Nick Taylor | Teaching Kids to Handle the Best and Worst in People

Nick Taylor: [00:00:00] Don’t ever think you can teach your kids too much into being prepared for any situation. Teach your kids the joy of being, you know, at the end of the rainbow, but prepare them to walk through hell if they need be. Have your kids know themselves as much as they know their friends, to be able to not give people too much access to them, too much access into their life, constantly sharing the world with them.

You know, I think a lot of kids have gotten that distorted with social media that this new, the whole gr. Wm get ready with me mentality as if people care how you make your toast and make your coffee and nobody cares. I prepare my daughter to look for the best in people, but I also prepare her to handle the worst in [00:01:00] them as well.

Brent Dowlen: Nick, every dad has that story. They just love to tell. It lights them up when they talk about being a dad that they just, it makes them laugh and smile. What is your favorite dad story?

Nick Taylor: When my daughter inherited my competitive mentality for sports and playing in a, in a 13 and older a a u tournament game, a girl kept slapping her wrist and when she got her rebound, she cleared it out and hit the girl in the nose.

Brent Dowlen: Oh. When our children are very clearly our children, right? My God, yes. Yep. That’s definitely my kid.

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Let’s get back to it.

Welcome to the Dad Hat Shenanigans podcast, the unfiltered Truth of Being a Dad. Real Dads real stories, unfiltered, candid conversations on fatherhood. I’m your host, Brent Dowlen, and today my special guest is Nick Taylor, AKA Be Nick Energy. Nick, welcome the dad Hat Shenanigans podcast.

Thank you for having me.

I’m glad to be here.

Nick, for, for [00:03:00] context, tell us who you are, a little bit about you, what you. Well,

Nick Taylor: my name’s Nick Taylor, AKA b, Nick Energy. I donated a kidney to my best friend of 23 years to his 16-year-old son a few years ago. Um, in that time of rehabbing and subacute hosp rehab facilities, I found live streaming and found a love for live streaming.

And when I no longer cared about numbers and the algorithms and they started outweighing the human connections, I found the podcast world with my podcast Two Next One Cup. I’ve been at it for five months. I have, you know, my own Signature Energy drink with my sponsor, and I’m a father to an 18-year-old who’s a freshman at San Diego State who will be playing basketball this year.[00:04:00]

Awesome. Now, of course you are gonna have to like send me a, a sample of this drink ’cause I’ve never heard of it and I live on energy drinks. If you can’t tell, I’ll com I’ll completely send you a tub in the mail. You, you don’t have to send me a big tub, just, just send me a, a sample or whatever. It’s a

tub.

It’s got 120 servings in it, just one scoop and Gatorade or water, whatever it tastes amazing.

Brent Dowlen: Oh my God. Now I definitely have to try it. I, it does, dude. The amount of money I spend on energy drinks a month is kind of stupid, so I, I balance much. And on top

Nick Taylor: of it, it’s sugar free. It’s made out of nine T essential vitamins.

There’s no crash. It’s sustaining energy. It tastes like blue raspberry lemonade.

Brent Dowlen: Tell me it mixes with bourbon and I’m there for, sorry. It

Nick Taylor: probably definitely would hold off. It probably would. [00:05:00]

Brent Dowlen: Nick, you’re wearing, uh, said. Major League baseball hat. You gotta tell us the dad Hatt story. So all the teams, yeah.

You gotta tell us the dad Hatt story. I

Nick Taylor: know. So my daughter got me this hat this year on Father’s Day because I am from Boston. I am a Red Sox fan. I was a college baseball player. She knows I love baseball. I mean, as much as I love any sport, football and basketball included, but she knows I love baseball and I was a baseball player, so, and my dad played AAA for the Red Sox, so she bought me this hat for Father’s Day.

Brent Dowlen: I love it. I love it. What position do you play in ball? I was a pitcher, I think 95. A pitcher. Yeah. Holy crap man. That’s hard work. I, I had a friend who was a college pitcher and went on to play for, I wanna say he played for the Pirates, but yeah, he went on to [00:06:00] play pro ball and I was always amazed, man, you, you pitchers just like the work you put in, everybody’s like, Hey, he just throws the ball.

