You Can't Control How Your Kid Turns Out

0:00Layla's pregnant? >> Yeah. >> How how long until the baby arrives? >> Four months. >> Four months. >> Yeah, exciting. >> What are all the feelings? I can see some a mixture of feelings on your face. >> [laughter] >> Um, I'm stoked, you know, uh I'm stoked. Uh, I'd say I've elements of fear, mostly that I I want to do a good job, you know, being a father. Um

0:27>> I can see, Alex, that you're scared. >> Yeah. >> because I know you're you've I've sat here probably for 10 hours over the last I don't know how many years. >> Yeah. I'll tell you what the issue that I've been struggling the most with, which is how do I define a good parent? >> Mhm. >> And how do I define a good child or a successful child? Which then just gets into sort of a meaning of life question, which is why I think it's so difficult, but like I'll take the parent one for example. If if we define a good parent as a successful outcome for a child, one, it would depends.

1:01>> Mhm. >> Right? Is it a billionaire who's lonely and sad? Is that a successful outcome? I don't know. Um but let's just assume the world's version of success and I won't enumerate it. How many people who have all that success had bad childhoods? >> Mhm. >> Do we now call their parents good parents? >> Can I can I posit something? And it's not I've not had I've not had kids either. But what would happen if you removed both questions? >> Oh, just like I'll just take it as it is.

1:27>> Well, I I'll say it's very I it would >> I I almost want to say it's impossible for me. >> [laughter] >> Because you control. You like being able to control your outcome. >> I want to know what I'm doing. I want to know where like I want I ask what do I want to happen so that I can align all of my life to try and make that happen. And so if it's like and even even the question of like what is a successful child, is is it a child who is happy? >> Mhm. >> Many people would say I just want my kid to be happy. >> Mhm.

1:52>> And that's fine. Is it my child is the maximum makes the maximum impact on society. Different upbringing. >> Mhm. >> And like the trades that we make at the beginning, I probably won't be able to have a kid who has both. Or at least the degree to which I can steer. So I have um three other siblings. I'm the youngest of four. >> Yeah. >> And one could theoretically say my parents were a constant, the environment to some degree was a constant. There were slight changes. >> Mhm. >> Us four.

2:19>> Mhm. >> You've got this, me the youngest is crazy like entrepreneur didn't go to university blah blah blah. Got Jason. Super genius at school. Rewrote the textbooks to make them smart smarter. Works in this business now, my business. Mathly rewrote the you like on the front of the newspapers. Kevin, smarter than all of us. Savant level genius. Could said to me when he was younger that he could learn any language in four four weeks fluently if you gave number one in the world in Runescape at one point. People would watch him online play with super genius. Um decided he doesn't want to go into world of work.

2:48And then my sister who, you know, I think she qualified as a lawyer. >> Um >> And she's worked in hospitality and stuff. All of us extremely different. My parents were a constant, environment was a constant constant. I say all this to say that maybe just like running experiments as we do in business, maybe like the job and you know, Jeff Bezos talks a lot about this is to like stay out of the business of the output. And focus purely on the input cuz you you know, some of the questions you were saying there were like, what do I want them to accomplish? Are they happy? Do I These are all outputs.

3:14>> No, for sure. >> Um you can't you The other thing that I noticed when I interview executives, I always ask them, tell me about your kids. >> Yeah. >> And they tell me about the kids and I go, are any of them the same? I always ask the same question and they go, no. We've got this one who won't stop bouncing off the walls. This one that's an empath and is like super shy. >> Yeah. >> Did you do anything different? No. So like you know, I think you'll you'll almost probably be guaranteed to miss expectations and be let down if you get involved in the output. >> Yeah. So obviously there's nature and nurture. There's kids who are going to have genetic predispositions for different things. So let's say that's half. And then the other half is the nurture or environment. Now, that is still something that I'm not going to be able to control 100% anyways because you guys did have different environments.

3:53You grew up in different grades, talking to different people, having different teachers, went to different universities. Like >> I had different siblings. >> Yeah, there's yeah, all of those are are variables. And so, in some way, it's a bit of chaos of you can't. You can't control. But, if we if we eliminate all control, then what's the point? And so, I I still come I I come back to the like, "Well, I'm going to try to control the controllables." >> Yeah, inputs. >> And right. And but, if I had if I'm So, it's like I need to know where I'm going.

4:20>> The output. >> In order to direct my car. But, what I'm focusing on a day-to-day is I need to shift gears, I need to drive the car, I need to fill it up with gas. Me focusing on the output is not going to get us there any faster. But, I have to know where I'm going. And so, this is again what I've struggled with. Now, to be fair, I cannot figure it out and the kid's going to come either way. It's >> [laughter] >> He's not going to wait for me to to figure this out. And I'm sure maybe someday he'll look at this podcast and be like, "My god, Dad. Jesus." >> You know what's interesting? The car analogy, I think might not be apt because I I Do you know what? I was trying to find another analogy. And the one that I stumbled upon was a plant growing a plant in your house.

4:54You put the seed in the in the the soil, and you might think, "I really want this to be 6 ft. And I really want 100 leaves." But, you [laughter] >> Yeah. >> All you can do is water it and give it sunlight. >> Yeah. >> And it's going to be what it's going to be. >> Yeah. >> Or you can say, "Please be 6 ft. Please be a football player." or whatever. But, you can control the input, which is the water and the the sunlight. >> It's funny cuz like my my immediate situation goes back to the grandpa story, which is like, "Well, I could put it in front of the I could put it in front of the sun or I could put it in shady room. I could like I could determine how much I'm going to water it, what kind of soil it's going to get." Um like there are other variables that like And so, again, I would be like, "Do I want to grow the tallest plant? Do I want to grow the plant that has the most fruit?" Well, I would either prune the plant or so that it would grow taller. Like these are all things. Now, can I change whether it's going to be a peach tree or an apple tree? No, that's going to be based on the seed that I plant. And that I don't have any control over. But, there are some things that I can control.

5:46And of those things that I control, I would like to know what I'm optimizing towards. [laughter] And I'm sure that this will just be a wonderful lesson in humility for myself. And it'll be [laughter] great and people laugh in the comments, I'm sure. Uh but yeah, I think I to to ask me like what we we're talking about Layla earlier. I would say like one of the the foremost things that I love the most about Layla is that Layla has never tried to change me.

6:11She's like, "That's Alex." Like, you can want him to be a peach tree or an apple tree, but like he's going to be Alex. He's going to dress that way. He's going to and if tomorrow he feels like shaving his face and having a Fu Manchu, he's going to do that. Like, I'm going to try and optimize to the degree that I can to equip the, you know, my son and hopefully future kids um with as many skills as possible to get what they want out of life. And I think that's that's what I would say that I that's where where I have settled on is I'm going to use all the resources I have to give them as many skills as I can to handle life.

6:44And if I can do that, then if they want to go to London or they want to go to LA, at least they'll have the skills to get there. Um that's as far as I've gotten. >> I can't wait to see.