the House, we start to see a lot of changes. Because what happens once they start even identifying and giving themselves permission? Hey, I'm going to fail this week at least once at least, like when I started taking over, just setting up the security system at home.

00;20;01;02 - 00;20;23;01
Zach Watson
So there's three doors we have to keep locked, and then you just, you swipe it. The thing, the little tablet in our, kitchen, and then it locks the house and arms it. I knew I was going to forget at least once for that first week day. So I said, in seven days, let's talk about it again and let's see, like, where did I sell?

00;20;23;01 - 00;20;44;07
Zach Watson
Why did I fail? Are there any other things we want to add to this responsibility? We recognize that if there's a box sitting in front of it, I'm going to forget. I also need to use it. Stacking from Jim's Clear's atomic habits. The moment that I click the dishwasher start button. Right after that, I go do the locks.

00;20;44;09 - 00;21;09;03
Zach Watson
Her dog, we would let go out to pee one more time and then bring her back in and then lock the doors and set it up. So I think giving ourselves permission to fail is what our partners that are annoyed with us are not giving us. The once they see momentum. And you have the structure of a weekly conversation about these types of things, I think you start giving each other more of the benefit of the doubt.

00;21;09;06 - 00;21;25;21
Paul Sullivan
So I yeah, I can hear, I can hear, you know, listening or saying, okay, I get what he's saying. But man, this is a lot of work. You know, I'm at work during the day. My wife's at work during the day. Now I have to come home and have a conversation about this task that we have to do.

00;21;25;24 - 00;21;38;05
Paul Sullivan
You know, for those who are skeptical, you know, why is it worth it? Or how long does it take to get these things in place? I mean, once you've figured out this routine, are you doing it again and again to talk about the time commitment that's that's involved?

00;21;38;08 - 00;22;10;01
Zach Watson
Yeah, I'm going to talk a little bit about the time commitment as well as the emotional commitment is the fact I think you're already doing the work either way. The question is where do you want to do the work? Do you want to do the work of doing your job, getting home, walking on eggshells, making sure you don't accidentally piss off your partner because you, you know, didn't do something the way that they expect, and be less intimate and just things are a little bit harder and a little bit more passive and less together.

00;22;10;04 - 00;22;38;27
Zach Watson
Or do you want to have an extra time commitment of 45 to 60 minutes once a week to talk about the calendar and one of the responsibilities you guys are working on, and all of the friction of each of those moments throughout the 168 hours of your week goes a little bit smoother. I've found personally that the less friction, throughout the week is far better.

00;22;39;00 - 00;22;58;26
Zach Watson
And having the 45 to 60 minutes, I think a week, the that's one of the top things that I hold my guys accountable to when they sign up for Mental Mastery. We talk about wins every week. We go through the same playbook and have, like a semi philosophical this conversation about the book and what it's presenting.

00;22;58;28 - 00;23;20;15
Zach Watson
And then they help them identify how did their we call it the boring meeting. Because it used to be the expectations or relationship meeting just felt really heavy. So we decided to be sarcastic about it and call it what's the boring meeting? We're going to talk about dishes. We're going to talk about what it was that didn't set the security alarm last night.

00;23;20;18 - 00;23;46;04
Zach Watson
We're going to talk about the poop left over in our backyard. Smart dog. The. And at what frequency do we want to be to clean that up? So every week you're having that conversation, you're you're getting iterative. And I think over time you're going to start talking about more emotional things too. So I think, a lot of guys say that they had the best week of their marriage, that they've been married nine years.

00;23;46;07 - 00;24;11;25
Zach Watson
After being five weeks into the program. And the huge reason for it was because they were having those weekly conversations where I'm coaching them to bring the agenda. So they're holding the mental load of it, and they're the wife shows up and is kind of presented with more things rather than having to bring it all herself, is they also found opportunities to talk about what you've called unicorn space, which is, I think, the simplest way to put it.

00;24;11;25 - 00;24;32;15
Zach Watson
It's the thing you talk about at an adult dinner party when you're not talking about kids or work. What's that thing that that you're get excited about? Probably a little bit more exciting or passionate about than a hobby. Or maybe the sports could be it. I think for a lot of guys, sports are a bit more of a hobby.

00;24;32;15 - 00;24;38;12
Zach Watson
But, for me, for a while it was this content creation. My unicorn space has now become my job.

00;24;38;15 - 00;24;58;15
Paul Sullivan
Give me. It makes me want to ask this question, you know, because, look, I buy into this, I think what you're doing is great, but, you know, to simplify it for the listener, there's a video you did, I don't know how long ago it was, but I was watching it, and it's so good. And it's essentially the fictional spouse saying, hey, Zach, you know, what do you want for dinner?

00;24;58;17 - 00;25;21;08
Paul Sullivan
And your answer at first is, I don't know, you know, what do you want? Which is an answer that so many people that I've given, that so many people give, because you think in saying, I don't know what you want, you're being more magnanimous. You're saying, okay, it's up to you, whatever you want, but tell what that is really doing and what, a better response to that question that we all get might be.

