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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 Tired podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by Samaritan Ministries. I know so many of you are thinking about your family's healthcare needs this year. It's one of the most important decisions you'll make. It's why I highly encourage you to consider Samaritan Ministries.
It's a biblical, affordable way to pay your medical bills, and it has everything you should be looking for and a healthcare sharing ministry. Samaritan members glorify God above all else, and they care for one another through prayer and encouragement. It's a way to align your healthcare with your faith and through direct member to member sharing.
You'll always know who you're helping and who's helping you. Here's how it works. There are no network restrictions, so when a medical need arises. You choose the healthcare provider that's right for you, and you have a say in the type of treatment that you receive. You can send your medical bills to Samaritan Ministries.
They'll notify members to pray for you and to send money directly to you to help pay those bills. And when another member has a medical need, you'll do the same for them. When the body of Christ comes together to encourage and pray and provide for one another. Burdens are lifted and God is glorified.
This applies to all areas of life, including your healthcare. You can check out Samaritan Ministries and if it's the right fit, you can even join today. Let them know you heard about it on Dad Tired by going to samaritan ministries.org/dad tired. Again, that's Samaritan ministries.org/dad tired.
Joey, super excited to be hanging out with you today, man. I'm grateful for your time. For the audience who may not be familiar with you, bro, tell us who you are and what you're up to these days. Yeah, Jared, good to see you, man. Thanks for having me on and yeah, I am a dad. I'm a dad first who has through a variety of shortcomings and uh, and missteps have found myself where I am today, which is trying to help other dads and other moms.
Get it right when it comes to phones. This is something that was a long journey for me. This is something that really started from when my, my son, my son Harrison's almost 16 now. My daughter Gianna's 14 as of yesterday. And so I think back about a decade, uh, to a moment, there was a Saturday afternoon with my son Harrison and, and Jared, you know this, I'm sure a lot of the guys can relate to this, these soccer Saturdays where you lug the lawn chairs out there and you go sit and you watch the game and.
Honestly, it's not that interesting all the time, right? So I think we can, I think we can all admit that I appreciate you just being the one to say, yeah, it's, it's, that's not always the most interesting, certainly not the most, um, you know, enthralling competitive game. And so Harrison, every team has a player like this where it's the kid on the team who's not scored the goal.
It's the last kid on the team. So Harrison, as great of a kid, he as he is, and Harrison's a great tennis player now. He quickly found that soccer was not his thing, but this Saturday it was kind of this magical Saturday that popped up outta nowhere. So games about midway through and Jared, I remember this memory, I kind of visualize this almost in slow motion.
It's like cue the James Horner dramatic music, the Braveheart music. Harrison rears back his leg. Kicks the ball and in slow motion rolls into the back of the net, and Harrison scores his first goal. And everybody knew it. Everybody knew that the kid who not scored, scored crowd goes wild. His coach picks him up.
But there was this moment, right, right when he scored right before his coach went and picked him up, when he did what all 5-year-old boys do, he turned to the sidelines to lock eyes with me to share this beautiful, magical moment. He sees the pride on my face and the smile on my face, and it really was, it was just.
Absolutely incredible. A moment frozen in time. Except I missed it. Mm. Every moment about what I just described, I didn't see a bit of it. When Harrison looked over at me, all he saw was the top of my head. Mm. And I think I still have the, the bruises on my ribs from my wife's elbow to show for it. Mm-hmm.
She just said, you missed it. Harrison scored his first goal, and it, it was that moment when I said. Something's wrong here. 'cause I was looking down on my phone, that's why you saw the top of my head. 'cause I'm looking at my phone and I just realized something's wrong. Here I have, I have a relationship, which is weird to say, and we can get into that.
I have a relationship with this phone. I would love to say that all my relationships got better, that I got it right that day, but it didn't. So it took years and years and years. And I got a text message one day from my now business partner, Heath Wilson, who said, Hey, I got this idea and I'd love to sit down and talk about it.
And the idea was basically we as dads. Are missing the mark that we have so much more life on the other side of our phones, but we're so enthralled with this thing in our pockets. It, it could be for bad reasons, it could be for good reasons. It could be we're saving the world. It could be because we're focused on work, but our relationship with these devices is getting in the way of our most important relationships.
And we said, let's see if we can figure it out for our families. And if we can figure it out for our families, I bet you we can figure it out for a lot of other families. Hmm. Using the word relationships is interesting and convicting. I'm sure there's some strategy behind that in your language, because I think like how long did it take you from that moment to eventually say, this is a relationship to admit that.
Yeah. Gosh, this is such a huge concept. I would say for me, I didn't have those words for it for years. Right. And I think there's one reason why one, one of the reasons why this is so challenging, I, I think especially for us as guys and as dads. It's 'cause the solution's so freaking easy. It's just put away your phone.
And in the same way, the solution, if you're trying to lose a little bit of weight or put on some muscle, is very easy. Mm. Eats more protein. Cut out your ultra processed foods. Move more, sleep better, drink more water. It's so easy, right? But we recognize in those cases when it comes to exercise, we recognize the difficulty.
We recognize how hard it is. Yeah. And so as a result, we go to great lengths to do those things, to remove the friction from doing something difficult but valuable. We can burn calories for free. We can build muscle for free. We just do pushups and run around our neighborhood, right? That's all free.
However, most of us join gyms, most of us put a lot of resources behind doing this thing because we know it's difficult and we need help removing that friction. So the problem with our phones is. That it seems so easy. We've not yet gotten to this point of saying this is hard, and kind of admitting like in a way, and I'm not saying throwing in the towel, but just kind of raising our hands and saying, I could use a little bit of help because this thing is the most, this has the highest potential to get in the way of our intentions.
If you define intentions, we define intentions as any, excuse me, if you look at it as biggest distraction, we define distraction as anything that gets in the way of our intentions. So anything that gets in the way of our intentions, and most of us, I guarantee you, everyone who is a dad listening to this show.
It's called dad tired, so I assume you're a dad. Maybe you're a pre dad. You say, Hey, I need some help. I wanna do better at this thing. So we all intend to be really good and this thing in our pockets, as silly as it sounds, and I, you know, I paused there for a second 'cause I know it sounds silly and it's the same thing.
We all struggle with this thing is really, really hard. So when it comes to relationship, I didn't have those words for it, but when you apply those words to it and just say, I do have a relationship with my phone. That's a thing that everybody has. So I'm gonna digress here for a minute. Just, just, just bear with me.
