Raise Your Vocabulary, Not Your Voice with Author, Entrepreneur, Tech Exec, and Dad of Rhymes Gareth Moody

Welcome back to our 9th episode! The Dad Corp sat down with author, entrepreneur, tech exec, and dad of rhymes, Gareth Moody.

Gareth hails from South Africa, raised in Alscot, and resides in New York City. He also authored a book, Very Fine Recipes and Rhyme, which is about recipes that will satisfy your hunger and humor.

He talks about the kind of framing up language to enable kids to be their best, and how senseless raising your voice to your kids really is. He has two kids, a daughter and a son. We also get to hear him do an Ode to Dad rhyme later on the show. So expect that great segment! Sight tight and relax. Let’s all listen in.

Quotes:

“That is expressing itself in the way that you’re encouraging your son with the fear of loss, with the fear of not being so great. I wonder if we could restore the magic of that child’s interest at the very beginning by changing our language, changing our relation to that fear of the future.”

“You have to control how you respond. You mustn’t go back to your old responses and your natural responses because they will not help.”

“What was missing was an examination of my own assumptions. Because I didn’t examine my own assumptions, I was only getting half the story about the person because I was not listening to them, I was really listening to me listening to them.”

#dadlife #thedadcorp #dads

Transcript

   J:   Hello dads. You have Jonathan Shiery back again, Episode 9, The Dad Corp podcast, sitting down with some epic dads. We’re joined with co-host Sean Hailey back again this week and we have a chance to sit down with tech executive, entrepreneur, and author Gareth Moody. Gareth authored the book “Very Fine Recipes and Rhymes.”  It’s a children’s book that brings food, pictures, and rhymes together and formulates recipes that will both satisfy your hunger and your humor. There’s a lot of fun.

         Gareth hails from South Africa, grew up in Ascott, UK, also famous for horse racing and of course the queen. About two hours from train to London and he currently resides in New York, City. Gareth has traveled the world with his two young children. Both are fantastic kids. He brings a lot of insights and he has incredible talent around the language and vocabulary and he brings into this discussion which is focused on raising your vocabulary, not your voice for ways that you can frame up conversation with your children to enable them, not discourage them.And then we go into discussion of just how silly it sounds when we raise our voice and how pointless that part of our reactions are with motivating, enabling, and helping our children be successful.

         We hope you enjoy. Without further ado let’s get into the podcast. Share it. Like it. Love it. Just make sure you listen to it. Here we go.        

J:    So what’s going on? How was dinner?

G:   Dinner was Thai and it was ordered in. It was very nice. It was excellent.

S:    Nice! What did you have?

G:   We had drunken noodles.

S:    I love drunken noodles.

G:   Yeah, they were very good. But they were the second best to some unnamed shredded chicken object which is really nice. And that was my favorite by a long, and then of course you got to have green curry. That’s mandatory. I think that’s illegal in some state not to when ordering Thai.

S:    So you actually like spicy food?

G:   Very spicy, and my daughter likes very spicy food. She is, okay which I know it’s very unusual for kids. I think my daughter eats spicier food than I do. And my son who can’t stand any spice at all even at 3 miles range he’ll complain that the air is too spicy. But he eats sushi and rejects French fries. So I believe there’s something going on with the species.

S:    Yeah, my kids love, love, love spicy food too. They can’t get it spicy enough. My kids put Tabasco and hot sauce on everything. I mean they’ve been doing it since they’ve been little and it’s just out of hand. (crosstalk)

G:   They love it.

S:    My wife used to love spicy food until she got pregnant. That was one of the things that she can’t spicy like she could before. Every time I cook, I cook stuff spicy. She’s always, like the kids are loving it and she’s like ‘oh, just too spicy for me.’ I’m like ‘you used to love it.’

J:    And Gareth did you introduce them to spicy at different times in their lives?

G:   So my daughter just came out that way, just immediately wanting to eat very, very spicy food. My kids have different moms. So they have their similarity of me and then quite different lives. But they get on very, very well. Thank goodness. But when it comes to food and spicy food, my daughter loves spice. My son can’t stand it. I personally like it but my daughter is something else. She just drenches the stuff. But it’s very interesting to hear stories of other children like this because it was always in my imagination that with kids you always want it to give the plainest food but that’s just another thing that I’ve been wrong on about kids. There we go.

J:    How old are your kids?

G:   My daughter Mikeala, she is 4 and a half. And my son is nearly 8. He’s going to be 8 next month.

J:    Okay. Sean how old are your kids?

S:    My daughter is 18 and my son is gonna be 14 in a couple of weeks, I mean 15 in a couple of weeks.

J:    Got you.

G:   Does it feel like yesterday that they were very, very little to you.

S:    Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t but most of the time it definitely does. It’s like you’re looking at them and it’s either I can’t believe you’re an adult, looking at my daughter. It’s amazing.

G:   That’s amazing.

J:    And Gareth that’s actually one of the rapid fire questions we’re gonna have for you down the road. Not to put you on the spot but just getting you prepared for the first boyfriend in a few years, hopefully.

G:   Yeah, got you. I will try not to think about it too much. I’ve just been given water because of the spicy food. We’re talking about spicy food and my mouth is getting hotter and hotter and my wife gave me spicy, icy water. See, there you go. There’s a rhyme, the ice and the spice.

S:    Nice.

J:    So what are you doing these days with the corona virus? It’s kind of a crazy road out there right now, huh?

G:   Yeah. I’m in New York. I’m in the upper Westside of New York and I am sheltering in place as much as I can. I go downtown every other day to see my son. To me it’s a necessary travel. But I am working in various clothing and in various positions. And today I must’ve spent about 8 hours on video conferences for work. And work and night have blurred into one. And all my best intentions to get fit have fallen apart. And I do suspect because I’m walking much less. My general baseline fitness has gone down. And actually in some way I’ve really enjoyed the time. So it’s been, I’ve quite enjoyed the routine although I have half an eye that I probably shouldn’t be doing this to, for terribly long term. But what we do in trying to entertain ourselves, we got a 1 bedroom apartment. I have the choice of the bed, the kitchen table, or a bunk bed for my office. I mean what’s not to love?

S:    (crosstalk)

G:   You know my bunk bed I have done a million dollar deal from my bunk bed. So my bunk bed is obviously the lucky place but I’ve chosen the kitchen area too, I sit at the kitchen thing. But I had complaints today that because I have the sun comes in behind me, I’m just a black silhouette on these video calls. So someone complained that I wasn’t camera ready so I’m gonna have to change around a bit.

S:    People obviously complain about anything.

G:   You know I think that’s habitual. I found that people haven’t, I mean I don’t know. It’s a really difficult topic, isn’t it? Because you do think that people do complain a lot. And I have become aware, much more aware in the last 4 or 5 years of my own internal complaint system. And sometimes I can catch myself before the complaints come out and I became aware that I shouldn’t exist with complaints inside me all the time. But I think that may be just something like group psychosis going on but people we do think complain all the time, in my experience of this especially during this crisis has been that it’s almost like comedy complaining. It’s you complain to make light of things. You complain but not really. I don’t know. I think complaining is a very interesting topic because there is this idea that people complain a lot but I think the true observation is that they use it to get through things. But your complaint about that is that I could be just talking nonsense and I probably would (crosstalk) the other way.

J:    But you know I have the same thing right now which is kind of interesting like people at work or even myself. I’ve been complaining for years and it would be nice to telecommute or do some remote working, working from home. And then it happens. I’m getting as much work from home as I want because I can take. It’s interesting how quickly I went from wanting something to now I’m complaining about that once. I could see that and I agree.

G:   Yeah, you see? Be careful what you wish for, right? This is maybe fed up when you know what they want. But I noticed that people are being very optimistic. I must say I’ve been waking up very optimistic and going to bed very disappointed but that’s just, and it has been but it’s always been the case. So there you go.

J:    What’s hard, right? You’re in a tight space and Sean I know you can’t relate to this in your great false mansion (crosstalk) and all that other good stuff you got. We basically just think about it like you were quarantined to your bathroom that’s like (crosstalk) New York City. That’s kind of like what we’re working with. I know this is gonna be a tough part of the conversation (crosstalk)

S:    I’ve seen your palatial pictures of your place John so don’t even try it. 

J:    That’s funny because Gareth and I live in the same building. And so Gareth you can probably sympathize your point dramatically is that we have amazing amenities which is exactly why we live in these buildings. But for the amenities we sacrifice space because we never expected to be in the apartment as much. It’s not the New York City style. New York City is not the place you want quarantined. That’s kind of my conclusion after doing it for the last 20 days.

G:   I’ve been receiving pictures of people’s gardens around the world. The best garden I’ve seen is from someone I speak to is in the south of France. He has a swimming pool and several fig trees. And yes, I’m very interested to see people’s gardens. I long for a garden. I long for just a small patch of grass. And so yes, strange things are going in your mind when you’re in New York City especially on quarantine. But strange things are going in New York City in your mind anyway pre-quarantine. I’ve been dreaming of a garden for 15 years. I should really do something about it.

J:    Aren’t there things in New York City or I know that some other cities were creating this garden on the rooftops where you can have your own little gardens patch you buy like a square plot of garden on somebody’s rooftop. Have you seen that before?

G:   Yeah, I’ve seen this. There’s one in Brooklyn I think. I think there’s a Brooklyn set of apartments that they, and it looks on to this city. They’re very magnificent ones. There’s that very pretty promenade now on the south side there but they have gardens at the top. I think they do stuff like that. I think generally cities are gonna go greener, aren’t they? That’s gonna be the trend. And that’s something I noticed on lockdown that’s way better is you can hear the birds singing in the morning and in the afternoon. The city’s so quiet that you can walk around this and actually hear birds singing. So I thought it was extremely nice actually.

J:    Yeah.

S:    I’ve never heard of bird in New York City before that’s (crosstalk)amazing.

G:   Yeah, yeah. It was really notable. It was really notable. The other day I was out and wow! That has really caught my attention.

S:    The last time I was in New York a few months ago, I was on the Westside and I had a meeting on the upper eastside so I said ‘oh, let me give myself an hour,’ just because I’m trying to go across town. When I got out of the hotel, I just decided to walk all the way east before I got into a cab going north because I knew I would just sit in this cab forever. And then I was looking at some pictures people have and some videos people have from New York City where the streets are just, like there’s no one on the street. You see a couple of cabs and a truck but no cars. I’m like this is amazing.

G:   Yeah. I’ve been exactly in that position. I went to the Oculus the other day. I was getting on the subway there. And the Oculus is this huge space and normally it is absolutely packed with people. And I swear I could look across the Oculus. There was not a soul in the place. It was nearly about 5 pm on a Wednesday evening or something. It’s just surreal, so huge space nothing going on at all. It’s like humanity has left.

J:    So Gareth there’s this book out there that you authored. 

G:   So yes, I do have a book. It is called “Very Fine Recipes and Rhyme.” And it is nonsense recipes in rhyme with a bit of science in there but a bit of jokes, and history, and stuff. I think it’s just brilliant but now I cannot get my kids to even look at the book. I think it’s been may be looked at once and so I’m just very pleased that my kids have taste. So the book, I think it’s fun. I did it as a project for me. It took me ages to do. I had some help from my mum. I’m not ashamed to admit it but she didn’t want her name associated with it. And it’s a good book. It tells all kinds of funny nonsense stories. It tells you about the sort of food you should be eating, why it’s healthy for you. It also just has a little bit of jokes in it too. But no, the kids won’t even look at it and the fact that I wrote it is of no concern to them. I would never push it on them. I just go and weep on the corner by myself rather they didn’t know.

J:    I was reading the book so I bought it. So I hope that you get some of the royalties off of that 3.99 Kindle (crosstalk)

G:   Yeah, actually I get more off Kindle than I do off the hard copy which goes for $25 (crosstalk)

J:    No kidding? How was that?

G:   When I sell it for $25 on Amazon, then I think I get like $1.44, it seems to move around a bit.

J:    And then beat those kids 23.99?

G:   Well, I don’t know where that goes. I think that may be evaporates to the government or something. I don’t know what happens to it. But then when I buy it on Kindle because it’s more in Kindle, I don’t know because I get a bit more, I get about $1.66. So thank you for your contribution. If you buy 2 more copies, I’ll buy you a bear when this is all over.

J:    Well, I know one thing you won’t be able to buy with 2 more copies is a roll of toilet papers because that’s going for about $29.99

G:   Well, if you did buy a copy of my book then, oh wait. This is a different (laughter)

J:    Well, I was reading through it and it was really cleaver kind of interesting book and I’m surprised that the kids didn’t go all over it because it has pretty good pictures. I don’t know if you were the artist behind that but I thought the pictures go really well like with the rhymes and even like rule number 1 had around clean hands are essential and so not to pass any germs early in the day you could’ve implanted with worms. I thought that was hilarious being rule number 1 is to have clean hands.