Yeah. But he throws the ball really, really incredibly. That’s, yeah,

Nick Taylor: and it’s, and it’s like I come from that era where I’m just a little younger. You know, I’m six years younger than Justin Verlander, who’s one of my favorite pitchers. And, and watching him and Clayton Kershaw where no one knew Kershaw’s retiring this year.

But we come from an era where like. There was no pitch counts. There was no inning counting like your objective was. You pitched for as many baseball teams as you could club wise in the summer. You pitched as much as you could in middle school and high school teams as long as they could put you on the field pitching, and you had at least two days rats.[00:07:00]

They had you throwing and now these kids, they’re so managed so much better than we ever were,

you know? And I think about it, like I torn my rotator. I’m like, yo, if I was pitch managed properly, like where, how far could I have gone? Because I mean, I played D one, I mean, I played at San Diego State.

Brent Dowlen: Yeah. My friend, uh, actually tore up his rotator cuff in the College World Series, and so he lost his, like he was going straight to the pros and they rode him on a farm team for a year to see if his shoulder would recover enough for him to be viable before they pulled him back up to the pros.

Like there was a point where you guys were just throwing your arm until there was nothing left.

Nick Taylor: One of my favorite memories is I had my daughter my freshman year of [00:08:00] college. Like one of my favorite memories is right before my second season in college, like my first game, I have a picture of me on the mount holding my daughter.

Brent Dowlen: That’s incredible, bro. Oh man, like

Nick Taylor: one of my favorite memories ever playing ball. That was one of my favorite.

Brent Dowlen: Nick, when you found out you were gonna be a dad, I’m everybody and their dog gave you advice on what, what you should expect as a father and what was, what was actually the valuable, what was the best piece of advice you got when everybody had an opinion about it?

Nick Taylor: Probably from my father who has passed since, which was no matter what, we’ll get through it as a family.

Brent Dowlen: Mm. That’s a strong mantra right there, man. That is, that’s a lot of value.

Nick Taylor: Very few [00:09:00] words, but so much weight has held in that phrase my entire life, no matter what it’s been.

Brent Dowlen: That makes sense. What is your favorite thing about being a dad? Seeing all the bad traits that she picked up.

That is not an answer I would’ve expected or have had before. I gotta admit.

Nick Taylor: You know, like I’m a witty, sarcastic person, so like when I say something to her and I get something witty back and I’m like, can’t be mad at you, you got that from me,

Brent Dowlen: right? I, I, I, you say it out loud and it’s like, I’ve never, not what I expected, but at the same time I gotta like confess there.

I take a lot of pleasure. When I see some of my not as great [00:10:00] traits come out in my children. ’cause they’re, my, my daughters are now 11 and 13, they’re hitting those teenagers. Mm-hmm. And there, there have been several times that one of my daughters did something. I’m like, oh yeah, that was me.

Probably not the thing that, you know, some dads would be like, oh yeah, that was me. Well, I’m like, yeah, that was me. Totally. Yeah.

Nick Taylor: And I’m that same way. And I’m like, yeah, yeah. I would’ve answered that the same way, kid.

Brent Dowlen: Nick, I gotta ask you, what are we talking about today? What do you wanna talk about in fatherhood?

Nick Taylor: Huh?

Do you feel that there is preparing your kids too much for the world that we live in today?[00:11:00]

Brent Dowlen: I’m not sure if there’s too much, but I also don’t know that there’s a, like part of me wants to say. There can’t be too much because the world is changing so rapidly at this current timeframe in history. Like I, I’m a Gen Xer and the world my children are growing up in is so radically different. It’s got some of the same attributes, so radically different at the same time where I always feel like I’m playing catch up.

Does that make sense? I, I get

Nick Taylor: it. I’m meenal and to me, I’ve gotten the best of your generation. I know that from having a sister that’s a Gen Xer. And I’ve also, you know, being born in 89, I got that taste of, you know, being a millennial. So I’ve gotten the both and to me. [00:12:00] I feel like, okay, I grew up in the city of Boston.

I used to wake up in the summer, leave my house at 9:00 AM run with six kids till the lights came on in a city and we were fine. I would never, ever let my daughter do that growing up. In the neighborhood. Sure. But if I lived in a city never, what the way today is, and even now people have said, uh, you know, because I do music festivals and I do concerts, I see a lot.

