Adam Kunes: We're back, baby, episode number nine.

Ben: Number nine, feeling fine.

Adam Kunes: March to a hundred.

Ben: Let's go and it's the month of March so well the end of March

Adam Kunes: I just went from 9 to 100 real quick there.

Ben: I mean, that's what it's all about. Getting your reps in, more and more of these. I know Mike McGee listens to these as as they go out. So we're making these for you,

Adam Kunes: Thanks for listening, Mike.

Ben: But I know we have some updates. I saw a picture of you. I don't know if people saw it online. But you had your first pop-up this weekend. How did that go, buddy?

Adam Kunes: It went well. I was, it was fun. It was really, it was all supposed to be fun because I wanted my, my, my kiddos to, to see the grind, you know, and I thought it would just be a fun father, son project to work on. So we went to a local brewery who was having a vendor market, took the golf cart over and set up a little dad day table and we were selling our dad hats and it was actually a lot of fun. We sold quite a few hats. I paid each kid for helping me out and it was cool. It was just fun hanging out with the kids and and talking to some folks about what we have going on at Dad Day.

Ben: I mean, that's like one of the, when you look back on companies, they always have that photo at a pop-up. So I'm glad you had your kids in the photo with you. It makes perfect sense.

Adam Kunes: Yeah, I'm excited to do more of them. It was a lot of fun and you know, for them to see early on about the inner workings of business, just seeing this transactional moment where we created this thing, people were paying for it, we're making money. It's cool for a seven year old's brain to kind of wrap its head around that and yeah, I'm excited to do more.

Ben: They go back to their school and they're like, my dad sells hats to other dads. That's what he does for a living at breweries.

Adam Kunes: Bye. but we're here. are, you're coming up. Your day is coming soon where I'm going to send you a signed dad hat.

Ben: month away. That's what I want. It can't be on the top of the brim, under the brim, please. But I will wear that proudly in the room, operate whatever the room's called, the baby deliver room.

Adam Kunes: There you go. Yeah, I will. I won't sign it. Don't worry, but I will send you a dad hat.

Ben: Give me 12. I'm gonna go to every dad there and put it on their head.

Adam Kunes: Cool, I'll send you an invoice for those and yours will be free. Yours on the house, Baker's Dozen.

Ben: There we go. All I had to do is deal with nine months with my wife to get a free hat. That's awesome. I delivered a baby and all I got was this hat.

Adam Kunes: But you are... You're three weeks away, right? Four weeks?

Ben: Yeah, she's like 35 and a half right now. She's crushing it. She doesn't think the baby has dropped though. So she uses chat GPT way too much with this thing, which is great for her because she's at least getting some sort of answer, but it might be a little bit much, but the GPT is saying it hasn't dropped yet.

Adam Kunes: Okay. Well, when in doubt, trust, trust the robot man.

Ben: But I will tell you that freezer is fully stocked with some of the best meals me and my mother could ever have made. She came in last weekend to kind of just help us get set up for the baby coming. So we were cooking. We were cooking a lot on Sunday, some of the best meals. She's like I don't even know what her nationality is, maybe Polish, maybe Slovak, I don't know. But she's like a little Italian woman in there. She knows how to cook, but she does not use measuring cups. She doesn't use any of that. But we made We made some bomb meals, so I'm super excited about that.

Adam Kunes: You just freezing those until, until the day comes.

Ben: Yeah, and I will tell you, I'm not a freezer person. So this is my first step out of a free, I will only buy fresh. I go to the grocery store every two days because I must have, something must have happened in college where there was like moldy food, but I will not freeze my food because I think it's disgusting having it sit out. And then I will also throw it away quickly. So I have to grocery shop like every two days.

Adam Kunes: That's a bit much, man. Maybe start using a freezer. I think that's good on you that you're one and fresh, but...

Ben: This is my first go at freezer foods. I asked my mom, so do I remove this thing and put it right in? Is that how this works? And she's like, yeah. That's it.

Adam Kunes: Welcome to the real world 2026.

Ben: I don't know what happened, but I blame all my lacrosse buddies for this, this food situation in the fridge and it haunts me still. I still haven't gotten a therapy for it.

Adam Kunes: We'll unpack that in another episode. What else is poppin'? We did, no one called 833 Dad Show this week. It's a little bit of a bummer, because I'm 20 bucks a month for that number. So, if you have questions or comments, concerns, no medical issues, we don't handle any of those, but if you just want us to bring up a question you have about dad life. or just life in general, call 833 Dad Show and leave us a voicemail. It goes directly to voicemail. Ben and I aren't actively answering this line. So you'll be prompted to go directly to leave a voicemail. It's all anonymous.