G:   Yeah, exactly. It’s all about health and how to prepare the kitchen, how to look after the kitchen, how to make the kitchen get cleaned up after you done this. Yeah, I had to force some rhymes in there. It’s very difficult to make a completely rhyming recipe but nevertheless it’s there. I think the shortest one that I can remember which is only 2 lines I think it’s called the sandwich solution. And it goes like this, yes this is a recipe to make your sandwich, it’s like ‘think of something in your head, your mouth waters at its mention. Stick that thing between 2 bits of bread, viola your new invention. And that’s how you make your sandwich.’ But included in the longer poem is the history of the sandwich. I mean what’s not to love about that. I haven’t got a good answer for my children nor the tens of people that have acquired the book on Kindle or in hardcopy. One day I’ll know.

S:    So based on your obvious rhyming skills did you ever think about a career in hip-hop music?

G:   I often thought there were many things about me that just wouldn’t really work for that, no rhythm but I do have rhyme and those guys are so good. You know you can be good at something and you think ‘oh, I’m pretty good.’ And then like in chess, I’m a chess player and I unless you guys play chess I would seem very good at chess to you. And the thing about chess is it’s all rated on this Elo scale. So actually once you understood what my rating was you’d know I’m not very good at all. I just know something about chess. And so I thought for a long time those hip-hop guys, they would be like the Magnus Carlsen who’s the best chess player in the world. You could imagine that they’d be up there. And I wonder, I think I’d be an expert rhymer but still nowhere near good enough to be in hip-hop singing. Those guys are like the Magnus Carlsens, the Garry Kasparovs who, yeah.

J:    Do you think that that’s a skill or is that something that you develop with practice or is that look like anything else or you’re the best editor or a little bit of both?

G:   I think that everybody is able to do anything at all but obviously you got these dispositions and they settle into your life very, very early. So everyone, all babies they come out and I don’t know if you had this experience when the baby is born and when they take the baby to a room and they do various tests and things and it also gives mom and dad or particularly mom, dad too, a little bit. A little bit of a break just to absorb what’s happened with this amazing new tiny squishy thing that you are now infinitely in love with and want to be responsible for forever. And then you peer through, they say ‘wait, you got to go and get your baby.’ And then you peer through the glass because you’re going to go in and look at the baby and then you look. And they’re all in the same, in America, in New York all in the same plastic boxes. And there’s pink ones and blue ones. And you somewhat scared and go ‘I’m gonna know my baby here,’ and you settle and ‘that’s my baby over there.’ But then you get into the room and you’re tagged off with your tags and you were led to the correct baby. You realize they ‘oh, do look similar. I won’t tell my wife what I’ve just done here.’ And then you scooped up your baby and bring them back to. But you can see why they have to tag them because everyone seems to come out the same. That’s the thing. We’re all the same. Isn’t it amazing that some people have such talent for certain things, such vibrant talent. It so sets them apart. And so do I think that rhyming can be taught, absolutely. But I’ve got a bit of disposition, I’ve got a knack for it in the same way I wouldn’t ever have the knack for doing hip-hop. But it comes from somewhere. All of this information is coming from somewhere. So there we go.

J:    You know it’s interesting because I sing a lot with my daughter and not well, right? (crosstalk) Well you don’t have to tell me it. She tells me. So what’s funny though is like her and I will start doing these rhymes and Sean I’m sure you remember it and Gareth you might be going through this at this age. I can’t, I think it’s 5 over the last year Milan starts practicing rhyming things, right? This is how they start to learn words and so we are always thinking of words to rhyme. And for the life of me I’m blank. I just think that there are certain people that have this gift that can take language and they just see it come together. And I’ve watched friends that are really good at this. You see it at such a kind of expert level in hip-hop or any type of music or poetry and I’m like I don’t know how you train it. I think some people, there’s some things that are not trainable. I’m always kind of fascinated with how to train my daughter to be a better communicator and think on her feet to be able to come out with the words that she wants. And I always struggle with that but I think being able to do that rhyme just means you’re able to think quickly on your feet and you can use the language more effectively. I don’t know. It’s kind of fascinates me. (crosstalk)

S:    S quick point to that Jonathan. You and I were talking about the other day. I have 2 kids who are quite talented in 2 different things. My daughter’s quite talented in singing and my son is quite talented doing Brazilian jujitsu. So my son has been training for not even a year and he’s like, there’s no one at his age that really is formidable for him, at least so far. And in our school he’s beating up most like adult men that he goes against. Then my daughter is extremely good singer but what is funny about the talent of hers hard work is that, I was telling Jonathan my daughter was horrific at singing when she first started. We actually told her that she might not want to do that, like pick another something else. We were trying to be honest with her when she was a child. And she just practiced hard and studied and listened to music all the time. And now is a phenomenal singer. My son, it basically has come naturally to him with jujitsu. I think that there’s always this saying that hard work beats talent especially when talent doesn’t work hard. So if you’re very talented and you work hard, I think that you’re gonna be sort of like the best. But if you are not as talented but you work really, really hard, so if you look at it from a sport situation, you look at someone like Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan or really Kobe Bryant because he’s been in news a lot, did anybody ever worked harder than him? I mean he did have talent but he wasn’t the most talented person I’ve ever seen play basketball. But he was talking about how he would get up at 3 o’clock in the morning and starts his practice at 4, 3 or 4 in the morning he starts practicing so that he would be able to get more practice in in a day. So he would go at 3 then he would take a break. Go again at 9, take a break. Go back at 12 or 1 and you know go practice again at like 8 or something like that to make sure that he had, he took 2,000 jump shots a day or whatever the number was. So to that skill and bringing it to our kids and being dads, I mean your kid finds something that they like I think he, my job now is to get my son to work hard because it’s hard to tell him to work hard when he’s like there’s no one else that can beat me, right? But then you get into a situation where you’re not, the people are gonna catch up to you. Yeah, you’re excelling now but sooner or later, people who work harder to beat you and because they developed that work ethic, you may not be able to catch up or you’re gonna have to have that inner strength in order to decide that ‘hey, I wanna do this and I’m gonna get better,’ Whereas my daughter, she understand how it is to work hard because she wasn’t always gifted with it. Or at least her gift wasn’t readily apparent. So that’s my 2 cents.