So have I kind of prepped my daughter in life to be a little bit of a warrior and a a lot of bit and not a victim? Yeah, I have, but I think we live in a world that’s truly. Has more dangerous today than when we were growing up. [00:13:00]

Brent Dowlen: Yeah. I’ve had extensive conversations with people about that because I don’t think there’s more crazy or more bad.

I think it’s more prevalent and less restrained because we have. Reduce the consequences. We made it possible for like it was there when we were kids, but less bad people would do risk, take the risk of actually doing something truly hor horrendous because in our generations people wouldn’t tolerate it and like, you know, there would be consequences.

I feel like taking that away.

Nick Taylor: And I also believe that we grew up, we grew up in a society where definitely the kids today have social media. So when something happens in California, you hear about it by five o’clock. News. Okay? If a kid [00:14:00] goes missing or something happens, or a crash, you know, when we were kids, something could happen in California and you didn’t hear about it for a week or two.

Oh yeah, like I definitely, I definitely believe, you know, the media’s coverage has increased knowing the evil, but then the part of me with my business, I believe that more people equals a higher risk. And then we’re just, we more populated now than we were kids too.

Brent Dowlen: Let me, let me pause momentarily and thank you for including the forgotten generation.

My, my wife is Centennial. She gets so pissed ’cause people lump her lump, lump her in with millennials and she gets so angry. She’s like, I’m not a millennial. Like, she, she gets so angry. I was like, I know you’re not. Yes, we’re in. It’s okay.

There, there’s only a couple years before between us, but she’s an [00:15:00] 81 baby. And, and she gets so mad. She’s like, I am not a millennial. I was like, I know that. I remember millennials. I’m old enough to remember millennial came for the fact of kids born into the two thousands. I remember when that, when the, when the big clock changed and everybody freaked out about Y 2K and nothing happened.

Right. That’s where millennial came from. She’s not a millennial, so thank you. Right. I’m, I’m gonna tell her that tonight, like when I get done recording this. My wife is gonna light up when I’m like, you know what? I talked to Nick and he’s like, no, we’re zals. Fuck that shit. We’re not millennials. It will absolutely make her night.

I know that sounds petty guys certain age, right? It’s a whole different thing. Uh, I I look at kids like my kids’ age, and I am so protective of my daughters. Like I, I am that absurdly protective father. [00:16:00] Who probably, like, I, I, I try not to make my kids afraid of things, but I am that overprotective father who’s like, are you looking in my Joss direction?

Great. I will hit you with a baseball bat for fun. You know, like I, I’m that Gen Xer, so, you know, but I look at the, and then like yesterday, I let my daughters walk up. My oldest daughter’s best friend was playing soccer. We lived less than a quarter mile. From the soccer field for the junior high team.

Like I can see it from my front door and they wanted to go up and watch their friend play and like I actually had like, okay, breathe Brent. They can walk two blocks on their own. It is okay because quite honestly, like I was that kid who like, you know, I went out and came back when the street lights turned on.

That just meant I had to be on the street. We lived on a court street. There were lots of kids, so we’d be at someone’s houses playing until our parents actually screamed for us. But [00:17:00] the rule was we had to be on the street when the street lights came on. Right? Yeah. Now, like my kids are walking two blocks together, my 13-year-old and 11-year-old, and I’m like, sweating bullets going, oh my God, they’re gonna kidnapped.

Now part of that comes from the fact that I did some work with a group out of LA called Saving Innocence that works with human trafficking and specifically child sex trafficking. And so I, I did an extensive like, you know, five or six show coverage of saving innocence, working with them. And so I am more aware of it than some men are for sure.

But like that’s the world we’ve changed to. Like I’m looking at two blocks between there and there, and I’m like. There’s a lot of bad crap. I know. I know. Most of our police force here in town, it’s like there’s a, I live in a tiny town and there’s a lot of bad crap that can happen between point A and point B right now.

Nick Taylor: [00:18:00] And see, that’s where I am. Right. So like when I had to renew. My security license this year, it was like an hour and a half of online trafficking signs to pay attention to. Mm-hmm. Ways that people are doing it, where they’re doing it. And then all of a sudden I was so aware that like my podcast one day was like an hour and 15 minutes of like a PSA to women.

Brent Dowlen: Yep. I did several of those shows after working with Saving Innocence. I’m like, protect your children. Oh my God, they’re all gonna kidnapped.