00;25;21;11 - 00;25;44;29
Zach Watson
Yeah. And also, I think one of the videos you might be referring to, as I said, the I think the traditional one that a lot of us, I think millennials heard from our uncles and aunts on our wedding day, of happy wife's happy life, creates a really terrible culture of mental load. And what that looks like is it starts out really cute and romantic.

00;25;45;02 - 00;26;06;11
Zach Watson
And, like, what restaurant do you want to go to? I'll go wherever you want. I will be an amoeba and we will go. I don't I hate sushi, but we will eat sushi if that's what your heart desires. And over time, I think it's. It starts as you get to choose. And slowly we get this, like, learned helplessness of.

00;26;06;16 - 00;26;32;18
Zach Watson
Okay, it's not that you get to choose, but you have to choose. And so the requirement of them to choose the requirement of them to be the final decision maker starts to weigh. And the transition period of the get the get to choose versus have to choose. It's hard to say when that line occurs, and I think that's one of the huge traps we all fall into.

00;26;32;21 - 00;26;39;18
Zach Watson
And I think, I mean, I made a video wrestling with Kristen Bell, talking about, like, where, where.

00;26;39;21 - 00;26;42;14
Paul Sullivan
She who she.

00;26;42;17 - 00;26;45;01
Zach Watson
She when I if I.

00;26;45;01 - 00;26;49;16
Paul Sullivan
Didn't Rosenman anybody who has a daughter frozen. She's Anna from frozen on.

00;26;49;20 - 00;27;00;17
Zach Watson
Yeah. I, I guess you're right. Right. Are two and a half year old. Hasn't gotten into frozen yet, but I'm sure she will, because we still want to build a snowman more times than I can a minute.

00;27;00;19 - 00;27;10;04
Paul Sullivan
And that video is remarkable because it illustrates what you're saying. 20 people can watch an Instagram, but the walk through the basic premise of the conversation that you have.

00;27;10;04 - 00;27;26;03
Zach Watson
Yeah. So it's started just like the example you gave. Like what? What do you want to add to it? Oh, I don't care. What do you want? And we kind of throw the ball back and forth to each other a couple times and she's like, no, you don't get it. You need to choose for me. And then she goes, we crossed it together.

00;27;26;03 - 00;27;53;03
Zach Watson
Like, almost like a rant of like, all the things she's already had to choose this morning and she is constantly thinking about in upcoming weeks of, like, all these domestic labor, family, decisions that are falling on her and not necessarily to the fault of anyone else necessarily, but have just been weighing on her. And so making one more decision about where to go get brunch is just a bit too much.

00;27;53;05 - 00;28;07;18
Zach Watson
And so she's really asking for, for me as the friend to go get brunch with, like, where do you want to go? Can you, can you please. It would make so it makes so much difference to me if you can make this decision rather than adding one more to my plate.

00;28;07;20 - 00;28;27;02
Paul Sullivan
And I don't want to give away the ending, but it was a surprise ending, I'll be honest with you, because in the end you say waffles and mimosa and like my kids, ask where's the protein? Like if you don't have some protein, you're just going to be crabby afterwards because you one mimosa leads to two and all you got are the carbs and you put sirup.

00;28;27;04 - 00;28;42;27
Paul Sullivan
Anyway, Zach, and this has been remarkable talking about the Company Dads podcast, I want to ask you this question that you've had, this is your third career to really change careers. So what you started off as as a math teacher.

00;28;42;29 - 00;28;44;14
Zach Watson
For.

00;28;44;16 - 00;28;46;05
Paul Sullivan
The fourth, what was the first one?

00;28;46;08 - 00;28;52;09
Zach Watson
I was the first one was I was a software developer for two years, and I went to college for engineering software developer.

00;28;52;12 - 00;29;13;15
Paul Sullivan
Then you were a math teacher? You started making some content as a math teacher. Then you weren't, went and worked in tech sales, and now you've gone off on your own, to create this coaching program. Why was it, you know, a lot of people would, would read these books that apply to their lives. Maybe they'd talk to their friends about it.

00;29;13;18 - 00;29;27;28
Paul Sullivan
What was it that so moved you about, you know, fair play and everything that we talk about our mental load. What was it some that said, you know what I'm going to I'm going to take a leap. I'm going to do this. I'm going to make, as you said, in what was your unicorn space? What was the thing that you enjoyed doing?

00;29;27;28 - 00;29;51;03
Paul Sullivan
I'm going to make this my career and by extension, you know, help other people. Now, obviously, that's something teachers try to do. They're trying to teach kids how to learn math, whatever you teach them. But what was it that made you think, okay, I want to go. I believe so deeply in this. I believe this is so important for my generation of dads and couples that I'm going to go, you know, make this my, my, my career.

00;29;51;05 - 00;30;12;06
Zach Watson
Part of it was I think it made sense. I know that I just thoroughly I know it certainly is an ego aspect to it where it's exciting that right now I can post something on Instagram and 30,000 people are going to see it that I it's hard to visualize that amount. It's like selling multiple Gillette stadiums, which blows my mind that.

