Latest / Startup Dad / We Drove Through the Night to Meet Our Daughter | Matt Korn (Dad of 4, Founder of Dad Esquire)
Transcript
- [00:00:00] Matthew Korn: I'm helping him in the shower, he was on the other side, and I was like, Caleb, come over here so I can wash up your hair." And he wasn't listening. And I, asked him like three times, and I started getting frustrated. I, I have a tendency to get frustrated. Um, and suddenly he just looks at me and he goes, "That's how I feel when you're on your phone, Dad." And I just like paused and I was like, "What do you, what do you mean?" [00:00:19] Matthew Korn: And he's like, he's like, "Well, you know, you're always on your phone. And when I'm trying to tell you something, you're not listening." And then he says, he just twists this dagger in my heart and he's like, "What's so important on your phone that you can't listen to me?" [00:00:32] Adam Fishman: Welcome to Startup Dad, the podcast where we dive deep in the lives of dads who are also leaders in the world of startups and business. I'm your host, Adam Fishman. The legal profession has a well-documented problem with isolation, but throw fatherhood into the mix and that isolation can become overwhelming. [00:00:53] Adam Fishman: Today, I'm joined by Matt Korn, a senior employment lawyer at Pearson Ferdinand and the founder of Dad Esquire, an online community dedicated to supporting lawyer fathers. Matt has spent years in Big Law building practices while trying to balance being present for his family. He's married to Haley, and together they're raising four kids, three biological sons and one adopted daughter, which has given him a unique and deep perspective into the challenges of parenting while managing the demanding culture of legal practice. [00:01:26] Adam Fishman: Today, we talked about the isolation that many lawyer dads experience and why the profession makes it particularly difficult to build community, how sleep deprivation became his default answer for managing everything and what that really cost him over time, the wake-up call he received when his wife told him she felt like a single mom and how that changed his approach to work-life balance, the difference between physical presence and true emotional presence as a father, his family's adoption journey and what that taught him about expanding their definition of family, and why he created Dad Esquire as a resource for fathers in the legal profession who don't want to navigate law or fatherhood alone. [00:02:04] Adam Fishman: We also discussed how career transitions can actually improve family dynamics when approached thoughtfully. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to Startup Dad on YouTube or Spotify so you never miss an episode. You'll find it everywhere you get your podcasts. I hope you enjoy today's conversation with Matt Korn. [00:02:21] Adam Fishman: Welcome Matt Corn to Startup Dad. Matt, my absolute pleasure having you on the show today. Thanks for joining me [00:02:28] Matthew Korn: Yeah. Thanks for having me, Adam [00:02:29] Adam Fishman: All right, I want to jump right in. what is the most surprising thing that you've discovered as a dad? You're 11 years and four kids into this journey [00:02:37] Matthew Korn: Yeah, I, I mean, for me, I think the most surprising thing is how different each of them is. And I remember having our first son, he's like the quintessential first kid, rule follower. He's, he's super competitive. and super smart, very diligent, and just type A. Second child is the exact-- He's like your second child. [00:02:59] Matthew Korn: He's the one that doesn't listen to the rules, um, makes his own rules. He's gonna be my lawyer. I've told him if he's not a lawyer, then, uh, you know, I don't know what to do with him, but he's gonna be my lawyer. And then the third, we had our third son, and I was like, "I wonder if he'll be more like the first one or the second one." [00:03:14] Matthew Korn: And it turns out there's a third personality type, and that's, it's, it's called Caleb. It's a type C, I guess. Um, and he's, so he's so pr- super different. And then we had our daughter, and she's different than all three of the boys. So like, I, I think that's-- I was like, I feel like our daughter's adopted, and I'm sure we'll talk about that. [00:03:31] Matthew Korn: But our, our three boys, I'm like the same DNA, same, you know, I felt like we did things the same way, [00:03:37] Matthew Korn: so different, so different. [00:03:39] Adam Fishman: Yeah. We've had, I've had dads on the show talk about kids being basically par-baked, uh, at birth. They're like, "They're gonna be how they're gonna be," and you can maybe steer them a little bit, but like for the most part, their personality is pretty ingrained in them. So, um, yeah. Cool. Well, what a wild adventure with four kids in the house too, and we'll, we'll, we'll talk more about that too. [00:03:59] Adam Fishman: but you, uh, you also are a lawyer, and you've done a lot for the legal dad community, which I think is awesome. And one of the things that w- you know, you wanted to dig into today is, I think something that a lot of men don't talk about. We've talked a tad about it on this show, but especially lawyers, you know, definitely don't talk about it, and that is the idea of isolation, as a dad. [00:04:22] Adam Fishman: So why is that topic, like, at the top of your list? [00:04:25] Matthew Korn: for me, I, I'm, I'm just, I'm a huge believer in community. I created an online community because I, I think there's a lot of power in being around people that have shared experience. the practice of law tends to be pretty isolating. It's generally not a team-based environment. There, there are teams, but most of the time you're working in your office, often door closed, just spending hours on a brief, and you're not interacting and you're not, you're not part of a teamwork environment. [00:04:52] Matthew Korn: It can be very isolating. Lawyers have higher levels of suicide and, and drug and alcohol addiction than a lot of other professions. And, and I think it stems from this isolation that we have. and I think that's partly also, um, you know, a law firm culture and environment. Not every law firm, some law firms are better than others at this, but we don't always talk about things outside of the law while we're at work. [00:05:15] Matthew Korn: You know, we, we don't feel comfortable sharing, "Hey, you know, I'm exhausted today. My kid was up at 3:00 AM." We want to put on like, "I'm ready to go every single day. I'm ready to do the best work I can do." Um, and we don't want to share weakness. And so I think that the, the profession does that. [00:05:32] Matthew Korn: I think also as dads, um, you know, I know from, I'll speak from my own experience, um, we moved to a new city. I'm not close to where I went to college, where I went to law school. Y- you got to make new friends. It's, it's tough to make friends as an adult and outside of like school environments. So if you don't have, you know, brothers or, you know, guys that you were in a fraternity with that are living in the same city, it, it's tough to maintain those friendships long distance and to build new ones when you're a, especially when you're a dad of young kids. [00:06:01] Matthew Korn: Like the number one thing I hear from dads is, "I don't have a lot of personal time. I don't have a lot of free time. I don't have a lot of time to go out and hang out with my friends, 'cause when I have free time outside of law, I want to be with my family, I want to be with my kids." [00:06:13] Matthew Korn: And so it's hard to make those close relationships, and I think both of those things combined make it, you know, it's kind of a perfect storm for feeling really isolated. [00:06:22] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Well, we're gonna spend some more time on that topic. later in the conversation too, I wanna come back to another thing. Actually, a thing I read about, that you posted on LinkedIn, which is the time that your five-year-old put you on blast, [00:06:33] Matthew Korn: That was this week. [00:06:34] Adam Fishman: oh, it was this week? Oh, sh*t. [00:06:36] Adam Fishman: Oh, wow. Well, that's real fresh then. Let's just pour salt in that wound. Um, uh, but we're gonna get there. before that, um, you know, for years when people asked you about how you managed four kids and being your senior employment lawyer, your answer was just sort of like reactionary, "Well, I just sleep a lot less than everybody else." [00:06:54] Adam Fishman: Was that true? It's probably not true now, 'cause I know that was a catalyst for you, uh, changing things. But, like, tell me about that. Like, did you sleep like three hours a night? Like, what, what were you doing? [00:07:05] Matthew Korn: still, still probably true. I don't know that I'm, like, at a, at an Elon Musk level or anything, but I'm, I'm, [00:07:12] Adam Fishman: Not enough ketamine in the world for that, so [00:07:14] Matthew Korn: I don't, I don't s- I don't sleep, like, seven or eight hours that I'm recommended. I... If I get a good six hours, that's a good night for me. And, and it was, it was true. The reason I talk about it is, like, uh, you know, I get asked all the time, "Why did you create this community, this Dad Esquire community?" [00:07:31] Matthew Korn: with anything, there's tons of inputs. One of the inputs for me was guys coming to me, I remember a specific conversation with a guy in law school who had a kid, and I was like, "Man, I don't know how you're doing law school with a kid." [00:07:42] Matthew Korn: Like, that's... There are a lot of members in our community that do it, and one just joined and he already has four, and he's having his fifth kid as a second-year law student. [00:07:49] Matthew Korn: I was like, "You get, you win the prize." Like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna create a special badge or ribbon for him because that's incredible to me. but he asked me, "How do you do that? How do you balance being a, a partner at a big law firm and, having four kids? Like, I wanna, I wanna be a successful lawyer, but I also... [00:08:04] Matthew Korn: we have one already and I wanna have more." And that was my answer, I just sleep less. I, get the work done after they go to bed. I get up at, you know, 3:00 AM. I'm more of a morning person, so I'd rather get up at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning and work than stay up late at night and work. So, you know, that was what I did, um, for a long time. [00:08:21] Matthew Korn: and I realize that's not a great answer. It's not a healthy answer. and so I started looking at resources. It is something I've worked on. I'm, I'm probably better than I was. I would say that, you know, I was averaging even less before, so I've, I've, I've tried to be better, but it's still... Now, [00:08:34] Matthew Korn: in addition to the law firm job and the, the kids and wife, I've now added running an online [00:08:39] Matthew Korn: community, so [00:08:42] Adam Fishman: demanding at all, you know? Uh, that's crazy. What, what do you, what do you think that... So you, you, you know, you mentioned you're not perfect on this. You still probably don't sleep enough, but, like, you're better than you used to be. What do you think that old approach, like, really cost you that, like, wasn't maybe obvious at the time, or maybe it was obvious and you just kind of muscled through it, you know? [00:09:01] Matthew Korn: I always think like, "Oh, I can just get a little bit more done. I can stay up a little longer." I don't think I'm probably as productive or efficient as I could be if I got more sleep. I, I have a good friend who every, every year I get her Christmas card and she... Like, it reminds me, I think I'm busy, but I'm not until I get her Christmas card and realize all the things she does. [00:09:19] Matthew Korn: And she says, "I sleep eight hours every night and I just make better use of the 16 I'm awake." And I think that's more the mindset I'm trying to adopt. when you, y- you're a dad, so you know, my kids were not great at bedtime. If they get down by 9:00, we're lucky. So I'm staying up till 10:00, 10:30, 11:00 just to have some time, right? [00:09:38] Matthew Korn: So it's, it's hard and then you start your next day early, 'cause if you want to go to the gym or you want to do anything, you got to do it at 5:00 AM. you know, I'm still trying to figure it out. I've used some AI tools to try to be like, "Hey, these are all the things I want to do. How