Nick Taylor: You know what’s crazy is I end every podcast and it’s funny ’cause even my live chat, we’ll even type it out before I even say it where I’m like, yeah, I’m wrapping up, you know, and I’ll go through my outro and I’m like, you know what I say?

Protect the women, protect the kids, and [00:19:00] everybody will always type it out in the chat. And I think it’s just hilarious that people watch my show so much that they know that’s how I’m gonna end it. But I end it that way all the time.

Brent Dowlen: Right. You just like, uh, do you know what’s coming? Yeah, I know what’s coming.

Nick Taylor: I always end it with the world needs a little bit of kindness or do something small. You don’t know how much impact it will have. And you know what I always say? Protect the women. Protect the kids.

Brent Dowlen: Nick, we’re, we’re talking heavy things today when we talk about I, right? I think the plan was to talk about being there for your kids. Or did I miss that?

Nick Taylor: Yeah. Being there for your kids. The dangers in the world. Sorry, I preparing your kids too much for the dangers of the world.

Brent Dowlen: I am [00:20:00] so excited about this conversation with Nick.

I’ve been looking forward to this conversation. So we are diving into safety or being there, or where am I?

Nick Taylor: Yep. Totally got lost in my own thoughts. You know, preparing your children for too much. And I just, to me, I’m just saying I prepare my daughter to look for the best in people, but I also prepare her to handle the worst in them as well.

Brent Dowlen: How do you go about like in the world we live in, ’cause I know there are a lot of dads out there like us who are looking in the world right now. It is kind of effed up like there. There’s a lot of really shady crap going on in the world and there like me, who’s stressing out about my kids walking two and a half blocks [00:21:00] on their own when, when we ran around wild till all hours of the night.

How do you start to prepare them for that? You work in security, you own a security company. How do you do that? The

Nick Taylor: wildest is is not only did my daughter go to blocks, but she went across country to college and like. As a girl. I mean, you’re not ready for that when it’s your boy. I mean, but I only have one child and it is my daughter.

She is my legacy. She is my only one. So, and being a daughter in a party town, you know, you know, I try to teach her to, you know. I always say, make friends with one big guy on the football team and make sure that’s the person you hang out with the most, [00:22:00] because you’re less likely if you catch an Uber to think they’re gonna wanna try to get him with some chloroform, because unfortunately, that stuff happens now.

It’s happening in Nashville. Hmm. Unfortunately it’s stuff that’s happening. So the, you know, you try to teach your kid to, to, I mean, you know, again, trying to teach her to be somewhat sober, even if she has a couple of drinks. You know, again, you have to know kids are going to make mistakes. Nobody’s perfect.

I mean, come on. The nights I had in college, I don’t even remember them. The best nights I ever had, I definitely don’t remember. Right. Okay. I was told the next night, it was the greatest night ever, but I don’t remember anything. So to me, you know, I try to tell her to stay in groups, you know, stay with people, she.[00:23:00]

You know, fortunately two of the girls that in her dorm room that she stays with are fellow athletes as well. So she’s with people, you know, birds of the same feather flock together. So I’m hoping, you know, you know, she said she’s friends with them. So I hope she stays in a group. I try to tell her that, I mean, she’s got, makes, you know, just don’t make somebody innocent.

I was, they’ll see, they’ll see you the next day.

Brent Dowlen: I was so proud. The other day I was at a, at a big community event, right? With one of my friends here in town. Uh, it, I, I’ve been, I have been blessed in the fact that my wife, my children’s best friends. Are actually like my wife’s best friend is their mom.

And unlike a lot of situations where it’s like, okay, that means I tolerate them. Like their dad is one of my closest friends, like him and I jive. [00:24:00] So we have this great amazing thing where their kids are best friends from my friends and their parents are our closest friends in the area. Um, which is a huge, huge blessing.

But we were at this big community event the other day. And my wife’s friend was performing with the veterans group. They were up on stage singing and my oldest daughter and her best friend walked away. Right. And her dad looked over at her uncle and was like, did she even say she was leaving? Did she say she was going somewhere?

