Episode 76 Podcast Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Ask your kids, sit down and ask ’em, what would you like to do together that would make you really happy? And I guarantee I’ve done this with clients, I’ve done it with my kids over the years, you’ll be amazed at what they say.

Speaker 2 (00:16):

Hi everyone. Rob Kropp and Dan Stones here from Pravar Group and welcome back to another episode of The Trade Den. Hey Dan, welcome back.

Speaker 1 (00:23):

Hey Rob. Very good. Hey everyone. Great to be back. Yeah, looking forward to today. What we’re talking about is this idea that as tradies, you guys are wired to provide. We know that, right? It’s in your DNA business owners. We get into business usually to provide for others our families and things like that. We show our love when we get into these spaces by working hard, making good money, making sure everyone has what they need. We’re the provider in that space. But somewhere along the way, there’s a big trap that a lot of people fall into. You start thinking that providing equals loving and that being a good dad beings being a busy dad and being on the job, that’s what it is. But your kids aren’t thinking, Hey, dad loves us so much. He works 60, 70 hour weeks. They’re thinking that dad’s work is more important than us. And as we go through this today, what we’re really talking about is what we call the provider trap. And it really is the story or the lesson that we can try and learn about how when good intentions go wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:22):

I’ve experienced this firsthand and it’s actually the real reason why Pravar exists today. And the reason why we do what we do here at Pravar Group, the word Pravar means breathe life back into the family. And the very essence of the heart of what we do with our coaching is helping our clients build great businesses and reconnect with their families. And the reason why that is because it is, when I was a young fella growing up, my family fell over purely because of the way the crazy hours, the way that my dad was trying to provide for us as a family. He was an operator at the power station doing nights, weekends, afternoon shifts, night work when he wasn’t working. He had his passion of being out in the garden and his landscaping and mowing his lawn. And then outside of that, he was trying to build crops, fencing and gardening where he is building retaining walls, fences, trying to run a trades business to be able to make more money and provide for us as a family. Now, I know looking back now that I’ve had time to process it and mature and have my own experiences trying to run a business and be a good dad as well, is that looking back my dad, he was doing the best with what he could at the time. But there’s no doubt the hours that he was working and the way that he was going about it, no doubt led to our family falling apart, which had a massive impact on me growing up as a young fella.

Speaker 1 (02:52):

And it’s such an interesting thing to look back on that I think, Rob, when you tell this story, and I’ve heard you say this so many times, and there’s always something you can sort of pick up as you listen to this, but even that, the mowing of the lawns and you say it’s his passion, was it, I mean maybe it was, but was it really his passion or was that also him trying to provide a nice environment for the family and keep giving back? And I think this story about good intentions is I’m giving back, I’m giving back, I’m giving back, but you’re not giving ultimately what everyone needs and then everyone ends up suffering. And even the person that’s trying to be the giving person and do the right thing, everyone ends up suffering. It just becomes a zero sort of sum game.

Speaker 2 (03:29):

It does. And my dad’s come, my whole dad’s side of the family has come from the land. They’re farmers. My granddad was a cane farm, his brothers were dairy farmers. That’s hard work. And working hard and working long hours was, and I think it’s a generational thing, that’s all they knew. And my dad fell into that trap. He worked long, hard hours to make money for our family. Now, hats off to my dad is he wanted to be able to give our family a good life. We had a nice home. He helped build parts of it. We did live in a beautiful environment. We had a great home around us. He wanted to be able to provide for us and set ourselves, our family up to have a great future. But I remember when I was a young fella, my dad missed out on things because he was working. My dad missed out on sporting events and events at school and time with us because he was working long, hard hours to make money for our family. And I think that’s part of the challenge. And there was no doubt other things that were going on in our parents’ world, but I just know that that contributed a lot to our family unit falling apart because of the way that my dad wasn’t showing up. He should have been.

Speaker 1 (04:55):

Even hearing you talk about it though, it’s such a fine line because I think that you can’t fall on that other side. There’s a sacrifice and a price to be paid, to have success, to have a nice house, to have the family and the comforts that you want to live a happy good life and go on adventures and holidays and do all that sort of stuff. There is a sacrifice that you have to do and there is a cost to it. You can’t just totally override one for the other. And we’re not talking about that today, but there is a line where it goes too far. And that’s the trap. I think people just don’t realise. It’s almost like that boiling frog scenario. You don’t realise how far you’ve fallen into it or how easy it is. And I think as we talk about this today, I’m keen to hear from you about, well, how do you relate to that Now even in your own world running Pravar and what you do, can you see the trap that your dad fell into in a different light? You’ve talked about as a kid growing up and as a young fellow and what it felt like. But what about as an adult now? And you are in your dad’s shoes, right? He’s probably the same age as what you were back then.

