"Can I Be a Great Parent AND a Great Entrepreneur? Help!"
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You know, there was this one time before I did my own money rehab when I checked my credit score and I realized I had no idea what it actually meant for my financial future. That's when it hit me. It was time to get serious about my money. We've all had that moment, right? Whether it's saving for something big or finally paying off debt, we all get to a point where we need to make some real money moves.

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Feels like progress. I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash.

But I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests.

Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look...

guest-friendly, I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. Money rehab.

Hey guys, how you doing? You missing me? Of course you are. Well, during this guest host beluza while I'm out on mat leave, I wanted one special guest host to make an appearance. Myself? Kidding. I mean, kind of. As you know, I co-host a career advice podcast with the entrepreneur editor-in-chief Jason Pfeiffer called Help Wanted. And even though Help Wanted is more work-focused, work and money are pretty inseparable. You need to work to make money unless you're doing something weird. So

So money comes up a lot on the show, whether it's asking for more of it, feeling like you're paying too much of it, want to create a new revenue stream. We talk about it all. So this week, I wanted to share some episodes of Help Wanted that I think will be pretty valuable for money rehabbers. So to kick that off, you're going to hear the episode where I actually told Jason I was pregnant. Yes, I told him on air while we were taping an episode because, of course, I did.

But that conversation was about more than just me. We also talked about the trade-offs that you need to make when you're trying to excel at home and at work. And after it aired, Jason got a ton of emails about this episode from parents who had never felt more seen. So as you'll hear, Jason really nailed this one. I mean, I've got a good co-host, guys. Here's our conversation.

This is Help Wanted, the show that makes your work work for you. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, Editor-in-Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine. And I'm money expert Nicole Lappin. On Tuesdays, Jason and I answer the helpline and help callers solve their work problems. And on Thursdays, I give you one way to improve your work and build a career or company you love. And it starts now.

You can remind me of the details, but we were doing some work thing and one of your kids had some poopy problems. There's a lot of poopy stories from the Pfeiffer household, though. Well, here's the thing. When you have kids, the first many years...

of your life as a parent is defined by poop management. And that's just, that is the nature of it. Waste management. I was actually just thinking about this recently because I have a nine-year-old and I have a five-year-old. And the five-year-old just graduated pre-K and-

in pre-k the teacher can't wipe a kid's butt kid's gotta go wipe his own butt which means that the kid's gotta start doing some wiping it's probably not very good but it's a it's a half-assed effort at it and so i know that colin is i know that colin i know that you know that nicole but for everyone else colin's you have two kids i have two kids fan and colin i know that

Colin is developing some skills at wiping his own ass, but I am still wiping his ass at home. And Fen has long since taken care of his own ass. But I was just, I was wiping Colin's ass this morning and I was thinking to myself, will I know?

the last time that I have to do this? And can I capture it? Can I film myself right afterwards running out into the street and being like, I have wiped the last ass, which would make me so happy. I don't know that. But that's the thing about parenting is you never really know when you're in or out of something. It's all just a big mush. Mm-hmm.

Thank you, Jason, for that. I will repeat what I've said many times to you because we talk a lot about these stories that you give great birth control through these stories. And I really love the way you honestly talk about it. I know like

Authenticity has been totally bastardized, especially in like the parenting social world, because like authenticity is whatever. We can have a full episode about that. But you are you're not edited. You're not making these stories beautiful in your work life and in our working relationship to like your kids are part of it. They're running around while we're recording. They're interrupting stuff. Wasn't there a time where you also edited?

had a Zoom with some important fancy pants CEO and

one of the boys came in. Oh, that's happened so many times. Yeah. The one that I thought was funniest was when I was interviewing the CEO of Zoom on Zoom and my kid came in and interrupted us because that was such a classic Zoom moment. Everyone has been on Zoom and had their kids interrupt them. So to do that with the CEO of Zoom was perfect. But yeah, I'm excited to have this conversation with you today, Nicole, because this has shown up in many of our conversations. And I'm sure I've even made reference to a

