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VEST Her Podcast
A podcast exploring the invisible barriers holding women back in the workplace and sharing stories of women navigating careers and building power collectively.
VEST Her Podcast
Redefining Gender Roles: Lead Dads and Equitable Parenting
In this episode VEST Member Claudia Naím-Burt co-founder and COO of Keep Company, a group learning platform helping employers care for the caregivers on their teams, talks to Paul Sullivan, former New York Times financial columnist and founder The Company of Dads, a platform supporting “Lead Dads”—men who are the “go-to” parents whether they work full-time, part-time, or are devoting all their time to their families.
Join us as we talk about how we as a society and company leaders should embrace lead dads and how together we can counteract unhelpful gender norms both at work and at home.
About our Guests
Paul Sullivan is the founder of The Company of Dads, the first platform dedicated to creating a community for Lead Dads. Its mission is to help Lead Dads feel less isolated and more confident that they have made the correct choice to take on the bulk of the parenting and family duties - or at the very least not embrace stereotypes around who does what at home. As a Lead Dad himself, Paul understands intimately the joys, frustrations, isolation and reticence around talking about being a Lead Dad. It’s a role that is growing in numbers but is far from normalized. Before starting The Company of Dads in 2021, Paul wrote the Wealth Matters column in The New York Times for 13 years. He also created the Money Game column in GOLF Magazine. As a journalist for 25 years, his articles also appeared in Fortune, Money, Conde Nast Portfolio, The International Herald Tribune, Barron’s, The Boston Globe, and Food & Wine. From 2000 to 2006, he was a reporter, editor and columnist at the Financial Times. He is the author of two books Clutch: Why Some People Excel Under Pressure and Others Don’t and The Thin Green Line: The Money Secrets of The Super Wealthy. Paul lives in Connecticut, with his wife and their three daughters and three dogs. Connect with Paul on LinkedIn.
Claudia Naím-Burt is the co-founder and COO of Keep Company, a group learning platform that helps employers care for, and keep, the parents and caregivers on their teams. Previously, Claudia was a member of the leadership team at Framebridge, a direct-to-consumer custom framing company, where she led Brand and Communications. As the 10th employee to join the company, she helped scale the business to over 400 employees, retail locations and past $82M in venture funding. After Framebridge, Claudia served as an entrepreneur in residence at NEA, and as a strategic advisor to several high-growth businesses, including Poppy Flowers. Claudia has held marketing and communications roles at American Express and Edelman Public Relations. She holds an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business and a BA with honors from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. Originally from Caracas, Venezuela, Claudia lives in Washington D.C. with her husband and two boys. Connect with Claudia on LinkedIn.
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Hey everyone, this is Erica Lucas, your host and founding member of Vest, an organization connecting women across industries, regions and career levels so that together we can expedite the pipeline of more women in positions of power and influence. Welcome to another episode of the Vestor Podcast, where we explore the invisible barriers holding women back in the workplace and share stories of women building power collectively.
Speaker 2:And I became that go-to parent. Now did I tell anybody in my town that I was the lead dad? Hell no. You know I live in a town where caregiving is done by moms and paid caregivers. You know I was the undercover lead dad. Did I tell anybody at the New York Times that I was a lead dad? Hell no. Even though all of my editors were women working moms at the New York Times. I was afraid that if I told them I would be seen as insufficiently committed to my job. Did I tell any of my friends around town that I was a leave dad? Hell no, why. What were men who were taken on this role? What were they called.
Speaker 2:They were called Mr Mom, they were called a house husband. People said, oh, are you retired? There's no good term for this. You know. A stay-at-home anything is not a good term. Stay-at-home no good term for this, you know. Stay at home anything is not a good term. Stay at home mom, stay at home dad. Nobody actually stays home. You're actually running a whole system. There are 25 million men in the United States who are lead dads or could be lead dads. That's a third of all fathers and it's being driven by men in their 20s and 30s, but men like me in our 40s and 50s. Covid was that wake up call. We can work differently and be more involved with our families, more involved with our spouses, and help with all of that invisible labor at home. But guess what?
Speaker 1:We can also be advocates for working moms and caregivers. A group learning platform helping employers care for the caregivers on their teams. Talks to Paul Sullivan, former New York Times financial columnist and founder of the Company of Dads, a platform supporting lead dads men who are the go-to parents, whether they're working full-time, part-time or they're devoting all of their time to their families. Join us as we talk about how we as a society and as company leaders should embrace lead dads and how together we can counteract unhelpful gender norms, both at work and at home. For our guests, full bios and show notes, go to wwwbestherco. Forward slash podcast. If you enjoy the episode, share it with a friend and don't forget to leave us a review. This episode is brought to you by Vest Her Ventures, a peer network of professional women and investment fund for women led companies in the care economy and future of work. To learn more, go to wwwvestherco. This episode was part of a more intimate coaching session with Vest members and has been repurposed to accommodate this episode.
Speaker 4:Tell us a little bit about the journey here At Keep Company. We really try to. We try to approach these topics, I think, as like whole people, so feel free, like the interwoven, the interweaving of the personal and the professional, is what we think the baseline should be. So, with that assumption, what personally and professionally, led you to start the company of dads?
Speaker 2:Great, thank you. So to give it away, it was COVID. But to sort of backtrack, I'll start by defining, you know, the term lead dad that we use all the time, and a lead dad is the go-to parent, whether he works full-time, part-time or devotes all of his time to his family. And then we say in many cases he's there to support his wife or partner in whatever they're doing. We say in many cases because 18% of fathers in the United States are divorced, widowed or otherwise single. And then the last thing we say is in every instance, a lead dad is there to be an ally to working moms and caregivers in general in the office. So I can weave the personal with the professional, because that's really what this story is. It begins as I say.
Speaker 2:You know, my parents were horrendous at being married and it turns out they were even worse at being divorced. So I grew up in a town called Ludlow, massachusetts, which is exit seven off the Mass Pike. I will give a fancy dinner to anyone who's ever stopped there. Many people go past it as quickly as they can, and I had two goals in my life. One was not to live in my hometown when I was older, and I accomplished that by going off to college and never returning. And the second was I wanted to write for the New York Times, which seemed absolutely ludicrous growing up in this depressed bill town in Western Massachusetts, but it worked out In 2008,.