G:   Yeah, that’s very interesting. I think you identify very well but there’s something really interesting about, obviously this idea that people tell that if you’re super talented and you work hard. But what is it that made your daughter work hard? That’s what’s really interesting to me. It’s that she was, and you said I think Kobe Bryant, whoever the example was you gave there, what makes you sustain that interest. People say ‘do what you love.’ But then why do you love it after a certain amount of time. And so this idea that your daughter at a very young age really wanted to do this thing, really had this interest, really passionately had this interest, to know real end other than to because she enjoyed it. There’s no end goal. It was like deeply in her. And so that there came the interest and then the practice and then what it is that makes you sustain that practice. And so then the interesting comment or the thing that I would like to reflect to you as I hear you talk about your son and your job as a dad to encourage him or to sustain his interest and how best to be available to him to do that. And your observation is that there’s no competition for him. He’s so good no one is challenging him. Now I wonder if there isn’t some other way to reframe that, to spark that interest. Is there something he could try to learn? Is there something that, is there some other way other than the fear of loss in the future, right? Or fear of falling behind others because I can imagine that it’s in the very deep level in the mind. So what you’re saying to him is ‘I don’t want that for you. I want you to put in the effort now because you could be much better, you could be greater and you’re gonna meet that person in the future. But you see the language level of our mind, the logical connection that is being made, those words have to be interpreted down to the layers of experience of what those words mean. What does it mean to be, because what you could do by accident with your words there, what could go on is you could say ‘look, if you don’t do this, someone’s gonna beat you. You’re gonna fall behind.’ Now how that gets synthesized into the deep parts of the brains, the sublingual, sublanguage, the subliminal, the pieces of the brain that operates and make us up in our deep thoughts. We don’t even understand this stuff. How do you even think a thought when nobody really knows that? Now think about those words coming down and being processed in your son’s sleep, just as he’s going to sleep. How to encourage that interest, that fascination, that intense interest that is sustained through all the changes in your life and I think that what we fall into is a worry path from speaking back to the news where we had that news of the negative cycle. We get attracted to the negative cycle. That is expressing itself in the way that you’re trying to encourage your son there with the fear of loss, with the fear of not being so great. I wonder if we can restore the magic of that child’s interest at the very beginning by changing our language, changing our relation to that fear of the future. What really drives people is, I think it’s always individual but I think that we do unexpected things with our language especially when you’re in relation, when you are the parent of a child. And you brought that child up. For the first 7 years of a child’s life they live partly in imagination and partly in the world that we would call consensual reality all the time. And we know this to be true because we’ve looked at their brainwaves. So when a child under 7 is playing, they are playing and imagination and reality are blurred. They’re much more deeply than they are for adults and very much more continuously. But in that time you’re forming your language skills. And this is what’s so interesting about how all of this works when you really think about it is when I string some words together and you’re interpreting them especially something emotive. You’re trying to emote something on your son. You’ve got the best of intentions for your son. Your intent is without question. But deep down how he could be responding inside without even being aware of it, it could actually be deleting some of that inherent passion and interest. Does that make sense of what I’m saying? I just want, this is an interesting topic that I find fascinating about language.

S:    No, I definitely agree. You want to try to be as positive, find the deeper meaning, the root and push that not just ‘hey, if this doesn’t happen, you’re gonna get beaten.’ Because it’s just negative, it’s just negative thoughts rather than saying ‘hey, you could be the best if you just do this and this.’ So the language whether you can make it positive or you could make it ‘you’re gonna die if this happens rather or you could be successful if you do this.’

G:   Can I pick on that for a second just to see if I could express a bit more deeply of what I’m getting at here? Because maybe I’m on just some mad course and that could well be true. But when you say you wanna be positive because they could be the best. Now my argument there is that within that word, within that phrase ‘you could be the best’ you could have undiscovered unknown things that really just put someone off because it comes with so much, there could be for example to be the best is a lot of hard work. To be the best is a lot of responsibility. To be the best is all these things, all this baggage that come from being the best. So even though that’s a very positive phrase, underneath the language, inside how the motivation really works and burns, it could be coming across totally unknown to us about not sparking interest. I hope I’ve made myself clear of that. It’s a very weird idea. It’s an idea I’ve been thinking about for 3 years about what language really means and then how you kind of process it and bring it back out, anyway.

J:    No, I think it’s a fair point and it brings for me and my own personal reflection there it creates a pressure that the way you use language. I do that with Milan all the time in tennis and you see me Gareth, I’m out there training with her on it but I’ve had to be very careful in the way that I get her excited about it and, for me I get excited about it by telling her ‘you could be great at this. You have a beautiful swing. Your coaches want you to work out and train harder.’ But that just puts pressure on her. When they’re 5 years old and I know Sean you’re probably gonna say as I get through the years and maybe that have changes but with Milan it’s all about having fun. I’ve noticed that if I put pressure on her, I start actually kill that passion or the kind of drive there but if I turn it into like a game that it’s something that we do together and we’re having fun, she actually starts to push herself more. It’s kind of really interesting to see (crosstalk)

G:   By the way I think that what I’m trying to say is that capturing that game which when you’re with a smaller child like Milan who’s obviously clear because I see her. She’s very, very talented, very coordinated. She really got a tremendous eye for the ball. But that of enthusiasm and spirit, I mean Sean is gonna tell us on this one I mean there’s this old adage you’ve got little kids, little problem, big kids, big problems. The game gets more complicated.

S:    That is so true, more than you can ever imagine.

G:   Yes. I mean this is where I feel like we need to be reaching into your brain and just like trying to prepare ourselves but maybe nothing can prepare you for it.

J:    That’s something in the last podcast, Gareth. So Sean got to be a guest to come through because he’s actually been a great friend and advisor and mentor and just an overall soundboard for me as I went through the journey. Let me tell you a quick story and you can hear it on our podcast with Sean. It’s great but Milan’s like 3 years old or so. I got a picture of a beer and him at a bar taken a drink and basically says’ you think you have problems now, wait till your daughter is 16 years old wanting to go to a homecoming dance and stay overnight at some person’s place and not tell us how she’s gonna get there.’ Oh, hell no. So he’s been giving me the kind of enjoy it now because later it gets a lot harder for years. So he’s got a lot of good stories (crosstalk)

G:   It’s amazing. I think we’re still discovering some new enthusiasm for his son also learning bjj to even higher level too. What is it that’s gonna motivate that very talented son of yours to go to the next level? I mean it’s oh my god.

J:    His son’s a beast, man. His son’s like 6’3”. There’s babies out there. He’s a beast. I know this kid. I got to meet him whenever he was just tiny little skinny 7 year old or so. And now he’s just kind of looks like a man at his age.

G:   How old is he again? (crosstalk)

J:    I’ll tell you what’s gonna motivate him and Sean hasn’t said that. I’m sure he’s thinking he’s gonna kick his old man’s ass as a motivation.

G:   Oh, yeah.

S:    Exactly. He definitely wants to beat me. He wants to beat me badly.

G:   Are you good at this too then Sean? You can do all this stuff too?