Yeah, go. Because it's a very complex topic. When we say relationship, and I'm, I'm glad you picked up on the fact that that's a little bit weird. And it is weird because we as adults don't have relationships with objects. I see my lawnmower about once a week for nine months out of the year. Right. I don't have a relationship with it.
When a conversation gets boring, I don't sneak in a quick mo, so it's a little bit weird. And even with our cars, our cars may be the closest thing we have to a relationship, but really those are still point A to point B. So the fact that we have a relationship with phones is a little bit weird and people generally don't even question that.
Yeah, my relationship with my phone. But there is a classification of humans who do have relationships with objects. And that's children specifically. That's infants. Infants have relationships with objects. Those objects are called transitional objects. They're also called comfort objects. Those are things like blankets or teddy bears or those things that they clinging to, and those are very healthy in the maturation of a child.
So what they serve as is they serve as an object that provides a sense of security and comfort. In the absence of real security and comfort. So in other words, when your parents are gone, your parents as an infant, they are the source of security and comfort. And so when they're gone, in the absence of them, they clinging, we babies, we clinging to a thing to give us a sense of security and comfort.
Our phones have become, it's almost like we've reverted to the state of, of adolescence almost of infancy. 'cause our phones are now serving as a transitional object for us. And the weird thing about it, here's where it gets a little bit weird, is that we clinging to our phones for a sense of security and comfort.
But instead of doing it in the absence of security and comfort, we do it in the presence of security and comfort. Wow. We're clinging to our phones in the presence of those around us who give us the comfort and security that we need in our relationships. Right. Wow. So there's a real problem with that. So we're reverting back to this infant state and in saying, we have a relationship.
That's the real relationship we have, is that we have a relationship with a transitional object that is not evolving us into relationships. It's devolving us from relationships. Wow. It's interesting because depending on when you were born, many of us have had these devices in our hands and pockets for now the majority of our lives.
Mm-hmm. For some guys, really the, their whole life, depending on how old they are. Yeah. You know, certainly for our kids. And so it's almost like the, the sooner you give a child that device or that person device, and that becomes the, for lack of better words, the pacifier, the soothing mechanism. Yeah. Yeah. I guess what I'm saying is.
When you're in the presence of other people that are meant to be that. Mm. It's almost like they never even fully got to that. Yeah. I wonder if they had never, humans never fully got to that. Yeah. Source of comfort or soothing or safety, because we've always had this crutch. Yeah. And there's some of us like, you know, I didn't have a device until I was out of high school.
You're kind of nostalgic. There's a part of you that remembers what it was like to have. Soothing relationships. Mm-hmm. I keep using the word soothing, safe relationships, you know? Yeah. I'm trying to process what you said just out loud. Mm-hmm. But that's really fascinating. I had never thought of it that way.
One thing we have to be really careful about when we're talking about. Pre-phone or no phones. There are a couple things. One, I don't wanna take it back to these magical days of the nineties. It was, you know, it's, it's hard to be a teenager, right? It's hard to be a, a kid. It's hard to grow up. These things are difficult.
And so it's not like everything was magical back when we were growing up without phones. I was the same way. I didn't have a phone in high school. So it's not, there's no magic. And then it's, we're also careful to, we have to be careful not to really demonize our phones either. That's, I believe this is actually a very hopeful opportunity we have as dads.
I'm gonna speak just to dads, I'll say for all parents, but even in any relationship. But for dads, I think this is one of the most hopeful opportunities we have to get it right. And what's interesting is we have to recognize the necessity of phones in our lives. So when we say there's another element to the relationship side, we have the viewing of phone as a transitional object or a comfort object, but then looking through it very practically, what defines any relationship.
We think there are three defining characteristics of any relationship. The first one is proximity. When you're proximate to somebody, that that generally equals a little bit closer relationship. So our phones over the last 16 years or so, and it's really interesting, they're kind of attached to us.
They've become a little bit of an appendage, and that proximity is one defining relationship if characteristic or relationship. So 91% of us have our phones with us 24 hours a day. Mm. So we always have them with us. So literally, if you're somebody who spends some amount of time away from your phone, you've joined the 9% club.
Wow. Which is really, really interesting. And so we have them with us, which leads to the second defining characteristic for a relationship, which is interaction. When my phone is with me, I am going to use it. And so, and when people say like, okay, well just silence your notifications, for example. That's a good idea.
However, that only accounts for about 11% of our smartphone usage. 89% of our smartphone usage is self-initiated. So it's me sitting there thinking, oh, what's the weather tomorrow? Which as we all know, becomes thing after thing after thing after thing that we just go down this wormhole or our phone. So when they're with us, the proximity of our phones equals interaction with our phones leads naturally in interaction.
And then the third piece that defines any relationship is dependence. And this is, this is the real tricky part. This is where it gets a little bit gray. Is that we have become very dependent on our phones, but not in a real bad way. Not all the time, not in a bad way. So we need our phones. You look at a list of all the things they've replaced, you know, the, you know, you get Waze, I get the GPS.
I could order a Jimmy John's sub right now and have it by the end of this interview, right? I'm learning Duolingo. I learned Spanish in the bathroom, right? We, all of our phones are not these bad things, and the easier message here is. To say Our phones are bad, you should get rid of 'em. Go back to a smartphone.
But it's not practical because of this dependence piece. They also enhance certain relationships in some way. My grandfather passed away a couple years ago and I was able to FaceTime with him in the hospital room when he was in Arizona. I was in Georgia at the time, and I could say, I love you, and he could tell me he was proud of me.
Like, what a cool thing that our smartphones enable. Yeah. The problem with this relationship is we've just misprioritized this relationship. This it's getting in the way that our smartphones have gotten in the way of our most important relationships. And so if we can, one, define it as a relationship, two, recognize what constitutes a relationship.
Okay, I see. And then see, hey, there's some actual good in this thing, then we can do something about it. That's interesting. 'cause I actually, to be totally honest, I have a hard time seeing the good. Even the examples you used, I'm like, those are good. Yeah. But they're, none of them feel necessary. Yeah. You know what I mean?
And so it's actually, that's a hurdle in my mind. And even dude, the whole dad tired ministry is online. Yeah. And like guys are listening to this podcast because of phones and internet and all this stuff. Mm. But it really is, that's a hurdle for me because I, I still feel like, well, I don't know. I guess I feel like the.