And he’s like, I know she just walked away. And he’s like, yeah, go ahead. Like my, my friend is like. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Just walk away. Go get killed. You know, he’s like, the girl has no common sense. About his daughter, right? I’m like, that’s okay. She’s with Abby. He’s like, yeah, that makes it better because, because my daughter is the one who’s gonna pull out her pocket knife and scream and, [00:25:00] and stab anybody trying to grab her friend, right?

See, she’s like, oh, he’s with your daughter. She’s with your daughter. It’s, it’s a little bit better ’cause Abby is going to scream and, and stab somebody with her pocket knife, whereas his daughter just like freezes up and shuts down. She’s on the scale, on the spectrum. And so it’s not entirely like he didn’t prepare her.

It’s like her, because she’s on the spectrum, like she just shuts down. But the fact that she was wondering how my daughter, he was like, yeah, that’s okay. Abby Will, Abby will stab them. It’s okay. I was

Nick Taylor: like,

Brent Dowlen: yes,

Nick Taylor: I win as a farmer, which, you

Brent Dowlen: know what,

Nick Taylor: it makes you feel proud. Like, you know, that’s how it always was in high school.

Like my daughter trained with a couple of my friends that trained MMA, so like she just got around and hit the punching bag. I was okay with her. Learned some self-defense, right? I wasn’t, I went and lift weights. She went and learned self-defense. I was good with that. [00:26:00] You know, I don’t feel, Hey, so I’m raising Aham.

I’m okay with that.

Brent Dowlen: I don’t know, like honestly. I think almost every like, it, it is because I’m a girl dad, I, I think every, every child, like female child should be taught self-defense. Like I think all of them should be in martial arts. It just, that should be a prerequisite in school for girls. I, that’s probably entirely sexist, but I’m okay with that.

I, I’ll own that right now.

Nick Taylor: I’m okay dying on that hill. I am because today they end up being, unfortunately with the times we live in, they are the targets and unfortunately it’s just where we are in society. So you can’t prepare your kid. You know, I always, I mean, in high school. My daughter knew that if she went to a party, she could always call me.

I’d never get mad. And she had called me twice to pick her up when she was drunk, and I never [00:27:00] got mad. I stayed true to it, you know, like, you know, I was fortunate enough at the same point. I had a mom that would always keep true to that word, but I definitely had a father who was like, yeah, I’ll never get mad, but then got mad the next morning, like, why I was hungover.

Like, yeah, you won’t hear a word out of me that night, but I’ll be in your room at six 30 in the morning and you’ll hear from a dad that.

Brent Dowlen: So there’s some value to that too. Some ups and downs. Yeah, there is. There,

Nick Taylor: there is. There is and and I did have that perfect

balance where I

feel like my daughter really took to my structure.

So therefore I tried to keep it structured [00:28:00] as much as possible, but at the same point, like, listen, kids are gonna drink. They’re going to, at some point, unfortunately, it’s, it’s, they’re gonna do it at some point. If they don’t do it at, in high school, they’re gonna do it in college. They don’t do it at college.

They’re gonna do it when they hit 21. Some point there. Some most people are going to have an alcoholic beverage to touch their lips. So you either make ’em feel safe and make ’em know they have a place to go. Exactly. And make ’em know they have a place they can go all the time, or you make ’em fear you. I’d rather my daughter know I’m always on her side.

Brent Dowlen: Nick, let me ask you, because you, you do work in security and you have a security company, right? And, and you generally do like large venues and big events, uh, which is And strip clubs and, and strip clubs though. Well, there we go, right. Situational important awareness is something that I have [00:29:00] tried to teach my children.

I’ve taught them from the time they were little. It’s like a, your head moves first. You look before you move. You are aware of what is happening around you, right. Situational awareness stuff. There are a lot of dads who are like us, who are just like, oh my God, the world’s gonna kill my children. Right?

We’re all freaked out about this. We all, whether we want to admit it or not, like this is what keeps fathers awakened. What are some adv advice? What is some advice you would offer fathers on helping to make their children safe?

Nick Taylor: Make sure your kids don’t, I mean, my daughter is very good at it where, and sometimes I believe it’s a curse as well, where when she’s in a familiar place, she will let her guard them. But if it’s somewhere new, like she’s called me and been like that. I’ve been to [00:30:00] four parties, frat parties since I’ve been in college.

I’ve had maybe three drinks because it’s an unfamiliar place. She keeps her guard up. You know, and she’s learned that much, that if you don’t know where you’re at to always keep your head on a swivel. But I mean, nowadays, I mean, and even with statistics, most of the time it’s in places where you are comfortable.

