Ep #29 Parenthood, Career, & Marriage with Lori Mihalich-Levin and Jason Levin

The Future Is Bright Podcast

“We are both keeper-in-touchers,” says Jason Levin, author of the book Relationships to Infinity, which studies the art and science of keeping in touch. He and his wife Lori Mihalich-Levin first met on September 11, 2001 in France and stayed in contact as Lori built her law career and Jason built a career which includes his current role as a keynote speaker, trainer and business development coach at Ready, Set, Launch. This practice of keeping in touch has carried over into their married life as well. In a conversation at the kitchen sink, having put their two young sons to bed, Lori asked why there wasn’t a program to help new parents navigate their personal and professional lives. After Jason asked her what she could do to solve the problem, she began in earnest what would become Mindful Returns, a program which guides new parents transition back to work after parental leave.

The two touch base each Saturday night by consolidating what they call the “daily detritus” into one basket in order to tackle the duties of parenthood together. This idea was inspired by Atul Gawande’s “Checklist Manifesto. The two have also been inspired by Eve Rodsky’s book “Fair Play,” and they discuss the importance of a balanced division of labor in a household.

Lori and Jason’s support for one another is obvious. Join today’s discussion to hear their advice on how to write a book or make a speech in public and find out how Jason earned the name The TicTac Guy!

Quotes

• “The foundation of Relationships to Infinity is the social science behind networks, and how we think about our approach to connection and reconnection. Lori was just talking about the fact that we both are ‘keeper-in-touchers.’ There's actually a lot of social science behind that.” (8:44 | Jason)

• “I said to my dear husband, ‘There should be a program out there, a class I can take about how to transition into working parenthood. I can take a class on how to massage my baby, puree baby food, make a birth plan. I can't take a class on how to navigate the personal and professional identity crisis I'm having as I become a working parent. And Jason said, ‘Well, what are you going to do about it?’ And thus, the program that I created, Mindful Return, was born.” (10:53 | Lori)

• “Too often when we think about building something entrepreneurial, it has to be in the garage, venture funded, all these things. But what if you take little bite sized pieces with mind numbing detail on a weekly basis and you build something?” (14:26 | Jason)

• “There are so many dual career working couples these days, that this is an issue and it spills into the workplace too. Because if you have if you're doing 90% of the mental work of your household, you're just not able to focus on your job as much as someone who is doing 10% of the mental work of a household.” (21:52 | Lori)

• “Parenthood made me so much of a better public speaker, because before we had kids, I would stew about the slides. And I would sit there and analyze them, and I'd memorize my script. And then we had kids, and I said, ‘I don’t have time for any of that. And I just showed up as who I was, and I was much more spontaneous, and I hadn't over prepared anything, and people liked that better.” (33:14 | Lori)

Links

The Checklist Manifesto - Atul Gawal https://a.co/d/hppObRx

Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do

By Eve Rodsky https://a.co/d/6ZoaX2O

Parents at Work Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/parents-at-work/id1239258343

Connect with Lori Mihalich-Levin:

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorimihalichlevin/

Mindful Return https://www.mindfulreturn.com/

Lori's book - Back to Work After Baby - https://www.mindfulreturn.com/back-work-after-baby-book/

Connect with Jason Levin:

READY, SET, LAUNCH readysetlaunch.net

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonlevinspeakertrainercoach/

Jason's book - Relationships to Infinity

Connect with Chris Batz:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisbatz/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theliongroupkc

Instagram: @theliongroupllc

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm