Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - "Can I Be a Great Parent AND a Great Entrepreneur? Help!"
Episode Date: December 23, 2024This week, the Money Rehab feed will be taken over by Nicole's favorite episodes of Help Wanted, the podcast she cohosts with Jason Feifer. In this episode, Jason and Nicole explore a taboo topic: the... give-and-take struggle between a demanding career and parenthood. Jason and Nicole have noticed a reticence in others to talk about this experience for fear of judgment or misunderstanding, but in this conversation, Jason and Nicole speak honestly. Plus, Nicole uses this episode to tell Jason her big news!
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I'm Nicole Lapin, the only financial expert
you don't need a dictionary to understand.
It's time for some money rehab.
Hey guys, how you doing? You missing me? Of course you are. Well, during this guest host
Belouso while I'm out on mat leave, I wanted one special guest host to make an appearance myself.
Kidding.
I mean, kind of.
As you know, I co-host a career advice podcast with the entrepreneur, editor and chief Jason
Pfeiffer called Help Wanted.
And even though Help Wanted is more work focused, work and money are pretty inseparable.
You need to work to make money unless you're doing something weird.
So money comes up a lot on the show, whether it's asking for more of it, feeling like you're paying too much of it,
want to create a new revenue stream. We talk about it all. So this week, I wanted to share some
episodes of Help Wanted that I think will be pretty valuable for money rehabbers. So to kick
that off, you're going to hear the episode where I actually told Jason I was pregnant. Yes, I told
him on air while we were taping an episode because of course I did. But that conversation was about more
than just me. We also talked about the trade-offs that you need to make when you're trying
to excel at home and at work. And after it aired, Jason got a ton of emails about this
episode from parents who had never felt more seen. So as you'll hear, Jason really nails
this one. I mean, I've got a good co host, guys. Here's our conversation.
This is Help Wanted, the show that makes your work work for you. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, Editor in Chief of
Entrepreneur Magazine.
And I'm money expert Nicole Lapin. On Tuesdays, Jason and I answer the helpline and help callers solve their work problems.
And on Thursdays, I give you one way to improve your work and build a career or company you
love.
And it starts now.
You can remind me of the details, but we were doing some work thing and one of your kids
had some poopy problems. There's a lot of poopy stories
from the Pfeiffer household though.
Well, here's the thing. When you have kids, the first many years of your life as a parent
is defined by management. And that's just that is the nature of it. Waste management.
I was actually just thinking about this recently
because I have a nine year old and I have a five year old
and the five year old just graduated pre-K
and in pre-K the teacher can't wipe a kid's butt.
Kids gotta go wipe his own butt,
which means that the kids gotta start doing some wiping.
It's probably not very good,
but it's a half assed effort at it.
And so I know that Colin is this.
I know that Colin, I know that you know that Nicole, but for everyone else,
Collins, you have two kids.
I have two kids, Fenn and Colin.
I know that Colin is developing some skills at wiping his own ass,
but I am still wiping his ass at home and F Fen has long since taken care of his own ass.
But I was just, I was wiping Colin's ass this morning.
And I was thinking to myself, will I know the last time
that I have to do this?
And can I capture it?
Can I film myself right afterwards,
running out into the street and being like,
I have wiped the last ass, which would make
me so happy. I don't know that I, but that's the thing about parenting is you never really
know when you're in or out of something. It's all just a big mush.
Hmm. Thank you, Jason, for that. I will repeat what I've said many times to you because we
talk a lot about these stories, that you give great
birth control through these stories.
And I really love the way you honestly talk about it.
I know like authenticity has been totally bastardized, especially in like the parenting
social world, because like authenticity is whatever, we can have a full episode about
that.
But you are, you're not edited,
you're not making these stories beautiful in your work life
and in our working relationship too.
Your kids are part of it.
They're running around while we're recording,
they're interrupting stuff.
Wasn't there a time where you also had a Zoom
with some important fancy pants CEO and one of the boys came in.
Oh, that's happened so many times. Yeah, the one that I thought was funniest was when I was
interviewing the CEO of Zoom on Zoom and my kid came in and interrupted us because that was such
a classic Zoom moment. Everyone has been on Zoom and had their kids interrupt them. So to do that
with the CEO of Zoom was perfect. But yeah, I'm excited to have this conversation
with you today, Nicole,
because this has shown up in many of our conversations.