do I do that and sleep?" [00:09:52] Adam Fishman: And AI, that's where, that's where we're clearly not at AGI yet. They just fall apart. The [00:09:57] Matthew Korn: Ja. Ja [00:09:58] Adam Fishman: Um, there's another thing that you shared that, um... So your wife's name's Haley. She told you something a bit earlier in your career that I think was a bit of a wake-up call for you. and I think that, I'm gonna paraphrase, but I think she basically told you that she feels like, she felt like a single mom at the time. [00:10:13] Adam Fishman: take me back to that time.where were you in your life and your career when, when you heard that from her, and what did, what did it feel like? [00:10:21] Matthew Korn: that was about a year after our first son was born. He was born October 2014, so it was about a year after that. Um, I had been at my law firm, um, for about three and a half, four years at that point. Um, and, you know, I was building a practice. I was, It was a new practice area, mine safety and health, that my firm hadn't, had in the past. [00:10:42] Matthew Korn: And so I was building a practice, trying to get my name out there, trying to get the firm's name out there, 10-plus conferences a year, kind of all over the country. I'd fly out to Albuquerque, New Mexico. And when you do that as a lawyer and you're spending that time networking and building, you know, your business, y- you still have to get the hours in, you still have to bill the hours when you get home. [00:11:02] Matthew Korn: And so when I wasn't out, when I wasn't traveling and she was truly alone, I was home and I was in the office working, um, getting my hours in, getting caught up from when I was out. So it was, it was just a stressful time and, You know, I, I will say this, I'm not a, I'm not a baby person, even with my own... [00:11:20] Matthew Korn: I think that's okay to say. Like, I-- maybe it's not, but I, for me at least, it's okay to say, like, I'm just not... I like to say I hit my stride as a dad when they're like one and a half, two years old. Like, when they're babies, I just, I don't know what to do with a baby. I think it was a confluence of all those things, but I-- it really hit me when she was like, "I feel like a single mom," because she felt like she was doing it on her own, and she was. [00:11:40] Matthew Korn: It was honest and it was true. I was kind of grappling with that. I realized, um, after the fact, a lot of that pressure I was putting on myself. It was not necessarily someone saying, "Hey, you've got to do X, Y, and Z. You've got to be doing all this." I was billing more than I had to bill. [00:11:55] Matthew Korn: I was, you know, going to more conferences than I needed to go to. I'm a, go-getter. I'm somebody that's very goal-oriented. And so I was, putting that on myself and not prioritizing, um, my family like I should have been. that's kind of where I was. [00:12:08] Adam Fishman: Did it take a few conversations for that to, to set in, or was it just like a immediate gut punch like, "Oh, damn, I'm really messing up here"? [00:12:18] Matthew Korn: Yeah, I'm sure there were several hints along the way. [00:12:21] Matthew Korn: She, she, um, she probably was more tactful with the first few times she tried to tell me how she was feeling, and then finally got to a point where it was just like, "This is how I'm feeling." And that was good, good for her to share with me because that really kind of lit a fire for me and said I- I've gotta, I've gotta make... [00:12:37] Matthew Korn: Like I'm at a crossroads. Like I can either go all in on work, but I'm probably gonna end up being divorced or, you know, not seeing my kid at all,or I gotta figure out how to better balance and focus on my family. [00:12:48] Adam Fishman: there's this piece of the puzzle that I'm gonna, I'm gonna come back to a little bit later in, in the show, which is like you worked at a firm, you left that firm, you came back to that firm kind of on renegotiated terms, and then that were better for you as a dad and, uh, as a family. [00:13:03] Adam Fishman: just overall better for your life. but recently you left again to go to another thing. Um, and so I wanna dig into that in a little bit, but before we do that, I wanna talk about Dad Esquire, which is the shirt you're wearing, which I, I love. Hopefully I can get a piece of that merch. the tagline of Dad Esquire is, "You don't have to do law or fatherhood alone." [00:13:21] Adam Fishman: Um, so that relates to this isolation topic. Why those exact words? Like why, why was that an important... Why is that an important headline for the, for the community? [00:13:30] Matthew Korn: I tried to encapsulate what my mission was for the community. And, and like, there, there are different things in the community about connecting people to resources, and that was a catalyst for it was dad resources are hard to find. Um, I've found a lot, but like, they don't hit you in the face. [00:13:47] Matthew Korn: you know, I think that most busy lawyer dads don't have time to go search down and find all the dad resources that exist. But really the, the core mission is I want guys to know they're not the only ones struggling. A lot of times you can feel like, "I'm the only one." You can look around you, and there's probably other guys at your firm that have kids, maybe in a different generation. [00:14:09] Matthew Korn: They've been through the kids stage. Maybe it's this, you know, the associate down the hall from And it can, from the outside, look like they're just crushing it. They're billing all the hours. They're showing you pictures of their kids' baseball game, and they're just crushing it. [00:14:22] Matthew Korn: But I can tell you, like, they're not. They, they've got some struggles going on. that's been my experience. We've, we've got a bunch of guys in the community now, and we all struggle with something, and, and sharing that struggle, um, with other people makes it more manageable. [00:14:36] Matthew Korn: I think a lot of lawyers think, "I have to be self-sufficient." We're afraid to raise our hand and ask for help 'cause we don't wanna look like we don't know the answer.you know, and that applies to fatherhood too. [00:14:45] Matthew Korn: Like, it's okay to not have all the answers and to ask for help. Maybe that's a guy thing too. [00:14:50] Matthew Korn: Uh, You really hit on something there. I think the thing I wanna come back to that you said at the beginning is this idea of resources for, for dads. And you're right. Like, if you run a Google search, the first seven pages are gonna be things specifically targeting moms, even if you search for dad-related things. [00:15:09] Adam Fishman: there's way more content out there, uh, for that. There's way more people talking about it. There's way more people sharing, more communities, things like that. But, you know, I found you through Paul Sullivan's community, the Lead Dad, uh, group and his, and his Company of Dads, group. [00:15:25] Adam Fishman: Dad Esquire, and then what Paul Sullivan does with Lead Dads. He's, Paul's also been on this podcast. We'll link to that episode. There just aren't very many of those types of resources out there. And I found Paul, and Dad Esquire, even though I'm not a lawyer, to be, like, incredibly refreshing to just hear people talk about, you know, like you said, not everybody's got their sh*t together. [00:15:44] Adam Fishman: In fact, everybody's got something that isn't right. And to be able to candidly discuss that in a space that there's no judgment, you know, it's not social media, very helpful. So, uh, so how many members are you up to now with Dad, Dad Esquire? [00:15:59] Matthew Korn: Yeah. So we're, uh, we may be at 700. We're either high, high 600 or 700 right now. [00:16:05] Matthew Korn: so yeah, 700 in about 16 months, which is, I, I had no... When I started it, I told my wife, I was like, "If this is like 10 guys sitting around a Zoom talking about being better dads, like, then it's worth everything I put into it all the time, money to build it, all of that, because I think it's important." [00:16:22] Matthew Korn: Didn't expect 700 guys, and it's growing. I mean, it's growing. We had, we hit 500, I think, in like a few, two, three months ago. So it's, it's growing, It's growing quickly. [00:16:31] Adam Fishman: how does the word spread? Like, are people just telling each other about it? [00:16:34] Matthew Korn: Yeah, a little. I wish more of that. Um, it, it's a l- it's a lot of my LinkedIn content, so I'm, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. Back in November, I joined, like, a LinkedIn creative writing community, and I, I finally got, uh, you know, for the first part, January 2025 through November 2025, I was posting from the Dad S company page. [00:16:53] Matthew Korn: And I can't tell you how many people told me, "You'll never grow a company page." And I was like, "Don't tell me never. I'll figure it out." And they were right. Uh, this is not a way to grow on LinkedIn. But it took me that long to, like, get comfortable posting from my personal page and posting personal stuff on LinkedIn. [00:17:09] Matthew Korn: It, you know, you get the, you get occasionally people like, "This is a professional platform." My stuff is about, you know, work-life balance or integration, whatever you wanna call it. We can call it whatever we want, but, like, how do we, how do we manage these two roles we have? And so you'll see pictures of my kids, you'll see stories. [00:17:26] Matthew Korn: They all, you know, what I'm trying to do is, um, two-- I have really two primary things. I want other lawyer dads and, and lawyer parents, lawyer moms too, to see, like, it's okay to share about your family, because that's part of who you are. It's part of who you are beyond the law part. Um, and two, uh, that's how I get the word out about the community. [00:17:45] Matthew Korn: So what's been encouraging is since November, um, a lot of people just see my posts. We're not even connected, and they just, they see the post and they join the community. it's free to join, so there's really no roadblock to that. but then it's other people that I just connect with through, they like my posts. [00:18:00] Matthew Korn: I'm like, "Hey, are you a lawyer dad too?" Like, I wish... Some people put dad in their headline, not everybody does, and most people don't. I've gotten several lawyer pet dads, and, uh, unfortunately, we don't let lawyer pet dads in the community. I've, I try, I try to be polite and I'm like, "When you have real human children, you'll understand there's a difference." [00:18:18] Matthew Korn: Um, but yeah, apparently there needs to be a community for lawyer pet dads. I'm not gonna build that one, but it, that, that would be an interesting sub-community. [00:18:25] Adam Fishman: billion-dollar business idea right there. You heard it here first, folks. Uh, you know, what you just mentioned there is actually really interesting about dads not, uh, putting it in their bio and things like that. Like, that has been one of the most interesting, unique challenges with recruiting, finding guests for this show is I know a ton of people who are super successful in startups, professional life, entrepreneurship, being a lawyer, like all these things. [00:18:48] Adam Fishman: I don't know that if most of them are parents. I have no idea. Because they never talk about it. [00:18:54] Adam Fishman: So I'm glad that, um, we've got the space for people to do it, so. speaking of which, I guess like two things. Aside from pet parents, what surprised you most about who showed up at Dad Esquire? [00:19:07] Matthew Korn: it's a pretty diverse group. So like, a, a few like things that have surprised me is one, law school. I, I didn't know any parents in law school. [00:19:16] Matthew Korn: I didn't know how common it really is, and there are a lot of parents that go to law school. [00:19:21] Matthew Korn: We have, you know, everything from private practice to nonprofit to government to, Plaintiffs' lawyers, criminal prosecutors, defense attorneys. We have a few judges even. [00:19:30] Matthew Korn: all different types of lawyers. And then one of my favorite groups is the former recover-- they call themselves recovering lawyers usually. [00:19:36] Matthew Korn: I love that group 'cause I love, I love perspective. I want guys that we all share two things. We've either-- we're either working on or have achieved a JD or an in-international equivalent. we're all dads, uh, or expectant dad. I let expectant dads in primarily 'cause