The Quarterback DadCast
I’m Casey Jacox, the host of the Quarterback Dadcast. As fathers, we want to help prepare our kids—not only to enter the professional world but to thrive in each stage of their lives. Guests of this show include teachers, coaches, professional athletes, consultants, business owners, authors—and stay-at-home dads. Just like you! They share openly about failure, success, laughter, and even sadness so that we can all learn from each other—as we strive to become the best leaders of our homes! You will learn each week, and I am confident you will leave each episode with actionable tasks that you can apply to your life to become that ultimate Quarterback and leader of your household. Together, we will learn from the successes and failures of dads who are doing their best every day. So, sit back, relax and subscribe now to receive each episode weekly on The Quarterback Dadcast.
The Quarterback DadCast
The Art of Letting Your Children Fall and Learn - Paul Morton
You've never heard parenting wisdom quite like this. Step into the world of Paul Morton, a Scottish father, sales leadership expert, and podcast host who brings a completely fresh perspective on raising resilient children in today's overprotective society.
Raised in the remote Scottish Highlands by a single mother in the 1970s and 80s, Paul learned independence in ways that would make many modern parents uncomfortable – cycling miles alone as a young boy, handling injuries without immediate adult help, and developing self-reliance in isolated environments. Now raising his own children in Edinburgh with his American wife, he's carrying forward those lessons while navigating our increasingly bubble-wrapped parenting culture.
"We're not raising children," Paul observes with characteristic Scottish directness. "We're raising adults." This philosophy forms the cornerstone of his approach to fatherhood – allowing his son and daughter to experience appropriate risks and challenges rather than sheltering them from every possible discomfort. The results? Children who handle their own injuries with remarkable calm, develop independence early, and build the internal resilience needed for life's inevitable hardships.
Paul's reflections on his childhood illuminate how dramatically parenting has changed in just one generation. Where he once cycled miles alone to activities as a young boy, today's children are often driven everywhere and supervised constantly. He argues persuasively that this overprotection ultimately harms children by preventing them from developing crucial coping mechanisms: "If you don't let them fail, get hurt, break a leg, then how are they gonna deal with life? Because when they meet the universe as a whole, it's a rough old place."
Beyond parenting wisdom, Paul shares insights from his professional experience in leadership and his current project, "Second Wind Life" – focused on helping people navigate midlife transitions by repositioning their purpose and value. His unique blend of faith-based perspective, business acumen, and refreshing honesty creates an episode that will challenge your thinking and inspire your parenting journey.
Whether you're seeking practical advice for raising independent children or simply enjoy thought-provoking conversations about life's biggest responsibilities, this episode offers wisdom that crosses cultural boundaries and speaks to universal parenting truths. Listen now and discover why sometimes the most loving thing we can do for our children is to let them face challenges on their own.
You can learn more about Paul on LInkedIn or at www.leadershipthatsells.com
Please don't forget to leave us a review wherever you consume your podcasts! Please help us get more dads to listen weekly and become the ultimate leader of their homes!
Hi, I'm Riley and I'm Ryder and this is my dad show. Hey, everybody, it's Casey Jaycox with the quarterback dad cast. Welcome to season six, and I could not be more excited to have you join me for another year of fantastic episodes and conversations really unscripted and raw and authentic conversations with dads. If you're new to this podcast, really it's simple. It's a podcast where we interview dads, we learn about how they were raised, we learn about the life lessons that were important to them, we learn about the values that are important to them and really we learn about how we can work hard to become a better quarterback or leader of our home. So let's sit back, relax and listen to today's episode on the Quarterback Dadcast. Well, hey, everybody, it's Casey Jaycox with the Quarterback Dadcast.
Speaker 1:We are in season six and this next guest I went across the pond, everybody. I went over to Edinburgh. I wish I could say I'm going to, we're going to meet in St Andrews or we're going to meet in Arnusty, but we're not. We're going to meet in each other's living rooms or bedrooms or wherever the house is. That's how we are. But our next guest is Paul Morton. He is really a sales and leadership and executive very, very talented, very, very talented man. He runs a practical leadership academy, he's a podcast host, he's the CEO of a VR training company, guy's got opera skills. But that's not why we're having him on. We're having him on because we want to learn about Paul the dad and how he's working hard to become that ultimate quarterback or leader of his household. So, without further ado, mr Morton, welcome to the Quarterback Dadcast.
Speaker 2:Casey, it's an absolute delight to be here. Absolute delight, what an introduction. We're done, we're done. You give me your bank details. I'll just send you the money.
Speaker 1:Perfect, perfect. Well, we always start out each episode gratitude, so tell me, what are you most grateful for as a dad today?
Speaker 2:oh uh god's love um and his uh peace and his faithfulness through everything um, and the fact that my children know him as well, and for my family around me and having married an amazing woman.
Speaker 1:Love it Amazing woman. Most good marriages. We marry up Paul. We have kicked it.
Speaker 2:There's a great country song, fabulous country song. It says I'm just trying to keep my daughter off the pole and my sons out of jail. And trying to keep my daughter off the pole and my sons out of jail, I'm trying to keep my wife from finding out that I married up and she married way, way down. It's a great song.