And I'm sure I've even made reference
to a bunch of this stuff on Help Wanted before,
but we've never just looked at it directly.
So this'll be fun is talking about
what are the challenges of doing all the things
that an ambitious work
focused person wants to do, while also having kids, which
is a really hard balance. And I have come to this belief, and I
appreciate you recognizing it, that somebody needs to talk
about it. I think that most parents are afraid of talking
about it, because there is this expectation that parents just
love being parents and are grateful for the family and are feeling hashtag blessed. And
so much so that I even need to caveat at the beginning of this, like whatever else that
I'm going to say during this conversation, I love my kids. They're great kids, but it's
really hard. It's really hard and often very frustrating.
And I am constantly thinking about all the things that I could have accomplished,
either professionally or even just in the other things that I want for my life personally,
the amount of travel that I would love to do that I haven't done, the amount of time that I wish
that I could spend with my friends, the way in which we were just before we were recording this, we were talking about your
wedding and how I'm going to fly out from the East Coast to LA and back in the span of less
than 24 hours because I really want to be there with you to celebrate. And I'm so excited to do
it. But that's not leisurely. I would love to be there leisurely. I'd love to come out for multiple
days and I can't because I got kids at home. And I think that to bottle that up and to act like that's not attention in my life is to make it worse. And the thing that I have found that makes it better for me is to be open and talk about it. And what I found is that when I do some parents get really uncomfortable, because I think I'm saying things that they
had trained themselves not to directly engage with or speak.
And then other parents thank me because it's a conversation that almost no one else will
start.
So I'm here to start it.
Is it because parents are nervous about even insinuating that there are things that they regret by having kids.
I don't think that there's any one answer here, right? Like there are friends of mine who are parents and being a parent is the center of their identity and they love it and they won't relate to any of this. And then there are other people who follow other parts of the spectrum. So I don't want to say
that like anything that I'm going to say here is universalized, but I do think that what you just
said there is relevant to a whole lot of people. You make a life choice, whatever that life choice
is. And then you want to feel like it was a good life choice, because otherwise you're living with a
lot of regret. And I think that a lot of parents get uncomfortable when being confronted with
the possibility that like their life choice wasn't perfect. I think that it's fine to
acknowledge that maybe your life choice wasn't perfect. I think that it's fine to acknowledge that maybe
your life choice wasn't perfect. I saw somebody on TikTok say recently, they're like, a lot of
people criticize me for not having kids or something like that. Or say they don't understand me,
they didn't have kids. But I want you, if you're a parent right now, to close your eyes
and picture your perfect Sunday morning.
Now let me tell you something,
your kids are not in that picture, are they?
And it's true, perfect Sunday morning, Nicole,
weekends are exhausting with kids.
They're so exhausting.
But your life goes inverse when you have kids
where like weekends and summer used to be this flexible time,
and now it is the inflexible time.
Now it's the time where you're spending the most time on kid management,
and it's actually like work time and the school year
where you have the most free time as an adult, with small kids at least.
And my ideal Sunday morning
does not involve my kids. It doesn't. Because to be spending Sunday morning with my kids
is to be stopping them from fighting each other or being like running a restaurant in
my kitchen and trying to get them food. My ideal Sunday morning would be going out to
brunch with my wife and having a nice leisurely stroll somewhere or just catching up with
friends or just doing something where I feel like I have a freedom of movement as an adult in the world,
which is not what I have with my kids.
But to say that is to indeed challenge
some of the life choices that I've made.
And I just don't think that should be a scary thing.
We all make life choices and it benefits us in some ways,
and it subtracts something in other ways.
As I'm talking about this,
I'm talking about the things that I've lost,
but I've gained things with having kids too.
