Between pick-ups, drop-offs, activities and calendar conflicts, staying organized can feel impossible. But there is hope. One solution is Maple, an app designed to keep all the chaos in one space. Today, we’re joined by the founder, Michael Perry.
Michael is a serial entrepreneur in the tech industry and a champion for parental equality. Together, we discuss the ongoing mental load of managing schedules, and how Maple aims to simplify parenting by organizing various aspects of family life, from meal planning to household chores.
In this episode, you'll discover the following:
- Michael’s personal journey towards advocating for gender equity, sparked by his experiences as a husband and father, shedding light on societal expectations and biases.
- Maple's mission to ease the mental load on parents.
- The importance of partnership and equity in relationships, aiming for a 50/50 split in responsibilities to foster harmony and mutual support.
- How we can shift societal norms and expectations around household responsibilities, striving for true partnership and equity in all relationships.
01:26 Michael's journey towards gender equity
06:40 Challenges of securing funding as a male founder in the household equity space
08:07 Friction and support from the venture community
12:44 Introduction to Maple and its mission
15:17 Incorporating children into Maple's platform
17:28 Importance of relieving the mental load for moms
24:39 Michael explains the focus on 50/50 partnership
25:00 Defining partnership in different households
29:35 Maple's broader vision as a generational company.
32:35 Reflecting on societal norms and gender roles in household dynamics.
42:32 The importance of teamwork and viewing relationships as partnerships.
47:22 Michael defines modern fatherhood and masculinity.
49:30 Discussion on the lack of strong male role models in today's society.
53:59 Exploring the impact of positive role models on family dynamics.
54:24 Michael shares his favorite life hack for being present with family.
More on Maple:
Download the app: Grow Maple, use code WMH30 for a 30-day subscription to Maple Plus.
Check out their Website: Grow Maple
Follow Maple:
Instagram: @GrowMaple
LinkedIn: Grow Maple
X: @GrowMaple
Please make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode, and kindly review the podcast on Apple Podcasts so we can reach more working moms.
We always want to hear your thoughts, concerns, questions or guest suggestions – email workingmomhour@212comm.com.
Follow us!
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/workingmomhour
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workingmomhour/
TikTok: https:/www.tiktok.com/@workingmomhour
Working Mom Hour Website: https://workingmomhour.com/
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@workingmomhour
Between pick-ups, drop-offs, activities and calendar conflicts, staying organized can feel impossible. But there is hope. One solution is Maple, an app designed to keep all the chaos in one space. Today, we’re joined by the founder, Michael Perry.
Michael is a serial entrepreneur in the tech industry and a champion for parental equality. Together, we discuss the ongoing mental load of managing schedules, and how Maple aims to simplify parenting by organizing various aspects of family life, from meal planning to household chores.
In this episode, you'll discover the following:
- Michael’s personal journey towards advocating for gender equity, sparked by his experiences as a husband and father, shedding light on societal expectations and biases.
- Maple's mission to ease the mental load on parents.
- The importance of partnership and equity in relationships, aiming for a 50/50 split in responsibilities to foster harmony and mutual support.
- How we can shift societal norms and expectations around household responsibilities, striving for true partnership and equity in all relationships.
01:26 Michael's journey towards gender equity
06:40 Challenges of securing funding as a male founder in the household equity space
08:07 Friction and support from the venture community
12:44 Introduction to Maple and its mission
15:17 Incorporating children into Maple's platform
17:28 Importance of relieving the mental load for moms
24:39 Michael explains the focus on 50/50 partnership
25:00 Defining partnership in different households
29:35 Maple's broader vision as a generational company.
32:35 Reflecting on societal norms and gender roles in household dynamics.
42:32 The importance of teamwork and viewing relationships as partnerships.
47:22 Michael defines modern fatherhood and masculinity.
49:30 Discussion on the lack of strong male role models in today's society.
53:59 Exploring the impact of positive role models on family dynamics.
54:24 Michael shares his favorite life hack for being present with family.
More on Maple:
Download the app: Grow Maple, use code WMH30 for a 30-day subscription to Maple Plus.
Check out their Website: Grow Maple
Follow Maple:
Instagram: @GrowMaple
LinkedIn: Grow Maple
X: @GrowMaple
Please make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode, and kindly review the podcast on Apple Podcasts so we can reach more working moms.
We always want to hear your thoughts, concerns, questions or guest suggestions – email workingmomhour@212comm.com.
Follow us!
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/workingmomhour
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workingmomhour/
TikTok: https:/www.tiktok.com/@workingmomhour
Working Mom Hour Website: https://workingmomhour.com/
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@workingmomhour
Mads here, mom of three, and today I want to share a solution that's recently brought more peace and calm to our two working parent household. It's called Maple. After using it for a few weeks, I can honestly say it's a game changer. My husband, chris, and I have synced all of our calendars in the app. We're aligned on things like meal planning, who's driving who, where and when, and Maple has really become a central hub for us to work together seamlessly. Maple also helps with organizing things like trips and separate folders, including packing lists, a weather integration and space to upload itineraries.
Speaker 1:One of my favorite Maple features is that it stores all of your essential information, like emergency contact and insurance details, all in one easy to use spot, so I can share information with babysitters or caregivers or just pull it out at doctor's appointments. Personally, I don't ever want to have to dig in my wallet for an insurance card, ever again. Maple also offers gentle, non-intrusive notifications that keep us on track, minus the stress. And the best part, they have a version that's completely free and for those who want additional customizations, use code WMH30 for a 30-day subscription to Maple Plus. Thank you, maple, for being our trusted sidekick to lighten and share the mental load of family life.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Working Mom Out. Oh look, hi everyone. Welcome to Working Mom Hour. I'm Erica and I'm Madeline.
