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You’re tired.
Not just physically; though yeah, that too.
You’re tired in your bones. In your soul.
Trying to be a steady husband, an intentional dad, a man of God… but deep down, you feel like you’re falling short. Like you’re carrying more than you know how to hold.
Dad Tired is a podcast for men who are ready to stop pretending and start healing.
Not with self-help tips or religious platitudes, but by anchoring their lives in something (and Someone) stronger.
Hosted by Jerrad Lopes, a husband, dad of four, and fellow struggler, this show is a weekly invitation to find rest for your soul, clarity for your calling, and the courage to lead your family well.
Through honest stories, biblical truth, and deep conversations you’ll be reminded:
You’re not alone. You’re not too far gone. And the man you want to be is only found in Jesus.
This isn’t about trying harder.
It’s about coming home.
Hey guys. Welcome back to the Dad Tire podcast. I'm so excited for you to jump into this conversation. It is so interesting and really, really helpful. Uh, just fun. It's a really, really fun conversation. One of the most fun conversations I've had a long time on the podcast. Uh, I got a lot out of it personally as a man and a dad.
We'll get to that in a second. I do want to thank my friends over at Samaritan's Purse for sponsoring today's episode. If you missed collection week, it's over now. There's still time to pack a shoebox. You can do it online, and this is one of, again, one of the easiest and best ways as a dad, as a family, that you can share the good news of Jesus Christ by filling up a shoebox and having it sent to kids all around the world.
You can do that online again, 'cause National Collection Week is over. You can build these online. It's really fun, really easy way to do it. You just select the gifts that you want to put into that shoebox, and Samaritan's Purse will actually pack them for you and send them to a child in need. The cool thing about sending them online is it gets to some of the hardest to reach countries all over the world, and because of that, they have to go through really specific requirements and past strict custom regularization, the things that are culturally sensitive.
They take care of all of that, but these boxes will get sent to some places that are really hard to reach these people with the gospel. And so a really fun and unique way that you can be part of seeing the gospel of Jesus Christ spread all throughout the world. Including some of the hardest to reach places.
You can go to samaritans purse.org/build online to start building your shoebox today. Again, that's samaritans purse.org/build online to get started on that today. I also wanna thank my friends over at ollo for sponsoring today's episode. I told you guys, if you are looking to get holiday lights or any kind of permanent lighting on your home, we actually just had ours installed by the OLO team.
They came out, did a phenomenal job. Great guys, you can get these all over the country. They have installers all over the country, but the day I put them up, I'm not kidding you, I had multiple neighbors standing in front of my house like, okay, where do I get these? Where do I get these? They're just the coolest lights, man.
You can control all of it through your app. Again, if you wanna just go as simple as security lighting on your house, they have that setting. But you can do a million different combinations of lights and colors and patterns and. Ways that the lights can move and I mean fully customizable or they've got presets for all the different holidays, but my kids stood out there forever and watched these lights, all of our neighbors came out.
Just a really, really cool product and it allows you to not have to get up on a ladder every year while still being able to s display some really great holiday lights. And you can do 'em. You can do a holiday. There's like a holiday in every few weeks, at least every month, and you can put these lights up every month with a different holiday.
So really, really cool stuff. You can go to oelo, that's OEL o.com and uh, say that Dad Tired refer you. Make sure you mention that. But again, go to OEL o.com. You can get a free quote over there. Love what they're doing and the product and customer service that they have. OELO oelo.com.
Jeremy so excited to be hanging out with you today, man, having this conversation with you. Layla and I got to go to, um, a marriage conference. We do this conference every year, our retreat, and, uh, there are a bunch of speakers there. All of them are so awesome and helpful, but I found myself reflecting back on your talk consistently after that.
Layla and I talked about it a ton, so I had to get you on the podcast and just continue to pick your brain. I know we had some lunch together and I picked your brain, but I wanted to keep that conversation going, but before I get too deep into that, for the audience who may not be familiar with you, tell us who you are and what you're up to these days.
Hey, uh, I'm so delighted to be here. Thanks for having me, Jared. I am Jeremy Utley. I live in Mountain View, California. For the last 15 ish years I've been teaching at Stanford University in the design program. And if you heard my minivan start up right outside my garage, it's 'cause my family the most important part of my life other than the Lord Jesus.
Is they're going somewhere. I dunno where they're going, but I'm happily married for nearly 17 years and my wife Michelle, and I have four daughters aged 11, 9, 6, and four. And, uh, Sparky's the only other dude with me, so he's sitting outside right now. He's kinda looking at me. He, he often just wants to come retreat in the man cave with me, but I told him podcasts are off limits, buddy.
That's awesome, man. Our families are similar in that way. We've been married close to the same amount of time. Both have four kids. You have all girls, which is super fun. I have three girls and a boy, but similar ages, so we're definitely in the similar life stage here. I want to pick your brain on all the stuff that you're doing work-wise, but first I'm curious, you're in like academia world.
Yes, that's true in the, you're in the college world in California, which a lot of us are so removed from like, I. The college space now, you know, 20 years removed, 15 years removed. It's weird when you say it right? It's like it's been 20 years. I feel like I was just in college, but Yeah, I know what you mean.
I was just watching an uh, Nate Bar gaze. Are you familiar with him? The comedian Love Me. Love, yeah. And he referenced the sixth Sense, you know, he's got like a whole bit on the sixth Sense, and he said it was like at the time of the recording, he recorded that in 2019. And after the time we were recording he said, it's 20 years old.
And I was like, oh my gosh, dude. Six sense. That is deeply troubling, deeply troubling. Coming up on like almost 25 years, which is just insane. Anyway, man, like give us a pulse of like for some of us who haven't been around college students in a long time, like what's the pulse? Right now of young people, just from a, like a 30,000 foot perspective and, and in your world as a Christian, but working in the secular college environment, like, are you seeing any kind of trends, anything that you can, like, tell us about things that are coming?
Well, that's a real broad, yeah. Well, I would, I would preface by saying I'm definitely not a social commentator, but I am a student of culture. I am a, I consider myself more foremost a student even before a professor. That's kind of the through line of my life. So. I would say I do have the privilege of getting to interact with some undergrads, a lot of grad students at Stanford, but then some undergrads as well.
And I think, I mean, human nature doesn't change. So if you think about the lures of this world and the lust of our flesh and the boastful pride of life and all the things the scriptures want us against, I think for me, one thing that I've been thinking about lately, and I hadn't thought about it as it pertains to the upcoming generation per se, but I think it's kinda relevant.
The Lord said in the last days, the love of many will grow cold, but the one who endures to the end will be saved. And the one who endures in love, and I think I. It's love for the Lord that matters. It's not, you know, romantic love. It's not love for even the lost, let alone for some social cause. And yet I would say what dissipates my, I'm just thinking about myself, you know, and I'm thinking about the generation.
I mean, there's so much passion for social justice issues, for example, all of which are wonderful causes. And yet if they dissipate my love for the Lord, you know, Jesus even warned the Pharisees, you all love the scriptures and yet they're keeping you from me. If the scriptures can keep us from the Lord and from a pure, as Paul says in Second Corinthians, pure and simple devotion to Jesus, how much more can.
Other loves creep in. And I would say now, at this day and age, and the other thing I would say is just Jesus warned us the last days would be marked by deception. It's one of the kinda primary warnings he gives in the scriptures. See to it that no one misleads. You see to it that you aren't deceived. And Paul speaks about that as well.
And I think deception is rampant and it's subtle because it can veil itself as rationalism. How can someone who's rational be deceived? Right? It veils itself as humanism. How can someone who loves people be deceived? Right? And so these deceptions, they aren't overt. It's not that we're believing lies, it's that we're elevating some truths above the creator.