00;30;12;08 - 00;30;18;13
Paul Sullivan
If you were Taylor Swift, if you were Taylor Swift, you'd have no no problem imagining that. Yeah.

00;30;18;15 - 00;30;39;22
Zach Watson
But I think it was about a year ago, I think probably 13 or 14 months ago, I made my first video, of the, the mental Load series, which I'm on episode one or part 160 right now. And when I started talking about it, the very the second one I ever made, like 6.4 million on TikTok.

00;30;39;22 - 00;30;59;25
Zach Watson
And I was like, wow, why do they care so much about this? I'm I kind of got it, but not fully. And then, you know, as a, as any, average content creator would, they would see how well that worked. I should do something similar to that. So then I probably did ten parts in the next like seven days, and all those did pretty well.

00;30;59;28 - 00;31;20;12
Zach Watson
And when I say pretty well, they got viewership, they got engagement. They were sharing with people and people were saying, I've never heard it talked about quite like this. And so I just kept going and I kept sharing moments of my own life where I was noticing that I was adding mental load from a wife. And, you know, the first one was just me.

00;31;20;15 - 00;31;36;19
Zach Watson
We're about to put our kid down a map. And I said, you should we do water, milk? And I was just like, oh, I probably could have chosen that and just said, hey, I'm thinking we should do milk for x, Y, and Z. Reason. Feel free to push back on that I have no, I'm not committed to milk.

00;31;36;19 - 00;32;03;21
Zach Watson
But like, here's the choice. And just like those minute items that I started sharing and then over time people are saying like, you need programing, we need help with this. We really need help with this. Zach, I started taking it seriously. I hired a coach to help me because people, people just found, I think, as a math teacher, when you make thousands of examples of how to do y, y equals mx plus b, they just need practice problems.

00;32;03;21 - 00;32;24;02
Zach Watson
And you just keep practicing. And, you know, as I kept making examples, I was like, I'm making practice problems for people to see this in their own lives. And I think a lot of guys have a hard time hearing it because it feels like an attack. I tried to make it palatable and pointing out, this is where I'm screwing up.

00;32;24;05 - 00;32;46;08
Zach Watson
I'm wondering if you are, too. But if you are, I'm not going to call you out. I'm just going to call myself out. And this is the reflection on that. And so as time went on, I think, I started offering one on one coaching and in July and it exploded my brain when someone actually signed up for it, like, I didn't I didn't necessarily see the value in it.

00;32;46;11 - 00;33;15;10
Zach Watson
And then people kept signing up. And then October I made a video just inviting people to book a called videos, probably about 6 million views off multiple platforms. And at some point I was like, well, I can't do my day job and accept all these one on one clients. It just doesn't work. It was a minute of sacrifice to, do the childcare from 5 to 9 p.m. through the weekdays from some since the fall.

00;33;15;12 - 00;34;00;02
Zach Watson
So I can have those calls. And I think about about 130 initial calls since then. And then I realized I needed any group programing. I couldn't meet the demand anymore. One on one. And at some point it just I was walking away from those group sessions with the guys feeling like I was doing, sales. Almost cheesy what I was meant to do, but just really feeling like I was providing a safe space for them to knock around ideas and try new things that they hadn't and, walk away from those sessions feeling like I've really made a difference in someone's day, in their marriage, in their life, instead of selling them an

00;34;00;02 - 00;34;22;22
Zach Watson
extra $1,000 worth of software licenses. Just made a lot of sense. And I think over the past three months of just seeing how much people want it and need it and the results that I'm finding that they're getting after even just a couple of weeks. Yeah, I, I could I would like to be doing this on a larger scale with more people.

00;34;22;22 - 00;34;41;29
Zach Watson
I would love to make it more affordable right now, just like for my capacity as a woman in show. I just added a friend, John, as, a also a coach, to help me, image some of those groups and so I can offer more time. Time, blocks. I'm not sure. Does that answer your question?

00;34;42;01 - 00;34;56;27
Paul Sullivan
You did. And this is a great conversation. Zach Watson, also known as the real that I think share. Check him out. Thank you so much for being my guest today on the company of that podcast.

00;34;57;00 - 00;34;59;25
Zach Watson
Thanks, Paul. I appreciate it.

00;34;59;28 - 00;35;25;09
Paul Sullivan
Thank you for listening to the company of that podcast. I also want to thank the people who make this podcast and everything else that we do. The company of that possible, Helder, Mira, who is our audio producer Lindsay Decker, handles all of our social media. Terry Brennan, who's helping us with the newsletter and audience acquisition, Emily Servin, who is our web maestro, and of course, Evan Roosevelt, who is working side by side with me.

00;35;25;09 - 00;35;43;00
Paul Sullivan
And many of the things that we do here at the Company of Dads. It's a great team. And we're, we're just trying to bring you the best in fatherhood. Remember, the one stop shop for everything is our newsletter, the dad sign up at the Company of dads.com backslash. The dad. Thank you again for listening.