Speaker 2 (05:54):

Yeah, correct. I think when my parents’ relationship fell over, my dad realised that his business and his money and the hours that he was working meant nothing to him without his family. And that’s the huge realisation that he had. He goes, I was trying to build all of this and provide for all of this so that we could have this amazing life in the future, but that meant nothing when I don’t have the people that I care and love love of the most. And that took a huge toll on him as a person because he realised that there was no doubt mistakes that he made, and he probably wasn’t proud that he wasn’t showing up as the best version of himself. And that was a big journey that my dad had to go on to probably right a lot of wrongs. And it’s that old cats in the cradle song that I know is so many guys resonate.

(06:44):

There’s a lot of the guys that we coaching, coaching, they too had a dad who is probably not around and it’s the reason why they want to become better husbands, better fathers. They were missing that as well. But it’s funny to say that because I am now in that position where I’ve got a young family, grace is 6, Maddie’s 4 and Ben is 18 months. And it’s hard. It’s hard growing a business and running a successful business and trying to make money and trying to be a good dad and a good husband and a friend and a family. I mean, it’s hard juggling all that at the same time. There’s a lot of sacrifices that need to be made in other areas to be able to run a good business and be a good family man at the same time.

Speaker 1 (07:28):

And as you’ve just sort of alluded to, it’s so easy to trip into that good intention that you’ve set out with all along and then you turn around and what happened? It sort of hits fast. If it hits, it hits fast, it’s usually you’ve never recognised it. If you did, you would’ve done something about it. And today, as we go through this, I think for the listeners, we want to make sure that we sort of hopefully give some early warning signs and some practicalities about how you might recognise this yourself. I think everyone can resonate with the story and everyone understands the dangers of it. But let’s go another level now and get a bit deeper and say, well, what are the signs that you’re really in this and what are the signs that you might be falling into this trap? And I think for me, the first one is that you’re physically present, but you’re still mentally at work.

(08:08):

And we hear this all the time with clients where it’s like, I know I’m at home. Yeah, I’m doing the right stuff, but I’m not there. And I think that the physical presence versus mental presence is one thing, but then there’s also the idea that even if I’m not, and even if I’m out, I’m exhausted. I’m absolutely flat out I need recovery time to recharge so I can front up again the next day. So that’s our first thing I think is just where are you physically home yet tick, but where are you mentally when you’re there? Are you recovery mode or are you just in another place?

Speaker 2 (08:38):

Yeah, this is a big one where it happens when business is hard, you go through cycles in business, you’ve got cashflow problems, team problems. I know that they have been a part of my journey, which we’re not immune to having our own challenges here at Pravar Group and there’s, I’ve been guilty of this where you’re physically present with your family, but you’re so exhausted, you’re worn out, you’re busted, you’re tired, you are stressed, and it’s sometimes hard to be present when you’ve got the pressure building on you as a businessman, but it’s your ability to be aware of that and aware of how do we compartmentalise those pressures so that we can still show up as the best version of ourselves despite the pressure that we’ve got. That’s the challenge that you face, but it’s about being aware of the sign, the awareness of the sign that you’re in in the first place.

Speaker 1 (09:41):

Yeah, spot on. As we go through these signs, that’s what we’re trying to do is get the awareness first. If you miss the awareness, you’ll never be able to make the shift, which is where we’re going to go, but you need to have that awareness. I think the second thing to raise your awareness on this is start to pay attention if you’re not already, but start to pay attention to what your kids are saying or doing. The second sign being that your kids will start assuming that you’ll be working. Now the assumption is, well, you’ll just be working and eventually they stop asking you to come to things. They stop telling you stuff. They stop including you as part of their daily story, their routine, their adventures. You’re not part of that because they’ve just assumed dad’s going to be out, he’s going to be working.

Speaker 2 (10:19):

When they start making comment around that, that’s when you know that you have an integrated well, dad’s always working. Dad’s not around, oh, you’re going to work again today. Oh dad, when are you going to be home? If you’re starting to hear those signs, the best thing I love about kids the most is they’re unfiltered. But when they start saying that, that’s when you know that that’s a sign or a signal that because you’re so deep into sometimes in the business world, you’re oblivious to what the reality of where you are. But if you’ve got the ability to hear and listen for those signals that your wife or your kids are giving you, then it’s your ability just to have that awareness around that language that others are using around you.

Speaker 1 (11:01):

Yeah, absolutely. And our third one is you mentioned the partner. The partner sort of voice comes across and you hear all, you sort of see or feel. You probably don’t see it, but your partner starts handling all the decisions and all the pairing decisions just happen around you without you being involved. And you’ll eventually hear the word something along the lines of, well, you’ll never here anywhere. I’ve just taken care of what I have to do. And that goes beyond I think the relationship with the kids where they’re assuming things, but that’s where the split goes into you’ve both got jobs to do. You are the provider trap and your partner’s off doing the parenting trap if you like. It’s not a trap of course, but I think you get where I’m going.