But we've never just looked at it directly. So this will be fun is talking about what are the challenges of...

doing all the things that an ambitious, work-focused person wants to do while also having kids, which is a really hard balance. And I have come to this belief, and I appreciate you recognizing it, that somebody needs to talk about it. I think that most parents are afraid of talking about it because there is this expectation that parents just

love being parents and are grateful for the family and are feeling hashtag blessed. And so much so that I even need to caveat at the beginning of this, like whatever else that I'm going to say during this conversation. I love my kids. They're great kids, but it's really hard. It's really hard and often very frustrating. And I am constantly thinking about all the things that I could have accomplished in

either professionally or even just in the other things that I want for my life personally, the amount of travel that I would love to do that I haven't done, the amount of time that I wish that I could spend with my friends, the way in which we were just before we were recording this, we were talking about your wedding and how I'm going to fly out from the East Coast to LA and back in the span of less than 24 hours because I really want to be there with you to celebrate. And I'm so excited to do it. But

that's not leisurely. I would love to be there leisurely. I'd love to come out for multiple days and I can't because I got kids at home. And I think that to bottle that up and to act like that's not attention in my life is to make it worse. And the thing that I have found that makes it better for me is to be open and talk about it. And what I found is that when I do, some parents get really uncomfortable because I think

I'm saying things that they had trained themselves not to directly engage with or speak. And then other parents thank me because it's a conversation that almost no one else will start. So I'm here to start it. Is it because parents are nervous about even insinuating that there are things that they regret by having kids?

I don't think that there's any one answer here, right? Like there are friends of mine who are parents and being a parent is the center of their identity and they love it and they won't relate to any of this. And then there are other people who fall at other parts of the spectrum. So I don't want to say that like anything that I'm going to say here is universalized, but I do think that what you just said there is relevant to a whole lot of people. You make a life choice, whatever that life choice is.

And then you want to feel like it was a good life choice because otherwise you're living with a lot of regret. And I think that a lot of parents get uncomfortable when being confronted with the possibility that like their life choice wasn't perfect. I think that it's fine to acknowledge that maybe your life choice wasn't perfect. I saw somebody on TikTok say recently, they're like, uh,

A lot of people criticize me for not having kids or something like that, or say they don't understand me, that I didn't have kids. But I want you, if you're a parent right now, to close your eyes and picture your perfect Sunday morning. Now, let me tell you something. Your kids are not in that picture, are they? And it's true. Perfect Sunday morning, Nicole.

weekends are exhausting with kids. They're so exhausting. Like your life goes inverse when you have kids where like weekends and summer used to be this flexible time. And now it is the inflexible time. Now it's the time where you're spending the most time on kid management. And it's actually like work time and like the school year where you have the most free time as an adult with small kids, at least. And like,

My ideal Sunday morning does not involve my kids. It doesn't. Because to be spending Sunday morning with my kids is to be stopping them from fighting each other or running a restaurant in my kitchen and trying to get them food. My ideal Sunday morning would be going out to brunch with my wife and having a nice leisurely stroll somewhere or just catching up with friends or just doing something where I feel like I have freedom of movement as an adult in the world, which is not what I have with my kids. But to say that is to indeed challenge some of the life choices that I've made.

And I just don't think that should be a scary thing. We all make life choices and it benefits us in some ways and it subtracts something in other ways. As I'm talking about this, I'm talking about the things that I've lost, but I've gained things with having kids too. We could talk about that, but I think it's just fine to live in the complexity of having lost things as kids and that the life choice that you made was complicated and that's okay.

Yeah. Do you think like this scale, there's like a scale of regret? Like it's not binary, like I regret having kids or I don't. Or maybe there are some days that you do or some days that you resent your kids or career opportunities that you can't do or weddings that you can't really enjoy or whatever. Yeah.

