Navigating Co-Parenting: A Guide to Authenticity and Healing

[00:00:00] Kevin Rice: How do I, how do I excel in my career while still showing up for my family at home?

[00:00:06] Brent Cooke: There’s very little things that you’re going to do at work that are going to have kind of sustained impact as the things you do as a parent and as a partner.

[00:00:15] Kevin Rice: Take us a step back. What was it like to step into fatherhood while still carrying the weight of your role?

[00:00:21] Brent Cooke: I was not prepared at all for having to juggle all of the things that came with being a father, being a spouse, and being a professional.

[00:00:29] Kevin Rice: One of the things I think about a lot with parents is this concept.

[00:00:33] Brent Cooke: Of frankly, it got many times it got to the point where it would show up in my relationship with both my daughter and my wife. I had a great HR business partner.

She sat me down one day and really she boiled it down to bringing my more authentic self to work.

[00:00:52] Kevin Rice: Welcome to CEOs and ABCs.

[00:00:54] Kevin Rice: Real stories from execs who lead at.

[00:00:56] Kevin Rice: Work and show up at home.

[00:00:57] Kevin Rice: Career moves, parenting, wins and fails and everything in between. I’m your host, Kevin Rice. Here’s today’s episode.

Welcome back to CEOs and ABCs.

[00:01:07] Kevin Rice: My guest today is Brent Cook, a seasoned marketing leader whose career has spanned big box retail, challenger brands and now the largest automotive services platform in North America. He’s helped scale growth at AMC Theaters, petsmart Movement and today leads marketing at driven brands, home to names like Take.

[00:01:23] Kevin Rice: Five, Oil Change, Meineke and Mako.

[00:01:26] Kevin Rice: But what makes this conversation special isn’t just Brent’s resume and is the honesty in which he talks about fatherhood, co parenting, and the hidden tax that work can place on our presence at home. Brent shares candidly about breaking cycles from his own upbringing, building a healthy partnership with his ex wife to give their daughter stability, and learning to bring his authentic self into both leadership and parenting. We talk about how to set boundaries and keep your word when work pulls hard, how to invest in the connection bank account with your kids, and how presence in the small moments often outweigh any career milestone. If you’ve ever wrestled with the tension between showing up at work and showing up at home, this episode will definitely resonate. Brent, thank you so much for being here.

[00:02:06] Brent Cooke: Thank you. I’m a pleasure to be here.

[00:02:09] Kevin Rice: It’s great to see you.

It’s been a little while. It’s been nice to stay in touch here and there and it’s great to have you on the show.

[00:02:18] Brent Cooke: Yeah, thanks. I appreciate it. I always enjoy seeing your name come up.

[00:02:23] Kevin Rice: Well, I wanted to kind of take us a step back and Talk a little bit about parenthood and maybe the early days, because becoming a parent often collides with career responsibilities in ways that we can’t really anticipate. So for a lot of executives, certainly myself included, those first few months of fatherhood was really deeply meaningful. But it was also pretty overwhelming because the demands at work just didn’t stop. So maybe you could take us back to those early days after your daughter was born, or what was it like to step into fatherhood while still carrying the weight of your role at work?

[00:02:59] Brent Cooke: Yeah, it’s quite a ways back for me, actually. Cause my daughter’s now a young woman, so I’m reaching back into the archives. But, you know, I think there’s a couple of things that really stand out for me as I reflect back on it. Number one is as prepared as anybody tried to make me. I wasn’t prepared. I was like many things, I thought, oh, it’s just another step in the journey, and I’ll take it as it comes. And. But the truth is that I was not prepared at all for having to juggle all of the things that came with being a father, being a spouse, and being a professional who, at the time, I was very keen on the development of my career.

I spent a lot of time over the last 30 years investing in how I grow as a career professional, as I grow as a marketeer.

And frankly, I felt like, everybody’s doing it, everybody can do it. I’ll just take it as it comes.

I was not at all prepared for how to get into those things. I think the other thing that stands out for me is, especially in the early days of just how much you need the partnership of your partner, your spouse, whoever that is. And when I say partnership, I don’t just mean division of labors. I mean, literally an understanding and a reflection on what mode they are in, what is affecting their lives. And I think we oftentimes get really caught up in the. You do A and I’ll do B, and then everybody’s happy. But we don’t always take the time, especially when there’s a young child involved. We don’t always take the time to reflect on how people are feeling.