Speaker 2:I became a columnist for the Times the year before I got married, and I'll give a couple of dates here that lead up to another key year before the pandemic. That's 2013. I got married and I'll give you a couple of dates here that lead up to another key year before the pandemic. That's 2013, 2007. I was married. 2008. I become a columnist. 2009. Our first daughter is born. 2010. My first book comes out and people like it. They like it enough that they start paying me to give keynote talks. I don't even know that this industry exists before that. This is amazing. I seem to have an aptitude for it. I love every bit of it. 2012, our second daughter is born. I've already sold my second book.
Speaker 2:Life is. I could not even have imagined as a child, growing up with divorced parents yelling at each other in Ludlow, massachusetts, that this is where I would be. And in 2013, my wife, who's always worked in asset management, said you know what? I think this is the time to start my own business. And I said 100%, you have to do it. My life this is more. I'm more professionally accomplished than I ever imagined that would be. I want to support you. And she says I'm going to tell you one thing, though you may be mad at me. And I'm like, why would I get mad at you? Well, I'm going to go tell my partner tomorrow the truth. I'm going to tell him that in three months I'd like to leave and start my own firm and we're going to put the clients first, like we've always talked about. And that's what I'm going to do. And I said you're right, whatever you do, don't tell him that. And she said no, no, no, this is what I believe I'm going to tell him. I don't know if anybody here has worked in financial services, but the minute she went to tell her partner a man, that she was going to do this, he fired her immediately.
Speaker 2:And then the attorneys called. And then she came home and she said what are we going to do? And I said well, laura, I'm sure, growing up as a little girl in Atlanta, you dreamt of one day marrying a New York Times columnist. But guess what? The person who works in asset management earns a lot more money. So I think you start the business today. And she said well, what are we going to do about the kids? And that's when I said I'll become the lead dad and she said what does that mean? And I said, laura, is it really a time to panic? This is a bit of a crisis we're in, and what it meant was I could step into this role that I sort of created.
Speaker 2:I'd heard somebody use the term years ago, but I really embraced it and I became that go-to parent. Now did I tell anybody in my town that I was the lead dad? Hell no. I live in a town where caregiving is done by moms and paid caregivers. I was the undercover lead dad. Did I tell anybody at the New York Times that I was a lead dad? Hell no. Even though all of my editors were women working moms at the New York Times, I was afraid that if I told them I would be seen as insufficiently committed to my job. Did I tell any of my friends around town that I was a leave dad? Hell, no, why.
Speaker 2:What were men who's taken on this role? What were they called? They were called Mr Mom. They were called a house husband. People said, oh, are you retired? There's no good term for this. You know, a at home Anything is not a good term. Stay at home mom, stay at home, dad. Nobody actually stays home. You're actually running a whole system.
Speaker 2:And so I did this as an undercover lead dad and I had lots of funny stories about it, including one time interviewing a White House cabinet official in front of my daughter's ballet studio and having to hang up on her so I could take the call from the pediatrician, and not feeling like I could tell her that, even though she had kids, that I could tell her pre-pandemic that I had to take this call from the pediatrician. So what happens? We get to 2020. We get to the pandemic and I realized that being a lead dad and a New York Times columnist is not tenable. I'm as busy as I can possibly be at the times. My wife is as busy as she can possibly be with her asset management firm. She's got five or six employees now she's worried that this is going to be 2008. She may have to fire people and my kids, as happened with so many other people, are sitting in my living room. I now have three daughters and I think this is not. I don't know how to do it. And so what did I do?
Speaker 2:I went online thinking that the Google, because the Google is the source of all knowledge in our world, the Google would solve my problem for me. The Google did not solve my problem. The Google showed me that there's tons of stuff for moms, all the stuff for parents, really for moms and the only things for dads were dads in some form of distress horrendous divorce, drinking problem, formerly incarcerated, super important but not what I needed. And so I did what any journalist would do and I said how many lead dads are there in the United States? And that was the moment where I said I think there's something here. There are 25 million men in the United States who are lead dads. It could be, yes, that's a third of all fathers, and it's being driven by men in their 20s and 30s, but men like me in our 40s and 50s.
Speaker 2:Covid was that wake-up call. We can work differently and be more involved with our families, more involved with our spouses and help with all of that invisible labor at home, but guess what? We can also be advocates for working moms and caregivers in the office. I then thought how will I know if this is real? And I said I cannot ask men because men will lie to me. I would have lied to me if somebody came up to me and said caller, you're a lead data. No, no, no, I'm a New York Times columnist. Perhaps you saw my series of talks that I gave in Chile last year. Five cities, five days. Never in a million years would have said that I was a lead data.
Speaker 2:So I asked them you know, what do you think of this idea? And they fell into three buckets. That was my husband. I wish that term existed. His friends all made fun of him, but he helped me develop the career that I have today. The second was I love my husband, but we've had some kids. He doesn't do much at home. It's really causing friction. I wish he'd developed some sort of lead-dad bootcamp. And the third group, the one that really hurt me, because this is my childhood. I divorced my husband X number of years ago. He could never wrap his head around me being the higher earner. It was very difficult, but I wish you well so that other people don't have to go through this. And that was the combination of all of that. And I have three daughters. My wife has been very successful on Wall Street a male dominated world. I said I have to do something. I have this platform, so I left the Times at the end of 21,. Started the company of dads at the beginning of 22 and do three things media, community and workplace education.
Speaker 4:I love it. No, I think there's a woman named Eve Rodsky who wrote a book.
Speaker 2:She's on my board. She's a good friend of mine. She's, yes.
Speaker 4:Yes, so I. For anybody that's not familiar with Eve Radzky, she wrote her first book is called Fair Play and, to kind of bottom line it, she says we need more men to step into their power in the home so that more women can step into their power out in the world, and I just love that phrase. So my first question for you, Paul, is really what does it look like for men to step into their power in the home? What are the changes or structures we need to put in place for that to be more possible, more accessible to more men?
Speaker 2:So in some ways and I love Eve not only is there the book Fair Play, but she has a whole system of cards, and many of you may know about this, and these cards help you have very difficult conversations. In some ways, I think it is easier. It's important for men to step into their power, as you're saying, in the home, but also for them to be allies for working moms in the office. And I think in some ways, it's easier to do it in the home. Why? Because the home is a private space. You know, eve uses cards. We use something a little even lower tech. Uh, we call it paper test and it's simply we ask if it's a husband and wife pair. We ask the husband to write down a piece of paper all the stuff that he thinks he does in the home and all the stuff that he thinks his wife does in the home and then vice versa and we ask him to have a conversation.