So you can only teach your kids to just always keep a circle around them that they can trust. That if they let their judgment down that somebody is gonna look at, one of the best things that my daughter has seen growing up is that my best friend has been my best friend for 23 years. She has stood literally between anything that’s.

Ever tried to hurt me sober and drunk. Okay. And that’s even, you know, a year. We lived the closest to each other on the same block. And [00:31:00] we didn’t even talk to each other for a year when we were 28 and hated each other for a year. And then until one night we were out and he came up to me and he was like, one way or another, whether we fight tonight or we talk tonight, this gets handled tonight.

And we just ended up a little tussle on my front lawn and ended up fixing it and stayed best friends to the point. He was the best man at my wedding. I was the best man it is. And his kid got my kidney. And at the end of the day, the. I, you know, I always tell my daughter, you know, she has a good friend back home here that’s like that.

But I always tell her, don’t value having a good, having good people around you. I mean, and that lay, that work ground work goes in before you ever put yourself in a partying situation or any type of real danger. If you know you are in a good circle, then you’re, I mean, you teach your kids to keep good quality people around them, [00:32:00] it will lower the exposure.

Most of the people I see that end up getting into stuff in music festivals are people that got shitty friends, part of my language, but they’re people that end up straying from the group. They, their friends are off doing their own thing and worrying about themselves, and they’re off all by themselves.

Put in situations that nobody’s there but my guys to protect them.

Brent Dowlen: I, I am a huge, huge advocate of, like, I’m very careful about the circle. I let around my children, right? Who I bring into their lives, the, the adults that are around them. And it is about teaching my children to be discerning about who is [00:33:00] around them. Who they allow access to them. Right. I have to set that example as a father.

So you know what you’re saying as far as like having those close friends, having those people that you can count on to help protect you even when you’re not at your best really registers. But that, I think that starts with parents. You said your friend has been around you 28 years, is that what you said?

23.

The amount of friends, you actually keep that long in your life. I, I can count ’em on one hand right now. Like if, if I look back in my life, I can literally count on one hand the amount of people outside of direct family who have made that cut, who have been there for the entirety of it, for ups and downs, no matter what.

Like, I’m 45 years old. I can count those people on one hand, [00:34:00] and I don’t think I, I, social media frustrates me because it has diluted our concept of friends.

We, we have this, I, I, I directly blame Facebook because Facebook actually called followers, friends. And actually use that term. So I, I directly blame face Facebook, whether that’s warranted or not, that’s the personal opinion, but I blame Facebook for that nonsense because it diluted our expectation of the word friend.

I blame my space.

I miss, I miss my space. I miss the fact that you could like totally decorate your MySpace page and make it like totally you. You know

Nick Taylor: what? I remember five ex-girlfriends making a, I hate Nick Taylor group and they had their own custom, they [00:35:00] hated me group.

Brent Dowlen: Ah, the glory days of social media guys. It all went downhill after MySpace and,

Nick Taylor: and when your friends got upset, when you took them out, your top bait?

Brent Dowlen: Yeah. Yeah. I like the personalized song. Like you could, you could pick your song that that’s what played in any point someone came to your page, like Facebook would benefit from that. Like Mark Zuckerberg, dude, like if you’re hearing me. Facebook would benefit from that, from having your own personal soundtrack on your homepage.

Like

Nick Taylor: just saying, people were writing code be when we were six, 16, and 18 years old.

Brent Dowlen: Oh, yeah, yeah. I was in, I was in the first school in the United States to integrate Apple and IBM compatible into one network. Of all the places, like, I have no idea how it ended up, but I was in the first school in the nation to [00:36:00] actually integrate.

We had one apple and four IBM compatibles in every classroom, and it was all on one system wide network through every classroom in the, in the school. What happened? One of my dear friends installed Wolfenstein 3D for the entire school.

Nick Taylor: Listen, my daughter thinks I’m old as hell when I tell her I’m a Zenni O and I grew up with encyclopedias and go and Yahoo as my search engine.

Oh yeah. And then, and then you just got a whole bunch of numbers and dots and periods and comm.