Ben: If you've got to get something off your chest too, like, hey, you know what? I need to talk about this to somebody. I'll talk to a voicemail. You can do that as well.

Adam Kunes: Yep, for sure. And if you have been listening to these and enjoying them, if you could leave a review on Spotify or Apple, that goes a long way. Just click the five star review button. If it's anything less than that, shoot us an email and tell us why we suck.

Ben: or why you love it. Let us know why you love it. But we should get right into the meat of this episode, because I think it's a unique one. We actually haven't come up with a name for the episode yet. What are you thinking on it?

Adam Kunes: Yeah, I mean, we wanted to, we wanted to get this recorded and, and we had some stuff going on this week. I, I'll just get into kind of what went down on my end and we'll just let the episode title naturally form. But I had this come to Jesus moment where I've been going to Holy city CrossFit here in Charleston and the coach and I were talking about just, just setting a baseline, like seeing where you're at, what your goals are and I've been one of those guys the last, can't even tell you how many years, probably like 15 years where I've just been like, I'm good, I'm working out five days a week. I eat decently well, you know, I wasn't really tracking anything, but I didn't have a baseline. wasn't necessarily training for anything. I'll do a 10 K half marathon, you know, every other year or so, but. He encouraged me to go get a DEXA scan, which I was familiar with. It's basically the gold standard for measuring your body fat and a lot of different percentages. And I'm not gonna nerd out on what the DEXA scan is. You could Google it when you get a chance. So I Googled DEXA scan here in Charleston. I paid 99 bucks. I went and had this thing done. And it was a humbling moment. because the last test that I got was I did a VO2 max test about a year and a half ago and then they had the in-body body fat percentage where you just hold onto the handles which turns out is not super accurate. So I was kind of riding the high of that result. The VO2 max was definitely accurate and I was, I gotta throw this out there. I got a 60 on the VO2 max test which was. pretty elite. So I was feeling like this false sense of like, I'm just carrying that, like I'm good. And my body fat percentage, I think was 12 on the in-body. And I went and got this DEXA scan and I'm not even dropped the number on what my body fat percentage was, but I was like, damn, it was just this aha moment where I was like, I got a... I got to get it, I got to get it together. I got to reel it back in. just kind of, wouldn't say I let myself go. mean, you know me, you know that fitness is a big part of my life. think for me, it was just this realization as I've gotten older, I've just kind of, eat, I eat decent. think it's just been like eating too much and my whole week has just been, I've like been downed in. I downloaded my fitness pal. I'm going to go get a function health test. It was just, I needed to see those results. I needed to hold them in paper. And yeah, it was a moment. It was a moment for sure.

Ben: I mean, so what are like next steps? I know a lot of times when we have those moments, like kind of try to change everything at once. What are you doing differently right now?

Adam Kunes: Yeah, I think for me, was like, I'm definitely, I do like drinking, ⁓ at least a glass of red wine most nights. ⁓ and then I like snacking at night. Like I'll have, I'll have like Boulder chips or like some cheese. And, and I've been doing that just for a long time. And it was almost like this, yo, you, you can't do that. You know, like, ⁓ so that was, that was the main takeaway this week was like, definitely got to stop snacking in the evening, like eat dinner at. six, six thirty and just be done eating. So I've been doing that and then just getting a baseline similar to the DEXA scan. I just wanted to see what my caloric intake was. So I downloaded my fitness pal and I paid, I paid 80 bucks for the annual version where you could scan barcodes and it basically tells you everything. But yeah, I mean, I'm five days into tracking what I'm eating and it's been good, man. Like I've already dropped a couple pounds and I think for me too, it was like, I could step on a scale and be like, yeah, that's a healthy weight. Like I'm good. But I think it was more along the lines of just like, hey, I need to reroute the ship here a little bit.