Speaker 1:We're working moms, business partners and friends with kids at different ages and stages.
Speaker 2:We know moms tend to get more done in an hour than the average human, yet are often misunderstood and underappreciated in the workplace.
Speaker 1:We are here to shine a light on the Working Mom experience, to help ourselves and others step into and advocate for the superpower. We are not experts. We're two women who have been there and are still there kids, clients and all.
Speaker 2:We are here to help you, to bring us, as we cultivate, more joy in working motherhood at the corner of calm and chaos.
Speaker 1:Today, on Working Mom Hour, we're talking household and family management with an innovative solution that promises harmony at home and the person behind it.
Speaker 2:Michael Perry, founder and CEO of Maple, is on a mission to create a better world for parents everywhere. His journey in the tech world has been nothing short of remarkable. He's been featured on Forbes' 30 Under 30 list and is hailed as one of the top marketing executives globally by Business Insider. Before founding Maple, his company Kit was acquired by Shopify in 2016.
Speaker 1:More recently, michael has opened up about his family's personal experience with IVF, leading to his two children, and joining the conversation about equity in the household, making life easier for busy parents. This was such a great conversation. Let's get into it with Michael.
Speaker 2:Michael, welcome to Working Mom Hour.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me. I feel so honored as a working dad.
Speaker 2:All right, we're going to jump in with our first question around how you got involved working towards gender equity and the challenges that have come across in this field and as a man in this field.
Speaker 3:Oh well, I'm going to try to answer this as short and sweet as possible because it's one of the longer answers, because I think it's been a complex journey. First, I think I grew up in a predominantly women-led large family. My dad has five older sisters. They mostly all have women. My mom and my aunt used to wait tables together and my grandmother raised my sister and I and my cousin. I was around a lot of women, just naturally growing up my mom would say I'm probably the world's largest mama's boy.
Speaker 3:I think that there's always been a bit of a soft spot of wanting to take care of the women around me in my life which I think at times made me a good boyfriend and then hopefully a good fiance and then hopefully a good husband.
Speaker 3:I never really overly thought about candidly gender equality until I started A my wife entering the workforce and realizing that there was a lot of just general discriminations and disadvantages to her being a woman in kind of corporate settings.
Speaker 3:And then actually the real trigger kind of took off when my wife had our first son and we were in the hospital and they immediately started referring to me as the guest of the patient and that my wife was the caregiver, yeah, and so that was a big moment for me where I was like, oh, there's a huge expectation on my wife. I'm like, considered a second class citizen in this relationship. That was the first time I felt like discriminated against in that capacity and then that just was eye openings, because I think when you're pregnant, you're going to the Lamaze classes and you're doing all the things, that makes a tremendous amount of sense that there's a lot of coaching and energy and effort being put on one partner at least in a heterosexual relationship. The person delivering the baby and being in the hospital room and realizing that the tone was being set very early on, that my wife was the caregiver and I was a guest Never really sat well with me.
Speaker 1:I do remember, like the, even the name tag that my husband wore said guest and I've never really thought of it like that and I didn't change one diaper in the hospital I couldn't. You know he was doing everything, so I can imagine how that felt. I've really never thought about it like that.
Speaker 3:Oh, it totally broke me. It was so bizarre to me that, specifically with my second son, my wife had a C-section of my second son and then she actually had. I want to say it's called host clamp Cia. It's basically pre-clamp Cia after after delivering a child was very serious, almost killed my wife and we had to go back to the hospital with our my eldest son stayed with my parents and my wife, who was nursing my, my second son and I checked back into the hospital and even then, in that situation where my wife was basically on a mercury drip trying to bring her back to life to my own child, I was not the primary parent there.
Speaker 3:Right, my wife is like literally receiving medication is not functioning and they were treating me as like, like staff, like someone who was there to just like, help take care of my kid.
Speaker 3:So I think that you know, there's been a lot of degrees where I have felt it on an at a different degree and then just actually being immensely educated, because I don't think that Maple actually started off believing it was going to be a social company.
Speaker 3:We thought we were going to be a technology company and then just really realizing how deeply problematic the system in places for most households and the gap in terms of just not just division of labor at home but just the actual mental, mental load and the planning portions of home to the imbalances of everything. I just read on a US Census Bureau as an example because we're getting ready to launch a new tool at Maple that women spend three times, three X more time per week thinking about food and meal prep than their, their spouse. It's been just a very educational experience for me, and so I think that the answer is that my, my journey of trying to make the world, both as a heterosexual white man, just like being a big believer in equality and now it's like impacting my own home and in my own relationship in a different capacity. It's been an ongoing journey in a lot of different ways.
Speaker 2:I have a quick question. While you have gone out to get funding, predominantly most of the funders are are male in the DC space. How has the response been? As you're pitching this technology and platform? Great question as a dad.
Speaker 3:I'll be candid to you. I think it's important to have an honest conversation. This is my fourth company. I've been doing this for almost 20 years. It's been the weirdest experience I've ever had, on many levels. One was you know, I think most people in venture which, to your point, most people in venture are white men. You know, people either invest in things that they feel is a huge, like Macavelian, capitalistic opportunity, are they investing things that they're just personally passionate about, and when you go and you are trying to pitch people, that in theory would mean that they would have to admit that the system is designed to their benefit that you're trying to change. It's been challenging. Every yes we ever received was from a woman and every no. Really, I didn't have a single woman investor turn me down, so I actually almost exclusively pitched in. Now I will never snitch anybody out, but I literally had had people tell me. Why would I ever want to fix this problem?