Speaker 1:Oh boy. Well, what I'm grateful for. I am in a different location today, everybody. We are in Eastern Washington and I'm grateful to spend time this weekend with my son and his good buddy, and my daughter is at home with her friends and so kind of everybody's doing their own thing this weekend. And it's because I have a freshman in college well, now, a sophomore in college, which seems weird to say, and then a senior in high school to be and just grateful for the time. And every day when I do my gratitude journal work, the first line I always say is God, thanks for waking me up today. I get another day.
Speaker 2:It's the start. You know. Sometimes you're thinking it's tough. Okay, what am I actually doing? We do this at the dinner as well. I mean, we give thanks and we say well, what are you grateful for today? And sometimes the kids are nothing. And sometimes they come out and say broccoli or steak or whatever it is. But my wife is superb. She says how about running water?
Speaker 2:yeah, you know you get you there. You always something you can, always something you start with. And there's a guy that is a pastor of my church. He says something you know, sometimes you think about the things you would really not want to be taken away and you see, uh, he's got a friend in a wheelchair and he says, God, thank you for my feet that work, you know. Thank you for walking, yeah.
Speaker 1:Waking up every day. Waking up every day is a good start. It's amazing and it's funny I was. I tell a lot of my clients is, when I'm doing gratitude work in the morning, I find myself subconsciously starting to smile you can't help it yeah, and it's just getting your mind right to start the day is so important that I wish other most people would do it, but they don't and it sets you.
Speaker 2:I mean, I mean, you want to. You want to work out in the morning as well. That's great, You're. What's your? What's your 5am Ironman start to the day? Well, it's two serious cups of Brazilian coffee as well, but it's, I think, having a smile for the day and the start of the day, knowing that it's it's life and everything else that comes after it is what it is you just take it as you find it.
Speaker 1:Yep, Love it. Well, bring me inside the Morton Huddle Talk about. You know come from a sports theme, so I played this position called quarterback in an America football team. I always make fun of myself. There's a great movie I'm not sure if you've heard about it called Napoleon Dynamite.
Speaker 2:I've heard of it. I can't say. I know the theme.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's a really goofy American movie, but there's a character named Uncle Rico and it's this uncle that really is like living out of the high school dreams and he talks about throwing the ball up in the mountains. So whenever I talk about my college football days, I got to make fun of myself and call myself Uncle Rico.
Speaker 2:But joking aside, let's go inside the huddle, tell me about each member of the team and what everybody's up to. I think there's the four of us, but there's really the five, and the five is the family unit, the unit as a whole, and it gets stressed from time to time. And it gets stressed from time to time and it gets pulled from pillar to post. And I think, like any sort of team that you try to build in life or in business, before you can let it get stressed and deal with all the stuff that gets thrown at you, you have to know what's important and you have to know that everybody else has got your back and I would say the very best teams I've ever worked in have done exactly that almost serendipitously. And again, the family I think is almost serendipitously I'd like to say it's fatherhood planning here. I know exactly what I'm doing. I'm leading them forward through the church.
Speaker 3:No, that's absolute bs it's.
Speaker 2:I think it's as a result of who we, the unit, are. So, each member in turn. Well, we'll start with the greatest and best, and that would be my wonderful wife, and she is a fellow of yours. She's born in Missouri and she was raised in New Jersey and came over here looking for Mr Darcy from Pride and Prejudice and landed up with me. A random Scots bloke from the south side of Glasgow, right, so I am not Mr Darcy. Mr Darcy would be the first line of the book.
Speaker 2:The Pride and Prejudice is along the lines of a man who has 10,000 a year must surely be in want of a wife. 10,000 a year, 10,000 pounds a year, something like 40 million pounds these days. Okay, so he was really well off. No, sorry, honey, I'm doing my best and not quite there yet, give me time. So she's magnificent. Um, and when she's not driving everyone around, pillar to post, taking us, taking everybody everywhere, there's the three, three, three jobs of a parent right, taxi, short order, chef and laundromat, oh, and the occasional hug. That's the three things. So she keeps us coordinated.
Speaker 2:She's a phenomenal project manager a phenomenal organizer and so in touch with people. She has a beautiful gift of having a five minute conversation with somebody and then seeing them again six years later and saying oh now you said your cousin's hamster had a bit of a limp. How the heck does she remember this stuff? She connects with people in such a level. This is a beautiful gift. She also looks after us, keeps us, keeps us very, very healthy. She's a great cook, um, a very professional woman, but she's a great cook. She loves, uh, finding herbs and spices and things in the wilderness and pulling them together and making us all sorts of concoctions. That keeps us healthy and wise. And she's introduced my son well, so they introduce each other to foraging. So they go in, they all find mushrooms and they um, pull things off, little berries and plants and flowers together and make tinctures and all sorts of weird and wonderful things. It's just phenomenal. And then we'll go from the best to the the shortest for the moment, which is only very, very just the shortest and that would be my son, and he, he's 11 and is the philosopher king, so he's a very wise young man, but also likes doing wheelies on his bike, so he's a very smart, smart, smart kid. They're all fairly sporty. He's a good swimmer. He likes, likes his swimming, as does my daughter as well. Um, and he's very creative, very inventive. Um, one word for me, and he's often pretty much the opposite thing, but he's a good lad.
