What If the Real Meeting Isn't on Zoom?
Read time: 3½ minutes
Welcome to issue #049 of Unicorn Parents. Each week, I share practical insights and reflections to help you build a profitable business without missing the magic at home. If you’re serious about winning at work while raising great kids, you’ve come to the right place. This is a community built for ambitious parents who want both.
Today, one of my boys tugged at me while I was on a Zoom call.
“Daddy, are you done yet?”
It broke my heart.
From his perspective, I’m always on a screen.
Laptop.
Phone.
Another call.
Another “just a second.”
What could possibly be more important than playtime?
No explanation will help him understand that work isn’t competition. That building something doesn’t mean choosing it over him.
To a child, presence is love.
And absence (even temporary) feels personal.
When They Tug, We Turn
Children are allowed to be unreasonable with their parents.
Whether they’re newborns, toddlers, teens, or even adult children—it is their privilege to be immature around us.
That doesn’t mean disrespect is acceptable.
But it does mean this:
We must be the emotional adults in the relationship.
We don’t get to demand maturity from someone who still borrows ours.
And if that sounds familiar, it should.
As entrepreneurs, we know what it means to be the adult in the room.
Investors expect it.
Employees expect it.
Markets demand it.
At home, it’s no different.
It’s not glamorous being the steady one.
But it’s foundational.
A thousand tiny turns:
“Yes, I see you.”
“Show me.”
“Let me look.”
….build more security than one perfectly planned Saturday.
Because what they’re really asking isn’t:
“Are you done with work?”
It’s:
“Can I trust you?”
Trust Is Built in Micro-Moments
I once heard a psychologist ask someone:
“When you were bullied, did you go to your parents?”
The answer was no.
“Why?”
“I didn’t want them to worry.”
The psychologist replied quietly:
“No. It’s because you didn’t trust them.”
That line stayed with me.
Imagine a child who doesn’t trust the two people designed to be safest.
Trust isn’t built in grand gestures and speeches.
It’s built in micro-responses.
In how we react when they interrupt.
In whether we explode.
In whether we actually listen.
In whether they feel like an inconvenience OR a priority.
We don’t get to demand trust.
We earn it by being predictably mature.
Parenting is strange like that.
We won’t be thanked for most of it.
The meals.
The pickups.
The invisible stress.
The calls we cut short.
The calls we don’t.
And yet this is the work that matters most.
The Long Game We’re Modeling
One day, if we are fortunate, the roles will invert.
We’ll be 80+.
Slower.
Confused by technology.
Needing help with things that once felt simple.
They will know more than we do.
Way more.
And who will care about us—the aging one, the “old fogey,” the one who moves too slowly—more than our own children?
Parenting isn’t a 20-year sprint.
It’s a generational relay.
Our kids are watching how we treat our parents.
Do we rush them?
Dismiss them?
Roll our eyes at the repetition or the slowness?
Or do we slow down?
Protect their dignity?
Stay patient even when it’s inconvenient?
Kids rehearse what they observe.
Conditioning is hard to unwind.
The way we treat aging parents becomes the blueprint for how aging parents are treated.
In many ways, we are modeling our own future.
Sacrificial Steadiness
There’s something I didn’t fully understand or appreciate before parenthood:
Sacrifice.
Why would any rational being willingly give up comfort, ambition, even safety for someone else?
Why choose self-loss?
And then you hold your child.
And something ancient awakens.
You would give up sleep.
Time.
Money.
Status.
Even your life.
….Without hesitation.
It doesn’t feel weak.
It feels right.
In movies, villains treat attachment as vulnerability.
Something to exploit.
But real strength isn’t self-protection.
It’s self-giving.
Children elevate us.
They force us beyond self-interest.
They teach us a higher plane of being.
As founders, we pride ourselves on independence.
But the deepest strength in us is not self-sufficiency.
It is sacrificial steadiness.
The willingness to be the mature one.
The calm one.
The steady one.
Even when it’s not fun.
Especially when it’s not fun.
The Real Meeting
“Dad, come look at my insects!”
They’re calling me again.
The Zoom can wait 90 seconds.
Because sometimes the insects are the real meeting.
Building companies matters.
But building trust matters more.
Independence is powerful.
But sacrificial steadiness is stronger.
One day, when the roles flip…
when we’re the ones slower, confused, tugging at sleeves…
we will receive exactly what we modeled.
No more, no less.
So today, we pivot.
Today, we turn toward them.
Today, we choose to be the adult in the room…
the steady one, the calm one, the one who shows up.
And that choice?
That quiet, repeated turning?
It might just be the strongest, most enduring thing we ever build.
This is exactly what I needed to hear today "Kids rehearse what they observe.....In many ways, we are modeling our own future."