Yes. Anybody who has older kids wants to reach into this episode right now and say, it gets easier. It gets easier. Little kids are really, really hard. And that's true. And I've heard that over and over again. And every time people tell me that, I'm like, I hear that. I'm waiting to see it. But it's also disingenuous because a nine-year-old and a five-year-old is way easier than a

five-year-old and a one-year-old. So my life has gotten easier. I am able to move around more than I used to. I don't get woken up by screams in the morning, which is what happens when you have a kid that's just like three. And I suspect that when my kids are older and they're not exhausting in the way that they are now, and I have more freedom of movement as an adult in the world, maybe won't even have much of a memory of the kinds of things that were frustrating me at this point in my life.

So yeah, I think that it's a scale. And you know what my wife, so my wife, Jen, she always tells me a lot of this comes down to the expectations that you set for yourself. Like I always complain about family vacations because they're not the kind of vacations that I like to take.

I like to go to a city that I've never been to before. And I like to spend the entire day walking around and just discovering random things and eating random things and meeting random people. You can't do that with kids at all. Zero percent. You cannot do that with kids. So what can you do with kids? You can go to the beach or you can rent an Airbnb with a pool.

I don't care about these things. I don't like these things. And then of course, you're dealing with, you're going to fill the kid's time. You're going to entertain them. And that's not to say that this is unenjoyable. It's fun spending time with the kids, but it's not the way that I would want a vacation. And so my wife keeps telling me, when we're going on these vacations, you have to understand that this is not the vacation that you would love. This is a different thing. This is family bonding time. And that's going to come with different

roles and different outcomes. And that's true. If I go down Sunday morning from my bedroom and I think, I'm going to get a lot of work done this Sunday morning, that's going to be great. It's going to make me feel less stressed. And then I'm trying to work and my kids are constantly interrupting me. And I'm frustrated by that because they want another bowl of cereal and they won't get off their butts and do it themselves, even though they can, which is a constant conversation. Then I'm going to be really frustrated. But if I went down and I was like, I'm not going to get any work done right now, so I'm not even going to try. And that is all true. Jay

Jen is completely right about that. And I'm working on that. That's a really, really important perspective. And this is a much different example. But I remember when I launched my third book, I was very single at the time. And there would be times that I would shame myself for not going on dates. I was like, oh my God, I'm not making any progress in my personal life at all. But then I stepped back and said, I'm not focusing on that right now. That's not what I'm optimizing for right now.

Don't shame yourself for something you're not putting energy toward. And so, yeah, when you feel guilty about not doing work because you're fixing the kid's cereal or whatever, then that makes sense because you framed it that way. But saying that you're focusing on making the kid's cereal changes it.

Yeah, it does. And the challenge is, I don't know. And I'm like, I'm hesitating on saying this because I don't want to sound like a bad person. But like, that's the whole thing about this kind of...

straight parenting talk is that you keep walking this line of being judged. I'll just say that. And then I'll say, I don't know how to find joy in getting my kids the cereal. Like it is not a joyful task. It's an annoying task. It makes me feel like I'm running a restaurant in my house where I'm constantly being asked, Hey, can you get this? Push me in. I want another one of these. And that's not fun. There's nothing fun about that. And there's no way to make it fun. And I think that the answer is,

that you just, you do it knowing that you don't have to do it forever. I don't know that there's another answer to it, right? Like they won't need that from me forever. They need that for a certain number of years. And so the thing that I have to remember is that,

If this is not a joyful task for me, which is just constantly getting food for my kids, then I just have to make sure that I don't, in my head, equate my experience of parenthood with the annoying things that won't last forever. This is the good thing about kids versus a dog. A dog...

doesn't grow up, but kids do. Eventually, I know everyone tells me there will be this time when they don't want to spend as much time with me or any time with me. And so I'll tell you one other anecdote that everything that I'm just saying here reminds me of, which is when my kids were in diapers and