Speaker 2:Um, my daughter is a special character. She's, she's 13, going on 17. And we do the best, I do my best, to keep it to the 13, but she does her best to keep it to the 17. Most of our communications are Dad, can I have more screen time? No, no, no, you can't Bless her. She doesn't complain too much. She's a club they're both club swimmers, but she's a superb club swimmer club. They're both club swimmers, but she's a superb club swimmer. She's got some really, really good times. She's swum for our county as well, which is a nice thing, and here the counties are like the states. So Hampshire County, where we live, is about two and a half million people, so she's swum in the county for that and is a great athlete.
Speaker 2:She's been invited to go for the county athletics tournament in a couple of weeks' time, getting close to the end of term, here to do the shot putt. Yes, indeed, the shot putt because she's got shoulders, because she does fly. You know I've got a magnificent picture of my wall up here of her doing fly. She's got the arms like an eagle.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:It's amazing, it's a wonderful thing. So, yes, and it's amazing, it's a wonderful thing, so yes. And then the unit comes together and we eat dinner together, if not every night, then 99%, and we have our Sunday lunch together 99% of the time, and we spend a lot of good hugs, we have a lot of good. We have our challenges, for sure, but I think the unit is it's not one one. One one equals four. It's one plus one plus one equals 643. So, as a unit, I think we're strong. We're strong.
Speaker 1:Now were you or your wife swimmers?
Speaker 2:My wife became one. She did some swimming in her early 20s but she taught me how to swim. I could swim. In fact, my kids say, no, dad, you know how not to drown. Which was true, I know how not to drown, but she taught me properly how to actually breathe and all that sort of stuff. So I'm late to the game.
Speaker 1:Okay, I always like now taking a little pivot here. Paul and I want to go back in time and I want to learn about what was life like for Paul growing up, and I want to learn about the impact Paul's mom and dad had on him and maybe tell us a story or two on the values that were taught to you and instilled in you early.
Speaker 2:Hmm, my parents divorced when I was three, which in 1979 or thereabouts was a thing. Okay, so a single parent, my mother. I was raised by her and she did her very best and did a phenomenal job. I got to know my father again as an adult. I came down after university. We stayed vaguely in touch and I met, we came to, I got got together a few times but we stayed vaguely in touch. And I met him again as an adult when I came down for a job interview in london, having lived in scotland and kind of. We picked up a relationship there. But it really blossomed when I 12, 13, whatever it was years later introduced him to my wife. So he came to our wedding and he's turned out to be a really good granddad, mostly because I think his wife, his new wife of 40 odd years, is a phenomenal woman. So she's Nanny Fran. So she's a phenomenal woman and, without children of their own, have absolutely adopted and doted on ours and they're the closest people to us physically. My mother is what? Seven hours by train or three, 400 miles away, and my dad's 90 miles away and about an hour and a half, two hours by car. So it's a lot closer. So we still see my mum more often because she actually puts her back into it and makes it makes a journey down from scotland every six weeks, so she's down here for a good long weekend, which is wonderful, and I've seen more of her, uh, since the kids were born than I had. I've seen her through my adult life. You know, you've seen that graph where you know you, your contact time with your children is incredibly high and then it just drops like an absolute brick until you get old and it picks up again when they can't start to pay attention to you because you're frail. Well, thankfully we've actually foreshortened that slightly because of her effort in coming down and seeing us so very often. So as a little boy we moved.
Speaker 2:The story comes that I came home from the streets of Glasgow one day in the late 1970s, which was a bit of a rough place, and gave my mother a mouth full of Glasgow street parlance, so to speak, effing and blinding at her, to which my um, not puritanical but quite straight-laced mother said oh, I think it's time to move out of the big city to which we moved, to the middle of nowhere, in fact, the terminology I would use would be the back arse of beyond. In fact, you get to the middle of nowhere. You turn left, you keep driving for another 100 miles and you get to the back arse of beyond. It's really in the middle of nowhere, a tiny place called the Bridge of Orchie which, if anybody wants to look it up on a map, is in the highlands of Scotland and it's on a train line. Far, far north there was a single teacher school. She was a teacher, so she taught there. She was teaching in inner city Glasgow and then went from a big school with hundreds and hundreds of kids to eight kids, so eight kids, one head teacher. She was a head teacher immediately. Aha, very clever.
Speaker 2:And I had a mountain as my back garden. I had a loch as a swimming pool Not that you would swim in it, because it was seven degrees all year round it's cold up there but it was a phenomenal place to grow up. And we moved from there to the West Coast, the far far West. Have you ever seen a map of Scotland? There's a little leg that sticks out in the left on the West Coast, pointing down towards Ireland, the island of Ireland, and that's a thing called kentire, and right down the bottom of that again the, the buttocks of this island. There's this pokey archipelago stick. Uh is right next to an american air force base. Mackinac air force base is where they had all the nuclear bombers. So we had no problems. Cold war, millisecond of blinding light vapor. So we were right the way down there for several years and then came back to the borders, the rolling hills of Scotland again.
Speaker 2:So I was blessed by lots and lots of wildlife, lots of wilderness, lots of outdoorsness, and I think the overarching thing I took away from that was make friends, connect, be able to connect with people and be very comfortable in your own skin, because you're gonna have a long time and it's all you've got. It's only when you'll be able to rely on. So I don't have friends from my and I have acquaintances from my early childhood. Really ish, but not really. I make friends relatively easily and I'm very comfortable in my own skin, very happy on my own. But I'm equally relatively gregarious. I think I'm probably borderline introverted, but I'm quite happy doing the outside stuff as well.