The creation is being elevated above the creator. So anyway, I mean, I think all of us are certainly vulnerable. None of us are immune. All of us have to be careful to guard that pure and simple devotion to the Lord Jesus and recognize the love of many is going to go grow cold. I mean, you could say, by the way, the loss, there's no love there.
In their hearts when it says the love of many will grow cold, who is the Lord warning us about? He is warning us about ourselves. And so lest we exert too much concern for others, we go, hang on, Lord. How's my love? What's the temperature of my love? I've got a kettle that will hold a temperature for a certain period of time, you know?
And sometimes I'll like turn it on and then I'll forget about it. And then I come back and it's like, you can see it on the LED screen, which just broke by the way. So now you actually can't see it. It's kind of ironic. But ordinarily when it's working properly, you can see. And the tempera, it's 180 5, 180 4, 180 3, and Jesus said in Revelation, yeah, I would rather you be cold.
Then just your temperature going down. And so, to me anyway, that's a little bit of a commentary on, on our culture and on life on campus. But it's also to me, let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. And to me, that's me. It's not you. It's not a listener. It's not anybody. It's me. I'm the one in danger.
And I think if each of us, you know, as fathers, as disciples of Jesus Christ, if we look to ourselves, it says in another place, I can't remember where, which I used to be self-conscious of until I read in Hebrews where he says, it says somewhere it's written, somewhere. I go, okay, if the apostle wrote Hebrews can not remember, I'm okay too.
But it says somewhere that, uh, I can't remember the point now that I actually went on that tangent. But you get the idea. You get the idea. My feeling is sorry. It says somewhere, it's time for judgment to begin with the household of God. So to really take that to my own heart, you know, we had a communion service in our church recently and the preacher was just speaking about, he says, for this and uh, what is it, one Corinthians 11 or second Corinthians 11, he's speaking about communion there.
And one thing he says is, for this reason, many of you're sick and some of you have died because you haven't judged the body rightly. And our pastor was speaking about the soberness with which we ought to approach the communion table and judge ourselves. Anyway, all that's saying, kinda long-winded answer, but you poked the balloon and that's what you got.
Well, I mean, I really appreciate your perspective on that. One thing that stuck out to me is your ability, even though you kind of made fun of yourself there, your ability to memorize scripture. Is that, like, has that always been a high value for you? I treasure the scriptures for sure. My parents instilled a love of God's word in me and I thank God for them and I.
You know, I find myself wondering, am I, do I make my kids read the scriptures? Do I encourage them? Do they do it out of love? I was actually asking my dad some advice about that. My dad, by the way, would be the person to have on this podcast. Listeners, I'm new to the show and I've learned about Jared and his amazing ministry and work at the conference that we attended.
But now that I know a little bit about it, I'd say, you need to get me off the show and have my dad. 'cause my dad is the og. I admire him tremendously. And I actually, I know a few that I could recommend to you, but I ask him a lot of my questions, you know, about what? How do I do this? And one thing he said that I really appreciated, this is not an answer to your question, I'll come back to it, I promise.
But he said, instead of making your girls read God's word, tell them what. It stands out to you. Tell them stories that come out of your heart. Not, you know, not rote reading, but just, Hey, you know what? And I did that this morning actually. You know, we were, um, just by God's gift in kind of coming a little bit to your question, which is valuing God's word.
I, I really do everything I can to get up meaningful amount of time before my family does. There was a big shift in my life when my first daughter was born 11 years ago, where I went from kind of, I can do whatever I want, have time whenever I want to, man, my day wakes up and someone's yelling at me. You know, literally from the moment I wake up and I found myself after three or four months kind of going, why am I in such a funk?
And I realized it's been about three or four months since I was diligent to read God's word. I might haphazardly do it. I might pick up the Bible from time to time. I read it at church, but really making time, carving out time. And so I've made kind of a commitment to my, I mean, not. Commitment, but I made a decision at that time, which the Lord, by his Holy Spirit has sustained me in.
From that point on, I gotta get up before my girls do. It's way I can attack the day. He who wins the morning, wins the day. I think Spurgeon said that maybe, I don't know. But anyway, coming to this morning, so just what it looks like, you know, if I think about almost like gospel centered, I, although I wouldn't necessarily call it that, 'cause that sounds too formal, but just discipleship and, and speaking of the Lord, taking my dad's advice, I really tried to take that to heart and this morning I happened to read, I was reading in, uh, two Samuel, I think when Solomon becomes king and I just, it blessed me, you know, what did Solomon pray for?
We all know the answer to that question. He asked God for wisdom. Not. And God's amazed. He said, it's not wealth, not long life, not, you know. And he said, because you asked me for wisdom. I'm gonna give you wealth and long life and all this stuff. Right? We know that. I mean, that's like a introductory lesson.
It's easy to skim over that. And I just happened to, as I was reading it this morning, I noticed there's like a little one, you know, by wisdom. So I, and I'm reading on my phone 'cause I'm like doing a plan. So I'm on my phone, which I generally don't like. I actually hate it. But now it's like, once you start a plan, you gotta finish it.
So I'm like in the middle of this plan waiting for its end. But anyway, hit the one and it pulls up the margin. It says hearing. I thought that's interesting. It says literally Solomon asked for hearing, not wisdom hearing. And then later when the Lord commends him, he says, because you asked for this thing and in the margin it says because you asked for hearing.
I will give you that. And it blessed me. I, and I just made a quick note, you know, I open up my Evernote jotted a quick note. Wow. Wisdom is hearing and that's it, you know. And then I actually had a class earlier this morning like that we do this class at Stanford where. It's kinda a global, it's an online course.
So you, we do office hours once a month. So I was on office hours, read my Bible, then get up and then have early office hours before family wakes up. Then family gets up and I'm sitting at breakfast just before this call. The Lord brought that back to mind and not in like a Bible study kind of a way, not in a, everyone please open to Second Samuel chapter one, you know?
Yeah. But just like girls, you know what I, I said, you guys know, you remember what Solomon asked God for and my 11-year-old thankfully was like wisdom, right? I was like, yeah. I go, do you know what wisdom, what he really asked God for? And one of the girls was like, love, you know? I was like, they're all trying to find the right answer.
I'm like, no, no, no. He asked for hearing. 'cause we had actually prayed before breakfast and I found myself praying, Lord, gimme a ear of a disciple today. What reminded me of it was I was praying for hearing, 'cause that was a burden God put on my heart as I was reading his word this morning. And then the Lord just kinda gave me the opportunity to just share that little word.
I said, well, isn't it amazing? That when we ask for wisdom, well, it's not that we want something like gimme this cup. It's not that I'm gonna get it, it's that what I'm asking God for is I want to hear what you have to say. That's wisdom. You know, that's 30 seconds, bro. I mean, it's not like it was a long thing.
Yeah. And you know, if you judge the quality of your Bible study or whatever, that on time spent, I'm pretty sure I get an F. It's like it's hard to have a shorter Bible study, but to me it was natural. I wasn't planning on saying anything. So I'm using this as like, it's almost an anti example because it's not like I had a really good idea.
It's not like I had a a point really, it's just like after we prayed, as I'm praying, the Lord reminded me of a burden that he had given me. And then I just felt led to share for a second. You know, my daughter's flipping an egg, one of them's like banging something on the wall. So it's not like, it's not a particularly reverent moment per se.
But for me, going back to your question and then kind of my like tracing my answer. I was taught to love and study God's word. And then for me as a father, how do I cultivate that in my children? I don't know the answer entirely, but for me, I can't impart what I don't possess. Yeah. So I'm never gonna teach them to love God's word if I don't love God's word.