[00:04:34] Kevin Rice: Yeah, I remember reading all the parenting books, watching parenting courses online, and I felt like a lot of it just didn’t really connect with me. It felt like it was speaking to somebody without the context or consideration for all of the other stresses and all the other factors in life. And so as an executive, I know, or at least for me, it was really hard to transition from work into parenting.

And maybe that kind of comes from the stress, but maybe it also comes from kind of like what we learned from our parents or what we learned from our managers. And you know, it’s easy to default back into those models that we grew up with. So the way our parents raised us, the way our early managers led us, those models aren’t always right for our families or the teams we’re leading today. What are some examples of things that you learned from either an early mentor or manager or even parenting? Like, what are some examples that you decided to deviate from?

[00:05:38] Brent Cooke: Yeah, look, I, I think early in my career as a, as a young first time manager in managing people, I had a leader that was incredibly terse, didn’t have much of what I would call a bedside manner, and most of the time was a teller, not a, not a mentor or a coach. And I knew that I didn’t, I just didn’t want to be rubbing people that right way. But I didn’t know what was kind of the educational model that I was going to employ to help develop my teams.

And so again, I knew that was something that I was like, there’s gotta be more there, more that helps the individual grow, more that helps me get the outcome I’m seeking from the individual. There’s gotta be something more there. I can tell you as a parent, the way that it manifested, and I think it does for a lot of young parents, is in sports, when your child starts competing in sports. I had another parent that had an older son that was also playing sports. And you know, he pulled me aside not, not because of something I was doing, more so because of something we were observing on the field. And he said, I learned from my first kid what I don’t want to do with my second kid. And I. That was really impactful to me. And I was like, wait, tell me more about that. Like, I want to hear this lesson. I want what you learned. Because he even said he goes, I messed him up. I know I didn’t. I did some things all wrong. And I shattered his confidence in some places. And I thought the humility to be able to say that and to be able to share that openly with me, the worst thing I could do is not take a lesson from what he was telling me. The worst thing I could do is just chalk it up to something that he had to go through. But I can’t learn anything from.

[00:07:15] Kevin Rice: Yeah, that’s really special. I mean, I think a lot of men aren’t willing to be that open with other men and be candid and vulnerable about, like, I kind of messed up here, and I’m trying to be better. I wish that was a more common conversation between adult men. I think one of the areas that this really shows up for me, and I know a lot of other parents is around the topic of discipline. The way that my parents or other people’s parents raise them is very different than how we think about discipline today. So, for example, if my kid is dysregulated and throwing a temper tantrum, the first thing I’m thinking about is, like, you’re not a bad kid. You’re just having a hard time.

[00:07:57] Brent Cooke: And.

[00:07:57] Kevin Rice: And you’re dysregulated. So there’s no lesson to be learned. And what’s even worse is to just say, you’re on timeout. Go to your room by yourself. Because then they learn, well, I can’t share my emotions, whether they’re big, small, like, bad.

Then they learn to just, like, hide those emotions and shove them down. And we say, okay, now you’re. You’re going to go isolate until you cool off.

That’s something that I’ve completely taken out of my repertoire that, you know, our. Our parents, like my parents, you know, I. I got on timeout, and look at me. I’m fine. That’s kind of the rationale as to say, well, my parents spanked me or disciplined me, and I’m fine. Well, that’s not necessarily a good thing. It’s like, how much better would you be if that wasn’t your upbringing? And no critique on my parenting. They learned from their parents.

[00:08:48] Brent Cooke: And.

[00:08:49] Kevin Rice: And I think the topic has evolved so much over the last 30 years. But, yeah, I think discipline is a great example of, you know, breaking the. The cycle.

[00:09:00] Brent Cooke: Yeah, it’s a great example.

And it was a cycle, frankly, that I was challenged by. By my wife to. To break when our child was young.

And it was because I was raised in a household with corporal punishment. And I was. I was told that my version of getting the belt was better than the version he got of getting a switch. Right? So you’re lucky. You’re just bell. I had to go get my own switch out back and take that. So, you know, I was. I was deemed lucky to just be getting the belt. And really, like I said, I was challenged by my wife to break that cycle and say, you know, that’s. We don’t need to live in a household with corporal punishment. I understand that’s what you went through. I understand that’s the model that you were shown, but it’s not the model I was shown. And again, you got to be open to listen on these things.

[00:09:48] Kevin Rice: Yeah.