Speaker 1:So what, um? How was it? Was the? Was the divorce difficult on you growing up?
Speaker 2:Didn't know, didn't notice.
Speaker 1:No idea. Three years old.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was just normal, it was just. Isn't everybody like that? And then eventually you get, you get to work it out, you work it out.
Speaker 1:Did your mom ever remarry?
Speaker 2:No, she uh said her, her, her shtick was uh, the first one didn't take, I'm not doing it again. And she was very conscious and very cautious and very sensible about not introducing any other men into her, into my life really so I know she dated, she had friends and all this sort of stuff.
Speaker 2:But she met a wonderful man when I was about 14 but didn't move in with him until I moved out. So I went off to university when I was 18 and when I was 19 she had sold the house and moved in with him and they had 30 wonderful years together until he died a few years ago. So but she she's no other's an amazing woman. In fact, she is the 100th episode of my own podcast, leadership that Sells. So if you want to listen to me interviewing my mom, who was the consummate, extra dependent leader because she was leading a team of teachers, and teachers work very similarly to salespeople they don't work together, but they work towards their own individual goal. So she's a great leader for them.
Speaker 1:Wow, what were the values that mom taught you, that really really stood out to you, that maybe you've shared with your son or your daughter, sure.
Speaker 2:I would love to say faith, but that's not true. She was always a strong and has forever been a strong Christian. But she let me find my own path, and I think that's possibly. I think that's probably it. Find your own path, be happy, but know what happiness is. It's not clappy happy joy. Joy, it's contentment, it's, it is joy. It's uh, joy. In the morning it is, it's, it's the sunrise, it's that, it's happiness.
Speaker 2:And whenever I would ask mom, what do you want me to be when I grow up, she wouldn't say a doctor or an engineer or whatever. It was because I, because I was a smart kid, I was a smarty pants, you know all that sort of stuff, but she would say happy, that's no use. That's no use Be useful. But it was, I think, to meet the world as you find it, treat the world. Yeah, I think I said meet the world as you find it, treat the world. Yeah, I think that's it. Meet the world as you find it and then chart your own path towards whatever happiness means for you. I think that's. I've never actually thought about that question before. Can you believe it? It's something I would ask people, but I've never really thought it through.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's it okay when you, when you, when you think about find your path, or let let she, let you find your own path. Um, that can be hard for for parents at least I don't bet in the states. Sometimes, like in the united states, we get I don't know if it's like this in Europe, but you know it's you get so wrapped up into the sport or the activity and you want to, like, help them be their best scene. But kids got to fail, unfortunately, and that's where we get the adversity and grit and resilience and life that they're going to need later down the path. So was there any moments of struggle or failure for you that you reflect on? Now that you are like a you know sales leadership guy in business and a dad that maybe your mom, let you just kind of struggle through.
Speaker 2:Do you want them alphabetically, numerologically or chronologically?
Speaker 1:Maybe just give me a favorite one that maybe you've shared with your kids. That kind of just keeps everybody grounded.
Speaker 2:Failure. My goodness, I think it's all about the context, isn't it? It's like the stories of the kid going off to learn to ride their bike and he falls off, and the parent turns to the neighbor and says oh yeah, he's a bit of a faller. You know? No, he's a learner. This is what he's a bit of a faller, you know, it's? No, it's he's. He's a learner, he's this is what he's doing. Um, so I think it's whether, whether, whether I'm losing the power of speech here whether it was quite literally learning to ride a bike on a side of a mountain, which is harder than I think you think.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Um, and as a second hand thing as well, because we never had any money you know, single parent, teaching job, public sector in Scotland in the early eighties not well paid to realizing that you can be as smart as you like, but if you don't actually have the social skills to back it up, you're in a lot of trouble and learning to keep your mouth shut. That's a big one, I think. Dealing with people, learning to deal with people. And she pushed me out to go to scouts or to judo or to my tennis or whatever it was, and I was put on the bike and said it's over there, we'll go, I'll drive you there, but you need to remember where it is because you're cycling there tomorrow. Okay, wow.
Speaker 2:All right, three miles in the dark in Scotland with no streetlights. This is what you do, okay, and nobody's walking you in. Nobody ever did that. Parents didn't walk you in and sit with you. It's like go on, get on with it, go. It's kind of a different style of parenting than we have, I think. But, as you said, the resilience of just getting out and getting on and you fall over and skin your knee. You're two miles from anywhere. What are you going to do? Sit there and wait for someone to pick you up? Oh, okay, you'll be waiting for a while, you just have to get on with it.
Speaker 2:And it is excruciatingly difficult to do that with my own children, but I think we've been very good at it to the extent where either of them I've seen it, I've seen them both multiple times come in covered in blood, covered in blood, and you're thinking, oh, my goodness, what's going on? And they're just going. Oh, yeah, I've done this. You're thinking, oh, okay, they just wash it off, do whatever it is. Oh, I've got blood everywhere. They just wash it off, do whatever it is. I'm going back outside, alright. Then they just bounce and you see, I know everybody thinks their kids are special.
Speaker 2:I know my kids are special because I'm different, right, of course you see in comparison other other results of parenting not the kids, but other results of parenting not the kids, but it's other results of parenting. Okay, um ppp, we call it piss, poor parenting. Other results of parenting with other children out there and they buy it, they fall over whatever it is and it's a scream and the parent then destroys it by running forwards and going oh no, it's a disaster. It's not a disaster, it's painful. The kids needs help.