Speaker 1:Oh, because it benefits us so much.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So it's like. And then on the flip side, which has been interesting again, where I'm actually sad, my last company was very much focused on helping entrepreneurs and small businesses and there's like a big rally cry to like fight against corporate America, right, Like let's help the little guy or little gal run her coffee shop, make it build her business, and I feel like there was a large community lift. Anyone that was working in that space like wanted to empower the other person to kind of make a positive contribution.
Speaker 3:In a very weird way, I'm again on my journey of learning and eating a lot of humble pie. I'm probably one of a handful of men that work in what would be defined as either the hair economy or fam tech sector definitely the only man that's working on household equality and it's been met with like quite a bit of friction Because I think that there's some people who feel that there are problems that only certain type of people should be solving, and that's been equally fasting. So on one end, where my network is very strong in the venture community, I haven't had a tremendous amount of support from my mail counterparts, but it that is huge amount of support from my, from my sisters out there who are writing checks to help empower People to the next level and then at the entrepreneurial level, I'm being met with a lot of friction, so it's been quite a sad and interesting experience at a founder level.
Speaker 2:It feels like a TED talk, michael.
Speaker 1:Because, like, if a white man can't solve this problem, you know.
Speaker 2:We're in real trouble.
Speaker 1:Right, we're in.
Speaker 3:I think what's been interesting and what's been what's been kind of sad is that I don't even think it should be about like you know, white guy do it or not. I think it should be like can we all collectively try to solve a really painful problem?
Speaker 1:Can we?
Speaker 3:acknowledge the problem. Yeah, it's like who cares, who actually solves it when you're dealing with something that's so incredibly large. Right, I think we're living through a very unstopened epidemic. All right, I speak to women on a very regular basis who have literally told me they can forgive their husband for infidelity but they're prepared to divorce him because he's unwilling to be a good, like life partner. A lot of people living through various versions of depression because their life is not mapping out to the way that they. You know, it's not the Cinderella story, so to speak. I think it's impacting kids, I think.
Speaker 3:I think there's so much negative ripple from where we're at currently as a society at home. Right, I don't think we talk about home culture enough, like what are we doing at home to better the world, and so I don't think it should be about who's solving it, but it just needs to be solved. I think that that's why I'm sad, because when I was building technology for small business owners and I do think Maple will solve it I think we're on a really great path, but when I was doing technology for small business owners, there was a huge, overwhelming large, like you know, band of linking arms kind of mentality, and this feels like I have to like you know, people feel deep like I have to be the one that solves it, versus having that deep, deep belief that it just has to be solved.
Speaker 1:Like you're feeling friction from other, from others in the same space trying to solve the same issue as you. Like they're saying like we've got this, like we don't need your, you don't need to be here.
Speaker 3:Like backup, bro, this isn't for you.
Speaker 1:Like go back to working on marketing.
Speaker 3:Back to working on marketing technology with all the other tech bros.
Speaker 1:Fascinating Back up.
Speaker 3:And so like that to me has been sad because the reality of it is that I do have 20 years experience and I can be an advocate and I can be a family and I'm a father at the end of the day, like my wife is involved in this.
Speaker 3:You know, like, at the end of the day, like everyone else, I'm just a human on earth trying. You know it's all good. I've really like. I feel like I've come out of this experience becoming a better human being, because I'm learning a lot about what most people face on a day to day basis. You know, the reality of it is is that I've had an easier path than most people on earth, so I'm learning something later in life which is great.
Speaker 1:So you've mentioned Maple a couple of times. Maybe this is a good time to tell us what. What is Maple?
Speaker 3:So Maple is a company that I started in 2020. We set out on a mission to make parenting easier. Parenting is incredibly complex, as everyone knows, because, specifically, moms are trying to be everybody's everything. It's an incredibly disorganized job that oftentimes lacks collaboration. So when people use Maple, we very easily help them get organized around key things in their home, whether that's food and meal prep, bills and finances, household chores and maintenance planning and ship schedules whatever the things are that are the moving pieces of your home. You establish those things and we call folders. Those folders have tools inside of them, from checklist, shopping list, event tracking to even weather tiles. If you're planning a trip and you want to, you know, eyeball the weather two weeks out for where we're headed to has chat functionality. So we have we have about 10 different tools. We have an expense sheet tracker that people work with with their partners inside of these folders so that everything is fully exposed about what's going on in their home and everyone can equally being formed and contribute to the workload at home.
Speaker 1:Okay, so it's an app that you're both at.
Speaker 3:Yes it's a mobile app that both people are accessing. Yes, sorry, it's been great. You know we have over 100,000 downloads run five countries. We are actually just about to launch our very first which is going to be groundbreaking a meal prep tool, as we talked about just a bit ago.
Speaker 3:You know, so much of meal prep falls on one person's shoulders, so you can meal prep together 60 days out. You can plan breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. You can create grocery shopping list directly inside of Maple. All of meal prep that you've planned for pops up on your family calendar. So no more asking mom what's for dinner. Everybody knows exactly what's for dinner. Everyone can play a role in planning dinner, and so we continue to just make a big investment in trying to find, trying to build user experiences for home that feel a little bit more like a partnership. I'm a big believer that if more people entered into marriage treating it like a business partnership, most marriages would be in a healthier place, and so we. Maple is a operating system for your household to build and run like a company.