It's hard for me to see any good outweighing the bad. Like I just, I feel like I hate 'em. I'm being totally honest. So tell I, I'm, I'm curious about that. Will you, I know some of the obvious, but what is it about them that you hate? I feel like it has totally ruined human relationship. Hmm. Like we have lost the ability to know how to interact with each other, and that just breaks my heart.
And maybe it is some kind of romanticizing. Yeah, of what things used to be a slower world and a more eyeball to eyeball world. I just really miss that. Conversations are so weird. People, we don't, we've lost our ability to like debate ideas. We just scream at each other all the time behind a screen that I just.
Just bothers me a lot. You know what I mean? Mm. I've seen it destroy lives with pornography. Yeah. And the quick access to pornography. Mm. And just how I'm fearful for my, I have a son and my other kids. Yeah. You know, and I'm just like the access to information that Mm. So every example that people give that are like good.
And I get it. I mean, literally. Yeah. I'm grateful for this podcast 'cause I've met people. I think the gospel's been preached around the world as a result. But I don't know, man, that's a hard hurdle for me to get over my, like, hatred of it. I know what you mean. I mean, I, I, I, I really do. It's, it's. In terms of relationship, one of our members of our, of our company, they said that they believed that our phones had been additive to us in every area.
But relationships, and, and I think, and, and we could probably debate the, the finer points of that argument, but I do think one reason why is because it, it looks so much like it, it looks so much like a relationship with, if it's intended to connect us. I was thinking about this the other day. I text with a bunch of buddies, but.
I often just don't answer a phone call and there's a problem there. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so it, it feels like it's a relationship when I'm in a text conversation with a buddy, but that doesn't get down to like hearing the tone of his voice and realizing like, man, Luke feels some off with Luke day.
Hey bro, what's up? Yeah. You know what I mean? And so it's, and then to your point, I was talking with a. Guy by the name of Sean Killingsworth, who has, he's a young kid, he's a college kid who has a, a group called the Reconnect Movement and it's awesome. This kid is, he's so fiery and he's so awesome, and he, they have events that, I love this, you love this.
They, they're called Just Talk, which is hilarious. They put away their phones and it's called Just Talk, and I laughed with him. I said, dude. When I was growing up, that was all of our events was just talk. That's all we did. Like you have specific events called Just Talk. But he said when you're in a conversation, when he's in a conversation with somebody and he's out at a party or something because of our phones, he said, everybody you're talking with has one foot out the door in that conversation.
Right. I see the merit in what you're. And what you're saying and it's, it, you know, I try not to go down this kind of spiral of hopelessness. Yeah. 'cause again, I do think it affords opportunities, but I know what you mean. I mean, listen. Yeah. I also want to throw the caveat, I'm deeply in a relationship with my phone.
Yeah. You know what I mean? I'm not the, I'm the dude saying I hate it and I'm also married to it. That Yeah. You know, it's not like I'm so convicted by it that I've cut it out. I don't want to be hypocritical here. Yeah. By any sense, I, it's, I've had the moment you described at a soccer game, I've had 'em.
I've had those moments. Yeah. And so I just wanna be fully transparent, you know? Yeah. I'm not, I haven't divorced myself from that. Yeah. I think in addition to us hating them, 'cause I think if I were to, it's almost like we can't, this is actually Sean Killing's work, the reconnect movement, which I love what he talks about.
He said it's hard for one person to make a big change because the Savannah itself has changed. It's like the whole Savannah is different. The whole ecosystem is different. So one person getting rid of it doesn't, you're just gonna die. You're just not gonna survive. Again, using the Savannah example, so it's almost like.
The whole Savannah has to change for anything to happen. But you think about another group of people that hates phones or our kids, we, over 16 years have adapted to recognize that this is, let's just say for example, that this is just a part of our culture. This is just how it's going to be. Our kids don't know that when they're young, they need, and they crave eye contact.
They're, you know, as infants, they just want, they just want our eyes on them. And then when they're young, all guys can relate to what I'm about to say by the way. And they're gonna have like a soccer story moment like mine, where their, their son or their daughter says, daddy, look at me. Daddy put down your phone.
Yeah. Taking your phone. We hear stories all the time. Taking your phone, grabbing your face, pointing their face to them. And it's one of those moments that just, it kind of just sucks. It hurts to hear that, but, but for guys who listen to whose kids have said to them, dad, you're always on your phone, mom.
You're always on your phone. Dad, look at me, dad, put down your phone. I would encourage you to celebrate that your kids are saying that. I, I would encourage you to look at that as actually a real hopeful moment. And, and here's why. For two reasons. One of them, your child likes you. Your child really likes you.
They wouldn't tell you unless they liked you. They wouldn't care if you're looking at 'em if they didn't like you, right? And the second thing is, and this is so freaking powerful, is that your child believes they deserve your eyes to be on them. Mm. In other words, they believe that they are valuable enough to be looked at.
And so if that's happening, celebrate that. 'cause that means my kid likes me and they like themselves. Now we gotta worry a little bit when they stop asking, because then they become a little bit more conditioned. They become conditioned to believe that our phones are more important than they are. That's not okay.
But in this moment, you have, when your kids are young, especially, really, I mean, through their whole lives, we know this, the stakes are always gonna be high, but when your kids are young, the stakes are high, but that pain is low. Mm. So, so you having this real opportunity right now, while the stakes are high, but the pain is low to get it right, and if there's one message, you can just stop the podcast.
Please don't. But stop the podcast here to say. It's hopeful you can do it. This whole feeling, it feels desperation. Like, oh, I'm never gonna get over this. I don't believe that you actually can, you can change your relationship. You viewed as a relationship, say, I'm gonna change the relationship. You can change your relationship with your phone and when you do, you change your relationship with everyone around you, including yourself.
Yeah. I wanna dive into that in a second. Yeah. But if we could camp, I've got a couple more. Mm-hmm. Before we get into the home. Come on. Yeah. Which I do. Yeah. Let's drive the, I like, let's drive through the glass a little bit more. Have you ever thought about, sometimes I, it's obviously it's impossible to know what the future will look like.
Mm-hmm. But have you ever thought about how our kids will handle technology with their kids? Like sometimes I wonder that because they were born with devices surrounding them and we're kind of reacting to how, you know, our own upbringing, our own everything that, our own relationship with technology and our phones.