Yeah. I'm never gonna teach them to know God's word. If I'm not a student of God's word. And then when it comes to times to, you know, like the Lord says in Joshua, like when you're on the road, when you're sit down, when you're journeying, if God's word isn't in my heart, like you can't contrive that it has to be an overflow.
Yeah. And so for me, I, I hope I'm constantly seeking to be filled. I'm mindful and deeply aware of a lot of the ways in which I lack, but for whatever reason, the Lord allowed me to have a little victory today. Maybe just to share with you, well, there's a couple things that stick out to me about that man.
First is I, I just wanna highlight. A lot of times on this, on the podcast, we'll have like Christian authors or pastors or musicians or whatever, people who are kind of professionally in the Christian space, for lack of better words. What I love, dude, is you're just, you working in the secular world, you're doing some really, really cool things in the innovation space.
I wanna talk about that, like just from a career perspective, but. You're also just a quote unquote normal dad trying to fall in love with Jesus, right. And help your family do the same. That's the journey. That's, I love that, bro. I love that so much. And I just wanna like give that kind of, you have a lot of credibility behind you in the professional world as you should, but I just wanna like, give some credibility as like a normal dude who's like clocking out of work and going home and reading his bible and trying to figure out how to bring up Jesus at the breakfast table like that.
That's really, really cool, man. And if, if more dudes did that, I think we'd have a totally different culture and different church and different, we'd see God moving really, really big ways if, if we have more and more guys like that. I'll say, honestly, bro, I'm more conscious of my need than ever before and more conscious of the perilous dangers that beset.
Both sides of the narrow way than ever before. So it's not, it's a journey downwards. It's a journey to becoming nothing. As John and Baptist said, I must decrease. He must increase it. Yeah. There's a sense in which you can say that and it's like a exalted thing, but there's a sense in which you say that and it's actually, it doesn't feel great, you know?
And I mean, I would love to, I was even thinking earlier this week about where Paul says, most gladly will I boast in my weakness. I wish my weakness would get outta the way. I wish I would stop having weakness. You know, I'm not at that point where I'm gladly boasting. I'm saying, Lord, thank you for this problem.
I can't solve. I'm saying, ah, I can't solve this problem. You know? So all that say, I'm very mindful of my lack, but I see the path. A phrase that the Lord's put on my heart all year long from this summer onwards, really is down, is the way forward. Wow. So for me, I'm seeking, I really want to cooperate with the Lord in becoming less and less.
In my own eyes, you know, I can't control like what anyone else thinks, but do I think of myself less? You know, and am I, am I more oriented towards the Lord and concerned for the things of his kingdom and his righteousness and that sort of thing? Anyway, all that to say, may the Lord be glorified, and I'm definitely work in progress and today's the most important day of my life.
You know, today's the most important day of all of our lives. And so really seeking to say, Lord, it doesn't matter what happened yesterday. It could be a terrible day. I have a fresh start with you lord's. Mercies are new every morning. Yeah, and it also doesn't matter if it was the best day ever. There's no such thing as I.
Inertia in the Christian life, you know? Or momentum rather whatever. Right. An object in motion. Isaac Newton will continue to move less, acted upon the object of our lives is acted upon every day by the flesh, you know? And by this world and our, just 'cause we're in motion yesterday doesn't mean we're gonna stay in motion today, but just 'cause we were stalled yesterday doesn't mean we have to be stalled today.
That's the good news. That's so good. That's so good, man. I wrote a chapter in one of the books about essentially think Less as a dad, think less. About 15 minute, 30 minute, like polished devotionals. I love how you said it, like wasn't like this big reverent moment, like think less about those. 'cause it's just, frankly, it feels unrealistic.
I mean, oftentimes it is with young kids and more about those like 15 second moments where you're discipling you, like you said, uh, the Deuteronomy, like as you sit, as you walk, as you eat, like in these, like as you go moments, dec discip, which is what Jesus did, right? Yeah. With his disciples. It's that we're walking down the road and whoa, look at this wheat.
Let's talk about that for a second. It's in these moments, like as we're at the breakfast table and there's eggs being flipped, and things being banged on. Let's talk about the kingdom for a second. And I just have a feeling, I mean, I don't know, I only have, my oldest is about to be 13, so I, I certainly don't know.
I don't have a lot of perspective yet, but I'm hoping that those kind of natural moments. Will bear fruit of a child that says, man, my dad just like always talked about Jesus. Like he just always was talking about God. Like, yeah, you, you know, it just let me tell you about what God was teaching me through his word this morning.
Um, that just feels so much more authentic to me, and I feel like will have a, a lasting impact on their lives. Hopefully. I hope so too, bro. Yeah, definitely. Can you, getting into some of your work world, which is just super fun, tell us what you do like day to day. I don't really know how to describe it. I heard you talk for like an hour and I was like, that is amazing and I still don't really know what you do well.
Well, the keynote is not my day to day. Right. That's the exception, not the rule, but basically I'm in the business of helping people have epiphany moments. That's my goal to facilitate epiphanies. And if you wonder what an epiphany moment is, it's like the last time you felt that, like Keanu Reeves feeling of like, I know Kung Fu or the Haley Osmond, I see dead people.
It's like there are these moments where it's like. Oh that, where you have a special understanding or you have a special insight or you like, I think for most people that breakthrough moment is more like a break in, you know, catch 'em off guard. Like where did that come from? Right. And I actually believe you can perpetrate a breakthrough.
I believe that you can commit an epiphany. And so, and I've been fortunate to have learned a methodology and a mindset and a set of tools that, if not guarantee, they certainly increase one's likelihood of having an epiphany. And so to me, helping individuals with that, I think obviously there's implications for organizations and companies seeking to innovate.
There's implications for, you know, parents seeking to deal with disciplinary issues at home and everything in between. But, and I believe, I think, as I mentioned at that conference, this isn't something that I, this isn't like a standard kinda keynote phrase, but something I believe deeply is that innovation is the wrong word.
Innovation implies that I. It was our idea. We came up with it, you know. But I think as I joked at that conference, right, that was the first time I'd ever done that, by the way. But, uh, or this kind of line of reasoning, but you think about your favorite innovation, whatever it is. What's yours? Well, I'm a huge Apple guy, so pretty much every Apple product.
I'm a, I'm a big fan. What, so like the iPod, like gimme a glimpse into your life. Yeah. I mean, the iPod was an innovation that certainly started to capture my heart around the, uh, apple products and start to make me a, a fanboy. Totally. You have to No, you're, you're a devotee. Well, and, and the joke that you probably remember from the conference was like, when Steve Jobs unveiled the iPod, do we, we picture almighty God in heaven.
Is he going, what? Right, right. Oh my. Where did they think of that Now, you know, it's like. And so to say innovation I feel is kind of, it's a misnomer. It's, we call it a discovery. We discovered something God had already thought of. He's probably going what took him so long? I wanted them to have a click wheel for centuries, you know, but they, you know, whatever the, the, this one dude, 'cause of his disobedience, he didn't discover silicon and what, you know, I don't know.
I'm kidding. So discovery is actually, to me is a better word for it. But that being said, you know, when you say what do you do day to day, most of my days are concerned in some form or fashion with facilitating those epiphany moments. Could be with individuals, could be with teams, could be with companies.
It's usually a mix thereof. And then part of being able, not unlike, you know, by the way, studying God's word and imparting a love of God's word, the only way I can be a reliable facilitator of epiphanies is if I am a pursuer of epiphanies as well. And so part of my time is actually just spent working on, I.
Problems that matter to me and, and opportunities that I see in the world and and building things myself. So it's a little bit of kind of athlete coach kind of a situation. I do a little bit of both. Yeah. Uh, this is a total side note and has nothing to do with discipleship at all, but one thing that's you said as like a side that blew my mind was the same guy that invented the iPod.