Speaker 2:I love that we and we've had a couple of guests talk about this concept of the family meeting and treating your family like a like a business. And your kids I mentioned my kids are older, so we have a family meeting and it's sort of like our boardroom meeting. How do you incorporate I imagine not the younger kids, but they're so savvy maybe they do, they can put their towards like, instead of doing like the star chart. Do you incorporate kiddos into this too?
Speaker 3:My household does not, because my sons are foreign too.
Speaker 3:But you know, the cool thing about Maple and this is why I feel like we're building a generational company is that most of the people that work at Maple are parents, and we have people who are wanting to have their first child like during the process of trying to build a family, all the way to someone who has children, your children's age teenagers, and so we have people whose kids are eight, who are on their Maple account and they're assigning chores to them and their kids are checking the off, and so the cool thing about Maple is that it's totally flexible to solve every household's problems.
Speaker 3:One of the most painful learnings that we have come into in the process of building this company and I just have been running the numbers because we're getting ready to do a series, a round of financing, as you know, we've written over one million lines of code, we've removed 400,000 lines of code, we've built a hundred and twenty three versions of the absence February of 2021. And what's been so hard is that there's four people on this call. All of us have different homes, we all have different relationships yeah, I'll have different needs and so we've been working very, very, very hard, within the right constraints of how do you give people the tools to be successful in their household and not try to be a one size fits all. So the easy or the long answer is yeah, any household, regardless of makeup we have in some of our household folders, or nanny is in there with us, if you have extended support and care, it's like you can do whatever it takes for everyone to be on the same page and contribute evenly.
Speaker 2:What a mental load relief, specifically for moms.
Speaker 3:You know, I think the great thing when you, when you, have a mission of make parenting easier, it's a bit of a moving goalpost. You're always trying to make it easier. There's no end goal, right. And I think that the hardest thing that I've come to realize, even in my own marriage, in those early days as a father, was like I was being told I had no idea when my son was supposed to be going to the doctors this morning, which was which was great. I knew my son was going to the dentist and I was actually a participant in planning his dental appointment.
Speaker 3:But I too am a work in progress on trying to not just fall into these very specific expectations and just put everything on my wife to figure everything out. I think the thing she's been most proud for in our own relationship is like I just planned our whole ski trip by myself, we tried to co-plan birthday parties and we're trying to do things where it's just not like it doesn't happen unless she's doing it or it doesn't happen unless she's planning it. And I think that where most relationships feel a tremendous amount of friction and frustration is that mom is going and working a full time job. Then mom is doing most of the work at home, but then mom is also doing most of the planning at home, and so it's like one person is wearing three hats, and I think the shift that's taking place is that if you can get people in Maple and realize there's a lot of moving pieces to the home, that it starts educating like, oh my God, my wife is doing so much.
Speaker 1:Like it's no longer the unseen labor.
Speaker 3:It's completely laid out, invisible, like oh shit, like my wife is doing well different things across 20 different folders right now and I'm like not participating. So what we've been really proud about is when we first started the company, the participation rate and how we define. Participation rate is the second, not the primary, not the first person assigned, but the second person in the household to sign up, which is, generally speaking, dad. The participation of adding to a calendar or adding it to do, or like actually adding, doing the thinking, not just the checking off things. That used to be around 3%, right, so it was like very non existent. We've now seen that shift up to about 20%, and so we know that behavior and systems can change when the right infrastructure is in place to allow for those things to thrive. I just am very proud of my team, because the cool thing about my team is that they all want to make their own households better, and so we're designing things that touch our own hopes. We're building things that touch our own heart.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we talk a lot about efficiency. Obviously, where I was trying to be more efficient in our family life and our work life, I can imagine this would cut down on communication a lot, like we are just constantly texting all day about family logistics and neither of us want to be doing that, but we have to because that's you know. So that aspect of it is appealing to me. The other thing I'm curious about is do you have a relationship with Eve Radsky, or have you? I'm sure you've studied her. So what I love about her one thing I love is her concept of like CPE concept, plan and execute. Like if I plan dinner and get the groceries and you cook it like that's not you doing it, like I'm still taking on the mental load. So I could see that being interestingly integrated into that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we know Eve well. I've been very fortunate to sit on panels with Eve, have drinks with Eve, have breakfast with Eve. You know Eve, you know bless her heart. I do think that she has blazed a really big trail for bringing awareness to this problem and I think a lot of credit is due there to Eve. You know, I think what we subscribe to is a bit is softly different, which is when we first started Maple, we were really, on this whole, like it's got to be 50-50. Our very first marketing campaign was it's not 1950, it's 50-50. And really trying to drive better relationships and partnerships at home.
Speaker 3:I think the problem is and this is why Maple as a platform is so powerful because you can configure it to what you view as a 50-50 partnership. You can work towards something that is meaningful in your household incrementally. Are big swings right? For some people, you know, I look at households really as just two very large buckets. One is who's doing all the work and who's planning everything, and for some relationships, one person's owning most of all those buckets. The first big shift is how do you actually get someone to cook that meal? For most relationships, that's a huge step forward. Unfortunately, that's just like where we're actually at right. Like, most men don't make their kids school lunches. That's just the harsh reality, right? You survey 100 dads, I'm gonna guarantee you 100 out of 100 are probably gonna say my wife makes her kids school lunches 95 plus percent of the time, right, and so part of change is chipping away and working them into these ownership roles.