Speaker 2:But if you don't let them fail, get hurt, break a leg, then then what is life gonna gonna gonna, how's like? How are they gonna deal with life? Because when they meet the universe as a whole, it's a rough old place. Bones will still break. You know it's a rough old place and you've got to get on with it.
Speaker 2:And I think then that lack of resilience translates, which is the response to something, translates equally into a lack of courage in the attack for something. So you've got the proactive and the reactive, and if your reactive nature is to panic and look for help or whatever it is, then that feeds your proactive nature and it stops you seeking it, stops you managing it, stops you going through towards risk, because your nature is one of caution and cotton wool. So, if you are not, you don't have the, the JFDI, which is just flaming. Well, do it then, for what you can do, life, because as soon as you start meeting the rest of humanity, the rest of humanity is not out for themselves but, yeah, out for themselves. They're not going to spoon feed you anything.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, the risk, the resilience thing, the proactive, reactive things, I think have you ever talked to your mom about that in terms of like, when she was raising you and you were gritty little 11-year-old rolling his freaking bike? I mean, think about it. That probably wouldn't happen now. Maybe I mean where I live.
Speaker 2:Child protection right yeah.
Speaker 1:But it's funny, Hello son.
Speaker 2:Where are you? Where are you from?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:But parents can do it. What did you do, officer? I'm cycling away as fast as I can All right, yeah, but we wouldn't do that now.
Speaker 1:Now, it doesn't mean it was right or wrong or one was good or bad, but it was just the time.
Speaker 2:It's just the time, yeah.
Speaker 1:So how do you think, have you ever talked to your mom like how nervous were you, mom, when I was going off? Or was just like no, I'm not nervous, he'll figure it out it was.
Speaker 2:It was just what it was. It was what it was. It's not, uh, I don't think it was a set of parenting choices. Equally, as it's, it becomes then not really a set of parenting choices, although I have occasionally put my hand on my wife's shoulder and said, hang on, because that's a dad's job. You know, the dad's job is to throw the kids up way in the air and probably catch them. The dad's job is to give them a nudge down the hill so they roll. The dad's job is to promote the risk and the mom's job is to make sure that there's a cuddle at the end of the day, right, and I think the thing that I'm eternally grateful for is that my mom played both parts and played them both extremely well, extremely well. She gave me the rough and tumble she gave me. Now I do like musical theatre, you know, and I quite like the arts and all that, but I'm also fairly secure in my sexuality, so that's also quite fine.
Speaker 2:But you know, raised by a single mother, you'd think that there was a whole side of me with daddy issues and stuff, and he and I have had the occasional conversation. But eh what? No, get on with it and that's, I think, the thing that we inculcate in our children, is it's independence, resilience, getting on with it. We have not quite complaints, but you hear the tone of the voice from the parents. I saw your son in the store the other day. Uh-huh, he was going shopping. Oh right, well, okay then, because they would expect that we'd be there holding his hand. He said no, kid's got a card, he can go buy his own shit.
Speaker 2:I'm not'm gonna walk with him.
Speaker 1:I mean it's yeah, it's different it is different, it's, you know, I remember. I remember telling my kids stories where I rode my bike. No, no helmet, which would be? Why would we wear a helmet back then?
Speaker 2:it wasn't you know you wouldn't even bounce yourself paving.
Speaker 1:That's fine, right, I mean, and I would literally go down pipeline trails, across roads that were like no stoplight, no crosswalk, like very dangerous, but at the time I was going to be fine, I wasn't worried. But like when I know and I'm raising my kids when they were younger we were like completely nervous about stuff, trying to avoid ER room trips and you know, and then it's like I thought about for you guys over there but like covid was a blessing in many ways for us and it.
Speaker 1:It was a blessing that it helped me me, I'll tell me, specifically me and my wife too we were doing too much for our kids and you know, covid was like it, you know, shut everything down and so we're like, wait a minute, why am I cooking you food? No, no, you're going to do it yourself. And it was actually through a podcast I interviewed and a guy named Swen Nader and he wrote a book called you have Not Taught Until they have Learned, and that really kind of hit me and I was like, oh, I'm that guy. And so, thankfully, I kind of made the switch when they were 13, 14-ish, and now I got short order cooks it ish. And now I got short order cooks it's the best, it's totally, totally. You know, they do everything and I'm like they're doing their own laundry. He, they're doing. I mean it's the best.
Speaker 3:Hi, I'm Leslie Vickery, the CEO and founder of ClearEdge, a company dedicated to transforming the business of talent. Through our three lines of business ClearEdge, marketing, recruiting Rising that help organizations across the recruitment and HR tech sectors grow their brands and market share while building their teams with excellence and equity. I believe we were one of Casey's very first clients. He helped our sales and account teams really those people on the front lines of building and developing client relationships in so many ways. Here are a few. He helped us unlock the power of curiosity. For me it was a game changer. I was personally learning all about TED-based that's, tell, explain, describe, questioning and that really resonated with me. We also learned about unlocking the power of humility and unlocking the power of vulnerability. Casey taught us to be a team player, to embrace change, to stay positive. He is one of the most positive people I know. He believes that optimism, resilience and a sense of humor can go a long way in helping people achieve their goals and overcome obstacles.