We could talk about that, but I think it's just fine to live in the complexity
of having lost things as kids and that the life choice that you made was complicated. And that's
okay. Yeah. Do you think like this scale, there's like a scale of regret? Like it's not binary,
like I regret having kids or I don't, or maybe there are some days that you do or some days that you resent your kids or career opportunities that you can't do or weddings that
you can't really enjoy or whatever. Yes. Anybody who has older kids wants to reach into this
episode right now and say, it gets easier, it gets easier. Little kids are really, really hard. And
that's true. And I've heard that over and over again.
And I'm like, every time people tell me that, I'm like, I hear that I'm waiting to see
it.
But it's also disingenuous because a nine-year-old and a five-year-old is way easier than like
a five-year-old and a one-year-old.
So my life has gotten easier.
I am able to move around more than I used to.
I don't get woken up by screams in the morning, is what happens when you have a kid that's just like three. And I suspect that when my
kids are older and they're not exhausting in the way that they are now
and I have more freedom of movement as an adult in the world, maybe won't even
have much of a memory of the kinds of things that were frustrating me like at
this point in my life. So yeah, I think that it's a scale. And you know what my wife, so my wife Jen,
she always tells me a lot of this comes down to the expectations that you set for yourself.
Like I always complain about family vacations, because they're not the kind of vacations
that I like to take. I like to go to a city that I've never been to before. And I like to spend the entire day walking around and just like discovering
random things and eating random things and meeting random people. You can't do that with
kids like at all 0% you cannot do that with kids. So what can you do with kids? You can
go to the beach or you can like rent an Airbnb with a pool. I don't care about these things.
I don't like these things. And then of course, you're like dealing with you're going to fill
the kids time, you're going to entertain them. And then of course you're like dealing with, you're gonna fill the kids' time,
you're gonna entertain them.
And that's not to say that this is unenjoyable.
You know, it's fun spending time with the kids,
but it's not the way that I would want a vacation.
And so my wife keeps telling me
when we're going on these vacations,
you have to understand that this is not the vacation
that you would love.
This is a different thing.
This is family bonding time,
and that's gonna come with different roles family bonding time. And that's going to come with different
roles and different outcomes. And that's true. If I go down Sunday morning from my bedroom, and I think I'm going to get a lot of work done this Sunday morning, that's going to be great.
It's going to make me feel less stressed. And then I'm trying to work and my kids are constantly
interrupting me. And I'm frustrated by that because they like want another bowl of cereal
and they won't get off their butts and do it themselves, even though they can, which is a constant conversation. Then I'm going to be really
frustrated. But if I went down and I was like, I'm not going to get any work done right now.
So I'm not even going to try. And that is all true. Jen is completely right about that. And
I'm working on that. That's a really, really important perspective. And this is a much
different example. But I remember when I launched my third book, I was very single at the time.
And there would be times that I would shame myself for not going on dates. I was like,
oh my God, I'm not making any progress in my personal life at all. But then I stepped
back and said, I'm not focusing on that right now. That's not what I'm optimizing for right
now. Don't shame yourself for something you're not putting energy toward. And so, yeah, when you feel guilty about not
doing work, because you're fixing the kids cereal or
whatever, then that makes sense, because you framed it that way.
But saying that you're focusing on making the kids cereal
changes it.
Yeah, it does. And the challenge is, I don't know, and I'm like,
I'm hesitating on saying this because I don't want to sound like a bad person. But like, that's the
whole thing about this kind of straight parenting talk is that you keep walking this line of being
judged. I'll just say that and then I'll say, I don't know how to find joy in getting my kids
the cereal.
It is not a joyful task.
It's an annoying task.
It makes me feel like I'm running a restaurant in my house where I'm constantly being asked,
hey, could you get this?
Push me in.
I want another one of these.
And that's not fun.
There's nothing fun about that.
And there's no way to make it fun.
And I think that the answer is that you do it knowing that you don't have to do it forever. I don't know that there's another way to make it fun. And I think that the answer is that you just, you do it knowing that you don't have to do it forever.
I don't know that there's another answer to it, right?
Like they won't need that from me forever.
They need that for a certain number of years.