Speaker 3:And so I think that the problem, the only problem I have with Eve's concept, is that it's not just, it's like an all or none scenario, like I feel like it sometimes creates friction inside of households that if someone is improving and starting to do some of the physical labor of home, that's not seen as enough, and so it creates a lot of discouraging conversations around progress, and the goal, of course, is to get to own the whole thing from top to bottom. That's the goal anyone wants to have inside of a working relationship, right? My business partner and I have complete areas of ownership and that's how we define our 50-50 split. My wife and I have working areas of ownership. That helps us define a 50-50 split.
Speaker 3:I just think that so much of the conversation goes to these like all or none states. It's either 100% or zero, and that's just not how I think progress is gonna work on such a large, gender specific, systematic, specific issue. Because most of the men in today's world have had bad leadership. They've had fathers who've done nothing and so like in their mind, they're better husbands than their fathers were. But the bar's set so low that anyone yeah exactly they are, but it's still not enough right.
Speaker 1:What do you mean by 50-50 and why are you so focused on like equality in? You know, I just see so many. You know I'm one of four and we always talk about our relationships in summer 95-5. When it comes to the household, some are closer to 50-50, like ours, you know, 80-20, whatever, and every, like you said, every household is set up so differently. So tell me, help me understand your focus on 50-50 and what that means to you 50-50 to me means that you feel like you're in a partnership.
Speaker 3:That's just like when you feel like you and your husband or you and your wife are a team and this is, and everyone is feeling like they're working towards a common goal and that's a healthy partnership. That, to me, is 50-50, you're in it together.
Speaker 1:And are you encompassing like work life and home life in that, or are you saying just for like the home?
Speaker 3:Every home has to define that differently. Right, in my household, me work running a company is not my 50%. That would come in for my wife, right? So like I do that time with my sons every single night, I put my kids to bed. Every single night, I have dinner with my family. I cook a lot of the nights. I make one like we participate in co-parenting.
Speaker 1:Not me just showing up on-.
Speaker 4:Parenting 50-50,.
Speaker 1:we're showing up in the family, that's right.
Speaker 3:My wife and I's definition of 50-50 is I'm not gonna be a weekend dad and a fun time dad. It's like I'm contributing to taking care, and for some relationships maybe that's not what 50-50 looks like. I think when you're trying to be overly prescriptive, you're also setting people front happiness right, cause they have to find their own happiness in their marriage and in their relationship and define what equity looks like in their home. My wife does not work a full-time job. She's at home running our household, but I look at our life as a 50-50 split because there's work that she's doing unpaid work that she's doing that keeps this partnership going Right. So I'm not saying here oh this is my paycheck, this is you know.
Speaker 3:it's like we are in this as a team, together, and the output of everyone's work is that our kids are healthy, healthy, happy, our environment's good, our marriage is good, et cetera, et cetera, and so I think that so much of the resentment that takes place in relationships trickles down into their children. Why I am so adamant about 50-50, about building partnerships, is that I don't think any wife signed up to be an employee of her husband.
Speaker 4:My mother did sign up for that.
Speaker 3:And my wife's not signing up for that and my sister's not signing up for that right and vice versa. And vice versa. It's like you don't enter into a marriage to say like cool, I'm super ex Go clean the bathroom.
Speaker 1:I'm so excited to work for you for the next 60 years. Oh my gosh yeah.
Speaker 3:Right, and I think that when you look at the structures that are in place right now and the systems that are in place right now, there's an expectation a false and unfair expectation that one person is gonna do all this shit, and that's not a good relationship, that's not how a good business would operate.
Speaker 3:And so I think that the outcome and I'll wrap this up because I know this is long-winded, but one is I have recognized very, very, very early on, as any parent does, that I want my children to be significantly better on this planet than I ever could be right, and my children live a very privileged life.
Speaker 3:I just hope that they show up to be better men than I ever could be, and part of that is leading by example, that you have to treat everybody fair every race, every gender, every sexual orientation, every preference. Like you, have to let people live a fair and honest version of their life, and that also means that I need to show up and be a reflection of my own marriage, and I think that they're going to benefit greatly from that. And I think that if every couple works really hard to find harmony in terms of what works for both people, not what works for one person, then we're just in such a better place as a society long term, and I think Maple is going to be a vehicle that achieves, unlocks a lot of this stuff.
Speaker 2:So I imagine this is great. Everything that you're saying is music to our ears. I think our relationships run very similarly, mads and I, with our husbands as fathers. I have a question, though I imagine the majority of folks that are downloading Maple are the moms in their relationship.
Speaker 2:How are you helping women, or what is your marketing to help them enroll their husbands or partners into this philosophy? Because, to your point, I don't think it's widely established philosophy in the majority of households. I mean, you're creating this app as a solution for a reason, but I can hear in my head I have a couple of my friends even in my head right now saying yeah, I could never get my husband to download this and check off, scrub the toilets in the washroom on that list. Are you coming up with marketing materials to help folks enroll their partners into this?
Speaker 3:Again you guys answer it. You guys give me the hard, great questions.
Speaker 2:I'm not sorry.
Speaker 3:So, first of all, I think what's really important is that, for your listeners and for my team that listens to this, I don't view Maple as an app company. I view Maple as a generational company and that means that, even internally speaking, our values and culture as a company have to be directly reflective in terms of the type of company. Externally, we're hoping to build Great problems. Big problems don't get solved in one generation Very rarely, and so A yes, we do have marketing material, we do communicate and educate and we try to make it very cool for people to participate. The deeper hope and the greater hope is that we are the start of a new system for every single person that's coming behind, like my dad is 65.