Ben: No, I agree. think like right now I have a Walmart scale that pretty much just tells me I'm fat. So I don't need the deck. I don't need the Dexter or whatever you call it to let me know I'm really fat. But I do think we all have these kind of moments in our lives where like you're really receptive to make change too. And I think that's interesting because you probably weren't ready to make that change. It was just presented to you and you're like, ⁓ shit. Like this was a significant kick in the ass because you thought you were cruising. And to be honest with you, when you told me you went there and you got unhappy results, I'm like, dang, if Adam's getting those results, I'm going to get really bad fricking results. But I definitely had like those moments happen in my life too, where it's just, I think you have to kind of be ready for it too. And also ready to like make the change. ⁓ because like all of us have stepped on the scale and nothing has changed the next day or. We've ramped up so fast that it's not attainable. But I had a moment similar and it wasn't about weight. It was more just about like living. ⁓ When I went to this Lululemon event, and I'll just sum it up very quickly of the most humbling moment that happened there was we were around this room. They picked two people from every city and I'm looking around this room of men. was ⁓ a vulnerability weekend for Lululemon. and it was in Boston and some of them I recognized. I'm like, ⁓ that guy just won a Super Bowl. ⁓ that guy's a chef. That lady's an Olympian. But soon as you walked in, they said, you're not allowed to say your name and you're not allowed to say what you do and you have five minutes to tell the worst thing that's ever happened to you in your life. All these people that I thought I looked up to had these insane stories. mean, some suicidal, some that I thought were doing very well on different food network channels. were completely broke because they got all their money embezzled and everyone had this like tragic story. In all of those stories actually projected them on. It was like kind of that kick in the butt moment to be better. But I remember walking away from that experience saying, everyone kind of has this story and we can't look up to these people because they're level with us. We all are on the same playing field. It's just kind of when are you ready to make your moment? Or what are you going to do that's a little bit extra to be a little bit better is kind of my biggest takeaway from that weekend is just like, stop looking at these other things that are kind of noise in your life and do it for yourself. And I think to tie this all back to like fatherhood is just like, you don't have, no one's going to tell you to do it. No one's going to save you. And you got to take these moments and what are you going to do about them? Because no one's going to do them for you. Like no one's going to move your legs for you. No one's going to like save you. And I think being open to change and then being open to doing some of the different things that you've been doing is hard. It's really hard.

Adam Kunes: Yeah, for sure. mean, good point even tying it back in the fatherhood. I think a lot of the reason, I mean, I know starting dad day was more like less about getting into the weeds of parenting tactics and what to try. you know, there's a place for that for sure. And there are a lot of good books. I'm just very much of the thought that I think being a good dad starts with taking care of yourself. And I think that just blends into Everything with life like it starts with you, you know If you're if you're taking care of yourself and this this episode wasn't necessarily going to be about health and fitness as much as is we're maybe talking about it, but Yeah, sometimes you got to take a look in the mirror and say hey I'm happy with how I look or I'm not and I'm gonna I'm gonna steer the ship in this direction and for me it was this aha moment of you know, I was doing all the things I thought I was supposed to be doing but there was no baseline it was almost like How do you know where you're going if you don't know where you are? And I've just become so complacent in my even just fitness routine. And again, I thought I was doing the things and to a lot of folks, I am doing the things. Yeah, working out four or five days a week, awesome, cool. But having that test and seeing those results in person was almost like, hey man, yeah, cool. Like let's get back on it. I had my appendix removed ⁓ a few months back, so I had to take eight weeks off. And I think that's probably where a lot of it started, where I wasn't able to do anything. And it was just kind of like, hey, this slow build up to where I am now. But it was a good come to Jesus moment. And I'm feeling fired up.

Ben: Yeah, cause some people might just take that scan and just say, it's bulking. It's Balkan season. That's all it is. But, ⁓ I know we were talking about this the other day and I remember somebody mentioning when it comes to fatherhood, I keep going back to that a little bit. You can, you have two decisions. You can raise how you were raised or you can do it your own way. And we, me and you were discussing a little bit of not to dog our parents, but like back in the day, man.

Adam Kunes: Yeah.

Ben: It's not how it is now. It's a totally different world, but it's a totally different parenting style, I think. And that goes back to making the choices for yourself and what you want to do and what you want to be. some of the way we were raised was completely different. It was a different world.

Adam Kunes: Yeah, and as I've gotten further into fatherhood, it's a really good lens to look through how things were. know, take the good. I had a great childhood, you know, no knock to my parents, love them to death. There are things that I will take from that and apply to my, like how I'm raising my kids and then things that I want to do differently in my own way. And yes, the times have changed. We featured a stat in the newsletter the other day that one in four dads are now stay at home dads. mean, that just, that wasn't the case back then. And dads are spending more time with their kids. It's, it's like, it's acceptable to be in it, to be in the weeds and be with your kids and I think it's a really cool thing. And for me, a lot of that stems back to or comes back to just showing up for yourself. Like you have to take care of yourself first. And I think that just makes everything else easier.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we all know when we're doing the thing for ourselves, you're normally feeling pretty damn good about yourself. ⁓ Or you just feel good in general and you can show up more as they always say, Adam, put the mask on first. And I need to take note from that too, because I need to be better. I was crushing it last week and then travel just threw me off my game. And then family being in town threw me off my game and it's. so easy. I always say it's so easy to do the wrong thing. It's so easy to do the wrong thing like temptation or whatever. That is like the easiest easiest thing to do and switching your mindset is so hard. Like when situations arise, you know, you're out and about and you want to eat out because it's just the easy thing to do right now. Inconvenient and I can only imagine with kids like some of the easier things you could do or the simpler things and it's it's a lot harder to do the hard thing. when you're dead-ass tired and your kid asks you to do something with them, you're like, it's easy to be like, ⁓ know, go watch the TV. It's hard to go outside and pick up a ball when that's the last thing you want to do.