Speaker 2:We guarantee a hundred percent that those lists will never match up. And the reason we do that is, you know, as a child of the four parents, I know that resentment doesn't spring fully formed overnight. Resentment builds up. It's, you know, if any of us have and look under our couch when we go home tonight, if we're not at home, chances are there's dust under there. That dust doesn't get there one day, it just it's an accretion. And that's what resentment is and that's what causes problems.
Speaker 2:You know, no working mom on day one has taken on 20 or 25 extra tasks that her husband is not doing. It has happened one by one, by one, and there's not been a conversation. We add stuff to our stuff. We add stuff Eve uses a great phrase mental load. We add stuff and we take on this mental load. At home it starts with that simple conversation and to sort of, you know, nobody giving people ownership, giving ownership of those assets.
Speaker 2:Where I do more of my work is with companies, because in the office, really, the research you know pre-pandemic, that men who put their hands up this is coming out of Austin College men who put their hands up to be what we call lead dads. But anybody else who calls it the fully involved father were penalized at work. They were seen as insufficiently committed to their job. Now every working mom on this call is going to say hey, hey, buddy, you know, haven't you ever heard of the motherhood penalty? And of course I have. But two things can at the same time. Companies have a very gendered view of who is going to do what in the workplace and a very gendered view of who should be promoted, who should be paid more, and it's not true anymore and it hasn't been true for a long time. But the one thing that COVID did is it accelerated all these trends that were already happening. So we really push for men to be lead dads at work, not just for themselves. Great, good for them, but it's great for all those working moms because they have an ally. It's also great for all those hiring managers because they could say wait a second, I've got lead dads, I've got working moms, caregivers. We can make small changes that have a big impact. Now.
Speaker 2:This question may come later on, but we can see like a company like Deloitte just stepped forward this year, at least yesterday in the UK and they announced that all their dads are going to get six months of parental leave, and they did that, and they said it straight out. They said that not because we want to be a great company and give dads time to bond with their children. That's an ancillary benefit. They said it because they want to be able to promote more female partners and they want to be able to identify the best partners, and the way you do that is, you know something as simple as forcing people to take equal parental leave, because I have three kids.
Speaker 2:My wife had taken 20 weeks for each child and I had taken one week for each child. There's a 57 week delta. That's happening at giant companies, and therefore people are getting promoted, maybe just because they're there, and they may not be the best person, though, so there's a huge economic benefit to embracing lead dads as as allies to working moms, both in the home so everybody gets stuff done but really, uh, in the office, so that we can create these equitable, resilient companies for the future yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 4:Um, you know, the stat that we often come back to is up to 73% of the workforce is taking care of somebody at home, right? So when we talk about company policies, oftentimes they're focused on not just moms, but new moms, and so what we see is a lot of the benefits and, of course, we haven't done even nearly enough. There In the US, there is not paid leave on and on, but understanding that often what that leaves out is moms of elementary age kids, moms of teenagers, dads of teenagers, dads of adult children that have some sort of caregiving responsibility sandwich generation folks caring for parents, right? So really, what we? Yes, people with disabilities. There are so many types of caregiving.
Speaker 4:People often talk, they post pictures of their kids in Halloween costumes in the company Slack. They often don't talk about caregiving, and so that stigma that I don't want to tell anybody about this because I will be perceived as less ambitious, less capable is pervasive, right? And so one of the kind of questions I have for you you talked about Deloitte what are other policies that you have seen companies implement that you have seen be really effective in creating this kind of culture shift where more dads feel comfortable to one dad out loud like talk about their fatherhood and to step into more primary responsibilities in the home.
Speaker 2:It's a great question. So a couple of things, and you know we I'll talk about three different policies, that we talk about a lot, that all fit under our rubric of small changes that have a big impact. And they all come back to one thing, and that one thing is honest the ability to be honest with your responsibilities and therefore to be both a better parent or caregiver or a better worker and therefore, to be both a better parent or caregiver or a better worker.
Speaker 2:So the first one we talk about is care days, and a care day is not a sick day, it's not a vacation day, it's not a personal day, it's not a bereavement day.
Speaker 2:It is a day when there is a care emergency and we've talked to companies about implementing this. Give people five care days, give people 10 care days, and what does it allow you to do? It allows you to be honest and transparent when you have a care emergency. When I first proposed this, I got this very heartfelt LinkedIn message from this woman who remembered her mom calling in sick whenever she was sick, and it struck her as why is my mom lying? My mom told me never to lie and she's calling in to work saying that she's sick when I'm really the one who's sick. She has to stay home to take care of me. So that honesty is really important and we've had examples of leaders, you know, putting it on their calendar.
Speaker 2:I am taking a care day and at first and look, unfortunately, this is not going to start with your entry level employee. This has to start with management, because management, you're not going to fire, they're not going to get fired and they're going to be able to lead by their calendar. When they announce they're taking a care day, all the people on the same level are going to say what the hell's the care day? What's this guy doing? And then they're going to understand what he's doing. But all the people below that person are going to say, okay, if it's okay for him to take the care day, it's okay for me to take care of it.
Speaker 2:The second thing we talk about are care shifts, and care shifts could be for a parent, any caregiver, and essentially the idea is you agree to a dedicated number of hours each day in which you're going to work synchronously. So say, you're going to work nine to 3.30 or nine to four. It doesn't mean those are the only hours you're going to work each day. It means those are the hours that you're going to work synchronously and that gives you time, you know, to pick up something. Maybe if you have elder care, an adult in elder daycare you can go pick up. And then it recognizes that not everything that we do in the office happens synchronously. We've got PowerPoints, we always have emails that we're answering at night or in the morning.
Speaker 2:We have longer projects that benefit from a lot of things and I get pushback on this.
Speaker 3:Sometimes People will say you know, that's a crazy idea, you know who's doing that?