Speaker 3:I don't think we're changing my dad at this point. It's probably a bit of a lost cause. I'm a work in progress. My brother-in-law is a work in progress. There's a generation of men right now that are work in progress. Then there's the next generation below us, and can we try to avoid bad habits earlier on? Can we try to demonstrate and lead from a place that we set a new tone and a new expectation of how they show up in society, show up in their marriage, show up in the workplace, create better opportunity, expand their platform for more people. And that's the way I think about building this business. I'm 37. I'm hoping to be running this company until I'm 77. The hope and the goal is that we, as a company, shift workplace culture, shift home culture and shift governmental and society culture over the next many generations. Unfortunately, some people that are in motion right now may not benefit from that work, but the generations behind us will.
Speaker 1:I spend one hour in my second graders classroom every other week. There's seven and I see the teacher pairs the desks up like in twos and it appears that she and she said this much that she pairs them up based on, like someone who one person can help the other, and it's often a boy and a girl and I witness the girls doing things for the boys in a really interesting way I would have never thought of, like Chris go pushing your chair and you know Mary's pushing in the chair. It's fascinating Like it is embedded in us, in our, in our culture and, like you know, our parents all lived this life. It's it's fascinating to me.
Speaker 3:And it's really important, and it's taken me a long time to come to this reality, because I think when I was younger as maybe even a little bit more ambitious when I was younger, I was so misguided in what our purpose was as a human species, and the reality of it is that our purpose is the same as every other living species on this planet, and that's to care for one another, is to make sure that our species stays alive. The goal is to make sure that we don't go extinct, right, and so I don't think that it's terrible for Susie to be pushing in Chris's chair or whatever. Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 3:I think that what's I think what becomes terrible is I actually instinctively love that people want to help one another. I think it becomes a problem when the teacher is educating people that it's Susie's job to push in Chris's chair.
Speaker 1:Or Chris is expecting Susie to push in his chair.
Speaker 3:It's Susie's job to pick up Chris's fucking pencil on the ground Right. That's the kind of stuff where I'm like we're working backwards, not forwards, yeah, and that's why I said generationally, this is such a huge problem. Yeah, this is such a bizarrely big problem.
Speaker 1:It's just so deep.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's so, so deep. Like we build technology Maple is a technology kind of, but we are a social company. We are changing a social issue. We are trying our best to help people keep it together, keep it together, keep their family together, keep their life together, keep it together Right, and if we can try as a company, you know, I think that, interestingly enough and this is, and this may hopefully, 20 years from now people hear this conversation and say like we were ahead of our thinking.
Speaker 3:But the same way Nike says, if you have a body, you're an athlete. We deeply feel that if you are breathing, you have a purpose and that purpose is to care for one another. And if we can empower and build tooling that pushes that purpose in a more equal place, and it's just not one person doing the caring, but that we all get to do our life's work, we all get to serve our life's purpose. You know, then I think that I can turn to my sons and say I gave my best effort and that's literally. I literally work every single day, every single day, to try to make my boys proud and in the end they don't look at me and say you had the, you had the resources and the time and you didn't try. That won't be what's coming out of their mouth, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. And we just all have to lean into that. I was just going to say we like guess with perspective. So, marla, you have friends who are like at marriage age and you're seeing that happen all around you. Is this one of the topics of discussion before, like entering into a marriage? I know you talk about like do you want kids or not, but are your friends talking about like equity in the household or how things would be handled out of curiosity?
Speaker 4:Yes, I'm glad you asked that because I think that it's something that I'm observing because almost all of my friends live with their significant others before they enter into a marriage and while again, like traditionally, it is something that you know, sometimes it's something that families are all for and sometimes you know it can be like a dicey subject, whatever the case might be. But no, I'm seeing a lot of my friends split finances, have monthly budget meetings. We I feel like our generation we talk about finances a ton. We talk about sharing of household labor and there's also other factors into the mix too. Right, Like some of my friends have dogs, Some have multiple dogs and, like that, I see on a day to day how they're managing the workload there and then you can also see it's putting them to the test, but in the best way possible. So, yeah, yeah, I'm glad you asked that Interesting.
Speaker 4:I also had a question for you. This came up, Michael. I want to know, because I can imagine that some partners meet this app with resistance and that could be on both sides, both from resentment that has built up and both from an unwillingness to change the behavior. So is there a mindset you recommend both parties adopt before they start plugging into this app.
Speaker 3:You actually unpacking something without maybe even realizing it, and that is some of the largest pieces of resistance has come from, and depending on what part of the country, women, there's a lot of identity tied into the work that you do. This is why I think again, without being overly prescriptive, of like love Eve, and I love her concept, I love her vision for sharing the load at home. I think it's really about not building resentment for one another and figuring out what the right working relationship is for your household, and that's going to be different for everybody. Where Maple has to come into play is that we can empower whatever that looks like right. We can make sure that you are finding the right level of balance in your relationship so that one person is not holding resentment that they're doing more than the other. And as long as more couples can have truthful conversations, honest and open conversations about what's not working in their partnership whether that's like you're spending more than we're earning, or whether that's you're not doing as much as I am, or whatever that level of conversation, to the degree that needs to happen, it happens, maple can help them execute on getting on the same page.
Speaker 3:Maple has expense sheet trackers for people who are overspending. That is a point of contention. Finance is one of the top five reasons that people get divorced. Maple has a shared calendaring system so that everyone is on the same page. Maple has all the tools and bells and whistles and things that are cutting edge and built in such a way that we are entering, we're pushing relationships into a no excuse state, which is the most important place to be right, because the excuse historically has been well, I didn't know, I didn't know. I just think more conversations need to be had about like this isn't working or this is working into treat partnership. I very rarely refer to my wife as my wife and I always refer to her as my co-founder.
Speaker 2:For the business or in life.
Speaker 3:We are co-founders of life In a lot of ways. She's a silent co-founder of Maple. I mean her and I talk about Maple deeply and she gives product feedback and we're co-founders in terms of we built two children together and we're co-founders in our real estate investments and we're co-founders the more we can get away from. I'm building Maple and you're doing this, and I'm doing this and you're doing this. It's just that we are doing everything together. And I think when you have those level of conversations, you start looking about you, look at your life as this co-founding established business and then you start talking about business health how are we doing as a company? And that just shifts the weight on against, like you versus me and like we're in this together.
Speaker 1:I totally hear you and I think that is lovely. I do want to honor what Eve has done in her opinion on this, because she to us and we talked to her year or two ago on the podcast to us she's like the quintessential working mom that had this existential crisis. How did I fucking do all this shit? And the CPE thing is in my opinion and I'm not like we're not playing her card game every day or whatever but a lot of these concepts have resonated and it's like the mental load is so much it's real.
Speaker 1:It's real. And to be able to not think about certain like take 10 things away from me that you can handle fully and if you screw up, you screw up like we need to all do that in order to learn If we're doing it all together. That is challenging. I'm not saying you're against Eve, but I do want to acknowledge that she did something really important. Obviously, she's been everywhere initiating this conversation the past few years, so it seems like there's a place for everyone to take on this.
Speaker 3:I am very pro-Eve, I decide I don't blunder any words here. What I'm saying is that you have 120 million households in America. Each of those households are at a very different place in their relationships. Some people are willing to jump in the deep end very fast and establish her methodology, and the faster people can get to ownership the better.
Speaker 1:I think everyone should do it. Let's speak clear. We're talking about ownership of, like you own, soccer. This isn't rocket science, totally.
Speaker 3:It's just that I think I've had, I guess, maybe benefit of speaking to so many different types of households. For some people it's not even. Sadly, their marriage is in such a different spot that it's not owning soccer, it's attending the soccer game. The goal is to get people to ownership. But really where I think, where we all hope, is that we can get every household to progress. There's going to be just different degrees of that.
Speaker 3:If the cards that Eve has which are awesome, she's not stupid, she's built an incredible system If those work for your household and her methodologies work for your household, then there's no reason to abandon that whatsoever. She's a rock star and there's not going to be a silver bullet to fixing that problem. Back to the earlier conversation about linking arms. I'm pro-Eve. I hope that her business continues to thrive and people adopt her vision for whatever a better relationship looks like.
Speaker 3:But I've also come to terms over the last two years with some people are in pretty dire states. Their husband will never play a card game, their husbands will never use Maple. It's so extreme and they're holding on to things for maybe even the wrong reasons. But if we can somehow bring some enlightenment to, showing up in your marriage as partners is the right way of showing up, then whatever you can use Google Calendar and Google Spreadsheets, I don't give a shit what you use. Maple is not going to have 100% of the household, so that's never going to happen. But if our messaging is about showing up in the right way, then you can pick and choose however you decide to show up.
Speaker 2:I am curious, going back to your household and the way you and your wife operate, if there are strategies or practices that you to have adopted within your home to sort of create that harmony and collaborative spirit outside of, of course, using Maple. But are there things that the two of you do that helps sort of keep you healthy as co-founders?
Speaker 3:First and foremost and I think that this is again a place of privilege, but there's again a lot of different degrees to this. It could be as simple as trying to go for a walk. We try to find one on one time with each other, which goes a very long way of just checking in on another. It's crazy hard, right, but it's like you know. There's been stretches where we go two months without a date and then we feel the consequences of that. The same way, if my co-founder and I went two months without talking, maple would be in a very bad spot, right? Then no world shape or form do I believe I should be speaking to the co-founder of my business at a higher frequency than the co-founder of my life, and for most people, they spend more time talking to their co-workers than they do with their life partners. And so you know again Maple, great tool. Google has a bunch of great tools, eve, great system they all stem from. Can you have a conversation? Can you go for a walk? Can you go out to dinner? Can you lay in bed in Sunday night and, you know, maybe don't have sign filled on and take 20 minutes to talk to one another about, like, what's happening this upcoming week. Are you good? Can I support you in any way?
Speaker 3:That's really like I think that 17 years into my relationship and I work on my marriage every single day, I don't that there's no, you know, I'm hoping that the expiration date is death, but you have to continue to work at it. You know my business partner and I have been business partner for 20 years. Four companies, $10 million raised, one majorly big exit. We still work on our business relationship all the time and we still fight and we have it's like, but you have to work on it and I think for some reason, people think like okay, we made it to the altar, now we're done. So I don't know, now you're just beginning. Yeah, it's harder from here. So a lot of checking in and just saying it's crazy and I'm sure you guys have all felt this in a different degree. It's crazy how far a simple question of are you okay, are you good? Goes.