Hi, Kevin here.

[00:09:50] Kevin Rice: If you’re enjoying this conversation and you know someone else who’s working to grow in their career while staying present at home, I’d really love it if you could share this episode with them. It’s one of the best ways you can help us and help more leaders build their careers in a way that they’re proud of without missing the moments that matter.

[00:10:05] Kevin Rice: Most.

Every family has their own story, has its own unique shape and dynamic and evolution. And those early dynamics often kind of influence how we parent. Could you share a little bit about your family history, your parenting setup, what it looked like in those early years with your partner and how that evolved over time?

[00:10:28] Brent Cooke: Yeah, yeah, happy to. So we were married pretty young. I was mid-20s, she was early 20s. We had our daughter when I was early 30s and she was late 20s. And we kind of were on what I call a pretty conventional trajectory for young couple, that is having their first child. The big dynamic was we were both incredibly career focused. She was an attorney, and so she put in a lot of work, not only to get to where she was in her practice, but also to develop. And so, you know, we decided that one child was enough for us because we both wanted to be able to manage our careers. You know, we were living in the Midwest, Very typical kind of Midwestern suburb kind of lifestyle. Both working a ton, lots of friends that are. That are sort of thrust upon you through your children, sharing mutual interests and ages, as well as the proximity to your neighbors. And that was all, you know, kind of cookie cutter, if you will. But about the time that Grace got into her teens with my daughter, we, my wife and I made the decision to split. And we’ve been divorced now through most of Grace’s teenage years and into her. Her early adulthood. But, you know, the good news, and I say this is very good news, it is for me, anyway. I still enjoy a really, really healthy relationship with my ex, with Grace’s mother. And we text multiple times a week, checking in on each other and making sure that all is well.

And we. We said at the time of. Of separation that she would not see anything from either of us but love, adoration, and respect. And that was just super important to us. I think we were both pretty hard on ourselves about what we could have done differently in our relationship. Um, I think we were both pretty reflective of the types of parents we wanted to be, and we Made a commitment that this was the type of parent we were going to be to her, if we were going to be separate.

[00:12:23] Kevin Rice: I mean, that’s such a healthy way to respond to a separation and, you know, kind of navigating life after a relationship changes while also raising a child together.

Unfortunately, there’s just a lot of toxic discussions about it where people are encouraged to not necessarily reflect on their role that they played, but to, you know, call the other person a narcissist. That seems like the trendy thing to do these days is like, this is how you divorce a narcissist. But taking the time to reflect and recognizing that the most important thing when it comes to a child is having a healthy relationship with the co parent. And that requires a completely different kind of partnership. One of the things I think about a lot with parenting, and I’m actually like kind of writing a little bit about it as I start formulating a book on the topic, is this concept of the corporate tax on presence. So it’s really like the hidden costs that comes when work responsibilities chip away at our ability to be fully present at home with our kids.

When you look back on any of the years as your daughter was growing up, did you ever experience that tension of work taking your presence away at home? And if so, how did you start to recognize what was happening?

[00:13:46] Brent Cooke: Yeah, I’ll be honest with you. I wish I recognized it more at the time than I do now. And oftentimes work was the thing that got the priority. And I justified it by telling myself I was a better provider because I was making for my family and I was doing the things that were required to give them a good lifestyle. And I don’t think I asked myself enough in the question of what can go really right if I go to this soccer practice versus go stay at work for this meeting versus. And then the converse of that is what could go really wrong if I missed either of those two things? I just don’t think I did a good enough job of really asking the question in the moment.

Frankly, it got many times it got to the point where it would show up in my relationship with both my daughter and my wife, where I could sense the tension with me and I was the third wheel because my daughter was an only child. So the worst part of that dynamic is when you realize you’re the only one on the outside of it. And then I had to really reflect and say, okay, maybe I’m not present enough, or maybe it was in my mind just another soccer practice, but it was A really good one for her and something that she wanted to share with me immediately following it.

[00:15:02] Kevin Rice: Yeah. Was there any point, maybe later in your, your life where you made, you were, you recognized that and made some sort of shift?

[00:15:11] Brent Cooke: Absolutely, absolutely. So when she got to be a teenager, you know, when she early teens, like 13, 14, we had made a pretty significant move across the country, out of the Midwest and into the Southwest. And there were more and more opportunities for me to be present.