they need the help. [00:19:51] Matthew Korn: it-- you can't be prepared, but it's more prepared or feel more prepared. I have a birth announcement section, which is my favorite thing. They post pictures when their babies are born. but the perspective of having, people that were lawyers and now aren't, 'cause I'm sure there's people that are lawyers in the community that won't always have that, you know, traditional lawyer job. [00:20:09] Matthew Korn: and then we have the perspective of people with, you know, newborns through, um, we have some lawyer granddads. seeing that has been really cool. And then we have an international component. I would say 95% plus is the US. We're [00:20:22] Matthew Korn: in 45 states. There's still some like North and South Dakota I've not been able to crack yet, but I will, I will get there. [00:20:28] Matthew Korn: And so the cool things that have come out of that is we did a virtual summit in January, a two-day summit with speakers, and one of our speakers was a guy named Jorge Barona, who's incredible, and he's a law dad in Colombia. [00:20:39] Matthew Korn: I'm in Columbia, South Carolina. He's in Colombia in South America. [00:20:43] Matthew Korn: he is incredible, and he talks to me about like, "Hey, you know, like where I live, we're still like 20 years behind where the US is on dad stuff. Like people are looking at me like, 'Why do you wanna spend time with your kids?' [00:20:55] Matthew Korn: Or, 'Why do you wanna [00:20:56] Matthew Korn: not focus entirely on work?'" And so it was cool to have his perspective. And then the last thing I'll say is just that I had Two guys joined in Singapore. um, when the second one joined, I was like, "Wow, that's cool." Like, we've got two guys. So I connected the two of them and I was like, "You guys should meet up." [00:21:12] Matthew Korn: And then like a week later, they're meeting up for coffee in Singapore. [00:21:15] Matthew Korn: I'm like, man, something I created, like on my couch in Lexington, South Carolina, just made it halfway around the globe to Singapore and connected two people. That is a pretty cool experience for [00:21:25] Adam Fishman: Man, [00:21:26] Matthew Korn: [00:21:26] Adam Fishman: that's-- There's times like that when I'm like, "God, the internet is an amazing, amazing resource." And then o- other times where I'm like, "This is the worst thing ever invented." But I love stories [00:21:34] Adam Fishman: like that. What are some of the most memorable conversations that are happening on, on Dead Esquire? [00:21:39] Adam Fishman: Either, either like topical or like if there's one in particular that sticks out to you where you're like, "Damn, that was a, that was a really big one." [00:21:46] Matthew Korn: There's been a couple things. I didn't know how open guys would be. I try to lead. I'm an open book. I'll talk about anything. So I try to lead by being open to, to encourage other guys to be open. Um, I remember the first, we call it a monthly bar gathering now. We have a monthly bar gathering where we introduce ourselves, but I'm like, "Guys, this is not like, 'Hey, I'm Matt, I'm an employment lawyer and I'm in South Carolina. [00:22:06] Matthew Korn: I got four kids.' I want, I want a story. I wanna hear about your life." and I had guys opening up about their kids who have special needs. we have a good number of members who have kids who have autism or, um, other special needs, and they were opening up about that. And then in our chat, we have a... [00:22:21] Matthew Korn: It's called Dad Chat. I, I cleverly named it Pardon The Interruption, which I thought was hilarious 'cause we all get these PTI emails every day. And, um, then guys were like, "Where do we go to chat?" And I was like, "Oh, it's obviously it's Pardon The Interruption in the water cooler. Like, how did you not get that?" [00:22:36] Matthew Korn: And so I realized I had to make it very clear. Like, it's called Dad Chat now. And so in the Dad Chat, I had a guy that said, you know, "My wife just had a miscarriage," you know. "Has anybody else been through this?" And like three guys jump in and say, "Man, like we've been there. If you wanna talk about it, let me know." [00:22:51] Matthew Korn: you know, another guy posted, uh, "My child was sleeping through the night, and then started having teeth regression," teething and [00:22:59] Matthew Korn: going through regression. He goes, "And I'm, I'm exhausted." He's like, "And so I'm like feeling like I'm not doing my best legal work. [00:23:05] Matthew Korn: I'm feeling bad about that. I'm also feeling some resentment towards my wife, towards my baby." Like those kind of conversations, that's... I mean, like we're gonna talk, we're gonna talk trash about football. You see, I'm a proud member of the Bills Mafia, and one, one of the guys on my advisory board is a Chiefs fan, and he, he has told me I have to cool it with how much I talk about the Bills. [00:23:25] Matthew Korn: We have those chats too. We're guys, we're dads. We, we have all sorts of chats. But like what surprises me and what, what just like lights a fire under me is like the guys that are willing to come out and say like, "Hey, this is what I'm struggling with. Guys aren't great at that part. [00:23:40] Matthew Korn: They're really good at giving each other advice. Like they're usually when somebody says, "Does anybody have any advice?" There's plenty of people that say like, "Here's what you should, here's what you should do." [00:23:49] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Yeah. Um, I wanted to come back to what... First of all, that's sounds amazing. it is exactly the type of thing that I'm trying to accomplish with, with Startup Dad too, is just getting people talking about this stuff and the good and the bad, the, the, you know, the joy and the, like, heart- heartache. [00:24:10] Adam Fishman: And, uh, so I'm glad that this exists for the legal community too, w- which is, you know, as, as, as we all know, has been written about ad nauseam, being a lawyer is one of the most like, uh, anxiety-inducing jobs, like, least satisfying careers, but people still do it. So, I wanted to come back to the topic of isolation, and I wanted to ask you specifically, [00:24:31] Adam Fishman: Ob- obviously before, um, starting Dad Esquire, which has been probably helpful in, in reducing some of that isolation, like where did you feel particularly isolated at the intersection of like dad and, and career? [00:24:44] Matthew Korn: we moved to Columbia, South Carolina from Washington, DC, where I was in law school and had a good network of friends. we didn't know anyone in Columbia. We went to so many movies. My wife and I like movies a lot. So I remember like three months in, we'd gotten our third free movie pass at AMC, which meant we'd spent $300 going to see movies. [00:25:03] Matthew Korn: And I was like, I was like, "I feel like we're going to too many movies." [00:25:07] Matthew Korn: Um, but we didn't know anyone. I felt isolated even before kids. once we started having kids, it's that, how do I make time to build stronger relationships? we've found our community, and part of the inspiration for how I run Dad Esque, we, we personally found it at church. [00:25:23] Matthew Korn: We found it as in small groups at our church. we joined our first small group, had no idea what that was gonna be like, but we made some really good friends, people that were open. And that's how, to me, that's how you build a relationship, is you're open about what's, you know, you're, you go beyond the football, what do you do for work? [00:25:40] Matthew Korn: the questions that are easy. You get into stuff that matters. for the last 10 years, we've led small groups for married couples with kids. And so that's like really for me why it's so important and what the environment I'm trying to create inside our community is not just one where, I want it to be a Networking place. [00:25:56] Matthew Korn: I want lawyers to trade work and refer work to each other. I want them to build strong relationships, but I really want them to have a place that's safe to share, um, when they have something come up. that's truly what I've been trying to create. So The reason it's Dad Esque is, is really because I've got a lot of good guy friends from that group, like, and we go to breakfast regularly at a diner. We go on Sunday mornings at 6:00 AM 'cause that's the only time dads of young kids can do it regularly. And so we, that's when we go. But like, they're engineers, they're, one's an HVAC tech, one's, one, one's an accountant, right? [00:26:28] Matthew Korn: Like they're, they're different roles, and we can talk about dad stuff all day, and they're great at giving me dad advice. They won't ever fundamentally understand what I do for work or the pressures that I have at work, and that's what I think makes Dad Esque special, is the guys that join it can connect not just on the dad part, but also on the work part. [00:26:46] Matthew Korn: And that's really why it's Dad Esque and not just like dad community, [00:26:50] Matthew Korn: I think those two points of commonality. We all still have different things. There's guys that like enjoy woodworking. There's guys that have connected on that in our community. [00:26:58] Matthew Korn: Um, but those two points are important to me. [00:27:00] Adam Fishman: I wanna talk a little bit about your own family and, and the family that you built. Um, so you have, three biological sons and then you have an adopted daughter. So your youngest is adopted, she's three. you wrote, a big couple part post on this that we'll link to in the show notes. but take me through that decision how you and Hailey decided to adopt, you know, after having three kids, why, why did you need a fourth? [00:27:23] Adam Fishman: Um, and, uh, and then we'll talk a little bit about like the process of it and some of the, some of the details 'cause I probably have had someone on the show who's adopted before, but I've never had that as a topic of discussion and so I'd really like to get into it. So let's just start like why the decision to adopt, a fourth kid? [00:27:39] Matthew Korn: It's such an amazing story. but we had three biological boys, at the time we were adopted, they were two, five, and eight. [00:27:45] Matthew Korn: my wife had three C-sections. our first was-- I l- I can't, I would never, never undermine her by saying it was an easy pregnancy. It was, it was a uncomplicated pregnancy. The second one, um, our second son ended up in the NICU. He had a spontaneous pneumothorax, which is a hole in his lung. [00:28:03] Matthew Korn: and he had to be transported overnight in a ambulance at 3:30 in the morning to the hospital to a higher level NICU. It was terrifying. He got a needle aspiration in his chest, like terrifying moment. my wife was also physically sick for the first 20 weeks of his pregnancy, and so that was tough. [00:28:19] Matthew Korn: And then our third son, she more pregnancy complications. It was just a tough pregnancy. he also ended up in low, lower level NICU for a few days with fluid on his lungs. So, you know, after you've had three C-sections, they start telling you things like, "You know, we're gonna, we're, we're not gonna let you go past 37, 36, 37 weeks next time." [00:28:37] Matthew Korn: And,we, we sat down at some point when our third son was probably one and a half-ish she said, "I kinda wanna have another kid. I don't feel like our family's complete yet." I was always one to three, by the way. She was three to five. [00:28:49] Matthew Korn: She's not a lawyer, but she's a better negotiator than I am, so she, she [00:28:53] Matthew Korn: And I said, "Well, I've, I have always had adoption on my heart even before we had bio kids." and so I said, "Well, we could, you know, start talking about adoption." [00:29:01] Matthew Korn: There's a lot, and you know, we don't have time to get into all the different concerns, fears, anxieties around adoption, but we had all of them. and so there's a lot to consider when you're deciding to adopt, whether you have bio kids or not. it's a scary process. And so we, um, started talking to a lawyer and, and decided that it was, um, the right thing for us and for our family to do. We did not adopt to get a girl, but once we decided to adopt, I was like, "We got three boys." I want-- I actually think I wanted the girl more than... Now my wife now loves having a daughter. [00:29:32] Matthew Korn: But she was like, "I'm a mom of boys. [00:29:34] Matthew Korn: That's what I am." Like, I, I... And