Speaker 2:The Sierra Club. I was like I don't know. I don't know what the Sierra Club is doing. They never talked to me, but I can tell you who is doing it and that's a company called Dimensional Fund Advisors. And they'll say Dimensional Fund Advisors. What's that? I said, well, the name of the business school is the Booth School of Business and David Booth is the founder of Dimensional Fund Advisors and his name is on the business school at Chicago. And I say, oh, and I said let me just tell you, you don't get your name on the business school of the University of Chicago by attending every alumni reunion. You get your name on the business school of the University of Chicago by, in his case, donating $300 million. So David Booth is running the most for-profit, for-profit company you can imagine. And he instituted care shifts at DFA because he wanted to retain workers, he wanted to allow them to be productive. But he also wanted to acknowledge that it's easier to focus in a certain time when you don't have all these care things swirling around you, knowing that you have time to do those later on.
Speaker 2:And then the third thing we talk about are care compabs. And what is a care compab? It's no more than having parenting groups that really call men in Because I don't know if I can show hands. Probably won't be very important, but I love the Barbie movie. I'm not sure how many people here have seen the Barbie movie. I went to see the Barbie movie.
Speaker 2:My daughter this will come as no shock to you dressed me up as Ken, not the cool Ken, one of the other nerdy Ken, but that's a different story.
Speaker 2:And when you watch the Barbie movie, there's a point in there where all the men they've discovered the term patriarchy and they're going crazy and Ken is leading them and they're all in the Mojo Dojo Casa house except for Alan Like.
Speaker 2:Alan is the nerdy guy who the Barbies don't really like and the Kens don't really like. Well, when you have a parenting ERG now and 100 people show up, 97 are going to be working moms who have lots of things to talk about. The other three are going to be the Allens. Those Allens are the three guys who least need to be there. What we do when we have the care comp house is we get some of those Kens from the Mojo Dojo Casa house and we get some of those Kens from the Mojo Dojo Casa house to come over and be part of that parenting group and you create allyship with that. Suddenly, people are talking about their kids, they're talking about their parenting responsibilities, they're being honest that we're not moms or dads, we're caregivers and we can do our jobs at a high level and still be parents and still be the.
Speaker 4:Yes, absolutely so. Care days, care shifts, calling men in. I think that a lot of what we see we work exclusively with employers and very much resonate with a lot of what you're sharing and one of the things that we see is that when leadership parents out loud, talks about themselves as a whole person, it creates this implicit permission to do that too, right? So if I can take the time and space and I am an executive, then this creates kind of an implicit permission and I would say this is an invitation to everybody in this conversation. You have more power than you think you do in shifting the culture of your organization and more people are watching than you think. Right To, when you parent out loud in lots of different ways.
Speaker 2:So one that's a great point. I just want to add one thing because people are parenting out loud, whether they think they are or not, and so we want really people to parent out loud in an intentional, positive way, a lot of guys, a lot of managers, will be out there saying, oh yeah, you know you're taking that time off. I remember when I was your age. I worked all the time.
Speaker 3:Do you have any idea how?
Speaker 2:much I missed. I missed a lot. That's parenting out loud, but in a negative way. My wife remembers when she was a junior associate in asset management, one of her senior managers, a woman, was sort of bragging that she was going into labor on her BlackBerry still working. That's a way of parenting out loud, but in a negative way. We want people to see you know, post-pandemic, that it is important to be parents because the more focused you are at work, the happier you are at work, the least likely you are to leave, Like at the end of the day. We talk of all these policies as retention tools. That's what they are. These are the things to save companies money, but they're retention tools and being intentional, how you're parenting out loud, is really at the crux of a lot of this.
Speaker 4:Absolutely, and what we find often is that they're skills. Right, these are skills. We need managers to have, this skill, for example, of self-awareness, to think about how they are communicating implicitly or explicitly to your point, how they, and therefore the company, feels about you, talking about your family or your big job at home in addition to your big job at work. What do you recommend on that front, and are there any companies that you see doing a good job in terms of manager training, in terms of upskilling managers, to be kind of advocates for building more effective cultures where people can stay and have different seasons of family too?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So two companies that come to mind with two very different approaches. One is the carrot approach and the other is the stick approach and they're doing it to sort of achieve similar ends. The stick approach a company called Bailey Gifford, which is an asset management firm based in Edinburgh, but it's a global, gigantic asset management firm. They require that moms and dads take equal leave, and they really require it to the point where, if you're caught, you know cheating and going back into the system, um, you'll be locked out.
Speaker 2:And this is not like oh geez, what's claudia's cell phone number I got. I want to send her a funny text of me and my child. This is okay, I'm logging in and I'm going on these meetings and I'm trying to figure stuff out while I'm supposed to be on. Who does this? The vast majority are men who are doing this and Bailey Gifford shuts them off. They are cut off. And again, they are doing this not because they want them to bond with their children. They are doing this because they want them to bond with their children. They are doing this because they want to create an equitable workforce and they know that the world is changing and the great asset managers of today may not be the great asset managers of tomorrow, and these are people who are managing pensions for the state of Oklahoma. We have someone from Oklahoma. They're managing teacher pensions, they're managing firefighter pensions. This is important stuff and they want to make sure that they make the best choices in selecting the people to be their future leaders, not just selecting the people who are there. So they use that sticker approach. A carrot approach is.
Speaker 2:Pwc does an awesome job and they had a woman I would highly recommend her. She's just left to start her own consultancy. Her name is Deanne Awesome. It was about the best last name you could possibly have to do this job A-U-S-S-E-M-D-N. Awesome. And she created a wellness program at PwC way before the pandemic. This is like 11, 12 years old and what Deanne did is she looked to get the most inclusive program she could. It was parents, it was caregivers, it was disabled people, it was non-binary people. She cast this big tent and made PWC a place that you wanted to work.
Speaker 2:And it's so important when you think of something like consulting or professional services, because these are companies or I know you work a lot with law firms I mean these are companies where people can literally get up and leave and get the same job next door with more money and more benefits. And so this is not a group where they're all making I don't know Cybertrucks or something like that. Maybe if you can't go across the street and make your own Cybertruck, they are knowledge workers, they're super smart and they can literally. I don't like what PwC is doing. I'm going to go to Deloitte or I'm going to go to Bain and I'm going to do the same job in a different environment.
Speaker 2:So they were so smart to take this carrot approach, starting, you know, 11, 12 years ago, to really get workers involved and to really particularly around parenting, to make both the birthing and the non-birthing parent feel like they were given time off to be parents, to sort of ease into this role and at the same time because you mentioned this earlier on, claudia it's not like, you know, you could give somebody a year off for a parental leave, but it's not like on the 366 day, parenting somehow becomes easier.