Speaker 2 (11:38):

Definitely. And I think we’ve got to remember that running a business is hard and it takes commitment and showing up and your ability to run a business that people rely on you for your team and your customers and everything. So we can’t understate the responsibility that you’ve got when it comes to running being the director of an organisation. But what we’re not saying is you have to go to the other end of the extreme where you’ve got to be with your family 24/7 presence, present with your family. It’s your ability to be able to provide and be there and be on when you’re at work and on when you’re with your family, and be careful that you just don’t let the two bleed across from each other or try and balance each other with the same amount of time in the other side of the box. It just doesn’t work in that equation.

Speaker 1 (12:34):

Which is why you said it then you don’t need to be there that 24/7 all the time. It doesn’t need to be a 50/50 split. It doesn’t work that way in reality, it never will. So stop trying to do it, but when you are present, be present, you’re not going to get these years back with your kids. For instance, five year olds aren’t five year olds forever, and your teenager won’t always want to talk to you. That’s just the reality of these times. You go through, you take the good times with those sort of things, you enjoy them for what they are, and then you move on to what you need to do. But there’s always this sort of ebb and flow, but the thing that holds it all together is your presence and your awareness of where you are at any one time.

Speaker 2 (13:13):

Tell us a little bit about your journey, Dan, where I know that you’ve got older kids now, you’re probably at the other end of the equation. Talk to us a little bit about what it was like when your kids were younger, but now you’re also seeing the other side and the relationship that you’ve got with your kiddies.

Speaker 1 (13:29):

Yeah, we probably had similar journey and similar traps in my previous career when I started, I was in software and doing a lot of work internationally on the software scene and it e-commerce and all those exciting sort of things, and it meant a lot of planes and a lot of travel. I actually was, I think my record was like 31 weeks of the year I was away and we had a young kid, my daughter, she was under probably two. It was just that’s what we did. Now, Carly, my wife and I, we consciously made, we knew what we were doing at the time. It was sort of a conscious choice. It was the price we were paying. But I look back now and I think, geez, I was pretty absent. And luckily it was done at the right time if there ever is one for that sort of stuff.

(14:07):

But the shift was absolutely had to be made. I had to really knuckle down and say, well, at one point I remember it absolutely vividly. I’m happy to talk about it at a later time, but it was a real sliding doors moment. Which way is this relationship, this life, this fatherhood going to go? Am I going to be that or that? And I remember that so vividly, but luckily I made those choices. I had the awareness, I did the things that we’ve already talked about today and fast forward now, my kids have grown up. They’re 20, 24, 23 years old, 21 years old, and I look back and the relationship I’ve got now is amazing. So the payoff for this, it doesn’t come in the moment. It doesn’t get any easier in the moment as you do this because you’ve still got everything going on at once, but I don’t have to carry that baggage forever.

(14:50):

I don’t to be a dad. That was like, what if I had have done it differently or I was a good dad, I was a provider. I think I’m a good dad and I’ve got a relationship with my kids where they’re almost friends at this stage. There’s an absolute bond there that’s not going to be broken because I was there to share things and there’s memories that we can talk about. There’s not things that we can talk about. There’s real memories, real experiences, and there’s a genuine relationship that’s grown over time and you’d hope after all those years, that was a tight relationship and we weren’t trying to rebuild things. And I think that’s what I cherish the most, and I think I can trace it back to the elements of what we’re talking about in this episode already.

Speaker 2 (15:27):

It’s almost like you flip the switch from being a provider to being a present provider or at the start where you are providing, it’s like, how do I work? We know what we’re signing up for. I’m going to go away and work long hours and provide and do this thing. But there became a moment in time where it’s like, well, I’m still going to be a provider, but how do I be a present provider for the family? How do I get to do what I love? Love what I do, make good money doing that, but how do I get to be present for my family at the same time? And I think that’s where most guys go wrong. It’s an either or equation, not an end.

Speaker 1 (16:05):

And I think the time span of it, I think the trap also is very alluring because you think, well, once I get through this hump, I’ll be over it. Once I get through that time period that’ll be behind me. And as you get older and you’ve been in business and all that sort of stuff long enough, you realise that it doesn’t, it’s not going to change. If you’re driven and you want to keep growing and you want to keep doing great stuff, those challenges don’t go away. Those demands don’t stop. The team doesn’t get any smaller, it doesn’t get any easier in that sense. And if we are being honest with ourselves, the ability to have the awareness to go, well, this has gone beyond sacrifice now and this is the way it is, you can start to see the road ahead. And I think that’s where the decision point comes, and the sooner you can reach the decision point and you can make your choices consciously, the more you can navigate around the trap rather than just stepping straight into it and now I’m stuck. Look what I’ve done.