And I was in a work situation that frankly was a pressure cooker. I mean, it was, it was a PE situation with a strong desire to push the business forward, accelerate it very, very fast, to make our milestones and, and I kept telling myself, it’s the right thing to do, it’s the right thing to do.

And ultimately I got to the place where I realized I wasn’t just not just a good father, I wasn’t a good spouse, I wasn’t a good person. I was, I was frankly under a lot of pressure and I finally just kind of threw my hands up and said, you know what, I’m God, I’ve got to change this and I’ve got to take a different trajectory. And it starts with my point of view and my perspective on life. And again, that’s when I really started asking the questions of what could really go wrong or what could really go right if I make this choice. And that, like I said, that’s a trick that I kind of taught myself over the years to, to be very, very objective and critical.

[00:16:27] Kevin Rice: I think it’s a great kind of check in in moments where it could seem like maybe something isn’t a really big deal like a soccer practice or being home for dinner, but checking in with yourself and evaluating quickly in these kind of small moments that add up over time as to like, where do I need to be right now? And obviously, as a aspiring executive, I felt this too, where I had to put a lot of my time towards my career. I wouldn’t have been successful if I had been clocking in and out 9 to 5. That’s just not the reality of, you know, growing and evolving in our careers.

But it comes back to the time that we are with our kids, is having that presence and giving yourself to them fully in the time that you are with them. In those early days of after separation and co parenting, what did that look like for you and what were some of the biggest adjustments that you had to make both professionally and personally?

[00:17:31] Brent Cooke: Yeah, I think I had to figure out how to our relationship was going to be you know, we both agreed that what we wanted for our daughter, we both agreed that this was how we were prepared to conduct ourselves, right? But the real challenge was, okay, now put that into practice and now make sure that you can keep your emotions in check and make sure that you can manage your time and juggle your days. And one of the things that she and I talked about that I think helped us both, I don’t remember who said it first, so I don’t want to take credit or give credit, but we both said that, you know, one of the things that would help us if we could find our way back to the friendship that brought us together in the first place. And that was really a key to our relationship and trying to reset that so that we did manifest what we would said we wanted in front of our dog.

So that was one of the things that I think we both had to work on and addressing initially. We also had very open communications and conversations and in some cases the wounds were still very fresh. I mean, I remember having conversations with her about her new dating life and she with me about my new dating life. We had to overcome them, right? I mean, we just had to have those conversations, we had to get them out in the open.

And as far as how we managed our time, we put some things in place early on. Every Sunday was still family dinner, and we still called it family dinner. And the three of us would get together and then our daughter would go with whatever parent she was with for the week. But there was this notion of coming together before we went apart. And I just think it was. It was somewhat symbolic, but it meant a lot to us and that we got to share that time together, you know, and at the end of the day, the one thing I will say about, about my ex, about her mother, is that she knows me really well and she knows my strengths, she knows my watch outs. And I feel like the same about her. And I think that we still have enough trust and respect that we can lean into them. I remember times where I would have to call her and say, hey, this is the situation. You’re going to handle this way better than I am. You know, you’re in a much better position to land this plane than I am. And likewise, she would, she would come back to me and she’d say, hey, she’s got something due. She needs some help thinking about how to put the structure to it. You’re a structured thinker. She’s going to need you on this one. Right? So it’s just we need to lean into one another, particularly when, when we know it’s for the best of the child.

[00:20:07] Kevin Rice: Such a positive and refreshing story about how relationships might diverge. But when it comes to raising a child together, that is just such a healthy perspective on it. So I really like, commend and applaud you too for being able to do that.

But raising a child with two parents together is hard.

Co parenting is even more difficult when you’re doing it by yourself. And you shared a few things, but was there anything specific that you continued to do that helped kind of give your daughter a sense of stability throughout this change in your family dynamic?

[00:20:51] Brent Cooke: Yeah, I mean, look, we, we still share a lot. You know, it’s funny, I’m in a new relationship and a very healthy one. And, and a lot of times there’s a text thread amongst all four of us that you know that there’s inclusion there. And I think that’s really, really fun and really healthy. We continue to exchange gifts at every milestone, every birthday, every holiday, every key life event.

We celebrate them together. And I think that’s just important is that you, you show that inclusion. You know, it’s one thing to say, quote, we’re family. Right. But you got to act like it too. And that’s being inclusive. And again, showing your warts when you have them, and we all do, and standing up and stepping up for people when you know you can.

[00:21:41] Kevin Rice: Well, thank you for sharing about your personal life.