But I'm not necessarily looking for you to predict the future of how our kids are gonna. Respond. But have you ever given any thought to, like, I wonder, I guess part of my question or thinking about that is this young guy that you've, you've mentioned Yeah. Like they're already, that generation is starting to respond.
Yes. In fact, I just got, uh, targeted for another company that was started by some 20 year olds. Hmm. And their company is basically it, it's a device that essentially locks your phone. Wow. It's like a key. And it can't unlock, you can't unlock your phone until you go back to that key. So the. The point would be that you would put that key in a spot that's hard to get to.
Mm. And so you lock it as you go to the party or you go downstairs or whatever. Yeah. And you can't, your phone is inaccessible. Yeah. Until you come back and lock it. But that was created by 20 year olds. Yeah. So it's really fascinating to me. Like what will their response be? Yeah, I do think that our kids hate how it feels.
I really do. I just think our kids just hate how it feels inside. They know how it feels. There's just that crushing hurt and disappointment of, and spoke to John Delony the other day with Ramsey and, and John Delony was saying that. That the experience and studies are showing that the experience of basically being phone snubbed by your parents is very akin to interacting with a parent who's drunk, who's inebriated.
Wow. You see them physically there, but they're not fully mentally there. I. And it has this devastating effect on how that child feels. They're not having a real interaction that they think they are. And it Wow. And it doesn't feel good. I mean, how about that? We could sit on that for a second. I mean, you, you watch the body language of a child, their studies showing the, the child interacting with the parent who doesn't give them that facial expression, just the whole body language of just the, the sulk in their shoulders.
And so when we talk about. It's a longwinded way to answer it, but when we talk about all the stuff that we're seeing right now, the the high suicidal ideation among teenagers, the teenage unhappiness, just an absolute all time high that started about 15 years ago. People less smarter than I am are making this argument, but I don't think it's necessarily because they are hooked on their phones.
I think when they get phones and then they encounter things like body image and comparison and all this stuff, that's really devastating and bullying. I don't think they've been given that firm foundation over the first 15 years that teaches them how to withstand that when they do encounter it. So I don't think it's, the challenges are more insurmountable today.
I believe they just don't have the foundation that we've had in the past, that resilience that we've had in the past because, and I don't wanna be too reductive, and this is where I get, we gotta be careful because I just believe we have a generation of kids who have parents who have looked at a screen instead of their eyes.
Wow. And so what happens? So here's what I think one of the, a good comparison that a lot of people make is the comparison to smoking. I stumbled upon some statistics that showed when that showed that adult smoking, since they began tracking adult smoking, it's gone down 78%, 78% since they began tracking adult smoke.
So it's down considerably since they began tracking smoking. In children adolescents, it's down 78%. It's down the exact same percent adult and and adolescent smoking. Hmm. So what does that tell us? It tells us that we have so much power and authority as parents in modeling this. How well can we model what are we normalizing within our families to our kids?
'cause they will 'cause the, the model up to this point, we call it the three M'S model. Up to this point is that we as parents, model first m model a bad relationship with our phones. We give our kids a phone. They mimic what we've modeled to them. And then we do something that is absolutely crazy. We get mad at them for mimicking what we've modeled.
Mm. And then it just perpetuates. So we're breaking our relationship. So what happens if we model a good relationship, then they mimic that good relationship or get 80% of it right. And then we can make memories or make magic or whatever. Cool m you wanna put in there for the third M when we model a good relationship with our phone.
So I think, to answer your question, I think so much of that is dependent on what we're modeling today. What we're normalizing today for our kids is gonna be how they, how they initiate it. So we believe, again, our company is here to, we wanna change, we wanna create an entire generation of intentional families.
Andy Crouch tells us that real change happens over three generations. So what we really wanna do. We want to initiate the first generation of change, and then we wanna pass that on to the next generation. We'll pass it on to the next generation. And over three generations we can have that kind of impact.
And I know it sounds silly, it sounds reductive by changing the relationship with our phones, not for the sake of changing relationship with our phones. But so that we can have rich, deep relationships on the other side of our phones with the people who are right in front of us. Yeah. That's good man. And I can tell you're itching to give us hope and I keep pulling you back into the dark.
No, let's keep dragging through the glass. We have to know what's at stake. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? Like we absolutely have to know what's at stake. I mean, I'll tell you like if we don't do something, and this one just punches me in the gut every time I think about it, we got a generation of kids right now on TikTok and Instagram, and if we don't do something for them in us, if we don't do something, this will be the first generation of kids.
Who will die with more of other people's memories than memories they create on their own. That is the trajectory we're on. Yeah. It's going to happen naturally if we don't change something. I had that, uh, a very similar thought two weeks ago. Layla and I had a chance to go to Grenada with Samaritan's Purse and see the shoe boxes getting passed out.
Yeah. And just the whole way that they're presenting the gospel and discipling, it's incredible. But as we're like kind of winding in and out of these mountains and going to these villages, and we didn't really have cell phone service. And my plan was to kind of document the whole trip for the dad, entire community.
And I ended up not having cell phone access. And so I just, I was forced to thank God to like be fully present with my wife, with the, the volunteers, with the kids. And it was beautiful. And I remember thinking to myself like. How much of my life have I been living through a phone? Hmm. Like I'm experiencing relationship in the world through a phone.
Yeah. And here I am, like actually doing it in person. Like I. I am in a place where I've never been. I'm meeting people I've never met. I'm hearing the way God's working in ways that I've never heard God work. And it's just, it was so much more. Layla was telling me, she's like, everything it feels like that the phone is giving us is a what?
She's a what? Much more eloquent word, but it's a fake version. I forgot the Mm. You know, it's. But it, it's essentially, it represents itself to be real, but it's not real. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And, and something so beautiful about really having those memory, like real memories. So what you just said is really fascinating that there would be a generation, it's like all of what they're consuming about the world and the memories of the world are from somebody else watching other people travel, watching other people have experiences, watching another heartbreak, whatever it is that they're consuming.
Yeah. That's really crazy. I was gonna ask you too, and I promise this will be my last doom and glim question. We'll, no, let's keep, let's keep going. Doo and gloom, get into the, the, the hopeful stuff. Have you dug into any of the, like, science, like how this is reshaping our brains from a scientific perspective?