Speaker 3:And I agree Casey's book Win the Relationship, not the Deal. It is a must read. Listen. Whether you're looking for coaching and training or a powerful speaker or keynote, casey is one of the people I recommend when talking to companies. The end result for us, at least as one of Casey's clients our own clients would literally commend our approach over all other companies, from the way we were prepared in advance of a call to how we drove meetings, to how we follow up. It sounds really basic, I know, but let me tell you it is a standout approach that led to stronger relationships. I encourage you to learn more by going to CaseyJCoxcom. You have nothing to lose by having a conversation and a lot to gain. Now let's get back to Casey's podcast, the quarterback dad cast.
Speaker 1:So I don't know if that was. If COVID, when you guys went through, did your? Did you see a change in your kids as well during that time?
Speaker 2:um, I've ordinarily been dancing around the whole covid thing because you don't really know what people think or what, don't want to offend anybody and then I stopped. So if I'm offensive and I'm sorry to anyone who's listening you, casey, no, I think it was a crock of shit, I think it was a crock of shit.
Speaker 2:I think it was a crock of shit. I think our government responses to it were a crock of shit. I think the people who did this to us deserve my forgiveness and I forgive them and I can forgive them because I know of divine retribution. Yeah yeah, what they did to my family and to our nations and to the children of this world was despicable on so many levels. However, we managed to approach it from a point of view of anger, which was not necessarily the best, but it certainly wasn't fear. We were not afraid. Afraid, okay, uh. And our lack of fear was evidenced in the fact that we were less than obedient to the various rules and regulations that were floating around.
Speaker 2:We don't quite have a statute of limitations and I've run for public office and intend to do so again, so I'm not going to come out and admit to anything, but we, we, we had, we had a good time in covid, we were fine, we managed to because because my wife's american we managed to travel to florida, which was open and had a great time.
Speaker 2:We're the only people in the darn plane. I flew on my birthday and got a bottle of champagne from the crew who thought it was a laugh. They were. They were flying fish across the sea to to miami from london and we were the only people in the plane. Um, we went to sweden a couple of times, the, and we were the only people on the plane.
Speaker 2:We went to Sweden a couple of times, the kids and we had a great time. We bonded like crazy. What happened, I think, during COVID was the realization that it was a recalibration of the trust that we had in our social infrastructure and in our national decision-making bodies and realized that where they might purport to be for our best interests, the people who have our best interests at heart are us and we. We need to make our own decisions. So we, we did so, and they were better and the outcomes were better than the majority of people around that. We see. We have so many friends who are vaccine injured, so many who are really seriously vaccinated, obviously and they know it to be the case they got the second shot. They get sick again, again, again, and they're still sick. They have immune problems, they have skin problems. They get sick again, again, again, and they're still sick. They have immune problems, they have skin problems, they have all this crap. We never get any of them. Um, but the bonding that happened from that, the fact that it was also a beautiful summer over here, yeah, yeah, god smiled on us. He said, yeah, you're going through this shit, but you know what Nice weather and we had a great time and I had been made redundant. So I had been made redundant in the July.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I knew it was coming in the beginning of June because I was in the exec team. I knew what was happening. I knew all the things that were moving around. I was thinking, oh crap, I need to find a new job under this and then realized no, I don't, because they handed me the biggest bucket of cash and told me to leave and not let the door hit my arse on the way out. It did not hit my arse on the way out. I was out of the place so fast and we had such a good time, so we were together. It was so hard because my daughter was deeply depressed because she's so social. My son was tiny because he was a lot younger he was like five or six or whatever it was but we did well. We did well through that. Actually, I'm grateful for it.
Speaker 1:Me too. Well, I'm glad you spoke up about that. I had no idea we're going to talk about that, but my wife had a vaccine injury.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I never, I, never I didn't even know vaccine injury was.
Speaker 1:I didn't know that was a real thing. And actually, yeah, uh, this would have been two years ago I met a good buddy of mine he's a buddy now named Kip Stolkop and his wife and my wife. They met serendipitously through my mom and her mom and they both, to the day, almost had the exact same symptoms.
Speaker 2:Oh no.
Speaker 1:And if you've not been through it, you think well, we're making this shit up Like God. You know what I'm like. Do you think I want to spend 35 grand thousand dollars in the hospital? I think I want to go to the er. Do you think my I want to have my wife have a? Um, just walking from the bedroom to the kitchen and have her heart rate go from 80 to 130.
Speaker 1:Do you think I want to have her feet turn red, um, brain fog, um random, almost like having seizures, like you think we want that, and there's just no, there's no accountability from you know these, you know whoever. I don't want to get too political or going down the wrong path, but I think it's. I'm glad to say that because there are people that are still struggling and very, very grateful. My wife is I think she's probably 90% back Good yeah, and she can still exercise, but she still has random flares that make no sense when they happen. And I think it's good that we're speaking up because I think people still need a voice out there and if they're a mom or dad listening that, hey, you're not alone.
Speaker 2:No, no, it broke so many people. You still see them. I mean, you had a lot of. The world is full of broken people, but you still see people who will wear masks on the underground and all this sort of stuff and you're thinking I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry for you Really, because in their head this thing is a thing. It's still a thing for many people.
Speaker 1:I love the dude that wears the mask in the car by himself with gloves on yeah, he's having a condom at home in bed, just in case you get pregnant.
Speaker 2:You know what? Oh, I don't know anyway that's right, okay.