These are conversations that I just don’t think are really out in the world, especially in the business world. You know, I really appreciate you for sharing that message.

What have you been going through in your own evolution? You spent years in corporate big box retail.

Recently you’ve shifted more towards some challenger brands. So there’s, there’s something going on in your personal reinvention, your career reinvention. Could you share a little bit about kind of what’s been happening in your personal life and how that reinvention has been intersecting?

[00:22:18] Brent Cooke: Yeah. And Frank, a lot of it I can trace back to a very critical moment in my corporate life. I had a great HR business partner. Her name’s Jen. And I want to give her credit because she showed up for me in a big way and she, she sat me down one day and had a conversation about my leadership style and, and where my opportunity for growth lied. And really she boiled it down to bringing my more authentic self to work. And like I said, I was always the guy that kind of tried to compartmentalize those things and say, this is work, this is Home, the two shall not cross as much as I can and try to remain incredibly private about it. And she really challenged me to say, show up authentically. Be the person for your team that you want to be for your daughter and, and for your family.

And that was, that really hit home with me. And you know, she made me a promise at the time and she probably didn’t even remember, but she made me a promise at the time. She said, you start showing up authentically for other people and it will provide you more growth opportunity than you think you will ever realize by just following your career trajectory. And she was right. You know, the opportunity for me to grow in the domains of marketing that I hadn’t explored at the time, this was a dozen years ago.

I had not explored certain disciplines within marketing, particularly on the earned media side, media relations and PR and those types of things. I hadn’t done any of that work. I wasn’t going to get the opportunity to do that work by just banging on people’s doors and telling them, let me do this, let me do this, let me do this. It really came from showing up authentically and being. One of the things I lean into is that I’m a lifelong learner and just being willing to listen, being willing to job shadow, being willing to offer insights, being willing to be corrected when I was wrong, especially when in a discipline I don’t know anything about. That was the types of things that she talked about. She also talked about how powerful I would feel. And she said, you’ll feel much stronger and much more powerful when you show up authentically. And it’s true. You, you do, you, you show up in an authentic way and it gives you confidence and it gives you kind of the chutzpah, if you will, to, to go out and take on newer and bigger challenges because you feel good about yourself when you’re more validated internally than externally. And as you said, I went up to some challenger brands. I, I started a business with some other colleagues in the pet space. I went to an early stage business in the pet space and, and did some consulting work for them. I went into jewelry and watches and accessories and a struggling brand. That was a turnaround story. You take on bigger challenges and really go out and break the conventions of what your career has been when you feel confident in being your authentic self.

[00:25:15] Kevin Rice: So it’s easy to say, I’m going to show up, I’m going to be authentic. But in practice, what does that actually look like in the workplace, man?

[00:25:23] Brent Cooke: First of all, if you’ve done any kind of self assessment, listen to it, take it seriously. I’m not saying any one of them is gospel, but I am saying if they’re all pointing in the same direction, it’s probably for good reason.

So listen up. You know, try and lean into those things that, that they’re telling you are your strengths and try and recognize your vulnerabilities and be open with people about it. Just say, this is a watch out for me. You know, I used that term earlier today on a call with one of my, one of my team members. I, I said, I realize sometimes I can come off a little strong and, and I said, that’s a watch out for me. And I just, you know, I need to acknowledge it and I need to put it out there so that you can call me on it if I, if I need to be called on it. So that’s the thing for me, bring it into practice. It’s, it’s literally every day when you show up to work, you know, be ready to trust the things that you, and you can tell people, you know, call with people. I was on a call this morning when we were talking about research design. I’m like, guys, this is something I’m pretty darn good at. Let me just run with it, you know, and you know your strengths, but, you know, you know your watch outs.

[00:26:29] Kevin Rice: How, how does that being more of your authentic self translate to how you show up as a father at home?

[00:26:36] Brent Cooke: I’m, I mean, it’s very much the same way. I, I, I talked earlier about the, the, the communication equity. That’s the biggest thing is that I, I earn the right to ask the hard questions and have the hard conversations by being more vulnerable and open.

I can stand behind illustrative examples at work of where I’ve had success and why that’s probably worth listening to in this particular case.

You know, that’s the hardest thing with kids, is that the first thing out of your mouth they’re going to want to dismiss because it’s coming from mom or dad.