Like I know that there's. There's been some research on dopamine hits. One of my best friends just told me I need to read a book on, um, something about dopamine. Like these quick hits. Yeah. You know, I'm assuming it's got stuff to, I'll report back on what I want. But anyway, have you gone down that road at all and just how our brains are changing?
Here's what's amazing. There are countless studies. This is what's fascinating to me about it when it comes to this whole issue, is that we are no longer. Starved for knowledge and we, we have all the studies that we need. We have every, absolutely everything that we need When it comes to. They're kind of neuroreceptors and what it takes to, for them to get excited with, you know, the really, the devastating effects of not being bored, which is an interesting one.
Yeah. Not being able to sit and bored him. Yeah. I mean, that's a really tough one. Now, again, I know this has been a thing for everyone you'd say, like, you know, my dad would say his, his dad, whenever he'd say he was bored, that was the worst thing you could say. 'cause then you're gonna end up working in the yard for about six hours.
Yeah. So don't ever say you're bored, but the actual like. Physical changes in their skeletal structure, just the slumping of the shoulders from looking down. I mean, it's, it's study after study, after study, after study, after study. I. And I think one reason why we continue to not really quite get it right is 'cause we keep blaming it on the kids.
Mm. We keep blaming on the kids. All these kids, they, they don't know what it's like to be bored. They, gosh, these kids, these, why do you think they don't know what it's like to be bored? Yeah. Why do you think that they, that they don't get excited over, over? It's, it's like we've fed 'em cotton candy for every meal and then we get mad at them for not liking broccoli.
You know what I mean? Like, what are we thinking? Of course, this is the natural path of things, so. You know, when it comes to science and we can link a bunch of the studies that we've seen, but it's just crazy and it is absolutely overwhelming and it's absolutely irrefutable. And I do think that up to this point it's just.
Well that's just kids these days. There is a certain level, sadly, like we're mad at the kids, but we also have a certain level of resignation about, about it. Yeah. Alright, bro, let's get into some helpful stuff. You, uh, you, from that day, you know that the soccer story that you shared, which I appreciate you sharing, I think that's really relatable from that day to where you are today and just the way that God has grown you in this journey, seeing, being honest with your relationship with your phone.
Can you speak for yourself as a dad? Like how are you trying to manage that relationship with your phone and, and give us some Yeah. You know, things that we might be able to pull away the story that I go back to that I just love so much again. My daughter, Gianni, she turned 14 yesterday and this was Well, thank you.
Thank you. She appreciates that. This was probably four years ago. We had just kind of started on this journey with RO and, and looking and, and the way we began this with Jared was we just said there's a lot of bad stuff that can happen on your phone for sure. And there are a lot of good people solving that app blockers and all that kinda stuff.
But let's look at the core relationship. We see the core relationship, the primary piece, like I mentioned, proximity, interaction, dependence. The primary piece of that, the kind of the cornerstone is the proximity that they're with us all the time. So what would happen if we physically distance ourselves from our phones for some amount of time every day?
What if we physically distance ourselves? And we tried it. We had a bunch of different beta tests. We, we built like different boxes. Then we built kind of an app that would connect to the phone and quantify the amount of time you're away from your phone. As guys I know, we like, we kinda like seeing that.
What was interesting, we did that. I felt this in myself and then we noticed this with others that were beta testing. Everybody came back after they had a session time away from their phone and they saw how much time they all described the same feeling. They said, I feel so proud of myself. Mm-hmm. I feel so proud that I spent some time away from my phone, which in one way, you could say, oh, that's really sad, but another way, like, that's awesome.
Mm-hmm. Those are, when we're proud of things, we begin to repeat them. Yeah. So I felt this myself first. Four years ago, my daughter and I had just watched a movie. I. And at the end of the movie, she turned me very matter of fact, she was nine or 10. She turned me very matter of fact, not judgmentally, not even like congratulatory.
She said, Hey, dad, did you know that's the first time we've watched a movie and you haven't had your phone? Which in a way was a gut punch. I was like, oh, that sucks. You're nine or 10 and you've never seen me without a phone in the movie. But what it really did is it made me feel really good. I was really excited to watch the next movie with her because I thought, what a cool opportunity again to show her that that time's important to me.
Yeah. I told her that story about a month ago. Again, I said, oh, I, I told that story to someone today about when we watched a movie and she laughed. She goes, oh dad. She goes, I can't imagine you having your phone during a movie now. So here I was, I was the chief of sinners. Just call me Saul. So I hear here Saul was right, had this little road of Damascus and then all the other side, Paul says, and again, I'm still, you know, not perfect at this.
But then I said, I'm really good at this. I've normalized in a short amount of time what it feels like to be fully present with my daughter. For her to feel that feeling of me being fully present. Yeah. So that feeling has been a real game changer in seeing, and I believe this is where the the changes starts to come, is we, when you can see the results of your labor.
So we think of this, and I think the words we use are super important when people describe their relationship with their phone or how they interact with their phone. Most people will say, some version of this, they'll say. It with kind of a laugh. They'll say, okay, I'm just so addicted to my phone. They'll say it almost laughingly.
But they say that in a way 'cause it's, what are they doing? They're kind of giving themselves a pass, right? Like, oh, I'm addicted to my phone. What am I gonna do? So there's resignation in it. I believe when you look at this instead of through a, a lens of addicted to your phone, that's not to say they're not addictive characteristics to the things on your phone.
I totally get that. But versus saying I'm addicted to my phone. What if I say I have a bad habit when it comes to my phone? That changes two things. 'cause when you're addicted, you do two things at the outset. You say, one, I'm completely powerless over the thing. And then two, you completely abstain from the thing versus a habit.
But you know, an alcoholic won't have one drink a week, they can't have any drinks a week. Right? Where the habit, you say, okay, instead of saying I'm powerless to say no, I actually have some agency over this. I can kinda reformulate my environment and my decisions and the way I do things and treat it like a habit.
So I do have some power and agency over it. And then two, you actually don't have to abstain from it. You can use it in a way that prioritize real relationships over a phone relationship. But you can kind of reprioritize that where you don't have to completely abstain from the thing. So the way we've approached it is through the lens of the habit loop, which is, you know, three things.