Adam Kunes: Yeah, for sure. And it's, it's just good to, again, like coming back to that baseline and knowing where things are. And it doesn't have to be about health and fitness. think all it, just helpful to take a, take a good long look at yourself, what you're doing right now, where you want to go. And then how do you apply that to fatherhood? And for me, it was, you know, the DEXA scan was not related to dad life at all, but you know, just kind of tying it back to taking a look in the mirror and You know, just kind of owning it.

Ben: Yeah. I, ⁓ speaking of listening to somebody else talk, I listened to this Navy seal ⁓ and he was talking about whatever buds or camp or whatever it is. ⁓ And the one guy, which was his mentor just kept saying, said, be positive every single morning you wake up ⁓ and know that there's going to be something hard you have to do and you just look to the next thing and be positive about the next thing and be positive about the next thing. And then once you ripple all that positivity with doing things, like that's the best place to be in when you're at this place. When you're at Bud's, nothing's fun. There's not going to be one single thing you're going to enjoy, but you have to be positive going into it, knowing that you're just trying to get to lunch and then you're just trying to get to dinner and being positive all the way through it because then you won't have negative connotation of the hard things. And I always liked that because I do think me and you also talked about that. It's just like positivity is the hard thing to do. Negativity is the easy thing to do. And the more you're positive or around positive people, it's just, it's a ripple effect. And that is so important.

Adam Kunes: 100%. And that is a great tie into something we're doing here at the end of April in Charleston. We still have some tickets left. We're calling it Built for More, but similar to your Lululemon experience, I did something with the company 10,000 and it was great. It was a couple years ago, was in New York City and it was just served as this great kind of reset for me. I was around a bunch of other dads. It wasn't specifically for dads, but there were a lot of dads in the crew. And I came back just fired up. it's, don't, you don't have those kinds of conversations on a regular basis. It's really easy to get stuck in a routine and feeling like, ⁓ man, I'm just going to keep doing the same thing I've always done. And yeah, part of this built for more event for us is giving dads an opportunity to hit that reset button. and be around other dads that want to get after it and they're being intentional about dad life, fitness, all the things. So if you are listening to this and you're looking for a reset, hit us up. We'll send you a discount code for our Built For More event. is April 30th through May 2nd here in Charleston, South Carolina.

Ben: And I want to jump on that too. You were in South Carolina, went to New York. I was in Pittsburgh, went to Boston. There's something about leaving your town and going to someplace unfamiliar to do something like that. That is also very eye opening because you can be 100 % yourself. You don't know this area. Everything's brand new and you can be yourself. And I think that's what we did with our travel experiences in a previous life or have fun, do good, but like the importance of going outside of your town. is really important too. So I just wanted to emphasize that.

Adam Kunes: Yeah. And we intentionally made it a quick trip. So it's, about two and a half days. I mean, it's Thursday night. kick it off with a happy hour at five o'clock and then we break on Saturday at noon. So, you know, we're trying to be respectful to folks, to the dads that would be coming and wanting to be available for your partner. So it's a quick trip and you could fly in Thursday and you're out Saturday and it's going to be great. We're really excited about it. We've got some great speakers and you'll definitely, I mean, I'm on the thought you get what you put into it. So if you come here having a negative attitude and you're like, I don't even want to be here. Yeah, it's probably not the trip for you. But if you're coming with optimistic motivation and intention, it's going to be game changing for sure.

Ben: Love it. Now, again, I say this every time. I'm very jealous. I can't be there. The one event I always go back to is that Lulu event for me. So this is pretty much very similar. So good on you. But I think that's it. I don't know what we're calling it. Do you know what we're calling it yet?

Adam Kunes: I don't know. mean, pushing through, having a moment, do you know? I don't know. Are you having a moment? There it is. That's the title.

Ben: Are you having a moment? There it is. That's it. That's the show right there, Adam.

Adam Kunes: Yeah, and if you are not signed up for our newsletter, make sure you sign up over at dadday.co. It's a free newsletter. We send it Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And again, if you've been enjoying these or this landed for you, let us know. We want to hear it. We're just regular dudes. Ben's about to be a dad. I'm a dad of three. We're figuring it out here on the fly.

Ben: Have a great week. Enjoy.

Adam Kunes: You too. Later.

Ben: Goodbye.