S:    I’m okay. I’m an almost 50 year old man so it’s a lot different. My bones aggrieved. Jonathan was really good at bjj. He was one of those guys who’s really talented but didn’t work hard. (crosstalk)

G:   Not anymore?

J:    I hated the warm ups. Warm ups were the worst. Who wants to warm up?

S:    He is the perfect example of like he didn’t want to do anything except spar. He didn’t want to practice or doing the types of drills. He just want to just go and try to choke somebody and that’s it. He didn’t practice. He was naturally strong, very athletic, very, very good, had unbelievable pressure. I used to, when we spar, we could do we call rolling.

G:   I know. I’m a big fan of it. I’ve never done it but I’m a big fan of, I followed like the MMA and boxing but I know you roll with someone.

S:    Yeah. When it was time to roll, I would start looking around the room and find someone else to get my eye rather than Jonathan because I didn’t just wanna get smashed that time. It was like ‘oh my god, this guy’s gonna kill me,’ or trying to make excuses. Don’t let him fool you. He’s an absolute beast. Even without taking jujitsu for like the last 5 years if you’re on the mat, he still will just destroy me. Yeah, Jonathan is good.

G:   He was showing me some moves and actually we arm wrestled and I came second in that arm wrestling because he is incredibly strong.

J:    You definitely had me in a scary position, though. I thought I was gonna have to concede so don’t, and I think I have a good 50 or 60 lbs on you. So you showed up well. So as we get through the work and we talked about the motivation and the things that we’ve talked about with your kids. You brought up a point, Gareth and said around your son is in a different place than your daughter. You have 2 kids in different households. What’s that been like as you communicate motivation or you communicate kind of dive into everything, is it a challenge? Is it presenting your need kind of scenario thing?

G:   What it has done, I think I was in danger of fathering like my father. And my father was very good. He was excellent but I was in danger of like being like him when I’m not really like him. So instead of being me I was trying to be my dad. But then when the divorce happen and the separation and I got these 2 children, my solace has been I’ve tried as much as possible to go really close to my kids, play with them very richly, be down with them, be really attentive for periods of time with them, and notice, try to notice what it is they’re noticing, try to laugh at what they’re laughing at, try to be much more close and in tune with them because that’s the only time I can really feel so connected and because I don’t have, nothing you can do anyway. There’s this illusion that you can go in the same household and have more influence. I don’t know if that’s an illusion or not but all I can say is it has led me to for the time that I have to try and pay really, really much closer attention although I don’t always succeed in that. So that’s been great for me because it’s put me very close energetically with my children. And that’s something that I hold very precious. I’m not trying to take away expectation of anything because I never expected that to happen. What I’m trying to say is I’m trying to be really much more attentive in the moment, make the most of the moment, try and declutter the mind in having future worries that are not there enough, or not present enough, or not showing enough, and just try to spend more high quality time in the moment. That’s being my response that’s been difficult.

S:    So there’s been lot of dads who probably are gonna listen to this podcast who are in a similar situation that you are in and either they’re gonna have different children by different women or they have a child with a woman that they are no longer in a relationship with. How has your relationship been with your ex-wife and how have you been able to manage that relationship so that you’re able to spend quality time with your son because you did say you go there every other day or really try to go there every other day, so what has that relationship been like? And do you have any, I know it’s still pretty new for you but are there any nuggets that people would be able to take from to sort of help men in their situation so that it becomes a little better.

G:   I think every situation is different so it’s very hard. I feel like I can’t give anybody any advice. The thing that I would go to here, the thing that’s helped me at least psychologically because I really, I love and adore my kids. And for my ex-wife to be well means my son will be better so I’m very invested in her well being as well and for my current wife as well. So there’s this complexity of relationship and whereas in the past, my response to anxiety and stress and aggravation and arguments, I mean this corona virus is causing problems, it causes problems financially that leads to arguments is to really never to argue. There’s no point to argue. There’s no point to raise ones voice. There’s no point to be in a position where your emotions are dominating any aspects of an interaction with another person. You really have to try and be controlled in yourself and I don’t always manage it. So the only advice I can give is that I would say this, if you’re angry, you’re being stupid for some reason. If you’re angry, you’re being stupid for some reason. And so if you’ve been angry, you got to analyze why were you angry because you’re being stupid about something. You’re here in this situation. The situation is real. You can control how you’re responding. You can control maybe not your feeling but about how you respond to your feelings. If you do that, it lets you have some, you will find that the situation don’t flare up as much. Don’t give fuel to bad situations. And you’re always in this situation, you’re always gonna be splitting your time. Things are not gonna be as you want and you have to accept that. That’s the one piece of advice is you have to control how you respond. You mustn’t go back to your old responses and your natural responses because they will not help. And then I applied that to my kids. I try although if you ask my kids, they would disagree with this but I have a policy like don’t shout at kids. Why are we shouting at your kids for? What is the purpose of shouting at your kids? Shouting at kids to me is like a backward step. Now, it’s not always possible. But I think the way that you express yourself to your kids where people shout at their kids, I just don’t believe it’s helpful and I go back to that idea about how they’re learning and what they’re learning and how they interpret language. I don’t wanna be in my son’s head when he’s a 21 year old man, that little voice in your head that is your parents. I want my son to really think for himself and know that I am supporting him. So I wanna be the supportive voice in his head when he’s older. And I don’t wanna be some figure that is associated wrong doing or frustration or unmanaged emotions. I wanna be someone he can always turn to whether I’m actually there physically or the piece of me that’s been installed in his brain for because I brought him up is there. So he’s got that to turn to. So that’s my policy, is try to never shout at your kids and try your best not to get into situations where you’re feeling out of emotion control. But every situation is different, different, different everywhere.

S:    Well, I’ll tell you that you’ll be amazed at how you imprint on your kids especially as they get older. There’s things that you say now that you think they’re not listening to you about especially in their teenage years. They’re just like ‘whatever,’ or they’re giving you that look and you’re just saying that they’re not listening to you. And now there are times now when I talk to my daughter and she will say back things that I’ve said sort of verbatim. And I’m like ‘really? You remember that?’ she said ‘you only said it a hundred times but yeah, I listened. Just because I didn’t whatever, I understood. I listened.’ Which is great. That’s all you could really ask for is to try to instill in them certain values and certain information. And that information values only comes when you have conversations not when you’re yelling and telling them not to do this and not to do that. It’s once you come back and you say ‘listen, let’s talk about why this is not the right thing or why this is the correct thing.’ And then they’re able to, they might not accept it right away but sooner or later they will think about it. And I think that’s a great point about trying to balance your feelings and not be the yeller.

G:   Yes, absolutely.