Speaker 2:I mean, my kids are 7, 12, and 15. And my wife and I sometimes joke that we wish we could go back to those sleepless nights of changing diapers at 2am. I mean, the child can't move, nothing can happen, and so I think companies need to say like okay, this is a parenting journey, how can we support people on this parenting journey? And when they think in those terms, that's when a lot of those policies will be wildly applicable to caregivers in general. Because you have a loved one with cancer, you have a loved one who's injured that could come at any point in your career.
Speaker 4:Let's talk about community. So let's talk about the loneliness epidemic. Let's talk about the Surgeon General's latest advisory on parental mental health. This is something I'm really passionate about and something that brought kind of Erica and I together, and you know this. This Zoom is a testament to it. Right, talk a little bit about the role you see community and deepening relationships among dads playing in creating this, this change.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll talk about in two formats. And you know, after reading that Surgeon General's report it was like the one-two punch first loneliness, then parenting, and I thought to myself like should?
Speaker 3:I just take up smoking.
Speaker 2:Would that be like better for me?
Speaker 5:I don't know.
Speaker 2:Like you know, I've somehow avoided smoking and I thought that would be the right thing for parenting.
Speaker 4:Who knew it was hazardous to my health? Well, the data said it. So, just for context, so for anybody that didn't, at, the Surgeon General Vivek Murthy's office has been issuing several advisories. One that was issued was about the loneliness epidemic the amount of adults in the US that report ongoing chronic loneliness, and the stat in there was that acute, ongoing chronic loneliness is as bad for your physical health as 15 cigarettes a day something crazy like that and so the outcomes are pretty dramatic and pretty pervasive. And then the most recent advisory was essentially we have a mental health crisis amongst parents and the stress that they're under, and so it outlined some recommendations around that, and that was issued about two weeks ago. So just for anybody that isn't like you know, nerds like us watching the Surgeon General's office press wire every day- Thank you.
Speaker 2:So, to answer the question, two ideas for community for dads comes to mind. I mean, one of the things that we're doing at the company for dads is we have monthly online meetups that allow people to come from wherever they are not wholly dissimilar from what this is here. And then we have, usually two or three times a year, we have in-person meetings in the greater New York area, and this allows men who are lead dads to come and be with other lead dads and talk about what they're doing.
Speaker 2:And I always remember this story, claudia, from when I the final column ran in the New York Times. I talked about why I was leaving, what I was going to go do, and this good friend of mine his wife is a super senior partner at a big, prestigious law firm in New York City and he is the lead dad. And he came up to me and he said I love what you're doing. He works in real estate, he has a full-time job as well. Uh, I love what you're doing, I'd like to be a part of this. But, um, can I do it anonymously? And I said I'm sorry, I, you know, maybe you saw a draft proposal of the community. We. We got rid of the throwing puppies as far as you could into the stream. We thought that was really bad for our brand. It just come together and join it. And he looked at me like stone-faced, not laughing at all, all saying like no, no, no, I don't want the people I work with to know that I'm doing this.
Speaker 2:And so what kind of world do we live in when putting your hand up as a lead dad is somehow something to be embarrassed of?
Speaker 2:And so one of the things we do with these community meetings is really draw men in and allow them to talk, and we've tried to show men who have these thriving, wonderful careers, who are lead dads and are also masculine. One of our board members played for the Philadelphia Eagles and won a Super Bowl against the Patriots Sacked some guy named Tom Brady I don't know who that guy is I don't pay attention to guys with great hair and so he's a lead dad, but he's a very masculine lead dad. The other side of this is, you know, one of your first questions, claudia, was talking about equalizing things in the home, and this is always when I get a question like this, I try to use it as a shout out to moms, to the allies, to dads. And you know we jokingly say there is no lonelier, scarier, awkward place in America for a lead dad than the playground. You show up at a playground with a young kid and it's filled with moms and caregivers.
Speaker 2:Nobody talks to you, nobody invites you over. If they do, it's rare.
Speaker 2:And they're not looking at you as what you are. What you are is a parent. What you are is a parent who's there to give your child some exercise, some socialization, perhaps a play date. You're not some creepy dude trying to chat up the ladies and this is. You know, time and time again, when I talk to lead dads who devote all of their time to the families what some people call stay-at-home dads again, we don't use that term. When I talk to those lead dads, that's what they talk about again and again the loneliness they feel and the isolation. And one of the things you know we can have small, incremental change is what we go for.
Speaker 2:A guy, a Harvard trained doctor. He and his husband moved out to around me, a town called Wilton, connecticut, not too long ago and he was at a playground and mom came up to him, saw the two dads playing with their kids. Mom comes up to him and says you know, I'm sorry, I can ask you something. I don't want you to think it's awkward, but which one of you in this relationship is the mom? And he was rightly immediately offended and said we are both the dads. This is a Harvard trained doctor, his husband is a Cornell, trained psychiatrist and he's. And the mom backed up and said I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to offend you. He tells me this story. He calls me, we become good friends. Tells me the story.
Speaker 2:And I said I got to be honest with you, ramon, dr Ramon, I got to be honest with you. You're going to do something that my Irish Catholic grandmother taught me how to do, and that's you're going to use guilt to bring about change. And he says what do you mean? I said you're going to call that woman back and you're going to say look, I'm a parent like any other parent and I want access to that Wilton Facebook moms group, just like every other mom in Wilton gets. And he said why do I want that? And I said if you want your kids to have a childhood in which you actually know what is going on, in which you actually know how to get a used pair of ice skates for them to skate for a month and a half before they realize they don't really like ice skating, you need to be on the Wilton moms group. And he did that. And he used guilt and of course this woman felt horrendous, as she should. Guilt.
Speaker 2:And of course this woman felt horrendous as she should, and the Wilton Facebook group is no longer called the Wilton Moms group. It's called the Wilton Parents group, and that's an example of something like these. Things are not gendered. I mean, if you want to have a group and you want to talk about going out to dinner with all the moms, have at it. But these groups are really repositories of information. So the more that we can invite men into these repositories of information in the community, the easier it becomes for moms and dads to share that burden of parenting, or for the dad to take over more of it, because he happens to be the one who likes to. You know, find the used pair of ice skates for his kid is going to ice skate for six weeks.