Speaker 1:Well, I want to go. I want to, um, tell me the well it's the switching gears. I'm glad we spot, I'm glad we talked about that because I think it brings connection. But I want to hear, um, your biggest gap as a dad that might speak to another dad at home? Mine's, mine has gotten a lot better, paul. It's patience as a competitive guy. But tell me what's a gap is that you have as a dad that maybe might speak to another dad at home, cause I like asking that question. So so it realizes that no matter what we do, whatever your sales leadership, a bus driver, a janitor, we're all have the same job. It's it's to be the best dad we can be. And and there's ways we can kind of work together to kind of talk about our gaps, but do something about it.
Speaker 2:And that's why I asked that question. So your dad game that you're working hard to become better, I think, in any leadership role and this is a leadership role, right? Because if you want your household to be happier, be happier. You want your household to work harder, work harder. You want your household to be on time, be on time. You're the dad you lead. Yeah, everything comes from you In any leadership role. Um, you hire to, if you're smart, to fill in the gaps. And I hired like I chose. It was the cat that chose me. I hired and my wife is a phenomenal and between the two of us we make about 1.6 people. Okay, we make 1.6, really, really well from people, Not two, but 1.6. And the extra 0.1 is actually her as well.
Speaker 2:The gap I think I have is it's probably time, it's my attitude to time. I get in the flow when I'm doing things and then I look up and I've got three minutes to my call. It's okay, three minutes, that's fine. I get back in the flow and I look up. It's like six minutes past the call and I do the same with and it's so disrespectful, and I know it's so disrespectful and I've tried so many different things, so many different ways. I teach people time management, okay.
Speaker 2:So time is a particular bugbear. My wife calls it Paul time and unfortunately there's also my son's time as well, so he's kind of got that too. But we both just get into the flow and, yeah, I've seen, I see it with him. He gets into whatever he's doing when he's riding his bike or whittling a piece of wood or you know, picking his nose or something like. Yeah, he does whatever. Whatever we're doing, we get into, and that's it's a real challenge. And I know it's deeply disrespectful and I don't mean to disrespect, but I do and I keep on doing it and I've actually started praying about it recently. Um, in just just recently, and I mean like in the weeks ago, I thought I need help with this. Oh, hang on a minute.
Speaker 1:I know who can call.
Speaker 2:I got an idea here, so I am hopeful the Lord will provide. Who knows? And I know how to persuade people to do things and not to do things. I know how to hack my own brain. You decide to do something. You choose to do something. You don't try and do something.
Speaker 2:I am not a person who is late okay, I am a person who is on time. I'll let you know how it works, but that's a challenge for me. That's a real challenge for me. Um, that's a big old gap. I work really, really hard and I've not much been late to pick the kids up ever, really ever. I've got the timing of that down. I've got so many alerts on my phone. It beeps and burps and farts at me all the bloody time saying time to go. I don't miss trains or planes or stuff like that. I think, serendipitously, I'm one of the luckiest buggers I've ever met. The Lord is shining on me for some reason. I don't know why. I certainly don't deserve it. Um, it's my daughter says you are the person who will turn up three minutes late to the train and the train will be four minutes late. Yeah, it's kind of true, it is, it's a thing.
Speaker 1:I love that you. I love that you said the word serendipity serendipitously or serendipitous. Often this episode, paul, I used to say it randomly happened, but I am a big fan of the word serendipity um so I love that we've connected on that word. Um. If you were to describe um the three most important lessons that you will teach your kids before they go off into doing whatever they're going to do, tell me what comes to mind.
Speaker 2:Three most important lessons. I think they've learned a lot of them. I think we can build or continue to build, because they're both of an age 11 and 13. They're both of an age where I think we've you know what kids don't actually remember anything really until they're like eight. You get glimmers of stuff, but you're like seven, eight, nine, whatever it is years of life and lessons and education and living and travel and all this stuff. What do you remember when you were seven? Oh, I had a red bike. Okay, what else? It was really fast, yeah, what else? Yeah, not much, huh.
Speaker 2:So all this foundational stuff, this is foundations that reach the sky. So by the time your, your kids, leap off of your foundations into life, they're like the 34th floor of this building you've been building with them. So I think these foundations that we've been putting in have I, I think they've been taking um and again, it's not. I would love to say it's, it's purposeful. I think it's, it's directed, but it's not necessarily purposeful, it's just a nature. It's a decision based on some very, very simple guidelines, and the biggest one was that we're not raising children.
Speaker 2:That's not what our job is. Our job is to raise adults. Our job is to raise self-sufficient parents of the future, the mother and father of our grandchildren. That's where our job is to raise and I think, having had that in mind, the resilience, the self-sufficiency, the all that sort of stuff is part, is part and parcel of it. I think the the layers of things that we talk about. We talk about having a strong faith, having good fitness habits, having um love of your family, having good friends, having a love of food, knowing that your function in life all these F's there your function is to stack all these different talents that you have and be meaningful and be useful and be of service in the world, and that if you have the desire to make connection and to be of service, then you'll be happy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Love it. I love the answer, man. How can people learn about you? You're obviously a very well-spoken guy. You've obviously had a lot of success in business. You're teaching leadership. How can people, if they've been intrigued by your story so far, how can they learn about you and find you?