Speaker 1:So we've talked a little bit about fatherhood. How do you define modern fatherhood and masculinity today, and what qualities make a good father and partner in the current context, in your opinion?
Speaker 3:Again, I'm going to center this around our purpose, which is to care for one another, and the circle when you're talking about fatherhood is very small. It's caring for your children. I think that there was a version of that that was like, at one point you're going out and you're hunting and you're shooting antelope with a bow and you're bringing something back to make sure your kids can eat. And then there's the generation. That's like going and working in the mill for 100 hours a week and making sure that your kids can eat.
Speaker 3:And I always think, to some extent, being able to put food on the table for your family is important, but I think, more than ever, it's simply being emotionally available, vulnerable and showing up. I just like try to be there for my family and for my wife and for my kids and to make myself completely available to being the person that they need me to be. And whether that's dad who's taking my son to skateboard practice and I just ripped my oblique muscle on my stomach because my son wanted me to skateboard with him and I'm like, let's go, you know.
Speaker 3:And like if it's showing up for him in that way, or, like you know, this morning my son was asking me questions about where his great grandparents were and taking the time to explain that our time here on earth together is very my son's, four years old. It's a short ride, babe.
Speaker 3:Yeah and then we all end up in the stars. That's it, and I think that that's the key right now is the world is in a very fragile place, and exercising kindness to your children and exercising kindness to your partner, and exercising kindness and being emotionally available to everyone that's, that's what the world needs right now.
Speaker 1:Women have come a long way since, like the hunter-gatherer era that you mentioned, and most women are working. Do you think men are sort of afraid of this new, you know importance placed on them being emotionally available to their family rather than just bringing home the bacon?
Speaker 3:You guys. This has been one of the harder podcasts I've been on. I think the problem it is for men right now. I don't think that there's a lot of great role models out there. There's not really great leadership like. I think that we've lost great men. They're gone and now we have we're living in a time of a lot of just shitty men running this, running businesses, running the countries running, and it's like you know, I think that women have benefited from very strong, progressive, generationally strong progressive women each 10 years and I think women leadership is getting better and better and better and better and they're just, they're setting a different pace and a setting a different tone.
Speaker 3:I don't think that there's great male leaders out there and so I think that there's a lot of like who am I supposed to be right now? What am I supposed to be valuing right now? I think that there's a lot of things women need to fight for and there's a big rally cry amongst women. They're still fighting for equality, they're still fighting for their reproductive rights, they're still fighting for their place in the workplace. There's a lot of fight and rally and push and strong women out there leading the charge and you know, again, back to the ease people out there. Leading the charge, leading the charge, leading the charge this podcast, leading the charge, leading the spreading positivity and good messaging. It's like what, what, what's something great that a man's doing right now? And the problem is when you're like there's four of us, we're all educated. I cannot think of a single man right now where I'm like, damn, this guy's the shit right. He's like setting the tone, building a great company culture, showing up for his like.
Speaker 3:There's no, there's no man right now and so I think that, like there's an identity crisis right now of, like what is a good human? What is it good what? What like? What should we be doing right now?
Speaker 2:Yeah right.
Speaker 3:I think that the crux of the problem sits squarely on Men need better role models, and that's probably a very weird thing for your audience to hear, but I think it's just bizarrely true and important because when you say that I can, I can think about the men in my life that are in my immediate life.
Speaker 2:Right, because we tend to surround ourselves around like-minded folks. So the men that my children get to be around are very similar to you and in your perspective. But on a national, global, who's in the headlines every day? It's a really good point. Who? Who's my son watching, other than athletes, potentially? Or?
Speaker 3:even then, in some cases I don't even know if any of these athletes are great role models.
Speaker 1:You know You're seeing them in one aspect.
Speaker 3:You're saying one aspect, what's no, and you know God bless your husband for being a great. Sounds like husband and father and I'm Thrilled to hear your children are benefiting from that. But you know Where's our dr King at?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Where's our, where's our? Where's our fighter? Where's our freedom fighter at? Where's the person who's like, yeah, we're not treating you people right, we're not. We're not treating women right, we're not treating each other right. Who's the person that's willing to Risk it all?
Speaker 2:What is your favorite go-to go-to tool service or a general hack that makes your life easier, outside of maple, of course?
Speaker 3:I installed a widget on my iPhone for screen time and when I realized that I've spent more time on Instagram than with my children, I put my phone away.
Speaker 3:Like I think, that people Grossly underestimate the value of time. You don't need hacks, you need to be present and I think when we start looking at our phones, we're not, as you're, spending four or five, six, seven, eight hours a day on your phone. You know the thing that killed me the most one time I even hate saying it, just if fucking just it kills me, as I remember one time giving my eldest son a bath and I Was on my phone for a second and I looked up and he was just staring at me and I just realized that my son is watching me Pay more attention to my phone than him and that sucks. Monitoring my screen time is my largest hack to being a good I want to say good husband, but really honestly, actually just being trying to be a better father.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, michael. We know there's a lot to do when it comes to Labor and mental load and all this stuff in the household, but we're hopeful for the future With innovations and conversations that you're driving. What is the best way for listeners to reach you?
Speaker 3:Anyone can always email me on Michael at grow maple calm, but I'm also at Michael Perry on Instagram and Twitter, though I'm pretty committed to deleting those soon.
Speaker 1:and it's at a girl maple Everywhere okay, we'll add that to our show notes and thank you for being here. Hopefully our paths will cross or continue to cross.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I really hope so as an honor. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Likewise All right, bye, bye you.