Did the Nest thermostat, which has that same like functionality. Yeah. Tony Fidel. Totally. Yeah. That just now, every time I like adjust my temperature in the house, I'm just thinking of that and it blows my mind, man. That's, it's a perfect example by the way of like the combinatorial that is a perfect refutation of the idea that something's new.
It's, you know, nothing's new as Solomon said, right? Nothing's new. And if we think of innovation as it's new, I think we're mistaken, right? And as Christians, what we know is God is the only one who's capable of X nihilo creation. The rest of us are discovering and we're uncovering possibilities in combinations that God, that have appeared in the mind of God a long time ago.
And when you realize it's not my job. To come up with new, there's a few things where it's not my job. It's kind of a helpful phrase. One is, it's not my job to come up with new, I just have to search for unexpected combinations for combinations I haven't explored. So I can do like that. Literally, I'm just picking up two random things on my desk.
Okay. This is a photo strip of me and my daughter at the San Diego Zoo. Okay. And I've got a cup of coffee, and if I, what am I doing? And I'm creating, how do I combine a film strip and a cup of coffee? Oh, it would be fun if you have like a souvenir for, uh, special like moments that you've had with your kid to get printed on a coffee mug or, oh, like what if this thing served up hot beverages and we, this was the start of a 30 minute date, or what if on dates you had the ability to make this so that you commemorated it?
I'm just making this stuff up. It doesn't matter. But the point is. All of those quote unquote ideas aren't new. They're combinations sparked by a stupid coffee cup and a film strip. I picked up out of the dust, unfortunately, on my desk. Hmm. I think you said at the conference that your daughter had asked you what is an idea, and you had to simplify it in such a way that would help her understand, like define it in a way that would help her understand.
Can you talk us through that? I thought that was really, really helpful. It's a connection. It's a connection. That's it. Basically. Neurologically speaking, cognitively speaking, what's happening is two parts of your brain are connecting. That's it. That's the right, it is just two things that hadn't been connected before where there hadn't been a new neural pathway, so to speak.
Connected. Yeah. And so when you realize that, then you go, basically there's kind of two responsibilities in the, call it creativity. There's acquiring stuff that you can connect, which is learning and seeking inspiration. Seeking input could be talking to customers, could be talking to partners, whatever.
Right. Could be studying outside your field, like Richard Feinman did you know he is a physicist who spent time in biology classes because he's intellectually curious. Right. But the one kind of responsibility of a creative person is acquiring information. Hmm. Then the other is, yeah, so sorry to interrupt you, just to, to kind of, what I'm picturing is like a bucket and you just start trying to fill the bucket with things that might have the potential of clashing against Legos.
I, I call it Legos. Collecting. Okay. Legos. Yeah. That's a good, that's a good collecting and connecting Legos, right? Yeah, that's true. And those combinations where they click, you're like, oh. That's cool. That's a race car, you know, or whatever, right? Yeah. And it's, it's, you're trying on, you know, combinations.
That's the beauty of interdisciplinary collaboration, is we all bring different buckets of Legos to the meeting, and we can try on different possibilities. And if you think about it like that, then the task is a little bit simpler. And of course, there's a bunch of stuff that doesn't work. Uh, who cares? I mean, it's a volume game largely.
And when you realize there's very little price to trying these two, it's like they don't fit great. What's next? You know, if your ego gets in the way or what the other, by the way, I said earlier that there's some, I can't remember the phrase I used, but some good things to do. The other really good thing to do in the context of a team is try to not be creative.
It's not my job to be creative, just be obvious. And the beauty of that as like a, as a heuristic is profound. Because when you think your job is to be creative, then you spend time going, like, if your job is to be obvious, just say the obvious thing. And the beauty of your metaphor, of the buckets of Legos is.
What's obvious to me is likely outside of your frame of reference. And, but then that's, now I just lobbed a Lego in your bucket and now all of a sudden you've got this one Lego. You can try it with all the stuff you know, and if your job is just to find one thing that it connects to and say what's obvious to you, and then you throw the combination back in my bucket of, you know, metaphorically speaking, yeah.
All of a sudden we're spiraling upwards. We're we're arriving at this destination that neither of us could have arrived at on our own. Neither of us could have predicted. And that's really the point, like when you gather a group to brainstorm, your goal is to think of something you haven't thought of yet.
It's like, this is the most obvious statement, you know, and yet how many brainstorms end with people having not thought of anything new? Yeah. And why is that? Well, because they all feel the pressure to be creative, right? And none of them feel the permission to be obvious. And if you'd flip the script from, you know, and like one way to like a simple kind of script that you can use is instead of asking the default question, most of us ask when we hear an idea is, what do I think of that?
Right? So when I gave the example of like the picture and the coffee cup, right? And I'm like, by the way, I need a sip. But I gave that connection and I just threw out some random stupid ideas. Most people are evaluating those ideas. That's, I mean, this guy teaches Stanford, that's not a good idea. That's not a good idea.
That's, he said like three stupid things in a row. Because the implicit question they're asking themselves is, what do I think of that idea? Hmm. The right question to ask is, what does that idea make me think of? Hmm. That's good. It's a subtle shift. It's, but it's not just semantic. It's profound. Because if you see we're building momentum here.
This is a relay and I've passed it to you now you gotta run. Don't run the other direction. Yeah. And don't stop and don't slap the baton outta my hand. Keep running. And when you realize that that's the game we're in, all of a sudden it's judgment ceases and criticism and because you just realize, oh, that's not the game we're playing.
There's a time for that, by the way, like if you look at, I, I don't know if I referenced this at that conference, but one of my favorite studies of creativity, I just wrote a blog post about this actually just last week on my blog. I. One of my favorite studies of creativity, this Johns Hopkins neuroscientist named Dr.
Charles Lim. He basically studied FMRI scans. So scans of the brain while jazz musicians are in the machine playing jazz, or while freestyle hip hop artists are in the machine free flowing. And what he studied, he was trying to figure out what happens to the brain when a musician shifts from playing, call it sheet music to improvisation, or what happens to a rapper when they go from reciting known bars to just freestyling what parts of their brain light up.
And it's not helpful, by the way to say that the creative part lit up. It's like, thank you. The thing that's fascinating to me, sorry. The thing that's fascinating to me is to say, to realize there's actually a part of the brain that went dark. Hmm. And the part of the brain that went dark in Charles Lynn's studies was the part responsible for judgment.
Hmm. And you go, okay, what have we been training all these years? Our critical thinking skills, the ability to evaluate, the ability to judge. I picture it as like, you've got this incredibly jacked, you know, like a lot, I'm sure a lot of your audience are like, I. Into CrossFit or something. I am by the way.
Or hi. I don't actually do CrossFit, but I do like hi exercises. 'cause dads ain't got time for an hour at the gym, man. Totally. I'm like doing it in my backyard with the dumbbells. I'm like trying like, what else can I do with this dumbbell? Anyway, we can talk about that later. But the way I picture us cognitively is like picture this bodybuilder who's like right hand side judgment evaluation criticism is just schwartzenegger.
Just jacked. Yeah. And then the left hand side is like Napoleon Dynamite. Okay. It's like wonder possibility, spark ability, as I like to say. We need to be developing those muscles. Yeah. On the other half of our brain. I mean, not that it's right brain, left brain per se, but we need to be, we need practice. I was actually, it's funny, one of my good friends, one my best friends from college, I went to UT Hook him.
One of my best friends from college texted me 'cause he had read that blog post. Which anytime you realize one of your friends reads your stuff, it's like, wait, you read my blog? Like I, I just like think I'm like shouting into a canyon, you know? So, and then somebody I know, I'm like, oh, actually he sent me a screenshot and my first thought was, who wrote that?