You know, one of the things that I love to tell, you know, my partner at the time is I said, I need you to deliver this message because she’s automatically going to dismiss it if it comes out of my mouth. And so just knowing, knowing that, you know, you’re, you’re up against that battle immediately is, like I said, putting, putting the equity in when you need it, drawing down when you need it, and realizing when to step aside.

[00:27:35] Kevin Rice: Yeah. And I kind of think tied into that is around boundaries and boundary setting with your kids and work and as an executive, boundaries around travel and meetings and after hour communications can be really the difference between showing up and missing out. I’m curious if you have thought about or if you’ve put in place specific boundaries that you really hold firmly to even when the pressure is on at work.

[00:28:03] Brent Cooke: Yeah, look, I don’t as much anymore. I don’t have to because my daughter is a young adult, she’s finishing up university so I’m lucky to see her when I see her. The one thing I will tell you is just really trying to be true to my word. I will tell you, you know, again, this is a misstep from early that I in my career that I tried to correct, which is if I’m got a stint of travel and let’s just take the month of September as an example and I say I’m going to be gone almost every month in September. But October will be better, right? Make October better. Just do, do what you say you’re going to do and live up to that. Don’t do the thing where you’re like, next week will be better and next week’s no better and next week will be better and next week’s no better. To your point, it’s, it’s the boundaries that you set for yourself as much as anything.

[00:28:48] Kevin Rice: Yeah. And holding firm to your word is really important because that’s a really important value we’re trying to instill in our children. It’s kind of a universal value of integrity.

And with kids, like more is caught than taught. Right. So if you’re telling them to do one thing, but you’re acting in another way, they’re not going to internalize that, they’re not going to learn it. So it’s really important. The small things, the big things. If you say you’re going to build Legos after work or build a fort, it doesn’t really matter how tired you are, that’s the time to show up. Especially if it’s only 30 minutes a day.

[00:29:25] Brent Cooke: Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. I mean just live up to your word. And there is, there’s no feeling like being told that you’re full of shit by your own child and not having other expand on and be like, yeah, I kind of have been sorry.

[00:29:39] Kevin Rice: It’s probably the worst feeling in the world. Especially when they just, it’s maybe even only a few words of like, dad, you said you were going to do this. You lied to me. Oh, that is just a dagger in the heart.

So something that you know, I think I wasn’t great at maybe a few years ago, when Hathaway was doubling in size at the same time I had gone, you know, I had filed for divorce. I was single parenting with two boys, and I just felt like I had the weight of the world on me, and I just kept letting them down because I would come home, and I’d be just so drained physically, but also, like, emotionally and mentally. So I could come home and I could build that fort with them, but I wasn’t really giving them my presence. I wasn’t giving. I didn’t have the energy to give them what they needed. And with kids, like, there is no, I’ll do it next week. Like, kids live in the now. Kids are a great reminder of being present. You know, the future, the past, like, doesn’t matter for kids. It’s there in the present moment every day. So, yeah, I think it took me a long time of resetting, going through my own kind of personal and career reinvention to be able to be cognizant of it and make that a big priority for myself.

So I’m curious when. When you did make the. The decision to, all right, I’m gonna skip this work meeting. I’m gonna be with my daughter.

How did you make the most of that time with her? What were some of the, like, ways that you would spend time that felt really meaningful?

[00:31:15] Brent Cooke: Um, you know, it’s funny, your talk track, your. Your conversation arc changes drastically, I think, with your partner and with your child when you stop thinking of your career, the thing you’re doing for them, and realize that they’re on this journey with you. And so, you know, that really topically changed how we talked. I didn’t used to talk about work, and I certainly didn’t talk about work in the way that I could open up about how it was challenging me, and I started opening up about those things. I started talking to her about things that were right and wrong in her world and how we could relate to them versus how I had to fix them or parent them or come at it through that lens, if you will.

But the whole conversation changes when you switch your mind and say, this is a journey they’re on with me. This is not something I’m doing for them or I’m doing for myself. And I can manage that career part over there, and I can manage this parenting part over here. It’s very much attorney on the. That they’re on with you.

[00:32:21] Kevin Rice: Yeah. Yeah, I can relate to that. I think over time, I started Sharing more with my son. My oldest son is nine now, Levi.

In order as a way to better connect with him and open up a dialogue, I would share my work experiences.

So not necessarily like, oh, I’m doing this presentation or we have this big deadline. Not the facts of what was happening, but my experience in navigating a complex work environment.