I was like, "No, I need, I need daddy-daughter dances. I [00:29:39] Matthew Korn: walk my daughter down the aisle. Like, I need all those things." [00:29:41] Matthew Korn: So [00:29:44] Adam Fishman: and, you know, like outdoor peeing in our family already. So we need [00:29:47] Matthew Korn: Yeah. [00:29:48] Adam Fishman: here," so. [00:29:49] Matthew Korn: our daughter outdoor [00:29:49] Matthew Korn: She, she watches her big brothers, and that's what she was doing the other day near our pool in the woods. [00:29:54] Adam Fishman: awesome. That's awesome. I mean, the other thing about this too is, by the way, if you had had a fourth biological kid, the odds of that kid being a boy were pretty high. That's typically [00:30:04] Matthew Korn: yeah. [00:30:05] Matthew Korn: We did all the testing and with our third when we got the results, we just started laughing 'cause we were like, [00:30:09] Matthew Korn: "We really even need to do the test." We [00:30:11] Matthew Korn: We [00:30:12] Adam Fishman: you knew [00:30:13] Adam Fishman: Uh, so take me, I mean, we don't have to go into the excruciating details of the process, but like take me through, you know, for somebody who's going through this process, like what were the some of the things that you're like, "Damn, I wish I'd knew about that beforehand," or, "I could have known about this beforehand and I had to find out the hard way"? [00:30:30] Adam Fishman: I guess maybe both the bureaucratic and the emotional parts of, of this. [00:30:33] Matthew Korn: Yeah. We, we went through an attorney, um, a guy named Ray Godwent up in Greenville, South Carolina, who all he does is adoptions. And, um, that, that worked so well for... There's a lot of agencies out there, but we had concerns about, like, open adoption. So the open adoption meaning birth parents know all your, all your contact information. [00:30:52] Matthew Korn: Know where you are. And we were like, "We have three bio kids to protect." Like we, you know, what if the birth mom is a drug addict or, you know, is... That all those things can absolutely happen during adoption, and we, we wanted to protect our kids. So our-- the attorney that we worked with was like, "I do what's called semi-open. [00:31:09] Matthew Korn: Like, I want you to give updates. Like, you can send a letter through me if you want, but I want some updates to go to the bio parents. you know, you don't have to give all your contact information." [00:31:17] Matthew Korn: It was a wild process. A lot of people wait a long time to adopt. Ours, when they told us we wanted to adopt a girl, um, or when we told him we wanted a girl, he said, you know, "That can take longer, obviously, um, if you're specific as to gender. You can be as specific as you want about what you want." [00:31:33] Matthew Korn: That was really the one thing we were kind of like, "We would really like a girl." but it's not 50/50, and that's, that was another thing that surprised me or I didn't think about, was a lot of birth moms don't have access to healthcare, don't have ultrasounds, don't decide to do adoption until the last minute. [00:31:48] Matthew Korn: They call it stork drop adoptions, where you're finding out the moment of that you're adopting. Our process was very short. It was four and a half months from when we started till when we were holding our baby girl. [00:31:59] Matthew Korn: initially we were introduced to a birth mom in, in Texas and, um, she was Spanish speaking, so we had to get our letter. We wrote a letter, and we had to get it translated into Spanish. Fortunately, I didn't use Google Translate. I don't speak Spanish. I, I had an attorney at my firm that was able to translate it short notice, which was awesome. [00:32:15] Matthew Korn: But she selected one of the other couples, so that was, like, our first... I was, like, 10 years down the road. I was like, "Our whole family's gonna speak Spanish. It's [00:32:22] Matthew Korn: gonna be [00:32:23] Matthew Korn: amazing." [00:32:23] Matthew Korn: And then like eight hours later, you get the call, like she picked somebody else and, and they'd said she's 11 days out. [00:32:29] Matthew Korn: And I was like, "That's not a lot of time to prepare, 11 days." So then when our daughter came, Madison, they called us at like 10:30 at night, the paralegal from the law firm, and I had turned off my do not disturb on my phone. I don't know why. I often had it on at the time after 9:00, I'd have my do not disturb on. [00:32:45] Matthew Korn: For some reason, I turned it off that day, and I got this call at 10:30 and she's like, "There's a birth mom on the way to the hospital in Kentucky. She's 40 weeks. She's got high blood pressure. She's-- They're g- not gonna let her leave the hospital until she has the baby. Can you get to Kentucky?" And I just looked at my wife. [00:33:00] Matthew Korn: She's like, "You got 30 minutes till I move on to the next couple." Looked at my wife and we were like, "Yeah, we're ready.If, if-- Assuming she wants us, we'll get in the car right now." [00:33:07] Matthew Korn: she's like, "You could probably sleep for a few hours." I was like, "Nah, nah." Like I, one, I can't sleep right now, and two, like I don't wanna miss it if, if we can get there. [00:33:14] Matthew Korn: So we drove through the middle of the night, got there at 7:30 in the morning, um, to a very small town in Kentucky. didn't remember... I looked at my wife when we got there. We sh- switched drivers every hour and we were like, "Do you remember driving?" "No, no." Well, I don't know how we made [00:33:28] Matthew Korn: safely and alive, but, about 12 hours later she was born and, very similar to my first son, the birth mom labored for eight hours and then had a C-section. [00:33:37] Matthew Korn: And, um, what was really cool about it is my wife had had three C-sections, but because I was in the room, I was never allowed to cut the cord. and Madison was the first one that the birth mom didn't wanna meet her, which is not uncommon, [00:33:49] Matthew Korn: just fear of attachment. and so they brought her directly to our room. [00:33:53] Matthew Korn: I cut her cord. My wife did skin-to-skin, like she's been our daughter from moment one. there's a lot around adoption and I'm like, I, you know, we, we have tried to maintain contact with the, the bio parents as much as we can. We are blessed to have such a great adoption story. [00:34:08] Matthew Korn: I know there's a lot of really tough adoption stories out there, which s- scares a lot of people out of process. [00:34:13] Matthew Korn: The last thing I'll say briefly is that it's super expensive. back then, this is like four years ago, it was, the average domestic adoption was between $40,000 and $60,000. [00:34:23] Matthew Korn: there are not many companies that, um, help subsidize adoption, which I'm, I'm a big advocate for that. A lot of, of, a lot of healthcare plans pay for IVF treatments now. I think more companies could and should support adoptive parents. It's not a benefit that like somebody's gonna say, "Oh man, if you're gonna give me 25 or 50 grand towards an adoption, like I wasn't going to adopt. [00:34:43] Matthew Korn: But if you're gonna give me that money, I'll do it. [00:34:45] Matthew Korn: I'll agree to 18 years of raising a child and a million dollars or whatever it costs just so I can get that benefit." It's, it's a benefit that could truly help people. [00:34:53] Matthew Korn: Um, even as a lawyer, it's, that's a lot of money to spend. [00:34:56] Matthew Korn: Um, I would, I would not trade it in a heartbeat. [00:34:58] Matthew Korn: I just, uh, I like to advocate for more support for adoption and adoptive parents. [00:35:03] Adam Fishman: And, and you, so you said it's expensive. Where does most of that money go? Is that like legal fees, paperwork, [00:35:08] Matthew Korn: Yeah, [00:35:09] Matthew Korn: most of it is the adoption agencies. The adoption agencies that place, um... There's, you know, d- depending on when you find out, it's more s- more typical to be placed about three and a half months out, and you're helping with, um, living costs and expenses for the bio mom. there's a lot of things that go into it. [00:35:26] Matthew Korn: typically the adoption agency that's, helping connect adoptive parents, prospective adoptive parents bio moms is,the largest expense. I think ours was like [00:35:36] Matthew Korn: somewhere over $15,000 [00:35:38] Adam Fishman: Wow. [00:35:39] Adam Fishman: How did Madison's arrival shift the all-boy dynamic that you had in the house? [00:35:47] Matthew Korn: she is gonna be the toughest little girl there is, 'cause she's like, she tries to like wrestle her brothers. I already mentioned, like she sees them peeing in the woods to our pool. She's like... I, I looked at her the other day, I was like, "What are you doing?" She goes, "I'm peeing." And I was like, "No, baby, girls don't... [00:36:01] Matthew Korn: Like, let's not. You're gonna make make a mess. [00:36:04] Matthew Korn: please." And so she, she's gonna be a tough little girl. Um, I also like have told my boys, one of my favorite things to talk to... I was like, "Boys, you, you know, you realize I want you to protect each other, but I really want you to protect your s- as if anybody's ever mean to your sister or hurts her, you guys gotta do what it takes to stop it." [00:36:21] Matthew Korn: And they're like, "Can we kick them in the face?" I'm like, "Yes. Yes, can. I will defend of that. [00:36:25] Adam Fishman: You're like, "I [00:36:26] Matthew Korn: the face." [00:36:27] Matthew Korn: Yeah. Yeah. it has been, um, it's been awesome and I got to do my first daddy-daughter dance this year. [00:36:34] Matthew Korn: that was such a cool experience, [00:36:36] Matthew Korn: um, for me. So that's, that is kind of like s- the stuff where I was like, "Am I going to later in life regret not having a daughter?" [00:36:43] Matthew Korn: we're super blessed and fortunate to have, have her in our family. [00:36:46] Adam Fishman: Is there something that you've learned about parenting an adopted child that's different or hasn't translated from parenting biological kids, or has that just not come up? [00:37:01] Matthew Korn: Uh, she's, she's still pretty young. Um,one thing that's interesting is coincidentally she looks just like my wife. So we get people that are like, "She looks just like you." And sometimes we just say thanks. Other times we use it as an opportunity to talk to people about adoption, 'cause I think it's a super important topic. [00:37:18] Matthew Korn: It's a good intro to be like, "Actually..." And, and we like to play a game. I-- If people that don't know our kids, I'll show them a picture of all four kids and ask which one's adopted. Zero people have ever guessed our daughter. [00:37:29] Matthew Korn: My oldest looks just like me, so it's one of our two middle boys. [00:37:32] Matthew Korn: that is a fun game. we're not gonna keep it from her. She'll al-- We, we talk about adoption around her maybe too much. Like I don't-- We've, we've thought about it recently, like, do we need to say she's adopted? Like is that, does it matter? 