I would need to run into public restrooms to change them, which, as anyone knows, is just an at-any-time kind of thing, right? You're in the airport, you're at a restaurant, you're walking down the street, and suddenly you've got to find the nearest public restroom and change this diaper. When I would be in public restrooms, larger public restrooms, so there's people coming in and out, this thing would happen all the time, which was that some older man would walk by me

And he would see me changing this diaper and he would say, enjoy every minute. And I understand what's happening, which is that he's seeing his kids are probably grown up and onto their own lives and careers. And he sees me, young dad, young kid in this stage of life. And it makes him think wistfully back to the good times with his kids. And

And he's telling me to enjoy every minute, which is what he would like to be able to go back and enjoy those times. And I always want to turn to... I never did. I always just say thank you. But I always wanted to turn to him and said...

If you enjoy this and do you want to come change this diaper? Because I don't. I think that it's okay to acknowledge that some parts of this phase are not satisfying. You can't enjoy every minute. There are plenty of moments to enjoy. There are plenty of minutes to enjoy. I just took Fen, my nine-year-old, to a Pokemon convention in Orlando. It was great. He had a blast. It was very satisfying having that experience with him. It was great. I would like to do that.

But I don't want to change another diaper in my life. And I don't want to pretend like that was a moment to enjoy. Stick around. Help Wanted will be right back. Welcome back to Help Wanted. Let's get to it. So this is the funny paradox of everything that I just said, which is that I spend a lot of time

focused on and being stressed, like a lot of just internal monologue time in my life, focused on and being stressed by all the things that I can't do because I'm a parent. I have a long list of them. Jen has heard it too much. And yet my career has accelerated, I would say faster and stronger and

in the years in which I have been a parent than in the years in which I was not. Now, part of that is that you just get smarter as you get older. I was a parent on the latter parts of my life, not the earlier. But another part of it, I think actually very interestingly, is that when you have kids, you are forced in a way that at least for me, I never otherwise had to experience. You are forced to be incredibly rigorous about how you spend your time.

Whereas I used to be a lot more leisurely about how I spent my time, I am now regimented. And when my kids get out the door in the morning, I know exactly what I need to get done in the hours before they show up back home. And I obsess over that. Now, there's still a downside to this. Yesterday is a good example. I had a lot of work to do yesterday, and I really wanted to take a walk. I hadn't gotten out of the house...

I was anchored to the computer. Just taking a walk and listening to a podcast is a way to just feel calmer for me. And I kept watching the time tick down. And it was like 3 p.m. And I would say, oh, I got a little more time left. I got to get a walk in 4 p.m. Oh, I got to get a walk in 5 p.m. And then I got to 6, which is when I'm on as dad. That's the rule here is 6 p.m. is when pencils down.

And I never got the walk-in. Now, if I didn't have kids, I could have worked a nice full workday and put things down at 6 or 6.30 and then a lovely walk and maybe met a friend for dinner. And I can't do that. Instead, it's like I'm on dad duty. And I was actually telling Jen about that.

And she was like, well, why don't we take a walk as a family? And that's what we did. And I'll be honest. It wasn't the same. No, because the kids were complaining like crazy the whole time. They were on their scooters. Colin, of course, fell halfway through and was screaming his head off. Jen and I can't have a conversation, but the kids are constantly coming back and forth. I physically walked, but I wouldn't say that it was the relaxing experience that I wanted, but it's made me more efficient. I am a more focused person than I was before. Number two,

Having kids allows you to relate to other people who have kids, which is actually a really useful business skill. Because talking about your kids is just often a thing that comes up. I found that to be useful. I am sure that it has created in me some of the things that people say that parenting does. It makes you a more patient person, more understanding, something. I don't know. I don't know how to evaluate or identify that. Having kids does introduce you to other interesting people.