J:    And Gareth when you’re thinking about language and clearly that’s something that’s near and dear to your heart just hearing this discussion, do you find yourself communicating or using a language or the framing of language with your son who doesn’t live with you day in and day out and your daughter who does, do you find yourself acting or speaking differently?

G:   No, I don’t, not really. Not because of that, I try to be almost like the most childish version of myself with them and that person is the same with either one, obviously there are differences. So I don’t think so. I think it’s the same for me. It’s the same for me. I’m this kind of person who’s trying to be really understanding the child. I think the only reason I’m different with Mikaela, she’s a different person to Leo, these are my kids. They are just different people. And so I’m there for them as their father but the general principle of trying to be close, trying to understand, trying to be attentive, and trying to be very playful, that’s the same with both of them.

J:    And what was the most surprising kind of experience you’ve had? Because I know you’ve been resilient, a natural entrepreneur. You’ve just recently run a company and sold it and I know you’re starting a new venture around data analytics, and then marketing, and then Lead Generations, and you’ve obviously written a book, so you went through kind of the career side of life very successfully and you also have 2 beautiful kids, and they’re great kids. I’ve got the chance to know them both and I’ve seen you as a dad and you’re an absolutely fantastic dad. I feel like if anybody brings more energy to being a dad than I do, you continuously inspired me to be more positive and kind of bring more energy to the table. But I’m sure like when you went through the process over the last few years and you think about the kind of challenges that you have where you’ve mentioned like them living in different homes, what’s kind of been a couple of key surprises you’ve had for anybody that does go through or is going through it that they can know like I’m not the only one out there or here’s what I should expect?

G:   So as far as surprises, oh, thank you by the way for that comment, I do bring a lot of energy but so do you. I can tell Sean does too but he has to bring a different sort of energy to pin his son to the floor so he wasn’t rolling with which I can still do with my son. He’s only 8, still bigger. So the surprising thing to me well, I think there’s probably it’s surprising to me but may be not surprising to other people and I think it’s that Leo, my son has been so, so resilient. He’s been very, very resilient and that surprised me just how resilient he is, how tough he is and I’m very, very lucky to observed that and I think that’s a beautiful thing. He’s resilient and he’s so tough but he’s so loving and caring and this is in the context of a 7 going on 8 year old boy. They have a different set of rules to other creatures. The other thing that’s been surprising in a really positive way is that Leo and Makaela have a bond. They have a strong bond. And I think it’s a bond that is going to be less close than if they were brothers and sisters in the same house but they have a bond. They’re 3 and a half, 4 years apart and it’s been a surprise just how that’s developed and I give the credit to both the kids for that. They play well together. So both of those have been very pleasant surprises and the message I think to myself and anybody else going through this is that these kids are people too. They got ideas. They’ve got strength. They’ve got resiliency. They’re gonna form bonds. And so it’s been very positive.

J:    That’s awesome and I know. I’ve watched them together and I couldn’t agree more. And it’s really interesting how seamless you make it and you can tell there is definitely a bond there and sometimes it’s nice in some ways probably because you miss what you don’t have and that’s like a natural human instinct. If the brother and sister get to see each other every day, they’d probably fight like cats and dogs but knowing that they’re gonna be some time apart, they actually appreciate it. I think you hit it perfectly. They appreciate the time while they have it and make the most of it. You keep it positive but you also know that you’re gonna not see that person for period of times so you’re gonna miss them as well and so that creates that continuous bond which I think is great.

G:   Yup.

J:    So going to like some deeper questions here Gareth, when you look at being a dad and you’ve got your 2 kids, they’re young children but they’re both awesome kids and they’re very energetic, very happy, very smart kids like what does being a dad mean to you and how has that changed your own life perspectives?

G:   Yeah. I think for me it was such so overwhelming to be a dad and I really took it seriously. I remember doing bath time for my son and everything was so important. And I’m still too much of a worrier when I see them running about. So I think the thing that’s changed in me has been to really explore these ideas that I’ve been discussing, these ideas of language, of understanding the kids’ points of view. So it really gave me some actual depth to my experience of life that gave me, the fact that I ended up getting divorce that was never on my mind that would happen to me but here I am. So for me it’s been incredibly deepening personally and many surprises, many surprises. Although one really surprising thing about kids that I, unless you become a parent, you just can’t imagine what having a kid is like. They are so different to how you might think about what a kid’s like. I mean even feeding a kid, feeding a 1 year old. I mean it’s like doing quantum physics. It’s impossible, and getting them to sleep on time. Everything’s different to how you expect. And then you have to go with it and adapt and you find yourself having more energy and more ability to do it and you’ll never have a drive like it. Everything is, you get driven to help your child. It drives you at work. It drives you in your family life. And it does drive you to get to really try, anyway. I probably wandered off the point there.

S:    Wandering off the point is actually a good thing because it’s those things that people are trying to listen to. But just a quick question because you did say being a dad and you reflected as part of your career so what do you think you’ve taken from fatherhood and applied it to your career?

G:   I would say is that it’s just that general, I suppose it’s given me some confidence in a way. When you’re negotiating with someone, that someone you were negotiating might be a dad or a mum and you definitely know that they were a son or a daughter, you start to see, you can have this where you see people as kids sometimes and you start to understand why the business might not be working. What my philosophy about business is I wanna do good business with people. I do sales really for a living but I don’t wanna sell anything to anybody. I want people to want to do business with me. And then how do you get that trust going. So the application has been this understanding of how people come to hold positions that they hold and how they express themselves and how I interpret that to be very careful that I’m not just interpreting it in a way which isn’t helpful and I’m negotiating against myself and stop doing good business happening. So that’s how it’s helped me.

J:    And so when you think about determining how you perceive people, are you more apathetic?

G:   Definitely. I was always what I considered empathetic, certainly very caring for people. But what was missing was an examination of my own assumptions. Well, because I didn’t examine my assumptions. I was only getting half the story about the person because I was not listening to them. I was really listening to me listening to them. And so I’ve managed to go a little bit better now where I’m not like mapping my emotions on to them. I try not to like in American business in particular, well I mean in Europe as well, you often hear in the office that such and such client is an idiot because of XYZ as you guys say. But I try not, well I think that sometimes but I also then pause to think ‘well, is it me being an idiot? What am I missing? Why can’t this work better?’ At least I get to the point where I think of them as an idiot then I start to look at myself.