'Cause it's, she's, she's just as much part of our family. [00:37:46] Matthew Korn: We had that fear like our, you know, every, every adoptive parent is probably thinking, "Can I connect with and love this child the same?" What I try to explain to people is like, I had that same fear when we had our second child. Like when we had our first child, I was like, "I'm never gonna love another human being like this. [00:38:01] Matthew Korn: Um, besides maybe my wife, like I'm not gonna love another child like this." And then we had our second child and I was like, "Wow, you can love two kids the same." And so I had that same fear, and that's how adoption is. Like I love her just as much. she's even more special in some ways [00:38:16] Matthew Korn: because of how we, how she came into our family. [00:38:19] Matthew Korn: but we're, we're never gonna keep it from her. It's always gonna be part of her story. [00:38:22] Matthew Korn: we have a beautiful text message that the bio mom shared, with us that we've kept for her when she's old enough to understand. It's been really good for our boys too because they have... I posted about this once too, but they, they-- Like my oldest son came home from school one day and one of, the kids in his class had been reunited. [00:38:38] Matthew Korn: She was in foster care and been reunited with her bio parent. And he got into the car that day and was like, "Is Maddie... Maddie's ours, right? Like nobody can take her from us?" And we're like, "Oh yeah. Yeah, buddy. She's, she's fully part of our family. She's-- It's been finalized. She's always gonna be part of our family." [00:38:54] Matthew Korn: And so like he had that experience and then my second son, you know, one day... He likes counting and so he was like counting the members of our family. We had a cat at the time and he's counting and he's like, "Seven." He's like, "Oh wait, no, like six, 'cause Maddie's not really part of our family, right?" He was five or six years old. [00:39:09] Matthew Korn: that's legitimate, legitimate thing for him to think He even said, like, "She didn't grow in Mommy's belly, so she's not really part of our family." I was like, "No, buddy, she's just as much part of our family as you are." Um, so it's been awesome, I think, for our kids, um, our, our boys. Andwhen you adopt from birth, a lot of people say there's like a honeymoon phase where, you know, she doesn't really understand it yet. [00:39:30] Matthew Korn: She will someday, and there might be challenges down the road that we're, you know, we're prepared for. We'll, we'll handle those if we have to. [00:39:37] Matthew Korn: She's only known us as her parents. [00:39:39] Matthew Korn: I have a lot of faith that it's not gonna be that bumpy of a road. But yeah, but that's, when you adopt, you go in eyes wide open. [00:39:45] Matthew Korn: That's the best thing our lawyer did, is he gave us all the horror stories. He said, "These are all the terrible things that can happen. And if you, if you still are willing to do it, here's what you should do next." And, and you go in eyes wide open like that, There's still gonna be tough things, I'm sure, but w-we're prepared for [00:39:59] Adam Fishman: Have you and Haley, like, do you have a, a plan of when you're gonna really have a series of conversations with your daughter about this? Like, is that something that's come up between the two of you as parents? Or are you like, "You know, we'll, we'll, we'll know when we need to start, like, talking [00:40:16] Matthew Korn: Yeah. I mean, she hears-- She-- We talk about it openly with friends all the time, so she hears it. I'm, uh, part of me is hoping it'll just be part of her story. Like, it won't be... It'll be like it just, it won't be even unusual to her, [00:40:29] Matthew Korn: because she'll just know, that's how she became part of our family. [00:40:33] Matthew Korn: I'm sure there, I'm sure there will be times where she questions it or wants to know more about her bio. Her bio parents were amazing people. Actually, the bio dad was at the hospital, which I can't tell you how incredibly rare that and only in about a third of adoptions do you even know who the bio dad is. [00:40:48] Matthew Korn: Ours was at the hospital. and we got to meet him They were just young. Didn't, couldn't... They weren't ready, [00:40:54] Matthew Korn: weren't ready for a kid. So, like,we are in a very, very good position where we have a, a great story to share with her. If she wants to meet them someday, I hope we can arrange that for her. [00:41:02] Matthew Korn: Like, I, I feel like we're as well set up as you can be. I [00:41:05] Matthew Korn: feel very fortunate 'cause it could have gone very differently. as we go through those stages where she starts asking the same questions that my boys have asked about her, that we can answer them and say, "No, you're part of our family. [00:41:16] Matthew Korn: You, you're not going anywhere. you are fully a part of our family. Your, your bio parents loved you very much." They wanted a better life for you than they could provide. [00:41:24] Matthew Korn: And, I think about that a lot too. Like, when she was born, there was a formula shortage, it was hard. [00:41:29] Matthew Korn: I was on [00:41:30] Matthew Korn: Target. It was like buying concert tickets. I'd put the formula in my cart and it'd be sold out by the time I tried to check out. [00:41:36] Matthew Korn: but we were in a p- we were fortunately in a financial position we were able to do stuff, get her the top-of-the-line formula. She's, she's been on trips that are, that are fantastic. My, my boys go to a school that does Mandarin Chinese immersion. [00:41:48] Matthew Korn: She'll get to be part of that. Like she, she is gonna have a lot of advantages that she might not otherwise have had I am glad and so,happy for her. So I think, I think those are gonna be... They're, they're all tough. They're all gonna be tough d- discussions, but I think that we t- we talk about it a lot as a family and we're ready to have those conversations when she's kind of old enough to understand [00:42:08] Adam Fishman: Okay. Well, wow, what a journey. I'm glad it seems like it's, it's turned out really well so far, so thanks for sharing all that. and again, for folks who are, really wanna dig more into this, we're gonna share those links in the, in the show notes, so please, please take a look. Um, okay, so I wanna come back to a thing that I mentioned a long time ago, which is related to career change or job, job change, 'cause you're in the same career. [00:42:31] Adam Fishman: you left your original firm, you went and did something else for a while. You came back to that firm under sort of different terms, or you kind of gave them, I don't wanna say an ultimatum, but you, like, changed your practice area. You, you worked to make it more sustainable for you to be a lawyer dad. [00:42:48] Adam Fishman: and then pretty recently, like what, in the last month or two? [00:42:50] Adam Fishman: Three... Wow, three weeks, not even a month. Dang. Uh, you decided to leave for another thing after you'd kind of set up what sounded, what sounds like on paper as your, like, ideal, you know, negotiated balance. what drove that, that, uh, that decision? [00:43:08] Matthew Korn: All that's correct. I, I was, I was at the same firm for almost 15 years. Absent like a year and a half, I went in-house. That was right after the, my wife saying she felt like a single mom. I went in-house to try to get some more balance, and it, it was a really good reset for me. I came back, I changed... [00:43:23] Matthew Korn: I now do wage and hour litigation. I do RIF, reduction of force counseling. Health and safety is a tough practice for a parent because if somebody gets hurt or MSHA or OSHA shows up on a site, you're in the car, you're on a plane getting [00:43:38] Matthew Korn: And so it is a tough... You travel a lot. And I still travel for work, but my travel tends to be more predictable or I've, I've got, you know, a court sets a hearing that's not a telephonic or Zoom hearing at this point, and, uh, I know about it a month in, a month in advance, so it allows my wife to help to prepare better for me being away. [00:43:57] Matthew Korn: so I did all that, was at Fisher Phillips. I really like the firm. I like the people. It was nothing, nothing bad about the firm. I, I was approached with by Pearson Ferdinand. It's a, it's a newer firm. It's about two and a half years old. some partners broke off from another firm. It's fully virtual. [00:44:11] Matthew Korn: It's a very different law firm model from, um, any traditional law firm. And I, I was excited about a lot of aspects of it. One is that it's fully virtual, and so I get to work from home every day. and for me, what that means, like I, I do well working from home. I'm in my home office right now. [00:44:26] Matthew Korn: You can see my albums behind me. And to, I like to be home, like when my kids get home from school, I can spend five or 10 minutes with them and see how their day wa- give them a hug when they walk in the door, see how their day was. Like that is, to me, really important time, My eight-year-old, Joshua, I had to explain to him, that, you know, the other day he came home and he wanted me to go play with him outside. [00:44:47] Matthew Korn: He wanted to go throw a football around, and I was like, "Buddy, I gotta, I gotta work." And he's like, "Well, I thought you said when you got this new job, when we got home from school, you could just play." And I was like, "You heard about half of what I said. I said I wanted to g- I wanted to give you a hug and see how your day was, um, but then I got work for a few more hours before dinner." [00:45:04] Matthew Korn: Um, but that too, like I found myself staying in the office. Again, some of it self-inflicted, but staying in the office, getting home too late, missing dinner. Being home for dinner, being at the table with my kids for dinner is super important to me. My dad was, he was a traveling salesperson, um, so he was able to make his own schedule, and he was home most nights for dinner, and that to me is something I remember and I want my kids to remember about me. [00:45:26] Matthew Korn: Um, that despite Dad being a really hard worker, being, being a lawyer, being, anxious and stressed about work all the time, he was home, he was there. so that, that virtual aspect really appeals to me. from a business perspective, um, this new, Pearson Ferdinand is a full-service law firm, so Fisher Phillips was just labor and employment. [00:45:44] Matthew Korn: I can now offer my clients more services so that, that was attractive to me. I like the low overhead model. I feel more autonomous, um, where I basically have kind of my own law firm with shared support services, with partners who are really excellent lawyers. But when I interviewed for the job, Joel Ferdinand was talking to me and he said, "I hire really good people who also happen to be really excellent lawyers, but that me- order matters [00:46:09] Matthew Korn: order matters to me I want really good people at this law firm." And that to me is, is super important. And when you see the people at the top of the firm living that out, that is super important to me. So for a variety of reasons, it made, it just made a lot of sense. There was no, um, there's no billable hour expectation. [00:46:28] Matthew Korn: There's a, [00:46:29] Matthew Korn: you know, you bill what works for you [00:46:30] Matthew Korn: I, I did find myself a lot of you know, on a Saturday morning saying, "I gotta bill four or five more hours." Not, not because my client really needs this on Monday, not because it's gotta get done for a deadline, but because I need to catch up some. [00:46:43] Matthew Korn: I'm, I'm a little behind on my hours, and I, like that, the practice of law is already so stressful.I mean, for 15 years I did it. I, I didn't wanna live that way anymore. So for a lot of reasons, it made a, it made a lot of sense. I still have a lot of friends at Fisher Phillips, great firm. [00:46:59] Matthew Korn: but I'm excited, about the new firm. I'm excited, you know, I've got 300 new partners to meet. I'm a, what I call an extreme extrovert, so I'm, I love meeting new people and excited to meet everybody at the new firm. I've been here three weeks, so I've met like or 25 of them so far, but I got [00:47:13] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Wow. Okay. All right. Well, I wanna talk a little bit about intentionality and presence. That's another big topic for you, and this is gonna take us into the story that you posted on LinkedIn this week, but we'll get to that in a second. so I wanna dig into this topic. and there's a thing that you called out to me, which is specifically presence beyond physical presence. [00:47:39] Adam Fishman: So can you help unpack that for me? Like, what, what does [00:47:41] Matthew Korn: Yeah. [00:47:41] Adam Fishman: for you? [00:47:42] Matthew Korn: Yeah. I mean, and again, I wanted to start by saying I haven't figured this out. [00:47:46] Matthew Korn: in the community, you know, I do daily polls, I do these things called Dad Advice Quick Hits. They're like three to five-minute reads. Um, takes an article and turns it into a three to five-minute read for busy, busy guys. [00:47:58] Matthew Korn: often when I comment it's like, "Man, I need to work on this." So like, I'm not the expert, I'm not the guy that's figured it all out. I'm, I'm in there in the trenches with everybody else. For me, what this means is like you can be there but not really be there. And, and like, so I can be around my kids, I can, I can be home or I can be at the dinner table or I can be watching their soccer match, but I can be thinking about something completely different. [00:48:23] Matthew Korn: And the, the one really specific example for me, that I think of a lot is like my son, my oldest son is 11 and he likes to tell me these really long, long stories