Charles Duhig defined the habit loop, and James Clear kind of iterated on it, later said, it begins with the Q leads to a routine, the crescendo's in a reward. Mm. So the way that we've approached this is a physical place where you put your phone connects to an app. That's the routine. You put down your phone in the visual queue and then when you get it out, you have all the gamified experience of being away from your phone.
So that's the reward. Then you feel good about yourself and you repeat the process over again. But when it comes to reward, reward really isn't seeing on an app how much time you've been away from your phone. The reward is what's happened on the other side of your phone. 'cause all of this discussion is irrelevant.
If the goal is just to be away from your phone. Yeah, totally. Why would we do that? That's dumb. Yeah. What really matters is that conversation with your wife or a walk that you have, or reading a book or getting in the word, or having a devotion or journaling or whatever that is. That's the real reward that propels you to do it again the next time.
And like you said with your daughter, that she would turn around and say, you know, that's the first time you haven't had, uh, your phone. I, what I've been starting to do at night is, and this wasn't necessarily in relation to my phone or because of my phone, but I started to take each of my kids on a walk at night.
They all have their day. So I have four kids. So four nights out of the week they get a one-on-one walk with dad. Mm-hmm. And I don't take my phone with me. But that for me would be a reward. So yeah, again, I wasn't even really thinking about my phone. I was just thinking I want to give them my full attention.
So when I was there and then I come home and I, I got, you know, 30, 40 minutes of just really quality time with my kids, it was like, yeah, that definitely feels like a reward. That's time that I would've probably spent. I wasted on my phone. Yeah, that's right. That's how I got deeper in relationship. What I love about that, Jared, is this is an a very common question.
A lot of people are probably thinking, this is when I put down my phone, what do I do next? Yeah. It's an interesting question and it's what I think that's one you should be proud of if you're asking that yourself that 'cause it's admitting a level of. Gosh, I need some help because it, it is a little bit sad yes.
That we don't know what to do without our phones. But if you could admit that that's a good thing. But what you've done instead of beginning with put my phone down, now what you've begun with the now what? Mm-hmm. You've said, I wanna take a walk with my kids and when I'm doing that, I'm not gonna have my phone.
So if we can reverse those things, and we even say like one of our early product designers said, Hey, what if we just started people on saying. When you're taking a shower, don't have your phone. You know what I mean? Like just begin with the things where you don't need your phone. Yeah. And then in, instead of just having this like big insurmountable goal of like, oh gosh, I gotta put on my phone now what?
Instead, begin with the thing. Begin with the reward in mind. And then when you're doing that, just don't have your phone. Yeah. And that can happen anytime. I'm gonna pick up my son after this from tennis practice. And when I do, I'm gonna put my phone in the glove box because I know I want, and he's learning to drive.
He's gonna drive me home. He's 15 and a half. That's terrifying. Yeah. So it is quite terrifying. So especially in the, you know, the slowly developing teenage boy brain that don't tired real quick makes you dad terrified. Um, so, but okay, so it's an a otherwise mundane moment and saying. Harrison's gonna drive, I'm gonna put my phone in the glove box.
Yeah. That'll change it. That'll make that, that. What do I do without my phone? A lot more approachable by flipping it. Mm-hmm. So, yeah, I was gonna ask you some practical things just for you. Yeah. You know, like. Maybe just kind of rapid fire these, like, do you keep your phone close to you at night when you go to sleep or do you play what?
No, my phone is always downstairs in the RO box. My wife does have her phone next to her just in case. Hey, what if the, the unimaginable call comes in? Yeah, sometimes in the middle of the night, but she keeps her phone. My phone's always downstairs. Is the RO box is that for those who are listening and can't see us right now, like you've got it behind you.
It just looks good, by the way. Great design. Yeah. I really like the design. Is it, it charges, like there's charging capabilities in there too. Yeah, there is. It's a charger. There are chargers in there for, you know, you get a fully charged phone when you come back on the aesthetic. You mentioned it. It's wife designed.
It's wife approved. My. One question a lot of people say is, well, why couldn't you just put your phone in the shoebox? I say, okay, put your shoebox on the kitchen counter. See how long that'll last. Totally. Yeah. So it has to be pretty. So does, does that thing plug into an outlet and then there's like It does, yeah.
Okay. It does, yeah. It's super tech packed. I mean, it's, it's, what do we say? It's, it's, she's pretty on the outside. She has brains too. It's like my wife, you know what I mean? Nice. And so it's like that, but it's, it's tech back. So when you put your phone in it, it automatically connects to the app. So the box automatically connects to the app.
So it begins to. So you don't have to go in there and and go through the friction of starting a session or something. You drop it. It doesn't disable any functionality on your phone. We think that's an important piece because sometimes you do get an important call. Yeah, and it also is, Andy Stanley says that healthy relationships don't need rules.
That's a broad term, but for us, we want this to be an invitation. We don't want it to be a restriction. I mean, if RO could speak, it would say, oh, Jared, you're gonna go on a walk with your kids. Let me hold your phone while you do that so you can be fully present. So. It's a positive invitation and especially for kids as we're training them and as we're discipling them and taking them by the hand, we want them to volunteer for that.
We wanna see us volunteering for presence, not being restricted towards presence, but volunteering towards presence so that then they can make that same decision for themselves down the road. Yeah, that's really good. Sorry, I cut off your rapid fire. No, that's good. That's good. I was curious about that. So you drop that in at night.
What about like social media for you personally? Is that something you've restricted? Because that usually social media is the thing that adds the addictive element. Mm-hmm. To most people aren't checking the weather. I mean, although I will say I'm a little bit addicted to my weather outline, uh, but it's not keeping me on the phone for hours and hours.
Yeah. You're down in the low country. You all check your tides a lot, don't you? Dude, I'm check. Tides are a tide checker. I, I probably checked the tides four times yesterday. That's so proud. I, I just learned that. I love, I love South Carolina people. They check the tides a bunch. It's weird, man. And I talk so about the tides way more than I need to.
Yeah. It's a, it's a thing here. Yeah. To answer your question on social media, the social media that I keep is, I don't have social media apps on my phone. Okay. Whether that's LinkedIn, fa, I do, by the way, I have LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all four. I don't really, I don't really post on much of them.
It's a little bit more consumption, a little bit more of is is for the business. But all those are just on my laptop, so that doesn't mean I'm perfect, but I just keep 'em on my laptop. I don't keep it on my phone. Our friend, mutual friend, Josh Troub is, is really good about this, about dumbing down his phone.