So I would share with him. Oh, I was really struggling because me and one of my peers were having a disagreement and this is the way it made me feel.

And then all of a sudden I realized it created a open dialogue with him where he could start talking about his dynamic with his friends. If I would have just asked him, how was your day today?

There is one word answer every time and it’s good.

So instead of, instead of doing that, it was good, you know, and then I’d try, well, did anything fun happen? Did anything funny happen? What was challenging? And I just wouldn’t get anything. But I found that if I would open up to him first in a way that he could understand because it was more about my experience, not the facts of my career.

It just opened a much like, more interesting, inviting and vulnerable conversation for me to have with a 7, 8, 9 year old.

[00:33:49] Brent Cooke: Yeah, yeah. And look, with kids, you know, you’re always depositing or withdrawing from an equity. The more that you can deposit with them and show them your vulnerability on your side, the more credibility you have to make a withdrawal when you really need to make it. And when you need to have a conversation that you know is going to go poorly, you know it’s the right thing. But everything about it just in your body makes you say, oh man, I don’t know that I’m ready for this one. That’s when I say, you’re making that withdrawal and you just got to make sure you make enough deposits to have it there to take.

[00:34:25] Kevin Rice: That’s a good analogy. The connection bank account.

Well, now your daughter’s in college. How has your relationship with her evolved as she’s matured into an adult, a young woman. And what is it like today?

[00:34:40] Brent Cooke: Yeah, I think it’s less about me trying to make sure she’s doing the right things. I think early on you’re, you’re really putting up guardrails that are much tighter in. Right. Um, now it’s really converted to trust based relationship where I have a lot of confidence in her capabilities, in her decision making, in the way that she addresses, you know, her peers and people around her.

All of those things. I don’t need to coach those as much I’m more of a sounding board than anything. And that’s a great feeling. It’s a great feeling when you feel like as parent transition from the. I have to bring you the lesson here, right, that you need to learn and I need to impart upon you to. I’m going to sit back and let you come to me and we can talk about these things together.

[00:35:33] Kevin Rice: I mean, that’s really special.

It goes to show that you did do a lot of things right as a parent if you have that relationship of trust today.

A lot of children don’t think of their parents at this age as somebody to go to when they are struggling with something or they are working through a challenge or, you know, it’s just not. Not their person. And so that’s really special that you have a foundation of trust that you developed over the years that now she can come to you when she needs you and she feels safe to be able to do that.

[00:36:07] Brent Cooke: She does, she does. And you know, beautiful thing, like I said, I have a great relationship with her mother and she. And I can compare notes too because, you know, she gets different counsel than I get. She gets different topics and rightfully so.

But we can compare notes and both of us just, you know, several text threads on my phone about how amazing of a kid she is and how proud we are.

[00:36:30] Kevin Rice: There’s a lot of leaders out there or aspiring leaders who are maybe earlier stages of their career and their family trying to juggle both of these really important roles.

Leading teams at work, showing up for their kids at home.

From your own journey, do you have any advice that you could share with parents in that sort of position about growing their career, achieving what they want to achieve professionally while still showing up for their family in the moments that matter most?

[00:37:01] Brent Cooke: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think for me, you know, I mentioned the one piece of advice I got about being my authentic self and, and I took that really to heart. And, and like I said, I really started dialing in and paying attention to self exploration and doing every version of Enneagrams and Myers Briggs and all the other versions of self exploration that I could to. To learn about where I should be leaning into my strengths and where I can frankly raise my hand and ask for help. And, and that’s the one thing I, early on, I think I had to leave everybody with the impression that I had it all together. Like you could throw anything at me and I can figure it out. And that may be true, but I may have taken a very long winding path to get there if I wasn’t willing to ask for help or at least recognize where I needed it. So that’s kind of what my one big piece of advice is. Get to know yourself a little bit and don’t be afraid to lean into your strengths and learn something about where your watch outs are and where you can literally use help. Because I’m motivated by outcomes. I mean, I want to get to the end state, I want to get to the business goal, I want to get to high achievement, all of those other things.

Having the humility to swallow my pride and say I can’t do it on my own is a big one. The other thing I would say is just continue to learn. Just continue to be a student.

You don’t know. Whatever you think you have planned for your career, you will learn more. And if you learn more, it will take you on a much more exciting adventure than the one that you have in your head today.