My friend Matt, Matt Elblanc, who's also my book agent, I met him on a playground because our sons had become friends. And I've met a whole bunch of other people who I really, really like, who sometimes are very useful, both personally and professionally. And I don't mean useful, like whatever, good friends, and they become good colleagues through having kids. So yeah, there are upsides, but it's like upsides that live inside of attention.

So there could be some correlation beyond just your age being the correlation. Like when you started having kids, like you were also hitting a stride in your career. Yeah, sure. I was. And like anybody, I think you are more refined in your talents. You have a stronger network, just like however much older you get. But having kids certainly didn't hold me back from... I feel...

I don't even know how to say it. Maybe a life in which I was able to say, yeah, I have no kids to come home to, so I will just fly around the world doing speaking engagements nonstop. Maybe I wouldn't like that life. Maybe the quote-unquote bigger life is not one that I would actually enjoy or appreciate. There's no way to know, right? This counterfactual thinking is not actually helpful, but it's certainly a tension that I live with. And to be clear, you wanted kids. Yeah. You both wanted kids. I wanted kids...

But I don't think in retrospect that I had really spent that much time thinking about what it meant. I think that I just grew up in a healthy family with two kids, knowing a lot of other healthy families with kids. And having kids was the only vision I had of a life. Jen is literally texting me right now.

We need more bread so we can make the kids lunches. This is just the things that you got to think, right? Can't I just focus on my own lunch? No, I make the kids lunches. I don't know what to think about this. I don't know what to think about this thing that I'm about to say to you. Maybe you'll have some thoughts. When we decided to have kids, I had a different idea of how my life was going to turn out. I was a magazine editor and only a magazine editor.

And to me, all the things that I wanted to accomplish could be mostly accomplished by sitting in front of a computer. I just dreamed of writing things that people read. And the idea of starting companies, multiple companies, flying around the world and being invited to the incredible event, that wasn't on my radar. I didn't have that. And that didn't show up until I had two kids or one kid or something, until I had kids.

And so I almost wonder what would have happened if I had a different set of career opportunities at the time when we were making decisions about kids and whether or not I would have wanted to sacrifice those. Maybe the answer is that you just are never fully satisfied and it doesn't matter what life decision you make. I was just reading...

I don't know if you saw this, but Michael Strahan, a former football player, is now on Good Morning America and on every television show. Michael Strahan is now talking about retiring from television because he's done a lot of it and he wants to spend more time with his kids. Mark Cuban is leaving Shark Tank to spend more time with his kids. And these are not like politician excuses where you're stepping down from something, but because somebody's forcing you. But I think these are genuinely like they did it.

And it was great. And now they're done with it and they want to refocus on this other thing. And so that's another thing I have to keep reminding myself. I don't know what another parallel version of my life is like, but I can also pretty much guarantee that if I, at this moment in my life, cannot recognize and be satisfied with the successes that I do have, then I don't think some other set of successes...

would have made me feel any more satisfied. It probably would have made me just feel like there's something else to accomplish. My kids are great, right? We've spent almost no time talking about that in this conversation. And that's fine because that's boring. Everyone talks about how great their kids are. It's so boring. Just trust me. They're great. They're great kids. They ask interesting questions. We have fun experiences. They're great. Getting them cereal in the morning sucks. I'd never want to do it. I definitely never want to wipe an ass ever. But

But they're great. They're great. It's the dialectic. It's both things can be true. The things that come out of their mouth are usually great, even though I don't want to deal with the things that come out of their butt. That's completely fair. I think the emotional aspect of like recognizing those emotions when they come up, high resentment, high regret, like what's up? Nice to see you again. Instead of suppressing it is probably a healthier way. What advice would you give to someone who's expecting and maybe is in an entrepreneurial career and wants to

Keep up the pace. Be an awesome parent with an awesome kid. I would say... Great parent with a great kid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, everybody's life circumstances is going to be different. As you were saying that, the first thing I thought of was make sure you have great communication with your partner. But not everyone has a partner. I have friends who are single parents and they're making it work and are entrepreneurs. You can make anything work. I think...