So I've taken some chips and tricks from him on how to kind of optimize my phone. Social media. I, I do keep off my phone. That's great. Because I know myself, bro. Like I know I'm gonna get sucked into that. Yeah. Like this is all because of my own frailty. It's not because of any strength. There's, it's only frailty, which has led us to here and why I have to.
Why I have to, why everybody has to set up their environment for success. Yeah. That if you rely on your willpower over time, it'll lose to environment. Environment, eats, willpower's, lunch every single day of the week. Wow. That's really good. I've been saying to myself, uh, I've been thinking to myself, I think one of the strongest qualities of a man is the ability to be self-aware, to be humble and self-aware, to look at himself honestly, and say, this is beating me.
This is getting better of me. And then to just face that repent of it, asshole spirit to make some changes, help you make some changes, and then go in his spirit and start living differently. So yeah, I, I like that you know, your ability to say, you know, admit. It's a lot of this is coming because I know myself and my weaknesses.
Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. And the good thing for guys listening out there, they don't have to quit their careers and start a company like I did. You know? I mean, that's a, that's how bad I was, is I had to, I literally gotta the point where I said I have to do something so drastic about this because, I mean, our kids, we've seen stats will tell us that that 75% of the time we spend with our kids happens by the time they're age 12.
Wow. Ever. 90% of the time we spend with our kids happens by the time they're age 18. Geez. So that, that means statistically my son Harrison, who's about 16, like I mentioned, I have about 30 days left in aggregate with him in my life. Why on earth would I waste a freaking second of that? Why on earth would I waste a second of it yet?
And so here's what's cool about that. So it's almost like if someone said to me, came to me right now in this like, horrifying, we're back to doom and gloom here. But they said, Hey, you got 30 days left with Harrison. I would beg them for another hour. I'd beg them for another day. Just gimme another hour, gimme another day.
Just gimme a little bit. But that decision stares us in the face every single day that I can double that time by putting my phone away for 30 minutes a day. And then I can savor these last two and a half years I have with them in the house who doesn't make that choice. And so we're like diluting ourselves into thinking we have all the time in the world when we actually don't.
That we have to do something, we have to do it right now. It has to start today. We've, you know, this is why we've started the business. We also have, and we can talk through some of these if you wanna start today, we have four ways. Hey, here are four ways you can change your relationship with your phone again, because when you do, you change your relationship with everyone around you.
What are the four ways? Are you, is that something we put together or you want to discuss through 'em real quick? Yeah, let's, let's, we can dive into 'em. I, I think the one I, I kind of referenced that the first one is just understanding your role, understanding your power in the situation that you need to model a relationship with your phone that you want your kids to mimic someday.
They're absolutely going to mimic whatever relationship you model with your phone. So again, back to the three M's. We model it, they mimic it, we get mad at them when they mimic what we model. So let's just stop that right now. Understand how much power. Your daily decisions and what you model to your kids will have with them when they're young.
Again, stakes are high and the uh, and the pain is low. The second one is back to the proximity, is you must have, and I'll say you must have daily time physically distant from your phone. Yeah, and that sounds basic. That sounds easy, but only 9% of people do it. And I would encourage people as they do that, to start daily.
It has to be daily, but don't worry about how much time, don't worry about it. Okay. It's almost like if you, you know, if, if people always ask, how much time should I spend away from my phone? Well, it's, it's kinda like saying, let's go back to fitness, like. How much should I bench press? Right? Well, I don't know.
I don't know how strong you are. Okay, so start with a little bit. Yeah. And then next week do a little bit more. So I encourage people, and it sounds really basic, you know the fact that if you spend one minute away, you're in the 9% club, but start with five minutes a day. Five minutes physically distanced from your phone, you're gonna find it's maybe a little bit uncomfortable at first, but you're gonna know it's short, it's finite.
After you've gotten five minutes, work up to your next goal being about 23 minutes. And the reason why that number is important is. Takes 23 minutes and 15 seconds to refocus after you've been distracted. Wow. That's from Gloria Mark at uc, Irvine. So 23 minutes and 15 seconds. So we walk, I told my wife this when we started this RO kind of experiment.
I said, I don't think other than sleeping, I've done anything in the last decade, uninterrupted for 23 minutes and 15 seconds. Mm-hmm. So once you've gotten that down, then stretch up to be an hour, and then maybe two hours, and then maybe sleep with your phone downstairs then. You know, you can start building on that, but it begins small.
So start daily, start small, physically distant from your phone. The third one, this is a steal from Justin Whipmill early, which is establish sacred times and sacred places for your phone. For phone free zones. Sacred time could be the first 30 minutes after you wake up in the morning. Sacred time could be during family dinner.
Sacred place could be the family couch in the living room. I mean, it even we're not demonizing screens. We actually think of family movie night Without Second Screens is a really good win. Yeah. You're participating in one experience together, so establish Sacred times, sacred places where you don't have your phone.
And then the fourth one is my absolute favorite, and it's for you to look for cues all around you. The, the Gottman Institute, they call these bids. Look for these bids that are being thrown out to us all the time from our kids, from our spouses. So this could look something. With kids. These aren't really cues or bids.
They're actually requests. Sometimes they're demands, which is, daddy Watch me. Mm-hmm. Which is, daddy put down your phone. They're telling you exactly what to do. We are being spoonfed the exact right decision in that moment. And in that moment respond to it. Don't even think. Respond to it. Yeah. So the subtle ones, the subtle cues, the subtle bids, the things that maybe are a little bit indecipherable if we're not looking for them.
Look something more like this. My wife says. You won't believe what happened at the gym today. Oh wait, my wife is asking me to connect with her, or my daughter says, daddy, could I talk to you? That's maybe a little bit more overt. Or my son, his shoulder's kind of slumping over just a little bit. Wait a second, Harrison's body language is off.
You gotta be on the lookout for these things. Yeah, so when we get these things, when my daughter says, oh, you won't believe what? Having social studies, the response in that moment is this, oh, I gotta hear this. Lemme put my phone down real quick. That quick little statement that's so powerful because what it says, Jared, that that's telling the person on the other side, you're saying to them, Hey, this phone on it, about 8 billion people can theoretically reach me, and you are more important than every single one of them right now.