That's pretty cool. And I was like, oh, I wrote that. That's great. But he wrote me and he said, dude, I feel like the last 10 years, because he's, you know, super senior, you know, CFO type, last 10 years of my career, my job responsibilities and our life stage, he said, they've, my ability to defer judgment is totally gone.
I, all those muscles are gone. That, to me, I really appreciated that. I was like, dude, well let's do some drills like we can get back in the weight room so that we can get that half of your brain back in the weight room. Yeah. But it requires kind of deliberate, effortful attention. That's what most people don't.
May I continue riffing for one moment. Please. Okay. I don't know if you, how, how, like you wanna go back and forth, but No, man, one of the things that I kinda pictured, I found myself saying this the other day, where was I, I was in like a webinar with this consulting firm and we were talking about the need for practice.
Innovation and creativity is a, is an ability that you have to develop, you have to practice it. And you know, the Napoleon Dynamite versus Schwartzen here kind of gives you a mental image. But another way to think about it is like, like people read articles about innovation or like, they read book, I, I'm all about books by the way.
I've got a great one Idea flow. But they do all this stuff and then they're not innovating, they're not creating, right. And it's like, and they wonder why. And the way I found myself describing it on this webinar the other day was imagine you want everybody in the company to be pianists, right? And you've got Mozart or Beethoven or whatever playing in the elevators and in all the break rooms and the bathrooms.
But then when they get to the piano floor, ain't nobody playing Mozart. And it's like, why not? Well, my question is, who's doing their scales? Is anybody practicing? And they go, no, no, but we we're playing Mozart all the time. It's like, great, that's not what I'm talking about. Right? Studying innovation isn't enough.
You know, do your scales. Admiring creative people isn't enough. You actually have to do the work. And for most people, that's a big paradigm shift to go from admiring it or reading about it to you mean their pragmatic practices that I can engage, that strengthen the muscle. You know, that's like, well, you know, if I ask you, when was the last time you practiced innovation, you, most people are like, that's an oxymoron.
I read one time, Thomas Edison said, you need to cultivate an inventor must cultivate his imagination. And my thought as I read that was, I don't know how to cultivate my imagination. What does that mean? It's like you, uh, you can think it's like, either I have imagination or I don't, but cultivate it. Right.
You know? And as long as it remains almost mystical, it's inaccessible to people. And you gotta take it from like, it's not mystical. It's also not rocket science, meaning it's not unlearnable or like, you know, ineffable. It's pragmatic and practical. And that's where you have to draw people to. So then again, facilitate epiphanies.
Hey guys, hope you're enjoying this episode so far. Make sure you stick around because Jeremy has a lot of really great stuff for us on the back half of this episode. Did wanna share some good news with you? I had a very generous donor reach out to me this week and say that he would like to match all the donations that we get for the rest of the year, and, uh, absolutely incredible.
This is a guy who has been deeply impacted by the ministry and just really believes that God is going to use it to reach a lot more men. And so what that means for you is if you give a dollar, if you donate a dollar, he will give a dollar. If you give 50, he'll give 50. If you give a thousand, he'll give a thousand.
Um, just unbelievably generous. Again, he really believes that God is using this ministry to reach all kinds of men as it has in his own personal life. And so we would love for you to partner with us. Your dollar will go a lot further for our little ministry for the rest of this year. If you go to dad tire.com/donate, you can make that matching donation there.
Um, really, really exciting stuff. That being said, let's jump back into the episode. Okay. So I, my, all my, I got so many thoughts go on. There was a lot of good stuff in there. There are a lot of guys listening who obviously they're working their normal job. And I think it would be so cool for us as Christians and for our particular audience, Christian men, to be used by God, to have those kind of moments where we're seeking out the creative ideas that already exist in our creator and say, oh man, what is God doing?
And in my workplace, and to be the one at your workplace who's I. Presenting ideas or cultivating a culture of coming up with ideas. And again, I loved what you said at the conference. I love what you reminded us here. Like this is all God's like creativity. Like we just get to go to the creator and God, I wanna be part of using and, and seeing what you've already invented, which I think is just such a cool way to be salt and light to a world, to your workplace.
Amen. And so can you walk us through, like, for a dad who's listening, regardless of where he's working, there is a need for good ideas at his workplace and for that guy to, instead of like dreading going to work, thinking like I'm gonna be used by God to come into my workplace and bring some life into it again, salt and light.
Like, I wanna make this place better for the glory of God. God has sent me here on mission. I love that, that kind of picture, like God has sent me here on mission to be salt and light here. And so I wanna bring good ideas and make this place better. Walk us through, like you, you were just talking about that practice.
Like what are some ways a guy can practice that so that he can himself be comfortable with sharing ideas and also help create a culture where ideas can be shared. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. And let's just riff and, because I think this is such an important question, a few things come to mind. Just kinda like vomit them and then we can kinda dive in.
Yeah. Yeah. One is practice yourself so you got a problem, instead of trying to find the right answer, which is everybody's cognitive bias and is, there's no research that suggests that the first idea or is the best idea. In fact, I like to say first idea, worst idea. So push yourself to think of a few more.
I say 10. I've actually got a community that I, I actually just launched a couple weeks ago. This is totally unrelated, called Tri 10, where I built like this simple chat bot that basically pushes people to think of more than one idea. Very simple. And I've got a WhatsApp group going and people who are just doing it in class and business, whatever.
Cool. But so start with yourself. That's one thing. Two, be stupid. I can't tell you the, like one of my partners in a venture that I'm involved with, he's launched multiple unicorns of multiple billion dollar companies. He's one of the smartest people I know. Uh, he's lives in Copenhagen, name's Henrik, and anytime I wanna call it Henrik, almost always, at some point he says some variation of in the spirit of sharing bad ideas or in the spirit of saying something dumb.
And to me, the amazing thing is what permission that gives the rest of us. Right. You know, the smartest guy in the room is willing to be dumb. It only raises the bar if the smartest guy in the room says the smartest thing. It's like, gosh, I was thinking about saying something, but now I'm definitely gonna not.
Right? Right. Whereas if the smartest guy in the room's like, no, no, we gotta have bad ideas. Come on, let's toss 'em out and I'll go first. Right. There's enormous. Permission that that gives. Right. And then be sparkle. So one is like, ask people. So, okay, step one, practice yourself. Step two, be stupid. Step three, welcome.
Stupid. So when a bad, a really great question to ask yourself is, am I a safe place for someone to share a bad idea? It's a great question. And for a lot of people, it's like, dude, they're like the stupid machine gun. It's just like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's just like, only bring me your good ideas.
Well, congratulations. You have not cultivated psychological safety. You know, you have not cultivated an environment where people can innovate. And the reason why many people don't have better ideas is because they're not allowed to have worse ideas. Wow. And so what you need to do is actually create an environment where, yeah, it's fine.
Where isn't, there's not judgment. You know, I had Amy Edmondson, who's the Harvard Business School professor, I dunno if you've ever heard of it. It's on the East Coast. It's like this little institution. But anyway, I. Sorry. A little Harvard Stanford competition there, but, uh, she created this concept of psychological safety or she didn't create it, but she's really popularized it.
She wrote an amazing book called The Fearless Organization. She's two years in a row. The Thinker's 50 number one management thinker in the world. Okay. She's incredible. She hero actually, here's, I'm on your podcast and I'm plugging her book. Here's her new book. She sent it to me 'cause I had her on my podcast.
She's great. One of the key questions, if you want to evaluate psychological safety on a team, lemme see if I can read it from her book so I get it right, is if you make a mistake in this group, it won't be held against you. Hmm. That's fascinating, right? How much will people agree with that statement? If I make a mistake, it won't be held against me.