Speaker 2 (16:57):

I think the blokes who figured this out, they just don’t have great businesses and they just don’t have great families. They’ve got kids who are proud of them, they’ve got kids who want to spend time with ’em. They’ve got businesses that are growing and making profit, and they’ve got great relationships with their wives and great relationships with their kids, and they’ve got a family that’s proud of them and want to spend time with ’em. They’re the guys that we see within our client base who, I don’t like to say it have it all because it’s a little bit cliche, but they’ve integrated their life where they’ve got the ability to have a great business and a great family life, and they’ve got a family who want to be with them. And if you can get to that point, then that’s the holy grail. That’s the position that so many people strive for, but very few people end up with because they don’t put in the work to show up as the best version of themselves when it comes to running a business and being a great family man at the same time.

Speaker 1 (18:04):

Yeah, I’d agree. And it, it’s hard. It really is, and it takes diligence and discipline and all this sort of stuff. That’s why it’s a trap. You don’t realise it until you’re in it and usually it’s too late when you are. And I think you’re absolutely right in terms of what you said, and I think this week our challenge, if anything, if we move into that, is really just pick this routine and start to really go back and listen to this and really test yourself and in pure Pravar terms, face the facts around where you are at right now and pick one daily routine where you’re going to be a hundred percent present. Is it bedtime, is it breakfast? Is it school drop off? I know you used to a couple of years ago, it was bathtime that was like a non-negotiable and I don’t know, Rob, but that might’ve been the place where it all started for you to start to make these real strong cuts in terms of what is and what isn’t off limit.

Speaker 2 (18:55):

Yeah, for sure. Mine’s at the end of the day when it comes to nighttime around bedtime routine, I love the reading of the books and spending time there. It’s probably not so much for me in the breakfast time or in the mornings. I like to get up and do my thing and get set for the day. I’m still around. I work from home. But for me, it’s the nighttime. I love reading a book every single night. It’s my jam, and that’s my time to get in there, read some books, say Goodnights, ask ’em how their days were and have those moments. They’re the special moments that I cherish for sure.

Speaker 1 (19:30):

Yeah, I love it. Second one in the challenge is to ask your kids, sit down and ask ’em, what would you like to do together would make you really happy? And I guarantee I’ve done this with clients, I’ve done it with my kids over the years. You’ll be amazed at what they say. I mean, I’ve heard clients go, I’m struggling with all this stuff. I’m right in the middle of it. I think I’m in the trap. What do I do? I said, go and ask that question. What’s the one thing you can do together? What do you want to do? What’s going to be on your schedule, your agenda? And it’s as simple as I remember one client came back and his kid said, can we go out and water the garden? He was amazed, and so it was like you would never think that was going to happen, but he did it. And the joy that came out of it, it was just because he had the awareness to ask that one question. So make sure you ask that question. Then do it just this week. Just go off and do it.

Speaker 2 (20:16):

Then the last one you can do is have a conversation with your partner, and this is all about protecting family time from work creep. It’s about creating that compartmentalization with your time around work and around family. We’ve done a previous episode around the analogy of leaving your boots at the door and compartmentalising the two. So this is a great conversation where you can sit down with your partner and talk a bit about roles, responsibilities, who does, how you can protect those time, create great boundaries within the family units so that when you’re on from a work point of view, and then when it comes to family, that you’ve compartmentalised that time well, so that you can be fully present and you’re not that dad that’s sitting at the park instead of playing with their kids, they’re there sitting on their phone scrolling through social media or responding to emails. So it’s the ability to sit down with your partner, talk about where and when and how, and really cherishing those special present moments together as a family unit.

Speaker 1 (21:17):

And if you’re listening and wondering where to go for that, that episode was episode 34, struggling to leave work at the door, and it was our guide to separating work from home life and starting to get that idea of compartmentalization and leaving your boots at the door. So go back and listen to that if you want more of a practical deep dive and some work you can do on it.

Speaker 2 (21:37):

Yeah, it was a belter of an episode, wasn’t it?

Speaker 1 (21:38):

Yeah it really was a good conversation. I love these conversations there. It always seems to get us going when we talk. These sort of family matters. It’s juicy stuff and it makes a huge difference.

Speaker 2 (21:47):

If you’re ready to build a business that supports your family life rather than at the expense of it, then book in your discovery call @strategysession.com.au and let’s see how we can help build your trades business and reconnect your family.

Speaker 1 (22:02):

Absolutely. Remember, the whole point of working hard is to give your family a better life and have you be a big part of it and have those relationships down the track that we talked about today. So hopefully today’s been helpful and we will see you on the next episode.

Speaker 2 (22:15):

See you then.