Speaker 2:Well, I've got a project that I'm working on right now. You can find me on LinkedIn. I am all over LinkedIn. If you want to look at LinkedIn, paul W Morton Paul Morton, you can find me there.
Speaker 2:Of course, I run a podcast called Leadership that Sells and it's on all the usual suspect channels. But the thing I'm most keen on is a little project I'm working on just now called Second Wind, and so secondwindlifecom. Second Wind Life will be a fabulous little podcast with amazing thought leaders on all of those Fs that I mentioned. So I want to talk to people who are experts in each of those Fs in turn, but actually get them to talk about the other parts as well. So I want to talk to I don't know Dave Ramsey on finance, right, but talk to him about his faith and his family and his friendships and the food he likes to eat and how he keeps himself fit and what his function is and all these different things.
Speaker 2:I want to talk to Dr Seymour Holtraut about fitness or health or something like that, but also understand. That's what I want to do. So that's my project. I'm going to do that because the idea that you have a second wind in life, I think is more meaningful than people of our age. Let on, you get to 50-ish and you think okay, now what? Now what?
Speaker 2:Well, you get a second wind, take a breath and realize that you're no longer valuable because of the things you know and know how to do, but you're valuable as a conduit, by asking good questions to make connections and to bring out things that exist within other people and to fill in the gaps. So you're a conduit, so you move, you reposition your purpose and the value that you bring from being doing and knowing to questioning bravely, directly and pushing people.
Speaker 1:I feel like you just spoke to my that's. That's exactly what I'm what I'm doing, brother that's the thing, isn't it?
Speaker 1:it's thousand per. What you just said is I mean you, without even knowing it. I don't know if you knew it or not, but but like I was a corporate guy for 25 years, left, wrote a book, started a podcast and then speaking and doing leadership work and where sales executives found me, I didn't mean to do that and I'm obsessed with the word curiosity and I teach leaders and salespeople to ask better questions, not first level, but second, third and fourth level. So I'm proof that the second wind is going to work. So keep on doing it. There's a lot of people out there that need to get unlocked, so I'm excited to see what happens from this journey you're going to be on. Thank you. Okay, Paul, it's now time to go into what I call the lightning round. This is where I show you the negative hits of taking too many hits not bong hits, but football hits in America. Your job is to answer these questions as quickly as possible. My job is to try to get a giggle out of you.
Speaker 2:Go on.
Speaker 1:Okay, are you ready? Go Okay. So, as a father of two swimmers, you like to wear a Speedo to work.
Speaker 2:Never tried, never going to try.
Speaker 1:Okay, favorite musical artist is Prince. Ooh, okay, amazing musician.
Speaker 2:Ooh okay, amazing musician, Saw him live. I mean played his guitar with his actual teeth in the show. I mean wow, Wow and it was good.
Speaker 1:What would be one musical genre that you love that might surprise your clients you work with?
Speaker 2:Thomas Tallis.
Speaker 1:Who is that.
Speaker 2:Go and listen to Thomas Tallis and one particular piece called Spem in Allium. It is a 40-part motet written something like 600 years ago. It will blow your mind.
Speaker 1:Thomas Tallis. Okay, I'm going to look it up. If you and your wife are going to go on vacation right now, where are you going without the kids?
Speaker 2:Without the kids. Oh, sweden, somewhere like that, croatia, I've heard.
Speaker 1:Croatia's awesome Never been.
Speaker 2:Last book you read is Last book side of my bed it was an Isaac Asimov. It was a collection of short stories called I think it's called someplace something like this the rest of the short stories Other one I like a lot of sci-fi takes you out of your head was Arthur C Clarke the Sands of Mars, written before we knew what Mars looked like. You can just wander around with a little face mask on and there were little aliens. It's really cool If there was to be a book written about your life, tell me the title, the title, uh, the title, the one man band.
Speaker 1:Okay, one man band. Now, paul, you, you're never going to believe it. But Netflix found out about this, uh, hulu found out about this, hbo found out. But now they're just fighting because they want to get the one-man band into the theaters, into movie production. They've hired you as the casting director and I need to know who's going to star Paul Morton. It can't be you. Who's going to star Paul Morton in this critically acclaimed, hit new movie.
Speaker 2:Rutger Hauer.
Speaker 1:I was going to say Prince.
Speaker 2:Rutger Hauer. You know the one the say Prince Rutger Hauer, okay, right, you know the one, the guy who was, yeah, rutger Hauer, yeah him, he was in Blade Runner. He was the first replicant that he put the nails through his hands. Him, amazing actor.
Speaker 1:I like the grittiness and toughness. Okay, and last and most important question tell me two words that would describe your wife.
Speaker 2:Describe my wife or my life Wife.
Speaker 1:My wife.
Speaker 2:Ah, eloquent and elegant.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love that. I don't think we've had those before, but those are beautiful words that describe your wife, who I can tell you you have so much respect for Lightning round's over. We both kind of giggled a little bit, paul, but I love, I always love. I'm so grateful to interview people from different countries and perspectives, and one I love the Scottish. Scottish accent, I think it's well done.
Speaker 1:I think it's fantastic and I I'm excited that our paths have crossed. I'm excited to follow secondwindlifecom and make sure that's linked in the show notes. Everybody, I'm going to make sure that the work you do is linked in the show notes and, um, I've just had a really enjoyed our conversation today. I'm grateful for our time together and I wish you nothing but the best in the future thank you pleasure.