And so the thing that I have to remember is
if this is not like a joyful task for me,
which is like just constantly getting food for my kids,
then I just have to
make sure that I don't in my head equate my experience of parenthood with the annoying
things that won't last forever. This is the good thing about kids versus a dog. A dog doesn't grow
up, but kids do. Eventually, I know everyone tells me there will be this time When they don't want to spend as much time with me or any time with me
and so I'll tell you one other anecdote that everything that I'm just saying here reminds me of which is
when my kids were in diapers and
I would need to run into public restrooms to change them which
Say what knows is just at any time kind of thing, right? You're just like, you're in the airport, you're at a restaurant,
you're like walking down the street and suddenly you got to find the
nearest public restroom and change this diaper.
I would go when I would be in public restrooms, like larger public
restrooms, so there's like people coming in and out.
This thing would happen all the time, which was that some older man
would walk by me and he would see me changing this diaper and he would say,
enjoy every minute. And I understand what's happening, which is that he's seeing his kids
are probably grown up and on to their own lives and careers. And he sees me young dad, young kid
years. And he sees me, young dad, young kid in this stage of life. And he makes him think wistfully back to the good times with his kids. And he's telling me to enjoy every minute,
which is what he would like to be able to go back and enjoy those times. And I always
want to turn to it. I never did. I always just say thank you. But I always wanted to
turn to him and said, if you enjoy this, and do you want to come change this diaper? Because I don't, you know,
like, I think that it's okay to acknowledge that some parts of this phase are not satisfying.
You can't enjoy every minute. There are plenty of moments to enjoy. There are plenty of minutes
to enjoy. I just took Fenn, my nine year old to a Pokemon convention in Orlando. It was great.
He had a blast. It was very satisfying, like having that convention in Orlando. It was great. He had a blast. It was very
satisfying like having that experience with him. It was great. I would like to do that,
but I don't want to change another diaper in my life. And I don't want to pretend like that was
a moment to enjoy. Stick around help wanted. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Help Wanted.
Let's get to it.
So this is the funny paradox of everything that I just said, which is that I spend a
lot of time focused on and being stressed.
Like a lot of just internal monologue time in my life focused on and being stressed by
all the things that I can't do because I'm a parent. I have a long list of them. Jen has heard
it too much. And yet my career has accelerated, I would say, faster and stronger in the years in
which I have been a parent than in the years in which I was not.
Now, part of that is that you just get smarter
as you get older.
I was a parent on the latter parts of my life,
not the earlier, but another part of it,
I think actually very interestingly is that
when you have kids, you are forced in a way that,
at least for me, I never otherwise had to experience,
you are forced to
be incredibly rigorous about how you spend your time.
Whereas I used to be a lot more delusional about how I spent my time, I am now regimented.
And I, when my kids get out the door in the morning, I know exactly what I need to get done
in the hours before they show up back home.
And I obsess over that.
Now, there's still a downside to this.
Yesterday is a good example.
I had a lot of work to do yesterday.
And I really wanted to take a walk.
I hadn't gotten out of the house.
I was anchored to the computer.
Like just taking a walk and listening to a podcast
is a way to just feel calmer for me.
And I kept watching the time tick down
and it was like 3 p.m. and I would say,
oh, I guess a little more time left.
I gotta get a walk in 4 p.m.
Oh, I gotta get a walk in 5 p.m.
And then I got to six, which is when I'm on as dad. That's the rule here is 6pm is when like pencils down. And
I never got the walk in. Now if I didn't have kids, I could have worked a nice full work
day and put things down at six or 630 and then a lovely walk and maybe met a friend
for dinner. And I can't do that. Instead, it's like I'm on dad duty. And I was actually
telling Jen about that. And she's like, Well, why don't we take a walk as a family?
And that's what we did.
And I'll be honest.
It wasn't the same.
No.
Because the kids were complaining like crazy the whole time.
They were on their scooters.
Colin, of course, fell halfway through, screaming his head off.
Jen and I can't have a conversation,
but the kids are constantly coming back and forth.
I physically walked, but I wouldn't say that it was the relaxing experience that I wanted,
but it's made me more efficient.
I am a more focused person than I was before.
Number two, having kids allows you to relate
to other people who have kids,
which is actually a really useful business skill.
Like, because talking about your kids
is just like often a thing that comes up.
I found that to be useful.
I am sure that it has created in me
some of the things that people like say the parenting does. It makes you a more patient person or understand something. So I don't know. I don't know how to evaluate or identify that.