Don't say it yourself. You have to ask your people. Right? So step one, practice yourself. Step two, be stupid. Step three, welcome, stupid. You know, which is like letting people share and then be sparkle is, is be generative. It takes no genius to say why a bad idea won't work. None. Right. It takes incredible genius to see possibility in even a bad idea.
So push yourself to be a genius. Most people are so lazy, they take the easy way out, say why something won't work. And a really simple kind of flip is to say, let me push myself to see is there possibility here? And so that to me, that's incredible. And then the last thing, I mean, not the last, but the last thing that's on my mind.
Before you kind of like respond or just read back to me what you heard and what's interesting is improve. Hmm. And to me, there's an amazing attitude that world class performers have is they're always finding something to get better. That's really easy, by the way, when the bar is low in the beginning, right?
It's really easy to get better from stupid than from smart. But improvement, debrief, how to go, what can we do better next time? Right? But that's another, if you think about being salt and light, what an incredible environment that a Christian disciple and leader can create in a team where it's like, Hey, what can we do better?
Yeah. You know, how could this be even more amazing? And especially if you're commissioning low res, low-fi, low cost, cheap, fa you know, fast experiments, there's gonna be lots of stuff to improve. But if the kind of, the understanding and the norms of the team are, we're in the improvement business together.
We're not in the be perfect business, but do something imperfect and figure out how to perfect it over time, business, then you create, it just creates a radically different culture on the team. Okay. So I just listed a bunch of stuff. I'll pause there. Well, I, I just love the idea of a Christ follower, a disciple, a man of God going into his workplace with that kind of attitude.
And he can do it whether he's leading the organization or he is just part of the organization, right? Like you can be part of that. Every organization needs good ideas, needs improvement, needs more. I a culture of idea. And you can do it from wherever you're at within that organization. But I love the idea of a, of a disciple.
I. Like you said, come up with the 10 bad ideas. I remember at the conference you said somebody had like, they had like a journal or notebook in their front seat. Yeah. You know, and before they even go into work, you just write out 10 ideas, 10 bad ideas. Yeah. But I, I love the idea of a disciple going into the workplace, being like, Hey, this morning I wrote out these 10 dumb ideas, but let's just start throw, tossing 'em out here.
Mm-hmm. And creating a culture there where it's like, okay. And for the Christian you can say like, listen, I, I'm not the inventor of the good idea, so I don't have pressure. Right. I'm just trying to, I'm trying to find what the Lord's already created. Right, right. I'm not the innovator here. I think it helps by the way, when you know, like this is not random and frivolous this, and for, I imagine if I'm a listener, unfamiliar with my kind of area of expertise, you might go like.
But what's the proof dude? Like, this sounds crazy, right? But, you know, I listened to an interview with Jeff Tweedy. One of my favorite bands from college is Wilco, you know, and Jeff Tweedy. He describes you have to pour off the bad ideas. Like he pictured it, like scum on the top of the cup. The only way you get to the good stuff is if you pour off the bad.
You just gotta keep channeling it, right? Mm-hmm. That's, to me, it's a great metaphor, Taylor Swift. It's takes hundreds or thousands of, of dumb ideas to have a good idea. Kevin Kelly, who's also a believer, you know, founder of Wired Magazine, a multitude of bad ideas are necessary for one good idea. That's a quote from his book, uh, his wonderful book called Excellent Advice for Living.
But point being, this, by the way, is empirically validated as well, not just, yeah, I remember you saying there was like nu there was numbers, right? There's numbers to it. You need a lot, you need a lot of volume. You need a lot more than you think you do. But the single greatest kind of variable that dictates how good your ideas are is how many ideas you have.
And so orienting towards quality and bad is just a really great way to unleash volume. It's easy to have a bad idea. It's really hard to share it, but if you're willing to have it and share it, then you unleash the kind of volume and the variability required to get to good stuff. So lest someone listening think, oh, this is gonna be a bad witness, the goal is never to implement bad ideas.
The goal is never to do something that's reduces stakeholder value or, or is it like a, a breach of your fiduciary responsibility? No, you wanna do the right thing. But when you realize that the way to discover the right thing is to explore lots of possibilities and to enable dopey ideas. A steep jobs called them to emerge.
Right? Then you start to go, oh, well I've been approaching this the wrong way. And that's getting back to the muscle thing. That's where we've got overdeveloped muscles and part of our kind of thinking lives and and reinforced by institutions and incentives and things like that. And then we have underdeveloped muscles.
And if you start to think about developing the culpability, uh, not culp capability, both for yourself and for your team, then you'll see innovations flow more routinely. That's kinda what surprises people about the D school. D school's kind of the hub of innovation at Stanford. Think about that statement for a second hub of innovation at Stanford, which is the hub of innovation in Silicon Valley, which is the hub of innovation in the world, right?
So the hub of the hub of the hub, so to speak. Never said that before, but that's fun. The hub of the hub of the hub, we say it's not about innovation, it's about innovate horse. And we know that if we can equip humans with the abilities and the instincts and the modes of acting and interacting, they will routinely deliver innovations.
And that's a big surprise. People come to, they pay a lot of money to come to classes, for example, and they come to class and they go, it's not about innovation. They're like, wait, I want my money back. No, no. We'll get there. But it starts with you. It starts with your behavior, your mindset, your attitude, the tools that you draw upon.
And then when you start to think about this idea of practice, like, you know, I'm obviously a big Steph Curry fan being in Golden State, but you take any of your favorite athletes, right? It doesn't matter who they are, whether it's Leo Messi or Serena Williams or Rafa, whatever, it doesn't matter how much time do they spend performing before the audience versus practicing in the gym, right?
Right. Like maybe one or 2% of their time is spent performing, right? The other 98% is spent in practice, right? As a professional, as a dad, how much time is spent performing versus, you know, we, we devote embarrassingly little of our bandwidth or attention to practice, and then we wonder why we're not any good at, it's like, well.
You gotta practice and you gotta be comfortable not being good at it at first. Yeah, man. That's good. I want to end our time talking, kind of go back to like the husband father role. I want to give you the last words on this little idea of the A man who is a disciple of Jesus going into his workplace, trying to be salt and light, trying to be a faithful disciple, a lover of Jesus, and also somebody who adds value at his work.
What would you say to encourage that guy and get him in the right frame of mind as he's going thinking through his workspace? Work is not opposite. Ministry work is not not discipleship. It's really easy for us to construct these false dichotomies or these false tensions or contradictions. And I know it's really easy to think, to be a wholehearted disciple.
I've gotta be in full-time ministry. To be a wholehearted disciple. I've gotta work at a church. I'm nothing against working at church. That's fine. But what the Lord said, he what he commands, even slaves, which objectively you feel is a job they gotta get out. He says, don't even try to get out. Like don't.
It's not about changing your job, it's about changing your motivation and your ambition to be pleasing to the Lord and work heartily, he says, to slaves as working for the Lord and not for men. And to me it's, I can think my work is what's keeping me from being a disciple sometimes. Hmm. I can think my work is what's keeping me from ministry.
And what the Lord has often encouraged me is, no, your ministry is an overflow of your work and what I want to do. You know, think about, I mean the Lord Jesus is our dictionary and ultimate example. Was he not prepared at 12 years old to start preaching? He was confounding the scholars of the day at 12, you know, and yet God Almighty saw fit to continue to prepare and perfect him in total obscurity for the next 18 years.
He didn't preach a sermon. He didn't perform a miracle, nothing. And yet, when he was baptized again, even before he preached a sermon and worked a miracle, the testimony from Heaven was, this is my beloved son and whom I'm well pleased. And you go, what has he done? He's faithfully done his carpentry work.