Speaker 4:I love it. I think I think a lot of the thread today has been calling people into the conversation, but I saw pushing into the conversation Right Like that is a good example of somebody who had the skills to push in and it's really powerful. I would love to stay on this topic of how moms can call dads in and I would love a couple like what do women get wrong? This is a group of women. Tell us a little bit about what you think, maybe two or three practical things that women could think about doing today to call in more men to Father Out Loud at work, or call maybe the dads in their life to call them in.
Speaker 2:This is about the most delicate question I've ever been asked in my life. What can a white bald guy in an orange shirt tell women? I was like this is like talk about a minefield here, claudia. What are you setting me up here for?
Speaker 4:I think we've built enough trust in this conversation, to be able to know we're all coming from a place of partnership. So I think I will speak for the room and say we're good here, go for it.
Speaker 2:All right, Okay, so I'll say this. You know, in my previous life at the New York Times, I was a business columnist and every so often you'd hear the story of somebody would die young and unexpectedly and they'd have all their personal business assets were all in disarray. And whenever you'd write a story like that, you get all these calls and emails and people suddenly would say, holy cow, I've got to get my, I've got to write an estate plan, I've got to write a will, I've got to get all this. And it took that moment of crisis for them to sort of act on it. So one of the things I use that analogy to say if you are a senior female leader and you, when you had your children, if you remember feeling alone, if you remember your husband feeling like he had to go back to work immediately, even if he didn't really want to do that, you know, use your power, use your position to encourage both moms and dads to take the time off and not just say, hey, why don't you go, take parental leave as well?
Speaker 2:you know, put a policy in place that gives them those guardrails so that you can have that off ramp. You can have that time. However, you know, many weeks you get whatever it is something better, nothing. You, you can have that time off and then you can have the on-ramp to come back and that person you know, figure of choosing a woman really needs to work with the other managers. This is not about, you know, hiring a company to create the world's greatest HR plan. This is about bringing in, you know, people like you and me, claudia, to sort of help companies message these things.
Speaker 2:You know the second thing, and I've been a beneficiary of this it only takes one or two moms on the playground to sort of reach out to those dads. Now, to be completely fair, who are the moms that historically have reached out to me when I was an undercover lead dad and helped plan? They're mostly working moms. They're working moms because they're trying to juggle all this stuff too, but it's you know you want moms to be. You know your your ally out there, and I think you know the.
Speaker 2:The third thing um, I think, when it comes to things in the home, don't ever let frustration build up. Um, you know, when we talk about paper test, or if you have Eve's, you know uh cards, do that in a time, not an extremist time. Do it in a, in a quiet time. And I always say do it on a Saturday, do it on a Sunday, you know. Do it when your kids are doing their homework or something, and get an hour, have a cup of tea or, if you like wine, have a glass of wine and have that conversation, because nothing is ever solved when people are yelling at each other because somebody has forgotten to pick up dinner or somebody has left a child at an activity. That is not the time to have that conversation.
Speaker 2:So if you, so if you want to call your partner and you want to call your husband, do it on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon and really start that conversation and say what do you think you do, here's what I think that you do, here's what I do, what do you think I do. And that really moves things on. Because, again, I come at that from a very personal point of view, not just as the husband of a very successful woman in finance, not just as the dad of three daughters, but as the only child of divorced parents and I would like to make all three of those things better I'd like people to find a way to come together and not get divorced. I would like my three daughters to be able to become lead moms or marry a lead dad, or not get married. Married to do whatever they want, not feel that just because they're women that they have to take on these non-gendered parenting responsibilities.
Speaker 2:And, of course, I want my wife to continue to have success in her career.
Speaker 4:I have a lot more questions, but I'm going to ask one more before opening up the floor. So start thinking about your questions. As I asked this, this last one maybe not last one because I have a few more that might sneak in during the Q&A but what has surprised you in this company of dad's journey? Certainly you started on a mission. You are still on that mission, but, as we all know it is, we are always evolving in our family lives and our professional lives. So is there anything that has surprised you or that you didn't expect as you started this journey? That you as you, as you look at what you've achieved over the last couple of years?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's good. I don't want to sound arrogant, I don't. I knew it was a good idea at a great time and it's proved to be just that. Um, and I've been really heartened I wouldn't say surprised I've been really heartened by the number of men all different either jobs, all different ones reached out and said I'm really glad this exists. And I've also been really heartened by so many of the senior female executives who bring me in. I mean, this is the case. Maybe it's kind of surprising.
Speaker 2:It's not often men in these roles are hiring the company of dads to come in and give a talk. It's that senior female executive who's seen what we're putting out, who understands the importance of this, who perhaps had an experience herself with a spouse or partner, and they're bringing it in. So I guess, if there's one thing that I would like to see differently because once I go in there's plenty of men in the room I would like a senior male executive to say hey, paul, I want the company to come into my XYZ company and give a talk and have him be the one who's introduced. But you know what, as long as I keep giving these talks, doing these seminars, I'm happy. So whoever wants to bring me in. Bring me in, but I wish more men would be the one to initiate that conversation.
Speaker 4:I hear a lot of hope in that. You know, the data right now around loneliness and mental health crisis amongst parents is really devastating, so I think I too have. I mean, this is why you become an entrepreneur, right? You think that maybe you can put in, as we say in Spanish, like you're a little piece in making it better, and I do think there's a lot of hope right now that people are ready for some change, and so I appreciate your hopefulness. I will let everybody jump in with questions Again. I have a lot, so if anybody has any, let me know, and if not, I can keep going. I see one in the chat from Erica. Is this for everyone across the country or limited to New York based?
Speaker 2:It's for everybody across the country and we actually maybe it's surprising, maybe it's not we have a lot of Canadian lead dads and so I think maybe Canada is a slightly more progressive country than the United States, but we have a lot of Canadian lead dads, but it's all across, and that's honestly why we do the monthly meetups on Zoom and we do 8.30 Eastern at night, because then even people on the West Coast can kind of find a way to slot in. So yeah, that's good, it's national. Another shout out like you know, there are some good models of this in the UK and Australia.
Speaker 2:I think those two countries are doing a much better job than we are, or at the very least they're further ahead than we are in helping working parents, both moms and dads.
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely Any other questions?
Speaker 5:Claudia. I have a question, if I can. Well, first of all, thank you, paul and Claudia. This has been an awesome session and I'm a little bit nervous. I haven't been to a VEST session before, so I appreciate the VEST community letting some of guys uh join today. But um, I know we've talked calling you in chris we're calling that's the message right, I feel it, I love it.