Having kids does introduce you to other interesting people. Like my friend, Matt, who Matt Elblanc,
who's also my book agent, I met him on a playground because our sons had become friends.
And I've met a whole bunch of other people who I really, really like, who sometimes are
very useful, both personally and professionally. And I don't mean useful, like whatever, good
friends and they become good colleagues through having kids. So yeah, there are upsides, but
it's still, it's like upsides that live inside of attention.
So there could be some correlation beyond just your age being the correlation.
Like when you started having kids, like you were also hitting a stride in your career.
Yeah, sure.
I was.
And like anybody, I think you are more refined in your talents.
You have a stronger network, just like however much older you get. But
having kids certainly didn't hold me back from I feel I don't even know how to say it.
Maybe a life in which I was able to say, yeah, I have no kids to come home to. So I will
just fly around the world doing speaking engagements nonstop. Maybe I wouldn't like that life. Maybe the quote unquote bigger life is not
one that I would actually enjoy or appreciate. There's no way to know, right? This counterfactual
thinking is not actually helpful, but it's certainly a tension that I live with.
And to be clear, you wanted kids. Yeah. You both wanted kids. I wanted kids. But I don't think in retrospect that I had
really spent that much time thinking about what it meant. I think that I just grew up
in a healthy family with two kids. Knowing a lot of other healthy families with kids and having kids was the only
vision I had of a life. Jen is literally texting me right now we need more bread
so we can make the kids lunches. This is just the things that you got to think
right like I gotta make just make can I just focus on my own lunch? No, I make
kids lunches. I don't know what to think about this.
I don't know what to think about this thing
that I'm about to say to you.
Maybe you'll have some thoughts.
When we decided to have kids,
I had a different idea of how my life was gonna turn out.
I was a magazine editor and only a magazine editor.
And to me, all the things that I wanted to accomplish could be
mostly accomplished by sitting in front of a computer. Like I just dreamed of like writing
things that people read. And the idea of starting companies, like multiple companies, like flying
around the world, and being invited to the incredible event, like that just didn't, that wasn't on my radar. I didn't have that.
And that didn't show up until I had two kids
or one kid or something until I had kids.
And so I almost wonder what would have happened
if I had a different set of career opportunities
at the time when we were making decisions about kids
and whether or not I would have wanted to sacrifice those. Maybe the answer is that you just are never
fully satisfied and it doesn't matter what life decision you make. I was just reading,
I don't know if you saw this, but like Michael Strahan, a former football player is now on
Good Morning America and on every television show. Michael Strahan is now talking about retiring from television because
he's done a lot of it and he wants to spend more time with his kids. Mark Cuban is leaving Shark
Tank to spend more time with his kids. And these are not like politician excuses where you're
stepping down from something, but because somebody's forcing you. But I think these are
genuinely like, they did it. And it was great.
And now they're done with it. And they want to refocus on this other thing. And so that's
another thing I have to keep reminding myself. I don't know what another parallel version of my
life is like, but I can also pretty much guarantee that if I at this moment in my life cannot
recognize and be satisfied with the successes that I do have,
then I don't think some other set of successes would have made me feel any more satisfied.
It probably would have made me just feel like there's something else to accomplish. My kids
are great, right? We've spent almost no time talking about that in this conversation. And
that's fine because that's boring. Everyone talks about how great their kids are. It's
so boring. Just trust me, they're great. They're great kids.
They ask interesting questions.
We have fun experiences.
They're great.
Getting them cereal in the morning sucks.
I'd never want to do it.
I definitely never want to wipe an ass ever, but they're great.
They're great.
It's the dialectic.
It's both things can be true.
The things that come out of their mouth are usually great, even though I don't want to
deal with the things that come out of their mouth are usually great, even though I don't want to deal with the things that come out of their butt.
That's that's completely fair. I think the emotional aspect of like recognizing those emotions when they come up, high resentment, high regret, like, what's up?
Nice to see you again, instead of suppressing it is probably a healthier way.
What advice would you give to someone who's expecting and maybe is in an entrepreneurial career and wants to keep up
the pace, be an awesome parent with an awesome kid.