He's faithful. He is the oldest child and a, we don't hear about Joseph much. He probably lost his father at a young age. He's the breadwinner for a family of at least eight, and he's doing his work well, and God from Heaven says, I'm well pleased with him. And by the way, Jesus, as far as we can tell, in the miracle of Cano, when he turns water to wine, when his mother first comes to him, it's not like he's going, Showtime, finally chance to bust out my miracle skills.
No, he's like. What does this have to do with me? My time isn't come. And what I see there is he wasn't eager to rush out of the preparation time. He wasn't eager to stop being a carpenter. And for me, I see that it's such a challenge to my heart because it's so easy for me to superficially define success in terms of whether it's ministry or whatever that might be, right?
Yeah. A superficial external ideas about what discipleship looks like. But Paul, what he says to the Thessalonians, I believe, he says, you know what kind of men we prove to be among you? We didn't eat anyone else's bread because we didn't wanna be a burden on you, but we working hard day and night proclaiming the gospel to you.
And it continues. And I go, wait, hang on. The way I would write that sentence is because I was working hard day and night, I wasn't able to proclaim the gospel to you. What Paul says is my proclamation was amplified by the fact that I didn't take anything from you. Wow. And I didn't even ask for a meal. I provided these hens provided for my own needs and thus I was proclaiming.
And what I need the Lord to say to me often and what I would say to my fellow brothers who are listening is, it is possible to be proclaiming the gospel while working hard day and night. And as long as we have this false dichotomy of my work is what keeps me from being a real sincere Christian, we're never going to be wholehearted disciples and we have to eliminate that.
I'd recommend one short reading by a w Tozer called, I Believe it's the Sacrament of Living. It's one of the chapters in the Pursuit of God. That's, it's a wonderful, he says a much more eloquently than I ever could, but basically kind of just blasts this false dichotomy of the sacred and the, the secular and the spiritual.
To a Christian, there's no such thing. Yeah. Man, really, really good. I want to, uh, I know we've, I have so many thoughts and that I wanna explore with you, but for the sake of time for a dad who wants to set that kind of culture in his family, so I'm thinking something as maybe practical as like, okay, as a family, I wanna see ourselves on mission, maybe come up with some kind of family.
This is who we are. For us, it's like, my last name's Lopes, so as the Lopes family, this is who we are. Mm-hmm. And, and I think that's so helpful for a family to have some kind of mission statement or like identity statement, but a dad might hear that and think like, I don't even know where to begin with that.
How do we start to create some kind of identity as a family? This is where we, one example of where we might need an idea or a culture of how to come up with some good ideas here. Mm-hmm. So let's, using that example, can you walk us through some exercises on how a dad can start to. Create that kind of culture specifically in his role as a dad and husband, is your question.
How does he think about naming that, whatever culture is implicit or how does he think about setting a culture he desires, setting the culture he desires? I think, yeah, I mean both, but yeah, like setting the, that kind of culture where in the same way that we were talking about a man being a disciple, going into his workplace and creating that culture.
Now he's gone home and he wants to lead his family well as a husband and father and trying to set a good culture where again, leadership isn't just, Hey, here's my ideas, and you guys all implement them, right? But it's creating that culture. How does a, a man do that? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm a fellow journeyman on the way, that's for sure.
So I maybe even, how do you create that kind of culture where you're taking all these cool things that you're teaching organizations, big organizations, you've written books about it, you have a podcast, uh, like what are some crossovers to how you're, it's, it's shaping you as a dad. I dunno if this is a good answer or not, but in the spirit of sharing bad ideas, I'll say this, I just kind of talk about stuff as an overflow.
Not again, not as a regimen or as a ritual or something, but I think it's easy for me because work is so demanding. It's been 10 years since I was done. I'm never done. There's always more. I'm sure you can relate, tell there's always more I can do and you know, as like a solopreneur in, I know you can really, like, I was talking to a buddy, uh, on Sunday at our Churchill worship at Apple, and he's like, man, you know, I get to Tuesday, I'm like, is it Friday yet?
And I go, dude, I get to Friday. I'm like, how is it already Friday? I'm like, there is still so much to be done. I can't possibly have a weekend. You know? But that's the difference I guess, between being a laborer for wages and whatever. So for me, it's hard to shut off, but I can kind of think what it means to be a good dad is to totally shut that off.
And I kind of like put it in a compartment and I don't talk about it. And I, and what I find really humbling is the number of times, for example, my wife. Michelle, she would love to help me if I would let her. And it's so humbling because I think like the way to be a good husband is to shield her from that or to like talk about whatever she wants.
But a lot of times, like what she wants, she longs to be helpful. You know, there like a simple example, this was Saturday night I was trying to do, I, I was trying to build this like WhatsApp community telling you about, and I've got a newsletter, this relatively small newsletter, but I wanted to, I sent.
Actually, you probably will, you'll appreciate like real data. I'll give you real data here just so you get a sense for this. So I've got like, call it 14 ish thousand subscribers on my newsletter. I sent an announcement and I usually, like once a week I send like a blog post and a podcast. 'cause I blog and I and I pod and then I've been making just for myself and for friends, this like chat bot thing.
And like several friends have been like, dude, can I share this with people? And it's kinda like, like I'm kind of like, I'm not paying a lot, but I'm kinda like paying for all this stuff. And I'm like, okay, if it gets bigger, like I'm gonna have to upgrade this account. And you know, I'm like, nah. I was like, okay.
And somebody said, dude, charge us a subscription. I was like, oh, that's interesting. So I kind of very quickly figured out, okay, how do I even like. I don't even monetize anything on my website, so it's like I don't even, I literally have no idea. It's not my forte. I kind of just, just patched together kind of a thing.
I put it at the bottom of my newsletter and it didn't really get much engagement, and so then I was like, all right, I'm gonna do a dedicated blast. So I did a dedicated blast and it got like fairly, you know, solid, like probably like 40 or 50% open rate, something like that. And then a bunch of clicks I probably ended up with like, call it 500 clicks or something.
Okay. There was one purchase and I was like, this is broken. Like there is a serious problem here. Like clearly the landing page is not communicating the value that's here. He's like, one, I finding immense value from the thing. And like I'm a pretty discerning user. Two, I've got a lot of friends who use it and love it.
I'm like, what is wrong? So then it's like, I have two paths and you can appreciate this. It's, and I'm gonna get back to the question of being a father. It's like either I just abandoned it, like that didn't work, or I actually try to do better and it's like I, I was very tempted because it's like, call it.
I think I had said my original note, I'm gonna close it on Sunday. 'cause I want, like, I just, I wanna get a few people in the community. We're gonna try some stuff. And so it's like Saturday night and a woman in our church had, she was a former student in my accelerator. She had given me some good feedback.
And so like, I came home Saturday night 'cause we'd had like this like family church meeting, had some ideas. But in my mind it's like our date night, you know, it's like my time with my wife, you know, we're gonna, who knows what we're gonna do, but that's like a sacred, you know, cocoon that I'm not supposed to disturb.
Yeah. We get the girls to bed and we're like sitting there and she's like, so do you wanna work on that? You know, that landing page? And I was like, I was like, I feel so guilty because. I just kinda want to give up on it 'cause it's like clearly didn't work and it's gonna require too much effort to try to overhaul it and it's, I don't even care anyway.
It's not like I wanna like build a something and she's like, well let's work on it. And she literally sat down beside me and for like two hours, who knows by the way, if it ended up being any better. But for like two hours where she's working on it, she's like having me send her test emails, she's clicking through, she's trying stuff.
And it was just like this amazingly sweet and precious man we got to bed. I was so invigorated. She was so invigorated. Again without regard to output or outcome. Yeah. But just because like I was willing to invite her into something that actually it really did matter to me. Yeah. And I really saw, I perceived a tension between doing a really good job and being a really good husband.