about like something that just matter-- like Minecraft, and I'm like, "I don't even know anything about Minecraft." But he goes on for like eight minutes about Minecraft and like two minutes in, my mind is wandering to my to-do list and things I have to do. [00:48:48] Matthew Korn: And then he's saying something and he can tell, like he can tell that I'm not, I'm checked out, like I'm not listening to him and he can tell or like I won't-- or he'll ask me something and I'll be like, "Buddy, can you just..." So I have to, uh, regularly, this is the most humbling thing a parent has to do is apologize to your kid. [00:49:03] Matthew Korn: If you haven't, if you're a parent and you haven't apologized to your kid, try it. Try it sometime. Um, I think it's good modeling, but it's super humbling [00:49:11] Matthew Korn: to honestly apologize to your kid and say, "Look, like you know what, buddy? I was zoned out. I'm so sorry. Like, can you, can you start over? I, I, I am genuinely interested." [00:49:21] Matthew Korn: Even if I'm not, I am genuinely interested in what you're telling me. but my mind goes and that's, that's the presence, I think that's the presence that I strive for. It doesn't, I mean, it doesn't mean I'm especially good at it, but it's something that I, I try to be intentional about. The power of community is every day I'm in the Dad S community and hearing guys talk about it or seeing examples. [00:49:41] Matthew Korn: If once a day you're thinking, "I need to be a little bit more intentional with my kids," it's small s- small steps towards that. [00:49:47] Adam Fishman: Yeah. I imagine too presence looks different. You've got four kids with eight years of age spread, right? So presence with your three-year-old daughter looks a lot different than the Minecrafts listening to and being engaged in the Minecraft story that your 11-year-old's telling you about. So like how does it translate for... [00:50:05] Adam Fishman: I mean, let's take those barbell examples. Like how does presence translate with your, with your three-year-old? [00:50:10] Matthew Korn: Yeah. So for her, it's like getting on the floor and playing with her dollhouse and, you know, and just, just being there. It's more, probably more physical presence with a younger child 'cause they [00:50:21] Matthew Korn: don't... It's, it's not as much like we're having a conversation most of the time. one thing I would say about being a parent of multiple kids that I think is super important, and again, not something I've mastered but want to be better at, is spending one-on-one time with each kid. [00:50:35] Matthew Korn: And it's super, super important 'cause I, I can tell, um, and my wife can... She's even, she's way more perceptive about the kids' emotions than I am, but we can tell like when, when the kids need that one-on-one time with one of us. and so I try to, like last weekend I took my oldest to see Mandalorian. I'm not [00:50:53] Matthew Korn: not a huge Star Wars fan. [00:50:55] Matthew Korn: I don't dislike it, but I'm not like diehard. It was awesome to go for a couple hours with just him. He loved spending that few hours, just him. They get excited about that. So finding those moments where I can do something, I'll take my daughter to go get ice cream or, you know, my eight-year-old, I took him to the zoo, just me and him, and like that makes them feel special, and allows them to connect in a different way than if they're, you know, I don't wanna say competing for attention, but when you got four kids, in a way, they're kind of competing for attention all the [00:51:25] Adam Fishman: Yeah. It's only two adults in the house, so yeah. I want to talk about the story that you wrote on LinkedIn because it's sort of an example... In this moment, you weren't failing at this, but it called back to something that you w- that you have failed at in the past. tell me about this story of you with your f- it was your five-year-old, right? [00:51:44] Adam Fishman: Your third, was it your third child? Uh, in the shower and you were like talking to him and it kind of brought, he sort of brought up something that, that kind of stung I think a little bit. [00:51:56] Matthew Korn: Yeah. So I was, I was helping Caleb in the sh- in the shower. I'm, I'm very excited, by the way, for all of my kids to be able to shower independently [00:52:04] Matthew Korn: That's, that's one of the things [00:52:06] Adam Fishman: It's a major, it's a major win in the household when that [00:52:09] Matthew Korn: Okay. I got-- We got two that are there and then two that still need help. [00:52:12] Matthew Korn: So I'm helping him in the shower, and I, I just, you know, he was on the other side, and I was like, "You need to... [00:52:17] Matthew Korn: Caleb, come over here so I can wash up your hair." And he wasn't listening. And I, asked him like three times, and I started getting frustrated. I, I have a tendency to get frustrated. and suddenly he just looks at me and he goes, "That's how I feel when you're on your phone, Dad." And I just like paused and I was like, "What do you, what do you mean?" [00:52:34] Matthew Korn: And he's like, "Well, you know, you're always on your phone. And when I'm trying to tell you something, you're not listening." And I said, "Well, I'm sorry, buddy, like You're right. I shouldn't do that. I should give you more of my attention. I should listen to you." And then he says, he just twists this dagger in my heart and he's like, "What's so important on your phone that you can't listen to me?" Man." [00:52:52] Matthew Korn: that was, that was tough. And it, it's not, truthfully, it's not the first time, right? [00:52:56] Matthew Korn: my eight-year-old mimicked me by holding up a pretend phone and [00:53:00] Matthew Korn: down at his phone and saying, "Look, I'm Dad." Like, [00:53:02] Matthew Korn: my kids see it. and I said, "You know, buddy, I'm, I'm doing work, but you're right. [00:53:07] Matthew Korn: Like, you are really important to me." and so I wanted to reassure him. Now I got to do something, and it was this week, My wife's like, "Are you gonna actually do something with this?" [00:53:15] Matthew Korn: And, um, I do. I need to... I bought one of those lockboxes for my phone, like a couple months ago. [00:53:22] Matthew Korn: Truthfully, I've used it once or twice. I need to get better about that. Like I, I say it a lot. I say like, "You know, there's nothing that can't wait a couple hours." Um, and, you know, I can put my phone away for a couple hours. I just need to be better about doing it. And so it, it was a good reminder for me and, you know, a reminder I need to do something. [00:53:40] Matthew Korn: You know, I've been, I've been saying I gotta, I gotta get Caleb out one-on-one. If he's feeling that way, there's something, there's something there. And at five for him to like feel... Blew me away that he feel like, he felt-- He didn't even like, he wasn't judging. He was just like matter-of-factly saying to me [00:53:55] Matthew Korn: This is how you make me feel." [00:53:56] Matthew Korn: And I'm, I was like, man, this kid, I, I, I'm, I'm either raising a bunch of lawyers or they're gonna... I don't know what they're gonna do, CEOs or... One of my kids wants to be a clown and one wants to be a artist. So,I, I don't know where they're going. But, [00:54:09] Matthew Korn: anyways, it was a wake-up call for me. [00:54:13] Matthew Korn: Um, but now I need to implement [00:54:14] Matthew Korn: and I need to do something about it. [00:54:16] Adam Fishman: Couple other things I wanna, I wanna cover. one is I wanna talk about AI, I'm very curious about how you think about this as a lawyer, but, you know, that's, that's for a different podcast, I think. I really wanna talk about it as a segue into your take on screen time and your older kids starting to use AI in school and, like, stuff like that. [00:54:43] Adam Fishman: And first tell me what the most, you know, creative thing that you've done with AI as a dad is. [00:54:51] Matthew Korn: I don't know, maybe six months ago, my oldest son's 11, um, he probably just turned 11, and we were using ChatGPT had like a, has like a voice, you know, like you can have a conversation with [00:55:02] Matthew Korn: And I was showing him how it worked. I want him to understand technology and to be able to use this. [00:55:08] Matthew Korn: So I was showing him how it worked, and we were just chatting with it, I was telling, telling Chat about, like, about him and, and finally I was like, "Hey, Chat, write a poem about MJ." Um, and it wrote this awesome poem about how he loves math and he plays piano and, I think it like opened up his eyes like that, his interactions had been through like Alexa. [00:55:28] Matthew Korn: My kids love going to like Alexa when I don't know the answer to something. my eight-year-old, despite this Bills thing behind me, my eight-year-old's a [00:55:35] Matthew Korn: so he'll go ask, [00:55:36] Matthew Korn: Alexa, like, hey Alexas, are the Bills, Bills or Packers better? [00:55:40] Matthew Korn: how many Super Bowls have the Packers [00:55:43] Matthew Korn: So they use it for like information gathering. But I think, like my son, I wanted to expose him to, like you can use it for creative endeavor too. that was just a cool moment, there's probably people listening that are like, "That's a pretty basic use case." [00:55:56] Matthew Korn: But for me it was like opening his eyes to like, this thing interacts with you. It's not just giving you information, it's listening and thinking and interacting. [00:56:02] Adam Fishman: So your son's already started using AI with school. Um, this is a, a bit of a third rail for a lot of schools right now. They're trying to figure this out. You told me in our prep that, you know, you think your, your kids are gonna surpass you. Like many things with technology and kids, they're better at it way earlier than we are, and we may never be as good as them. [00:56:25] Adam Fishman: So you think that's happening with your, with your kids. But how do you think about AI as a dad for your kids? And then I guess also as a lawyer too, I'd love to hear your perspective on this in the legal world. [00:56:37] Matthew Korn: Um, so yeah, he came home the other day and he showed me, um, a storyboard he had done of like a pig king and his army of pig minions, and he's like a pig king in like a suit. And I was like, "How'd you make that?" He's like, "Oh, I just used, you know, Gemini and I created this image." AndAnd it's on his school iPad and they, then they're creating a story to go along with their images and and [00:56:58] Matthew Korn: I was like, "That's, that's really cool. I wish the school would like told me, 'Hey, we're using AI with your kids,' but that's fine." The way I view it is like they're gonna need these skills. I, I personally think, People that learn how to leverage AI are going to be the ones that are most successful in the future. [00:57:13] Matthew Korn: we've had two, two events in our Dad S community. One last fall that was kind of a back to school event about protecting your kids [00:57:21] Matthew Korn: online, which was awesome. My friend Hunter McMahon, led that discussion and he even had, as a lawyer, he had a contract for his kids and the number one item on there was, "This phone belongs to mom and dad. It is not your phone, so we take it at any, any time we want." Um, yeah, I shared, shared the contract in the community because or the contract because I was like, "This is perfect for lawyer dads." Um, but he, you know, he talked to us about like protecting and monitoring our kids online, which is super important. [00:57:48] Matthew Korn: And then more recently we had another, presenter and she came and talked to us about, how to teach our kids to use AI and like these different, different ways we use AI. Are we using it for information gathering? Are we using it to think? And there are certain areas where it's okay to use AI, like to, to get information we want to verify that is correct and we've had to have, you know, the LLM ends at this date, so it's not gonna know like, you know, what happened yesterday. [00:58:13] Matthew Korn: and so we've had discussions like that with them.but also just like, you know, how to, how to make sure they're still thinking and not just outsourcing their thought to AI. I use AI every day. I use it-- I, I post a lot on LinkedIn. I write every post, but I use Claude to as my editor. So I go into Claude and I'm like, "Hey, Claude, I've, I've, loaded all my past posts with performance" and