J:    Gareth that’s a fascinating answer. One of the themes that we’ve had coming from show to show is this approach with a goal of understanding that you get as a parent from being a parent. Sean and I talked about this and one of the interesting things that came out is when you’re raising a kid and especially at 5 or 6 years old when they’re just everything is about you. You’re their hero. They love you. They just wanna make you happy and they mess up and you get frustrated and it’s not because they are intentionally doing anything, they’re trying to be the best kid they can because they wanna make you proud. And then you start to realize that you need to take an understanding why are they struggling there? Have we taught them how we communicate? We communicated the right way. We’ve effectively given then the right opportunity to learn on their own kind of phase. And when I learned in that and I took that to my work and I came with like an assumption that people are trying to do their best because nobody wants to mess up in their career, then you can take a different angle of like understanding why, like why are they not doing what I need? Why am I not getting the results that I want? And I think you just hit that perfectly by saying the same thing like I don’t think anybody’s an idiot. It’s more around why am not able to connect with this person to get the outcome that I want?

G:   Yeah, very beautifully. That’s exactly right, exactly right.

S:    And one question I want to ask is, Jonathan had asked this question to me and I think that, I’d never really thought about it much but it made me think about it is so what are like the key principles you want to instill in your kids? When you’re thinking about like what do I want my kids to be or how I want them to act or what are those principles that you think are the features or, that you really want to get them to have?

G:   I really want my kids to be themselves and what I mean by that I want them to be really aware of themselves, the impact they have. I don’t want to be trying to please me. I want them to understand themselves in a very holistic way. And I think maybe the way to do that, that I can maybe have some influence is to encourage a continual sense of learning and just to try to encourage that, that wonder and learning, and that they are complete beings. I want them of course, they’re gonna run into difficult times in their lives and that’s gonna help them grow but they can really understand themselves and learn about whatever it is that’s going on here. I think a lot of difficulties come with people when they are trained not to be aware of themselves and then they wake up and they’re 40 years old and they spent their time trying to please their parents or impress someone. And I know that’s true of me and to this day I want to please people. I wanna make people happy and I know where that comes from. So that’s important to me is this idea of learning about yourself and trying to just be aware of where your motivations are coming.

J:    You know Gareth, you just said a couple of things and I’ve got to jump on them because I’m kind of curious from the conversations I’ve had in this one and with Sean I had recently. First, you brought up you trying to please everyone and you know where that comes from in yourself, where does that come from yourself?

G:   That comes from my parents, I think. So I wanted very much to please my father and my mother. I was very grateful to them. They were great parents. My parents were great. And I think somehow it’s just inherent in me. But it was too much. I would behave in small details of my life like my dad would behave in details in his life. And I know where that came from. My dad had a very, very tough upbringing indeed.  And so he’s a much more frustrated, grumpy, quick to temper kind of person than I am but that’s him. That’s him expressing his interaction with the world but I was expressing myself like I was him but I’m not him. I’m not as big as him. I was never as strong as him. I’m not the same person as him. I’m more emotional than him. I personally think my rhymes are better than his. He’s very funny but I think I’m funnier but he’s a great dad. He’s a great person. But what had happened was I had this interpretation, this archetype of what a dad is to me and I was expressing it through myself and I realized one day that’s what I was doing and that’s where it comes from.

J:    And following up on that that might lead me into the answer that I think you might give us but when you look at your children, do you notice similarities and things about yourself that you wish or you hope that maybe they don’t have? There’s always kind of the things that you hope they pick up, may be that great accent, that intelligence, and building a rhyme, but are there things that you look at and you’re like wow, that is something that I do and that is something I don’t want my kids to have? Because Sean and I spent some time talking about this.

G:   Yeah, of course I worry. I think what it is is if there’s anything that I could teach anybody in the world, is that you should try not to worry, because it doesn’t do any good anyway. And I was gonna say that I worry. You think ‘oh, my son should do mathematics. My daughter should do mathematics. It’s gonna be important because it’s important.’ And then I think ‘well, am I just instilling some worry?’ If I could just think that anybody in the world, I would want them not to worry unnecessarily about things they can't control in the future. But you hope things, of course I hope that my son and daughter are geniuses in the, I think they are geniuses, of course. But you know what I mean by that? You hope for certain magnificence. But I don't want to put any pressure on them. They are who they are. I want them more than anything else in the world to believe in themselves. I want them to have self belief in a way that I probably didn't have self belief for a long time in my life and sometimes they’ll wobble on. Self belief, that's what I want them to have. And I think I don't have sometimes that the answer to your question.

S:    That was good. That was definitely good right there. So Jonathan we’re going to the quick rapid fire questions? 

J:    Yeah, I think that sounds like a great plan. So we've taken up a lot of your time, Gareth, and this has been a fantastic show. But we have a couple rapid fire questions that we have to wrap up with and then we've got one doozy for you. 

S:    All right what is scarier? The Corona virus or thinking about your daughter's first date.

G:   Well, I mean, that's a loaded question, isn't it? Certainly the first date isn't it? I mean, what is her mother going to say? 

J:    Well, if you need any backup, you've now been a guest on our show. So you're now considered part of the family.

G:   I will consider that. We'll just have to make sure which state we're in. But, yeah, sounds good. Both of you will be needed though.

J:    That’s hilarious. Alright, second question, which is harder the first or second kid and boy or girl?

G:   Equal and different, equal and different, like everything. And there's no harder.

S:    That was my answer. What is your most embarrassing parenting story?

G:   I think it's the one probably I conveyed. It's where my daughter had been born. It was early in the morning. I was tired and I peered lovingly into the newborn crèche through the glass, waiting my turn to go and fetch Makeila. And I was sure that I had her in my view. And then I was led to the several perfect boxes down. So that was pretty embarrassing. And I think the nurse did look at me, but hopefully with a slightly forgiving look, that's probably the most embarrassing.

J:    Okay, so do you feel like that's a story that you would be able to communicate to anybody at work? (crosstalk)

G:   Oh, yeah because I'm really rather unembarrassed about all my cock ups in life. You know, I've become quite comfy. It's good to air. It's good to air the dirty load. Yeah, it's not so embarrassing. And I think it's a mistake that lots of people make that one. So maybe I shouldn't be embarrassed by it. 

J:    I don't know, Sean. It’d be interesting here if you had similar thoughts and Gareth. I hated talking to nurses, whenever my daughter was born, I felt like there's kind of levels of people that you communicate through the period of time. And so every time I went to the principal's office and I went quite a bit when I was a kid you just had this teacher or principal talking to you in this kind of way and you just felt like a child. I've had that feeling when I had to speak with the nurses about my daughter. I had that feeling every time I have to talk to my daughter's teachers. But I just remember asking questions and having these nurses look at me being like ‘oh, my goodness, I hope this kid's gonna be all right.’ 