My advice is simply to tell you, you can make it work. It just requires a lot of thinking and communication and gritting your way through things. There are parts of it that are going to be hard and they're going to get easier. And you're not even going to recognize that they're easier because there are other things that are hard. This is my life right now. It's actually really useful for me to see someone who has an 18-month-old. My least favorite time, here's my advice,

Hang on. One to two and a half is my least favorite time. And the reason is because that is when they are mobile but incoherent. So,

So that's when they're like walking around, but they don't understand anything. And they're like grabbing at everything and they have zero survival instincts. And they're trying to stick things in sockets and they want to anything that could be brought down to the ground. But it's awful. You cannot sit down anywhere because they will not sit. Try going to a restaurant with a one to two and a half year old. Not possible. They want to walk around the restaurant, try flying anywhere. They want to walk up and down the aisle. I hated that time. And then you know what? They grow out of it. Then they grow out of that time. Then they're not that anymore.

And now they're able to focus and play and eventually ask you interesting questions. And it just changes. And you have signed yourself up for a life of change. And if I've learned anything, my whole thing about my career, the thing I've actually based all of my speaking on and my writing is all about how change doesn't have to be

bad. It's not bad. Change is just different and it is what you make of it. And so make the best of it, but do not for a second think that you're doing something wrong. If you are standing in a public restroom and you're changing a diaper and some old person walks by you and thinks that you should be having a great time and you're not,

Don't think that you're doing anything wrong because you're not. Dude, you changed this fucking diaper. Tell them to change that fucking diaper themselves. That's really good advice, Jason. And I think having communication with a partner, if you have one, makes sense. What about communication with a work husband or wife? Or let's say you had a podcast and you had the co-host. Yeah.

Yeah. Let's see how to podcast and how to co-host. And somebody was expecting. Oh. And like, how would you talk to them about that? Are you telling me something?

Yes. You know, I know that we disagree a lot and you really tried to give me all this birth control and I just haven't taken it. It didn't take. It just didn't take. Holy fucking shit. Nicole, are you serious right now? Was this was did I get walked into an hour long of parenting advice without realizing this? Yes. Yes, you did. Oh, my God.

This is wonderful. The goal. I didn't talk you out of it. You didn't talk me out of it. We're well baked. We're four months. Well, you're four fucking months. Oh, my God.

You're going to be an uncle. Yes. Uncle Jason. Goal. Oh my God. I'm so happy for you. What I'm happy for is that I spent the last hour talking about how difficult parenting is and you have a big smile on your face and I did not ruin your life by talking about this, which means that you're like as ready as you possibly can be. I love you. I love you guys. This is great. To go into something eyes wide open,

and know that like the thing that you're going to do is hard and you want to do it anyway.

That is literally as much preparation as you can have. Everybody, before you have kids, should sit down with someone like me and just talk to them for an hour and have them bitch and moan. And if you still want it, you definitely want it. And if you still want it, then you want it. Right. If you still want it, if you're like, great, got it. It's going to be really hard, but I can manage and I've processed all this. The only thing that you can do as a parent is to have eyes wide open and...

And that's it. That's the whole thing. So I declare you ready. Not that you needed me to do that. Thank you. And I'm glad because holy shit, if you were four months pregnant and at the end of this, you were like, I have made a terrible mistake for myself.

Help Wanted is a production of Money News Network. Help Wanted is hosted by me, Jason Pfeiffer. And me, Nicole Lapin. Our executive producer is Morgan Lavoie. Do you want some help? Email our helpline at helpwanted at moneynewsnetwork.com for the chance to have some of your questions answered on the show. And follow us on Instagram at moneynews and TikTok at moneynewsnetwork for exclusive content and to see our beautiful faces. Maybe a little dance? Oh, I didn't sign up for that. All right. Well, talk to you soon.

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