I would say parent with a great kid.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Huh?
Look, everybody's life circumstances is going to be different.
As you were saying that the first thing I thought of was make sure you have great communication
with your partner, but not everyone has a partner.
I have friends who are single parents and they're making it work and are entrepreneurs.
You can make anything work. I think that my advice is simply to tell you, you can make it work.
It just requires a lot of thinking and communication and
gritting your way through things. There are parts of it that are going to be hard, and they're going to get easier. And
you're not even going to recognize that they're easier
because there are other things that are hard. This is my life
right now. It's actually really useful for me to see someone who
has a 18 month old my least favorite time. Here's my advice.
Hang on. One to two and a half is my least favorite time.
And the reason is because that is when they are mobile but incoherent. So that's when they're like walking around, but they don't understand anything.
And they're like grabbing at everything and they have zero survival instincts. And they're trying to stick things in sockets.
And they want to anything that could be brought down to the ground. But it's awful. You cannot sit down anywhere because they will not sit. Try going to a restaurant with
a one to two and a half year old. Not possible. They want to walk around the restaurant, try
flying anywhere. They want to walk up and down the aisle. I hated that time. And then
you know what? They grow out of it. Then they grow out of that time. Then they're not that
anymore. And now they're like able to focus and have and play and eventually ask you interesting questions. And it just changes. And you have
signed yourself up for a life of change. And if I've learned anything, like my whole thing
about my career, like the thing I've actually based all of my speaking on my writing is
all about how like change doesn't have to be bad.
It's not bad.
It changes just different and it is what you make of it.
And so, so make the best of it,
but do not for a second think
that you're doing something wrong.
If you are standing in a public restroom,
you're changing a diaper,
some old person walks by you and thinks that
you should be having a great time. And you're not, don't think that you're doing anything
wrong because you're not.
Dude, you changed this fucking diaper.
Tell them to change that fucking diaper themselves.
That's really good advice, Jason. And I think having communication with a partner, if you have one makes sense. What
about communication with a work husband or wife? Or let's say you had a podcast and you
had the cohost.
Yeah, let's say you had a podcast and you had a cohost.
And somebody was expecting. Oh.
And like, how would you talk to them about that?
Are you telling me something?
Yes. You know, how would you talk to them about that? Are you telling me something?
Yes. You know, are you telling me something?
I know that we disagree a lot.
And you really tried to give me all this birth control and I just haven't taken it.
It didn't take.
It just didn't take.
Holy fucking shit.
Nicole, are you serious right now?
Yes. Was this was it? Did I get
walked into an hour long of parenting advice without realizing this? Yes. Yes, you did.
Oh my God. This is wonderful. Nicole, I didn't talk you out of it. You didn't talk me out
of it. We're well baked. We're four months. Well, you're four fucking months. Oh my God.
So you're going to be an uncle. Yes. Uncle Jason.
Oh my God. I'm so happy for you. What I'm happy for is that I spent the last hour talking about
how difficult parenting is and you have a big smile on your face and I did not ruin your life by talking about this,
which means that you're like as ready as you possibly can be. Finta, I love you. I love you
guys. This is great to go into something eyes wide open and know that like the thing that you're
going to do is hard and you want to do it anyway, that is literally as much preparation as you can have to everybody before you have kids should sit
down with someone like me and just talk to them for an hour and have them.
And if you still want it, you definitely want it.
Still want it.
Then you want it right.
If you still want it, if you're like a great got it, it's going to be really hard, but
I can manage and I've processed all this, right? The only thing that you can do as a parent is to have eyes wide open. And, and
that's it. That's the whole thing. So I declare you ready. Not that you needed me to do that.
Thank you. And I'm glad because holy shit, if you were four months pregnant, at the end of this,
you were like, I have made a terrible mistake for myself.
Help Wanted is a production of Money News Network.
Help Wanted is hosted by me, Jason Pfeiffer.
And me, Nicole Lapin.
Our executive producer is Morgan LeVoy.
Do you want some help?
Email our helpline at helpwanted at moneynewsnetwork.com
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Maybe a little dance?
Oh, I didn't sign up for that.
All right, well, talk to you soon.