G:   Yeah. That's the whole podcast in that you're saying. Where does that come from? But that's yeah, I know what you mean.

S:    And the worst part is when the person who's looking at you were like 10, 15 years younger than you. You're like ‘what do you even know?’ I had a great story about, we'll talk in another time when I. My kid was in daycare. And what is the favorite thing you like to do with your kids?

G:   Actually, the favorite thing I do with my kids is sleep next to them. I love sleeping next to my kids. 

S:    Nice, nice, nice. Well, cherish that because it won't last too long.

J:    Very cool.

S:    I remember, my daughter used to come and wanna get in our bed and sleep with us and stuff like that. It was annoying at first and now you sort of like she never jumps into the bed with us.

G:   Come back. I’m sorry. 

S:    One day she and her mom was in the bed and they were watching the movie and I just jumped into bed. I felt like I was a third wheel, but I didn’t care. I felt like it was so cool. So imagine how things change over time. 

G:   Yeah, I'm making the most of this. It's my favorite thing. So, yeah. When it stops, I'll be sad. 

S:    Yeah.

J:    Yeah, mine too. I hear you. Like when Milan comes up and I just told her today because Sean always warns me that it's going to change. And I said, she was being my shadow like I couldn't even go to the bathroom without her following me there and look at her. And at one point, I could just feel that, you're talking earlier about, Gareth like that I kind of stress or that kind of feeling you get before you kind of combust. And I was getting that kind of annoyance going on. And then I took a deep breath, remember Sean's words? And I was like ‘hey, I hope yeah, I want you to remember something, kid whenever you're a teenager, I want you to remember how much you love dad. I want you to never forget that and keep that same kind of excitement about following me through the house when you're 13 and 14.

S:    You say that to her like two or three more times and instill in her brain. So when you're 13 or 14 like ‘remember what I said, how much you used to love dad’ so she can just look at you and go ‘whatever.’ 

J:    Yeah, right? It was funny because that looked at I got was like ‘why are you even saying that?’ I was like ‘I just remember. That's all I'm asking. Don't forget I said this.’ So we'll see if I can keep that in her head. So Gareth, one last to wrap up the rapid fire, but what's your best memory of being a dad?

G:   My best memory of being a dad. I mean there's so many moments and photographs and holidays. We had a holiday in the Caribbean island. It was amazing. My parents were there. My wife's parents were there, Leo, Mikaela there. It was fantastic. We were two weeks there. It felt like another world. I'm still paying it off. That was the best kind of practical life memory. And I think that's probably the best time of my life ever. That was about three years ago. It was just so great. And then in terms of like mementos of memory, there were two and they are both, when my son was born and he put his hand for the very first time around the index finger on my hand.

S:    Yeah, that is great.

G:   It's really, it's like imprinted. And then actually the same thing for my daughter but with my daughter, it's more of a continuous memory. I was holding her then I had to give her up to get, she had to get measured and they take this foot in print or whatever they're doing. But that whole memory, that's like I don't know how many seconds or minutes, but that is one continuous, like memento of me. My wife is there. I'm holding my daughter for the first time. So those are the memories.

J:    Those are great memories and to wrap this up on our side. I won't ask you to sing it or rhyme it, but we have a little bit of a ode to dad. And so the final thought that we want from you is if you had to write an ode to yourself and it was to say what type of dad your kids remember you as, what would that ode look like? All right Gareth, give us the dad ode.

G:   My dad ode is this “My dad would always worry but his time with us was never hurry. He played. He was a big kid himself. Now he’s in that vase sitting on my shelf.” So there’s the dad ode.

J:    I love it. I love it. Well, it’s gonna be famous and we’re gonna have a lot of future fathers trying to emulate their dad odes so I think you’ve set the bar pretty high.

G:   Well, thank you very much. And obviously I am obviously a very large vase seller so anytime that’s needed just let me know.

J:    Awsome. Those lines I think will be perfect for one of our promotional memes to send out and get this podcast listened to. So that was a great one. Sean, anything else on our end before we give Gareth a chance to talk about what he's been up to in his new business venture, as well as (crosstalk)

S:    No, I just want to say thanks for taking the time and it was great. I've learned a lot from you, just from listening to you because there's just so much to learn. Every time you hear a dad and talk about their story. So I just appreciate the time you've taken with us to tell us all the various things that you're been telling us about your kids and just life story. I appreciate it. 

G:   Well, thank you very much. I'm looking forward to listening to that podcast. And I thought some of the points you made were very, very interesting. So I shall go and listen to that. And I look forward to meeting you one day too.

S:    Yes, of course. Thank you. 

J:    And Gareth, so why don't you take a couple of minutes and just tell us about where people can find you? 

G:   The book is “Very fine recipes and rhyme.” Lots of amusing rhymes, some good recipes. You can find that where you find everything, that's on Amazon. Very Fine Recipes and Rhyme. Please go there. Please buy one, that would just be super. I'm going to be following that up with another book, which is about what is mathematics, what is language, what is science, what is physics? I've written a couple of those. So that's coming. That's coming soon to a decade near us. And then professionally, I'm actually doing something interesting at the moment for a staffing company. And a most interesting thing about this at the moment is that we have a very serious focus on nurses. We want to, we have several customers of ours, their hospitals, their staffing up in preparation for corona virus. They're in California and they're in Texas. There's also a couple of other states that escape me right now. So that is actually very interesting. That’s been very interesting work. I've been speaking with hospitals. I've been speaking with RNs, registered nurses. I've been speaking with directors of nursing. And it's been a really fascinating thing. I'm brand new at this, but the company is good. The company that I'm working for doing this is called GQR. And it's gqrgm.com. And that's I would say, the most important thing I'm doing in my professional career probably ever at the moment, given what's going on. So we want to, that's a shout out to GQR, www.gqrgm.com. That's it for now, I think. 

J:    Wonderful. Well, hey, Gareth, man, it's been a pleasure and great to get to know you and your family. We're big fans of you all and I absolute like your kids. (crosstalk)

G:   Yeah, likewise. When this is all over we’ll go over and play again. 

J:    Yeah, absolutely. I may let the dads play again. I know last time we're playing a little bit more than even the kids. So Sean I'll tell you about the jujitsu practice that Gareth and I were having while the kids were watching their dads in horror. But on that note, thank you for joining us. Thank you for sharing. We'll love to have you back. We also need to talk about how to get some of those rhymes out on our blogs. And I've already started the work with Dustin on figuring that out because we love to see more of that stuff coming through our platform as well. So let's keep in touch. Man, thanks for everything. Stay healthy and can’t wait to hear this podcast (crosstalk).

G:   Thank you very much. See you soon.

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