said, "Here's, here's what works well for me. [00:58:38] Matthew Korn: Here's what hasn't worked well." Claude figures that out and then helps me like, "Hey, you wrote this post and it's really good, but here's some things you could do to tighten it up." I don't do that because I care about, I care about the impressions, the followers, whatever. I c- I do it because I want people to know about the community, so the more people that see it, the better. [00:58:53] Matthew Korn: I, I use it for that. I'm not outsourcing my thought pro- all the ideas are mine. I don't ask Claude like, "What should I post about [00:58:59] Matthew Korn: Can you write a post for me?" I'm, I'm just typing my stream of consciousness in and having it help me [00:59:04] Matthew Korn: format. Um, I've gotten to a point where sometimes it like, it's like, "This post is good. [00:59:08] Matthew Korn: Post it." And I'm like, uh, am I thinking more like Claude or I'm getting better as a writer? Like, what is happening here?but I want my kids to like, to know where there are times where like, hey, we can't just outsource our thought [00:59:21] Matthew Korn: This It's a new world for everybody. And so, like in the legal profession, you've seen in the news, I'm sure, um, big law firms, big, big law firms where people are submitting briefs with cases that don't exist 'cause they're relying, they're over-relying on AI. [00:59:36] Matthew Korn: They're not reading the cases. I think it's important, especially as a young attorney, to read the cases, to, you know, as a associate attorney, I would read the cases and sometimes it would spark some kind of idea in me that I wouldn't have had if I hadn't read the case. It might not have been directly on point with what I was trying to find, but it helped, helped me refine what I was looking for. [00:59:56] Matthew Korn: AI tools are really good at making us more efficient. Um, we just have to be mindful, like that we're still using our brains and, and, and looking at it and saying, "Does this make sense? Is this a hallucination? Can I go find this case?" and that's where I want my kids to get too. I, I'm not in the camp of like, kids shouldn't be allowed to use AI in school just because I, I think they should still learn how to do things. [01:00:19] Matthew Korn: I'm a, I'm a big proponent of learning how to do math without a calculator. I remember tutoring kids. I'm, I love math. I'm a weird lawyer. I love math. I remember tutoring kids in high school in math, and they would, they would do their math problem on their calculator, and I'd be doing it in my head. [01:00:34] Matthew Korn: And then, and they'd tell me the answer, and I was like, "No, that's wrong." And they're like, "No, it's right. The calculator told me it's right." I'm like, "Well, the calculator's not wrong, so maybe the input was wrong. Let's go back and look at that." [01:00:43] Matthew Korn: I'm a big proponent of that. I want my kids to learn how to think, learn how to write, but also learn how to leverage technology. [01:00:49] Matthew Korn: Like it's not an either/or for me. And so it's, it's, it's gotta be both/and, and they, they can learn how to write. They, they have journals and they write in them, but then like maybe we take the journal and put it into Claude and see like, how does it improve you? And it helps make you better, [01:01:02] Adam Fishman: I love that approach. That's probably the most-- one of the more detailed approaches we've had discussed on this podcast, so thank you for sharing that. all right, I wanna come back in our, in our, our waning moments here. Uh, there's a couple things that I wanna revisit. One is I wanna talk about the current state of the law as it relates to, to parenthood. [01:01:25] Adam Fishman: and I wanna bring it all the way back to the thing that you said about like the, you know, how did you manage the career and all those kids, and you were just like, "Well, I just sleep less than everyone else." so [01:01:35] Adam Fishman: that's not as true as it once was. Do you think that's still true of a lot of lawyers? [01:01:40] Adam Fishman: Like, do you hear this in the Dad Esquire community? [01:01:42] Matthew Korn: Yeah, absolutely. And I, and, and I think, I think law firms are getting better. Big law firms have done a lot more with parental leave, making it more balanced, giving dads more time off, um, which by the way helps lawyer moms too. We talk about this a lot in the [01:01:56] Matthew Korn: community, like when a parent has to leave for a PTA conference or their kid's sick and they're, you know, dismissed early from school, that shouldn't be a mom only thing. [01:02:04] Matthew Korn: and it helps women in the workplace to know that like dads have to do that stuff too, so it's, it's a parent thing. Um, that's what parents do. And so, you know, I think big firms have moved and have better parental leave, but we had a discussion about parental leave in the community of just, you know, what firms and other companies were offering and, you know, some guys were like, "My firm offers like two weeks of, parental leave." [01:02:25] Matthew Korn: There's this guy, Elliot Ray in the UK, whose parental leave is his big thing, and he's like, "The UK is way behind all these other European countries. We only have, we only have X number of weeks." And I'm like, "Dude, Elliot, we don't have any. Our government doesn't provide any." [01:02:37] Matthew Korn: Some states do, but no federal leave for parents. So, you know, uh, there's unpaid, but there's not paid parental leave. And so, you know, there are still a ton of law firms out there that, you know, the mentality is you're a guy, you're not the one having the baby. Like, why would you need more than a week or two at home? [01:02:54] Matthew Korn: maybe they wanna connect with their new baby, or maybe they wanna support their partner while they're, recovering from pregnancy. You know, there's, there are a lot of reasons why guys would wanna stay home, for longer than a week or two. And so, you know, I think we still have a lot of room to move. [01:03:09] Matthew Korn: What I've been encouraged by is 700 guys joining the community. There's 700 guys that are sayingThe practice of law is very important to me. It's how I support my family. I love being a lawyer. I wanna be a good lawyer. I wanna serve my clients really well. We have ethical obligations to our clients, and we wanna serve them well. [01:03:25] Matthew Korn: But I put my family first, and that, to see so many guys with that mentality has been super encouraging. And I, you know, not to say that every dad who was, you know, raising kids 30 years ago wasn't thinking that way, because I think there were a lot of dads, you know, a generation ago who were, who were very present, who were putting their family first. [01:03:47] Matthew Korn: but I think the mentality has shifted, and, and I look at it as like, how do, how do dads provide? and, you know, provision goes beyond financial provision. It's, they want-- our kids want to see us. They wanna spend time with us. My wife's really good at telling me, like, "The work will always be there. Our kids won't. [01:04:04] Matthew Korn: Like, they won't always be [01:04:05] Matthew Korn: And so, like, you, you know, I think, I think there's a generational shift. I love that you've got this podcast. I love seeing more and more dad resources out there because I think there's a, just a, a shift in how we look at fatherhood. Like, the-- I use the term working dad or lawyer dad a lot. [01:04:21] Matthew Korn: 10 years ago, 20 years ago, like, people would be like, "Working dad? That's just every dad is a working dad." Like, what does that, what does that even mean? Um, and so, like, I, I just, I feel like there's a shift, um, and I'm encouraged to see how many other guys, like, agree with that and [01:04:36] Matthew Korn: are, getting excited about being part of [01:04:38] Adam Fishman: Yeah. all right, let's, let's wrap up here before lightning round. couple questions for you in closing. If you could rewind the clock to the day before MJ was born, your oldest, what would you, what would you tell yourself? Like, what, what advice would you give, Matt froma decade-plus ago? [01:04:59] Adam Fishman: And then what would you tell yourself to ignore? [01:05:00] Matthew Korn: Yeah. So I would tell myself that there's no way to be fully prepared to be a dad. I'm, I'm a lawyer and I'm somebody who likes to be prepared. I like to feel like I have control over a situation. And when you become a parent for the first time, there's no way to be prepared. People often ask us, like, "You've got four kids, which transition was the toughest?" [01:05:20] Matthew Korn: Zero to one every time. Zero to one. That is, I believe, the toughest transition is because you don't know what you're doing until you become a parent. And so for me, that's, that is the easy part of it. And what I would ignore is everybody else's advice. And so like, I, I really would. I, like, I tell guys that all the time. [01:05:40] Matthew Korn: Like, I will give you my advice, but I preface it with, "Do what you and your, your partner think is best." Like, don't worry about what your parents are telling you, what someone else is telling you. Like, you're different, your kids are different. Do what works for you. We talked about screen time.We're way more permissive with screen time than a lot of people in my community, than a lot of parents I know. [01:06:01] Matthew Korn: You know, I let my kids on their iPads when we're at a restaurant. I like to enjoy my meal. I like other people in the restaurant to [01:06:07] Matthew Korn: their meal. I, you know, so, so yes, like we will allow our kids to be on their iPad while we're waiting for food to get there. if I just tell people like, "This is the way to parent," then I feel like I'm doing them a disservice. [01:06:17] Matthew Korn: So that's what, that's what I would [01:06:18] Adam Fishman: Yeah. [01:06:19] Adam Fishman: if you were to think about, you know, I, I've obviously realized that it's hard to dispense advice, but if there's one thing that you tell or one thing that you do tell young lawyers or other guys who are in demanding professions that are on the cusp of becoming a dad, what would you, what would you tell them? [01:06:37] Matthew Korn: Get some sleep, um, before they come . That's usually what I start with. Um, no, I mean, like I, I, uh, you know, I had a conversation with a guy who was about to have his first child, and he said, "How much..." He said, "How much leave... I know we have X amount of leave. How much leave can I take, um, without getting eye rolls?" [01:06:54] Matthew Korn: And I said, "Look, take the full amount if you want it." Some guys are different, though. Some guys don't, they can't function, you know, four months off of work is gonna drive them crazy. So, some guys have to get back to work. Like, I try to tell people like, you know, do what works for you. don't worry about what other people are saying or thinking about it. [01:07:12] Matthew Korn: Just do what works for you. Your kids are super resilient. I remember the first time our son was on like a sectional, and it was like two feet off the carpeted floor, and he rolled and fell. My wife was like panicked and I was too. I was like, "Man," like, "what do we do? We are terrible parents." [01:07:27] Matthew Korn: He like bounced back. They're like Gumby's. They're like little... Not to say you should not be safe with your kids, but they're like little Gumby dolls. They're super resilient. And so like, yeah, we're gonna all make mistakes along the way. but your kids are gonna be resilient. They're gonna love you. [01:07:40] Matthew Korn: Like to me, that's the, the anxiety of like, am, am I gonna do it right? Am I gonna screw something up? There's a lot of guilt that we carry that, or at least I carry, where I'm like, "Oh man, I'm working too much, feeling guilty I'm missing stuff at home." And then when I'm home, I'm like, "Oh man, I really need to work on that brief," and I'm feeling guilt on both sides of that. [01:07:58] Matthew Korn: Just helping guys understand like you're, again, you're not alone, like other people are carrying the same kind of guilt. And it, it's gonna be okay. Like, your work is gonna be there when you get back, and your kids are gonna understand if you miss something. you can grab that bedtime story the next night if you missed it [01:08:12] Matthew Korn: tonight. [01:08:13] Matthew Korn: So- [01:08:13] Adam Fishman: Cool. Well, thank you