Speaker 5:Um, and I don't want to skew us because I have a question that's not about workplace, really, or community, but with two teenage daughters at home, I'm curious of what you think the role of lead dads might be in influencing the next generation's perceptions of gender roles. So maybe we can kind of get ahead of it in a proactive way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean thank you, chris. I mean there's one, one thing that I'm a hundred percent certain of, uh, that I'll give you your money back. Guarantee is that your children, just like my children, are watching what you do a lot more than they're listening to what you say, and so you know the relationship that my wife and I have as partners, both working, both doing stuff. You know, in the home, as I say, like I'm a guy who schedules every playdate, every birthday party, but you know, when it's Christmas I'm just as surprised as my daughter.
Speaker 2:So my wife loves to buy the presents. So we found a way to sort of split up and do the things that we like to do. But they see how we partner and they see how we interact. So my 15 year old is seeing this as a model and when she comes home she's always trying to get my wife friends and she say hey, you know, so-and-so's mom is a working mom. You know, maybe you guys can have coffee and so she knows that model. Same with my 12-year-old. To sort of add on to that question, probably the way you're asking it, I don't know if it's an issue for you, but you know some guys will say to me, you know, when they have four or five-year-old kids they'll say stuff like oh boy, I have daughters.
Speaker 2:Like I better really spend all my time with them now because once they become teenagers they're not going to want anything to do with me. And maybe I thought that when my daughter was three or four, but it's just not the case, because I've been there with my kids throughout and so now at night sometimes I'll go in and sit on my daughter's bed and read with her while she's doing her homework, or she'll come and ask certain questions to me that she doesn't ask my wife, and vice versa. So I always tell you know, dads, that, like you know, think of it. This is a real investment and if you don't want to be that dad who is alienated from his teenage daughter, and I only know daughters.
Speaker 2:I only have three daughters Invest that time and keep doing it, keep being there. It pays off. But again, to come back to that question, as long as you're modeling the world, you want to exist, even if it's not the world we live in that's what our kids are looking at and that's what they're looking at.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I appreciate that so much. I think I feel so strongly about normalizing many seasons of care throughout a career, many different seasons where family will pull hard. I think parents of teenagers right now need a lot of support. It is a very tough job. There's a lot of unprecedented challenges. I think that what we often encourage folks to do is it might mean that it's a time for new skills. Like different stages of parenting and caregiving require different skills, and the skills that you need for teenagers are sometimes different than the skills that you need for younger kids or for managing aging parents, and so we often lean into like listening as a skill with teenagers, the power of that. But it's interesting, we keep coming back to these themes of like when to call folks in, when to push in, and I think what I'm hearing Paul say is push in right, find your way to push in and to be present if that's something that that's important to you. So I love that that has kind of emerged as a theme today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'd also add, claudia, one thing like if somebody were to put on their calendar, you know, going to Sally's soccer game or going to Billy's middle school graduation, nobody would bat an eye. But those are what we call event dads. We want people to be lead dads, and so what I want to see people do is put on their calendar having ice cream with teenage daughter and block out two hours and knowing that you'll be back. So I would love to get away with the OOO, the out of office, as comfortable as you are. Being honest, there's sometimes, with my teenage daughter, the issues she had. I need to just go and get an ice cream with her, I need to go and walk in town with her for 45 minutes and then I get back to work and that's. Every parent has that happening, and the more honest we can be about it, the more we can support each other in the community.
Speaker 4:Paul, let's stay there for a second if you don't mind. Bring that to life for us a little bit. So if Chris that two-hour block on his calendar and let's say, 10 people on his team see that block, what do you think that does? What is the impact of that practically on the people that see it?
Speaker 2:Well, immediately it tells you if your manager is a jerk or not. You've got that going for you.
Speaker 4:He likes ice cream. How bad can he be?
Speaker 2:I don't know, I mean who doesn't like ice cream, you know, but I'm fortunate to live in a town that has four ice cream parlors, so we do have pretty heated family debates as to which ice cream parlor is is the best, but what it does is, on a serious note, it shows you like are you really supported at work? You know, I have a good friend who's about to leave a wildly high paying job at Goldman Sachs to go somewhere else, and he's doing that because when his mother-in-law was really, really sick, Goldman's you know, words did not were not backed up by their actions. You know, after a week or so of him being home taking care of his kids, still getting on Zoom meetings, they wanted him back in the office and he said this is absurd. My mother-in-law has been airlifted to a hospital and she may die. He is now looking for another job and that's because he was honest and they were in a sense, they were honest and so that told him something.
Speaker 2:On a positive note, you know, what does it do? Well, it starts a conversation and it allows those other people in your organization who are the same level as you, maybe, who are beneath you, reporting to you, say, okay, it really is okay. You know, my company talks about the whole person. My company talks about work-life balance, but if they don't actually support you know Chris or me going for ice cream for 45 minutes with a daughter and coming back then there's a hypocrisy there and, just as I said to Chris to answer Chris's question, just as our kids are watching us more than they're listening to us when we look at companies now in this post-pandemic world, we're watching to see if their actions and their words align, and hypocrisy is the clearest indication that perhaps, if we have the choice, if we're able to, perhaps we may want to find a different employer who supports us in the way we need to be supported.
Speaker 4:Erica, I see your hand is up and we also have one in the chat, so do you want to take it away, and then we'll? We'll hit Kayla's question.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and definitely Kayla's is a great question. So I don't. I don't want to take too much time, but I I hear doctor, not doctor, but professor Galloway talk often about the loneliness the young men are experiencing and how that's translating into toxic masculinity or seeing, uh, you know, males who do have this mentality of non-gender roles and stuff as beta males. How do we, um, how do we address that?
Speaker 2:It's a great question and I'll be honest because it's something I always tell my daughters Just because somebody asks you a question, you don't have to answer it. If you don't know the answer, I don't have an answer. I don't have a good you know answer to that.
Speaker 2:I don't know why my cousin, who is 20 years old and is a financial aid student in college. I don't know why he wants to vote for Donald Trump, um, but he does, and there's something in the pro culture, uh, that the more bombastic you are, the more appealing it is. And it's a kid who's a super sweet kid, who's gone on vacations with us and and been around with us, and so I don't. I don't. Unfortunately, I don't have an answer for it, and it baffles me and it breaks me, so we have a girl dad here.