That's good. What's that do for a marriage, bro? Yeah, what's, what's that do for your daughter? When she encounters, when, someday, when she encounters that, you know, bullying or when she encounters comparison or body shaming or anything like that, she has that foundation that says, I have been the object of my dad's focus and attention for the last 13 years, last 14 years, and I know I'm valuable and I know I'm worth it and I can get through this.
Yeah. That right there, those four things, especially that fourth one, I promise you this and then know it may, and I'm not being reductive and it's not too simplistic that those four things will change your life. That will change your relationships, I promise you. And it's just that practice. There's four things and those are things you can get RO box if you want.
I don't care if you do or not. I want you to live ro the term Ro means to notice. I don't care if you join ro as a company, but I do want you to live a lifestyle of notice and that's available to all of us today by doing those things today, and it will change our relationship and we can initiate multi-generational change starting today.
Yeah, really good stuff, man. You successfully brought me outta my doom and gloom mindset. He gave me some hope, bro, I'm, I'm, I'm thankful. I'm encouraged. Truly. I'm excited to set my phone down on this desk and go downstairs and be fully present with my kids and start implementing those habits consistently.
Hey guys, hope you're enjoying this episode so far. Just wanna take a quick minute to remind you that we have a brand new podcasting course for all you aspiring podcasters, or maybe you have a podcast. And it's not doing very well and you'd like to see it grow, we'd love to help you with that as well.
Maybe it's a hobby. Maybe you are a church that just wants to help get a podcast out to your members or, and the people in your community, or maybe you have a business and you just wanna spread the word or get more leads or inform people on something that you are passionate about. Regardless of what the topic is, we would love to help you get it started.
If you go to pod to finish, that's P-O-D-T-O finish.com, pod to finish.com. You can sign up for that today. I would love to personally coach you. We've already had a bunch of students jump into this program. A lot of you Dad Tired podcast listeners, uh, wanna start your own podcast. And I've been working with you.
It's been a really, really fun thing. So I'd love to see more believers get into the podcasting space. We need more Christians. In this space getting their voice out to the world and I would personally love to help you do that. Again, go to pod to finish.com and you can sign up there. Alright, let's jump back into today's episode.
I do want you to talk about ro. I know your heart is more just like I wanna help, um, families Yeah. And people you know in this area, but you've also created a great product, man. So tell us about it. And I know you guys have put together a great and very generous offer for the dad. Tired guy. So tell us about that.
RO is a platform that is, and again, we all have, we all have drawers, we all have boxes. Um, we all have those things available to us where we can put down our phone. What we may not necessarily have is a system that gets us to the point of putting down our phone, and that's what RO is. Ro is an app that's on your phone that, uh, gamifies the experience being away from it to where you can go put your phone in a designated place, whose sole purpose is.
To hold your phone, and that is a representation. There's something really powerful about that visual cue back in that habit loop, that visual cue. It's more than just a cue to go do something. It's more a representation of who you are saying I'm a present dad. This is an investment I've made in myself and my family.
I. And this is who I am as a present dad. And when you identify yourself as something, you become more like that thing. Mm-hmm. So it's a little bit counterintuitive. You're not this present dad, and then all of a sudden you can call yourself that you say, I'm a present dad. And then you become more like a present dad.
Yeah. And that happens with anything. It's like Nike calls everybody who shops with them an athlete. But, so if you identify yourself an athlete, you do the things an athlete does. So this, and again, I know I'm talking about dads, and this is really where it started, and this is a little bit of challenge to the fellows out there.
65% of people who join RO are moms. Moms are leading this charge. Yeah. And here's one thing I hate. We get very few returns, but the one that we do get, the one common theme we hear when we get a return is this. I couldn't get my husband on board with it. And that kind of pisses me off a little bit because, because fellas, your wife is begging you Yep.
To connect with her. Yep. Your wife is begging you to set an example for your kids. So what would happen if the dad tired community led this charge? Yep. What if we led this charge and just said, Hey listen, we're gonna draw a line in the sand and we're not gonna go in and bring this thing and then mandate it to our wives.
We're gonna bring it in. And we're gonna use it for ourselves. We're not gonna mandate it on anybody. We're just gonna lead by example. We're gonna set the culture in our home. Yeah, bro. That's powerful. And then before long, whenever our, whenever we, our kids have heard us say enough, oh, I gotta hear this.
Lemme put my phone down. So they're gonna start, when they get phones, they're gonna do the exact same thing. Yeah. And then here's something cool. When you hand your kid your phone and say, Hey, will you go put that in the RO box for me? They know what that means. They know it's focus time, they know it's presence time.
So RO is this platform and system. It is a monthly membership that you get the box that comes along with it. We do want the dad tired community to win. It's not about selling boxes, but if this is something for you that said, I've struggled with this and I haven't had much success in it. This is the game changer for you.
If it's other guys who haven't even thought of this, I'd encourage you to do the other things and don't buy anything right now. See what works for you. See if it works for you. If it does on your own, just like joining a gym, you don't need to join a gym if you have those disciplines down on your own. But we wanna provide that environment, that system, to help take away the friction of doing something difficult that we know is extraordinarily valuable.
That really is, I think, the greatest lever we have available to us in life, where a lever is something that requires minimal input. But provides maximum output. I believe this is our opportunity. This is our lever right here. The simple act of putting down your phone and seeing what relationships come from there.
Joey, I'm grateful for you, man. I'm grateful for your heart to help people. Thank you, bro, to help dads to help our community. This has been a really fun conversation. Thanks for letting me take it in all kinds of directions and uh, I, I appreciate just picking your brain, man. It's been a lot of fun. I appreciate it.
Jared. Thank you, brother. Appreciate it.
Hey guys, hope that episode was helpful for you. As a reminder, we are doing dad tired events all over the country, and we would love to have you come be at one. Our next one is in Batavia, New York, so if you have not signed up for that. If you're in the area, we'd love to have you be part of that, but we also have them all over the country.
Go to dad tire.com, click the conferences tab. You can see the conferences that we're doing all over the country. Uh, and then if you want to host one, if there's not one in your area but you'd like there to be one in your area, we would love to have you host it. You can just reach out to us directly on the website and we can get you information on what it looks like to host.
If you've got an event and you're looking for a speaker, I'd love to help partner with you on that event. You can reach out to us. Through the website as well and get that set up. Anyway, I love you guys. I hope this was helpful on your journey of becoming more like Jesus and helping your family do the same, and I'll see you next week.