I saw that as like a tension. And when by God's grace I feel the Lord allowed me to see, I. Actually, you can be a really good husband and do a really good job. Those things aren't in conflict because you have a suitable help meet who's eager to be a suitable help meet by the gift of God. Yeah. And so, and I see that like, you know, my daughter will ask like, Hey, how was, you know, I came in this morning for breakfast.
How was that class you did? Was it fun? Like, what kinds of questions did people ask? I can either insist, no, no, no, no, no. What are you guys doing today? Or I can say, you know what's funny? This lady asked about how she helps her team prototype. You know? And like some of those words don't mean anything to my girls, right?
Yeah. And I can think this is too mature for them or whatever, but taking opportunities to just kind of invite them into my world, I feel is a very, it ends up being fun. And I think it ends up being kind of like a compliment to them because they, it shows them that I wanna do a good job. I am willing to condescend.
You know, it's funny, Jared, it's a lot of times having a conversation with one of them or clarifying something to them. I go, oh. That's way more clear than what, how I just said it to my students, you know, because I find like, I've gotta like recalibrate for, you know, 6-year-old level. It's like, wait, why did I ever say it in the complicated way?
That makes way more sense in this way. Right? So it's ended up being a gift to me. But again, do away with the false dichotomies. You know, do away with the, if the thought is, now I'm entering into disciple mode. My question is, what mode were you in before? Yeah. I'll wrap up here. I again, I wanna pick your brain all day, but I'll wrap up here.
You shared the story at the beginning of your talk where you talked about how your kids broke a window in your house. Mm-hmm. That was a very old window that could not be replaced. You used a phrase in there that, as a parent really struck me and really it honestly convicted me because you said the only thing serious is sin.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, my daughter the other day, my daughter lo, one of my daughters loves slime. I had gone to bed and she was downstairs with my wife and apparently she took the slime and she just like threw it up on the ceiling to see if it would stick. Oh. And when it came down, like half of it was still up on the ceiling, like stained.
And so when I woke up the next morning, I went downstairs and I saw it and my wife, you know, saw me see it and she's like, your daughter's so terrified, uh, that she's gonna be in so much trouble. And I was convicted by what you said. The only thing serious is saying because honestly there was a big part of me that was like, I want to be really mad at this.
Yeah, totally. We just moved into this house and uh, now there's slime stain on my ceiling. I guess part of what I'm saying is one, I think that's so cool. That's such a helpful perspective as a parent. The only thing serious has said, praise God. And then the, the other thing, I don't know if I've created a culture in my family.
I. Where my kids are just like excited to share ideas with me. Mm. And I've got time to adjust Totally. But it does sadden my heart a little bit because I, I, I think maybe I bulldoze and it's just like, here's what we're gonna do. And it's like there's discipline and, you know, there's just, we're, you know, it's constantly managing.
Yeah. But where they really feel like they're part of a team and they can just share ideas even if they're, as Steve Jobs would say, dopey Uhhuh. I don't think I've created that kind of culture and it, and it makes me sad, but I don't have a question in there. I just gave you a bunch of. Thoughts, you know, you know what I would give you, which, which actually you're kind of hinting at it, but it also ties to this question, your, your earlier question about how to bring that attitude.
But one of the things that's been really profound in our family is the concept of do-overs that you can have a do-over, you know, and you can ask for a do-over and you, you make a mistake. And you know, sometimes it's, you need a do over, you know, sometimes it's like a directive. Yeah. But other times it can be a question, can I have a do over?
You know, somebody hurts somebody's feelings, can I have a do-over? And to me, one of the things that's cool is to model that with my kids. You know, like the other day I had been very forceful in how I corrected someone, someone was doing something wrong. Mm-hmm. And you know, I was very stern and one of my girls, not the girl was being punished, but another one was like, that wasn't very nice daddy.
And I'm like, okay. So it's like, now is that insubordination or is that feedback? You know, how do you even do that? But I was like. I felt the Lord leave me in that moment. I said, can I have a do over? She said, yeah. And then I said to the girl who had disobeyed, I said, alright, disobey me again. And she's like, is this a draft?
You know? And I go, no, no. Disobey me again. And she kinda did the thing. I said, we don't do it that way. Do you mind to do it this other way, please. You know? And the daughter who told me it wasn't very nice, she goes, that was much battered daddy. You know? And it is this, you know, great moment of we can have a do over.
And you know, and to me it's like, like we said in the beginning, every day is a, it is a new opportunity to depend upon the Lord, to demonstrate the life of Christ and forgetting what lies behind. That's what the Apostle Paul says, let us reach forward for what lies ahead. You know? And we may have messed up a lot of days in the past, but the Lord gives us, if we wake up this morning, we have a new day, we have a new opportunity to honor him.
And we can take some of the things we learned in this podcast or in our time of Bible study or at work or whatever it is, and say, today I want it to be different, you know? And. By God's grace, it can be different. I mean, we have so many examples in the scriptures of people who've messed up their lives thoroughly, who the Lord was still able to accomplish something with.
You know, I think for me, I think about the difference between Judas and Peter, such, so profound. I I, this isn't, I heard a teacher who I admire say this, but think about what the difference is between the two of them. They both denied the Lord in terrible ways. The difference was Judas didn't come back to the Lord.
He didn't think that his sin was forgivable. Peter knew, where else should I turn? You have the words of eternal life. And even though he had made a terrible mistake, some would say even worse than Judas, Judas just betrayed Jesus. Peter denied him, and the Lord says, whoever denies me before men, I'm gonna deny him before my father in heaven.
And yet, Peter was restored because he came back to the Lord because he believed. He could be restored. Message of hope. I think for me as a dad, I definitely take it, you know, it's doesn't, I mean, not that there are consequences for our behavior or whatever, nothing like that, but there's always a fresh start with the Lord, and we can take hope, and we can take heart, and we can say, Lord, fill me with the Holy Spirit today.
I want to be a wholehearted, faithful, disciple, follower, father, husband, to the glory of your name. Doesn't matter how much I messed up today with your help, it's possible. Man, Jeremy, I'm, I'm thankful that God put you together, man. I'm thankful for the way he knitted you together and put your brain together.
You pointed me closer to Jesus. I have a feeling you point a lot of guys closer to Jesus in this episode, and, uh, also got all the creativity juices flowing. So how can guys stay connected with you man, and all that you got going on? Yeah, definitely. Come visit me. I've got a website, my name at Do Design, Jeremy Utley Design.
Twitter, I don't have an admin, so I'm, I'm the person that you interact with wherever you interact with me. So if it's LinkedIn, I'm Jeremy Utley. If it's Twitter, I'm Jeremy Utley, but I'm easily reachable. Jeremy Utley at Gmail. Folks can email me, but I love, especially Christian Brothers who I can learn from and walk alongside.
I'm eager to, to meet with people like that. So happy to be available to anybody in your community. For sure. Sweet man. I'll put all that in the show notes so they can easily find you. But thanks bro. This was so fun. I really, really appreciate it, man. Thank you. My pleasure.
Hey guys, as always, hope that episode was helpful for you on your journey of becoming more like Jesus and helping your family do the same. Just wanna remind you, we did have that very generous donor offered to match all of our donations for the rest of the year, which again means if you donate a dollar, he'll donate a dollar.
If you donate five, he'll donate five. If you donate a thousand, he'll donate a thousand. Absolutely incredible. What that means in my mind, man, is just that we are reaching twice as many guys what we had hoped to reach, uh, when we were originally thinking through fundraising at the end of this year. It just means that we get to reach twice as many guys for the glory of God.
And so again, if this ministry has been helpful for you in any way, could you just chip in a few bucks to help us reach more guys all around the world with the gospel? We would love for you to do that. You can do that by going to dad tire.com/donate. Again, that's dad tire.com/donate. Love you guys and we'll see.