Speaker 4:I'm a boy mom, so I feel so passionately about this topic and I do think that Galloway, who's a professor at NYU Stern, has a couple of awesome podcasts. If anybody's interested in this topic is doing interesting work in kind of reducing the stigma and adding to this conversation. I think Kayla has a great question. What do you think makes more countries more progressive with lead dad parenting?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean. This always comes back to the Scandinavian countries Sweden, finland, Denmark. What makes them more progressive is they have a more robust social safety net and they have government that stepped in and said your job will be guaranteed for you. Um, and you know, I was talking to somebody the other day and I think it's denmark um, pretty sure it's denmark where it's now become, uh, you're stigmatized if you don't take your parental leave.
Speaker 2:As a man, it's like, well, what are you doing? Like why wouldn't you? Like you're the father, like you helped create this child, why would you not then go be involved? So it's actually seen as a negative, but it's the government that has created this support system so that companies aren't able to fire people. Or you know, I'm sure you've shared this or the case of your co-founder not able to change somebody's you know job or responsibilities when they're out on parental leave responsibilities when they're out on parental leave. So it's something that we're sorely lacking here. A couple of states have tried to make inroads in this to support it, but it's really that government wrapper that says this is what you can do and this is what you can't do. And if we think about it, people may say well, I don't know, can government do this? Well, government helps us do all kinds of things.
Speaker 3:Government helps with health insurance Government helps with 401k plans.
Speaker 2:If companies had a program the way a company rolls out its 401k plan to get the most people enrolled as possible, that seems like they're doing it for the good of their employees and in some way they are. But everybody who's ever worked on a 401k plan knows that the more employees you get enrolled at lower salaries, the more people at the higher salaries can put in. So it's this kind of self-serving altruism, but it's something that they make a real push for. So if the government was able to mandate that companies are going to have to do some sort of training or guaranteed jobs around both men and women who take leave, I think that would change the support because it'd be a social safety net.
Speaker 4:just the Scandinavian countries have yeah, I think you find in these conversations often it's very hard, when you're talking about working parents and caregivers, working caregivers, to separate the individual and the system. So we have to talk about how to equip, empower, support, the, but if they're in a system that was designed to not work, for them, there will be limits, and so, whether we're talking about the organizational system or the government system, the relationship between those becomes really important in this conversation. Jennifer, last question.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you guys so much for this information, and I think mine is more geared towards the how do you help small businesses?
Speaker 3:I'm a small business getting ready to move into the next realm and a lot of my clients that I help with the back office support within the human resource policy procedure, things like that. This is a great thing, and when you try to talk to those organizations and say, hey, let's build this, the first thing that I get is pushback is oh, I can't afford. Like, give the five care days, right, okay, that's just more cost out of my pocket, it's not billable expense. How do you, is there a way that I could help to convince them that the trade-off in the productivity with being flexible in the hours, the flex schedules do you have any words of advice or words of wisdom? Because this is a very important topic to me personally? And just a little background I moved my parents right next door to me three years ago because I know I will eventually be that person, so I know the importance of this within an organization. I just can't seem to get other business owners to understand that as well.
Speaker 2:I mean, claudia, I'm sure you have some great thoughts here. I'll just go very quickly. You know, my wife's firm now is about eight or nine employees and one of her employees, a man. His wife had their second child and so she was very passionate about treating him as a lead dad, of giving him that time off. And what she did? She just planned. She was able to plan for it. You know, no surprise, he told her quite early on, you know, three or four months in, when his wife was pregnant and so she knew, found out about when he would go out on leave and he was out for two months and she planned for it.
Speaker 2:Was it a cost to her? Absolutely, but she's taking a long-term view. This is somebody who's worked with her for 10 years. She depends on him, she counts on him. He has so much institutional knowledge she wants him to get in work for for her for another 10 years. So for him to be gone for two months, um, it just was a blow she had to take.
Speaker 2:Was she able, with a company of eight people, to get somebody to take over, um, all that he was doing? No, she, she wasn't. It was a. It was a tough two-month period, but it was an investment for the long term. When you're talking about a larger company, um, it's just a lack of wanting to do it. There's really no excuse. When you have these big companies, there are people to fill in. I remember, though, once talking to somebody who was a CHRO at one I won't out the person, but at a very large national pharmacy chain, very large national pharmacy chain, and they had figured it out. They were struggling because it was really easy for them to give parental leave to executives, because they could have somebody else come in and take over portions of that person's job when he or she was away. But it was really difficult for them to figure it out for the hourly workers, because, essentially, if you gave an hourly worker that amount of time off.
Speaker 2:You then had to replace that person with somebody else. They didn't figure it out. I thought wonderful person shared the story with me. So sure they tried, but I thought that that was just a lack of imagination, because it's such a gigantic company.
Speaker 2:Obviously there'd be lots of people going out. But what are you doing? A positive example coming at the Home Depot, they're always reinvesting in their employees and their hourly employees and they give them certain benefits, they give them money, they have a fund If something happens, a family tragedy, a roof, and they are investing so that those hourly workers stay. And my childhood best friend from Ludlow, massachusetts, has been an hourly worker at Home Depot for, I think, 23 years now and he has no desire to leave because they really take care of him as if he is a salaried worker or an executive. So it's really small companies planning see it as an investment in the future. Large companies really just no excuse and a lack of imagination.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I would say ROI. The cost of attrition is so much higher than anybody talks about. In law firms, which Paul mentioned, we work with quite a bit, and professional services firms. In law firms, it costs $650,000 when one associate leaves, and so doing some of that rigorous work about cost of attrition is valuable. I put in the chat a care calculator that we have on our website. That can be helpful, because I think my second point is it's so many more people than anyone thinks.
Speaker 4:Right, this is not niche, this is the majority of your team, and so, yes, I'm sure that Paul has awesome resources on his website. So there's so much education that you can do to empower people to be better advocates for this. And then the last thing I'll say is it's very convenient for this to be a binary decision this. And then the last thing I'll say is it's very convenient for this to be a binary decision and it's not. So it's very convenient to say either we do this or we don't do this. The reality is there is a lot in the in-between. Okay, so if cost is not a lever that you can pull, what are the other levers in terms of awareness, education, leadership from the top, all of the awesome recommendations that Paul gave us today. So I think my challenge would be it's not binary. This is no longer a yes or no question. This is how. How are you going to figure it out?
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