for sharing that. How can people follow along with you or join Dad Esquire or be helpful to you, right now? [01:08:22] Matthew Korn: most of the stuff I do is on LinkedIn, so feel free to send me a connection request. My last name is just like the '90s rock band. Um, I, I was here fir- I was here first, but they have the [01:08:34] Matthew Korn: And, there's a website dadesq.com. [01:08:37] Matthew Korn: And then if you're a lawyer dad, um, like I said, it's free to join in the platform. I host the community on Mighty Networks. A lot of people think the community is my LinkedIn. There's an actual standalone community on Mighty Networks, and that's dadesq.mn, for Mighty Networks,.co [01:08:51] Adam Fishman: Cool. All right. Well, I will send people to all of those places.and now it's time for lightning round. Um, here we go. What is the most indispensable parenting product you've ever purchased? [01:09:04] Matthew Korn: Desitin. And [01:09:07] Matthew Korn: it's Desitin. I, I personally don't like it. I don't like the way it smells or [01:09:11] Matthew Korn: feels on my hands, but like we, we use Desitin every diaper [01:09:16] Matthew Korn: and it prevents diaper rash. And if you get ahead of it and stay ahead of it, it [01:09:20] Adam Fishman: Okay. Well, [01:09:21] Adam Fishman: I, also learned, speaking of Desitin, I know this is lightning round, but I need to build on this for a second. I, learned in one of my recent episodes that there is a thing called a butt spatula, which you can use to apply the diaper cream and so your [01:09:36] Adam Fishman: hands don't have to touch it. And a dad told me [01:09:39] Matthew Korn: I [01:09:39] Adam Fishman: that. was his most indispensable parenting product. So now we've found the [01:09:44] Matthew Korn: wish I'm-- [01:09:45] Adam Fishman: of these two [01:09:45] Adam Fishman: things. [01:09:46] Matthew Korn: I'm, I'm out of, I, my, my daughter's still in pull-ups overnight, but we're out [01:09:51] Matthew Korn: diaper after 11 years and sometimes [01:09:53] Adam Fishman: If only you'd known about the butt spatula.okay, what is the most useless parenting product you've ever purchased? [01:09:59] Matthew Korn: And similarly diaper pads, like those, those pillow things. I, I learned, we learned very quickly, we got them for like the baby registry and we had all these 30 or $40 covers for this pad, and we learned you change the baby where they are. Like it's the backseat of the car, it's the floor, it's the couch, it's on your lap, it's wherever you [01:10:18] Matthew Korn: in that moment. [01:10:19] Matthew Korn: And so like, I'm not gonna go up. That and the diaper trash can, I, I, we didn't ever [01:10:24] Matthew Korn: Those are the things we got and then returned from our [01:10:26] Adam Fishman: All right. [01:10:26] Adam Fishman: true or false, there's only one correct way to load the dishwasher [01:10:31] Matthew Korn: Um, true. And it's organized, and I'm the organized one. If you bring that up as a dad, by the way, then just be prepared to be the one that loads the dishwasher every time [01:10:41] Adam Fishman: Yes. Yes, I, love that. Uh, what is your least favorite parenting task? [01:10:47] Matthew Korn: I, I, I got to stay on theme, on-brand here. It's changing [01:10:50] Matthew Korn: is the worst job of being a [01:10:53] Matthew Korn: Doing bath time is, is tough too. Um, and like I said, I'm, two are done, two are almost, and so I'm, I'm ready to be out of that phase too. But changing diapers, I, I will also give my wife credit. [01:11:03] Matthew Korn: She did way more of the diaper changing than I [01:11:05] Matthew Korn: So, uh, she gets all the credit for that, but that was my least favorite [01:11:08] Adam Fishman: All right. If your kids had to describe you in one word, what would it be? [01:11:11] Matthew Korn: that's a good one. Um, if my kids had to describe me in one word, it would be... I, I have like what I want them to say, and then they, they would probably say like busy [01:11:20] Matthew Korn: it depends on which kid too. My, my eight-year-old would be the one that would make fun of me. [01:11:25] Matthew Korn: My oldest would say like loving or, you know, he'd say something [01:11:29] Matthew Korn: so it'd probably depend on which... [01:11:31] Matthew Korn: My, my daughter, like I said, would say second, second best friend after mom. So it just would depend. [01:11:37] Adam Fishman: Your daughter would just say, "Not Mom." [01:11:38] Matthew Korn: Yeah [01:11:39] Adam Fishman: what is your go-to dad wardrobe? [01:11:41] Matthew Korn: I love wearing a pair of joggers and a T-shirt. Um, you, you talk- talked about the dad ass T-shirt. I love, I love wearing joggers and a [01:11:47] Matthew Korn: So that's, that is, that's really my go-to [01:11:51] Matthew Korn: for literally [01:11:52] Matthew Korn: anything [01:11:52] Adam Fishman: this merch for sale, by the way? okay. [01:11:55] Matthew Korn: it is. Da-datass.square.site. [01:11:58] Adam Fishman: Go buy it [01:11:59] Matthew Korn: you [01:11:59] Matthew Korn: can, [01:11:59] Matthew Korn: get it, you can get a [01:12:00] Adam Fishman: All right. how many dad jokes do you tell on average each day? [01:12:05] Matthew Korn: So my kids are the joke tellers in our house. I learn, I learn them from them, and then I share them in the community. Like, my kids come home with these... And it's funny because, like, my oldest one, is awesome, and he had, like, the joke book. He's very academic about it. So, like, [01:12:19] Matthew Korn: the delivery needs some work. He'll, he'll study it and, like, perform the joke. And then, like, my five-year-old just says things that crack me up, [01:12:27] Matthew Korn: They probably tell more dad jokes than I do. They call me bruh. [01:12:30] Matthew Korn: That's the word, Bruh. That's they would use. They'd be like, "Yeah, I'm [01:12:33] Matthew Korn: bruh." Um, but like I, when I do like six-seven, they're like, "Dad, six-seven's [01:12:38] Matthew Korn: And I'm like, "Is it though? Or it's [01:12:40] Adam Fishman: I used it recently and my daughter said that that was so 2025, and I was like, "Ooh, wow." [01:12:47] Matthew Korn: Have they, have they talked about you being born in the 1900s [01:12:50] Matthew Korn: before? [01:12:51] Adam Fishman: not come up, but I have gotten like, "You're really old," [01:12:54] Adam Fishman: type thing, so. what is the most difficult kids TV show that you've had to sit through? [01:12:58] Matthew Korn: Ooh. Blippi. [01:12:59] Matthew Korn: I don't like [01:13:01] Matthew Korn: Um, I think it's I'm just jealous that the man makes like, you know, tens of millions of dollars on something that's like a Barney reboot basically. And, and then I was like, "Why?" And then I realized when my third son, Caleb, one of his first 10 words was Blippi, and he could spell it, 'cause at the end of every episode it's B-L-I-P-P-I. [01:13:18] Matthew Korn: He's brilliant. I'm jealous, but it's har- it's hard for me to sit through an episode of [01:13:22] Adam Fishman: Okay. [01:13:23] Matthew Korn: Miss Rachel seems easier to [01:13:24] Adam Fishman: Much easier. Much better, I think, too.what is your favorite kids movie? [01:13:29] Matthew Korn: Oh, there are so many. You know, what we've been doing recently is kind of introducing our kids to movies that we really liked [01:13:35] Matthew Korn: as kids. and so we watched, um, "Heavyweights" last week, and we watched "Like..." with, with Ben [01:13:42] Matthew Korn: we watched "Like Mike." Um, and so we watch, we watch these, like, movies with them that are from, like, our [01:13:49] Matthew Korn: and they're always like, "These are so..." [01:13:51] Matthew Korn: I watched "The Goonies." That was my favorite movie as a [01:13:53] Matthew Korn: kid, and I've had my boys watch it, um, with me and, and it was [01:13:57] Matthew Korn: Um, so those are, those are probably my favorites. You know, I, I'll, I'll watch anything with them though. K-pop. I'm excited about the new live-action Moana coming out, um, soon. Um,movies are a big thing for me, [01:14:08] Adam Fishman: Okay. [01:14:09] Matthew Korn: movie is fun for [01:14:10] Adam Fishman: What is, maybe you still haven't done it yet, but what is the one, like, super nostalgic movie of yours that you can't wait to force your kids to watch when they're old enough? [01:14:20] Matthew Korn: Yeah, that was probably [01:14:22] Matthew Korn: mean, I watched, I watched "Goonies" so much on like a VHS tape that I-- like it, it was like [01:14:28] Matthew Korn: crackly cause the VHS tape was getting worn out, worn out. And my buddy got me a DVD version at one point so that I could watch it. So that, that was probably it. And I was like, "I wonder if my five-year-old will be afraid." [01:14:40] Matthew Korn: Um, and he was probably four at the time. I probably should not have let him [01:14:43] Matthew Korn: this. Um, there's gonna be people... So he was-- I was like, "Were you afraid of Sloth?" He goes, "No, he just [01:14:48] Matthew Korn: different." And I was like, "Wow," like this is the same kid that did the phone thing. He's, he's like, [01:14:53] Matthew Korn: he's gonna be a or brilliant. Yeah, but he's like, "He's just different. He looks silly." And I was like, [01:14:58] Matthew Korn: "Okay." [01:14:58] Adam Fishman: right. All right. Uh, what's the worst experience you've ever had assembling a kid's toy or a piece of furniture? [01:15:06] Matthew Korn: That was this Christmas, four bicycles. all [01:15:09] Matthew Korn: four. And we got these, um, I, I think they're called Guardian bikes, I'm a lawyer because I don't know how to do things with my hands. Um, and so I like, I'm, probably, like some, some guys on here are like, "Dude, that's pretty easy." [01:15:22] Matthew Korn: But for me, it was a task, and each of the bikes was like slightly different, so I was learning different things, and that was, that was [01:15:31] Matthew Korn: That was a brutal like [01:15:34] Adam Fishman: Oh [01:15:34] Adam Fishman: man, you'll never get those six hours back. Uh, how long can a piece of food sit on the floor and you will still eat it? [01:15:41] Matthew Korn: I, I like, I'm at least five second rule. more accurately what the question is for me is like my wife and I debate, expiration or best by dates, and I'm like, "If it still smells good, it's [01:15:51] Matthew Korn: Like, I'll eat I don't worry about what the date is. Like I'll just smell it and be like, "Eh, [01:15:55] Adam Fishman: Yeah. A-plus. A-plus. answer to that question. Um, all right, final question. I'm curious about this one 'cause you've got a mountain of children. Uh, what's your take on minivans? [01:16:06] Matthew Korn: Yeah. So I actually had a LinkedIn post about this recently, and said minivans are better than SUVs, hot take.turns out it's not a hot take. The comment section was heavily weighed in favor of minivans. truthfully, we had a minivan. [01:16:19] Matthew Korn: We-- My, that was my wife's primary vehicle for a while. Um, had a lot of miles on it, and it was, it was pretty beat after four young kids [01:16:27] Matthew Korn: in it. So she recently upgraded to an SUV. So we have two SUVs now, but I miss the minivan. Like, when I park my SUV, my go-to is like, "Boys, be careful with the doors," 'cause I'm just terrified they're gonna slam that door into [01:16:39] Matthew Korn: car next to them. [01:16:40] Matthew Korn: Like, having the automatic button and your, like, three-year-old can jump in and out by themselves, like, there's nothing and the number of cup holders. Like, the, there's an absurd amount of cup holders in a, in a minivan, and like, we need more cup [01:16:53] Matthew Korn: holders [01:16:54] Adam Fishman: Well, you've sold me, uh, sold on the minivan. You know, you could always go back there at some point. [01:16:58] Matthew Korn: Matt, thank you so much for joining me [01:17:00] Adam Fishman: today on "Startup Dad." This was, this was awesome. great conversation, and I wish you [01:17:05] Adam Fishman: and your four kids and your wife Haley all the best, uh, for the rest of the year, and a great start to your Summer too, by the way. Like, uh, we're [01:17:13] Adam Fishman: about to be in the thick of it with school getting out soon, so good luck to you, sir. [01:17:17] Adam Fishman: Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Matt Corn. You can subscribe and watch the show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Visit www.startupdadpod.com to learn more and browse past episodes. Thanks for listening and see you next week