[00:38:47] Kevin Rice: I mean, that’s a great reminder. I think a lot of us achievers feel like we can do everything and we probably can carry a lot of. But it does lead to exhaustion, it does lead to burnout. I remember a conversation candidly with my therapist where she was going through the amount of stress I have on my plate and I was like, this is no problem. This is easy.

Two years ago, I had twice this much stress on my plate. She’s like, I’m kind of worried about how much stress you have on your plate right now. And I assured her I’m good. This, I could, I could do double this.

And I burnt out and I stopped showing up as my best self for my kids, my now partner. And it kind of came crashing down where I had to do a complete reset again. It was not the first reset I’ve had to do in my life.

But yeah, just because you, you think you can carry it doesn’t mean that you have to.

Trusting partners, trusting friends and family, it’s much more sustainable that way. So thank you for reminding us of that.

[00:39:54] Brent Cooke: Yeah, no, it’s great. I, I’ll share my own therapy story as I think of many people who are aspiring executives. You’re very self critical, right? Like I could have done this better or I’m not handling enough, or I’m not moving fast enough or you become very, very self critical. And my therapist, early on, this was when I was going through my divorce and trying to figure out how to, how to cope with not just what was happening in my family, but what about me was, you know, driving a lot of that and what was my level of accountability in it? And my therapist said, I’m going to ask you some questions about your daughter. She said, what would you say if I said your daughter comes to you and says I’m a failure? What would you say if your daughter comes to you and says I’m not good enough? And I’m like, oh my God, I’d be a palm. She’s like, why don’t you believe that somebody wants that for you? And I’m like, you know, you weren’t supposed to say that. So she was, she was right on, man. But I give her a lot of.

[00:40:52] Kevin Rice: Yeah, I think that inner critic can be really loud in our heads sometimes.

I recognize my inner critic comes up a lot in relationships. It comes a lot up a lot in parenting.

It doesn’t really come up much for me in my career. And I’ve had to kind of go back into early childhood to figure out like, where does that come from? And so huge advocate of therapy, huge advocate of inner discovery, journaling, inner child work. Because a lot of these things that can be difficult or voices that are loud in our head today started a long time ago and you can trace the threads back very, very young.

Yep, we have a lot of listeners who would look up to somebody like you, who’s had just an amazing career and you’re just a, like a wonderful human being. Any parting thoughts for our audience when they’re thinking about how do I, how do I excel in my career while still showing up for my family at home?

[00:41:51] Brent Cooke: Yeah, look, there’s, there’s very little things that you’re going to do at work that are going to have the kind of sustaining impact as the things you do as a parent and as a partner. And that’s just a fact. There’s so much of my career that If I rewind 20 years and, and told my then version of myself, this is where I would be be like, no, that’s not what I have planned because it’s not your career. Very rarely is what you have planned. You can be opportunistic, you can be optimistic and continuing to seek and search, but the impacts that you’re making there are going to be very minor in comparison to the impacts you make on the people that love you and the people that you want to love. And so put your emphasis where it needs to be and like I said earlier, bring them along on the journey. If you really believe you’re on a career journey and you have aspirations to be an executive or top ranking official of anything. Bring these people along on your journey because they do want success for you. And the sooner that you realize that they want success for you, they’re cheering for you, they’re part of it. The sooner that you can really reciprocate for them when they need to.

[00:43:05] Kevin Rice: That’s great. And that’s. That’s what legacy is all about. Right? It’s on our deathbed. We’re probably not going to be thinking about. I wish I had one more C level title. You’re going to be thinking about your family and your children and what you were able to create for them and what they were able to go on and create in their own lives.

[00:43:22] Brent Cooke: Yeah, 100%.

[00:43:23] Kevin Rice: Brant, thank you so much for, for the amazing conversation.

I really appreciate you. You were originally just a early supporter of my career at Hathaway, and then I’m really grateful that that colleague relationship turned into a friendship. So thank you for being here. Thank you for supporting me on this podcast.

[00:43:45] Brent Cooke: Likewise, man. Look, I. All I did was recognize talent when I saw it. And if I’ve done nothing right in my career, it’s definitely sticking to that. So I appreciate it.

[00:43:54] Kevin Rice: Thanks so much.

[00:43:55] Brent Cooke: Thank you.

[00:43:56] Kevin Rice: If you’ve enjoyed this conversation, make sure to hit subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes. CEOs and ABCs is all about helping you grow in your career and show up at home. We have many more amazing guests coming up, so tap, follow, and stay tuned.