Brent Dowlen: Old school Oregon Trail baby. On the Apple two East. I remember Oregon Trail. And Carmen, where in the world is Carmen San Diego? Right. Oh, that was like groundbreaking when that came out. Yeah. Okay. We’re dating ourselves pretty badly here. Yeah. [00:37:00] Nick, what would you tell dads right now? ’cause like we have dads listening to this.

Who have children, and they are, they’re, they’re as nervous as I am. They’re as nervous as you are. They’re worried about their kids in this current day and age. And let’s face it, our world’s gotten a little insane the last decade or so. What would you advise fathers?

Nick Taylor: It’s not a bad thing to teach your kids, not to let friends have too much

access to them in general.

Brent Dowlen: Can you expand on that a little

Nick Taylor: as far as. Teaching your kids. Okay, great. You teach your kids to coexist and, and maintain friendships. Obviously [00:38:00] 23 years. Here my sec, our second best friend, 20 years. Okay. At the end of the day, like I value friendships, but I also value my time alone too.

Have your kids know themselves as much as they know their friends, to be able to not give people too much access to them, too much access into their life, constantly sharing the world with them. You know, I think a lot of kids have gotten that distorted with social media that this new, the whole gr. Wm get ready with me mentality as if people care how you make your toast and make your coffee, and nobody cares.

At the end of the day, there has to be time in which you have to yourself. And, and it’s one thing to be there for [00:39:00] people when they need you. It’s another thing to just give people 24 7 accessibility in which you don’t know yourself to be alone. Because if you know yourself to be alone, you know yourself enough to just be like, yeah, you know, that’s not something I’m comfortable with.

I’m cool just staying back tonight. I’ll see y’all let may keep you out of a bad situation because you have self-reliance as much as you do that. Codependency on friendships.

Ever wonder what really happens behind the mic? When the lights go off and the Polish show ends well, that’s when the real story begins. Join us on Patreon and get access to our exclusive Patreon only podcast. Behind closed mics, fallible and unfiltered. The messy, honest truth of growing as a man, [00:40:00] husband, father, and content creator.

No scripts, no polish, just the highs, lows, and chaos of running multiple podcasts. I’m up to four. Coaching, building a brand, working freelance as a podcast producer and digital marketer, and showing up as a husband and dad all at the same time. Plus, you get insider content from all three of my public shows, unique community option opportunities, and direct interaction with me available at every level.

If you love what we do. And you are the kind of person who wants to know how the sausage is made. That’s your cup of tea. Well guys, then you want a seat in the back room? Join us at patreon.com/the fallible man today. Nick, what is your best dad joke?

Why couldn’t the melons get married? Why? ’cause they can’t elope.[00:41:00]

Brent Dowlen: Nick, what is something you learned about yourself? When you became a

Nick Taylor: how

quick childhood flies by,

I definitely learned the quality of time.

Brent Dowlen: Nick, as we wind this plane down, whereas the best place for people to connect with you.

Nick Taylor: They can reach out to me on my Instagram at lowercase b Nick Energy. That’s the letter B Nick Energy 2025.

Brent Dowlen: All right, and tell us about your podcast while we got you here. Tell us about the podcast.

Nick Taylor: Two Nicks, one cup. I mean, we talk about everything from current events to content creating, to being parents, to, you know, talking about stuff that has [00:42:00] to do with Halloween and Halloween idea for the kids and stuff like that this time of the year. So yeah, we talk, we pretty much, and then every once in a while it’s my therapy and I just talk about the stuff that I know people feel.

That I feel as well, and maybe it’s just a heart to heart love session with the mike and you guys ears,

Brent Dowlen: Nick, we’ve, we’ve covered a lot of bases, uh, predominantly sitting around our children being safe and, and making sure they’re safe in this day and era. And I, that’s a lot on the hearts of a lot of fathers right now.

But if our dad’s heard nothing else today. What is the most important takeaway you wanted to hear?

Nick Taylor: Don’t ever think you can teach your kids too much into being prepared for any situation. Teach your [00:43:00] kids the joy of being, you know, at the end of the rainbow, but prepare them to walk through hell if they need be.

Brent Dowlen: Guys, for myself and Nick, thanks for joining us today on the Dad Hat Shenanigans podcast. We’re just a community of dads navigating life’s challenges together. Every father brings something and we all have these thoughts, these feelings, these issues with our children, and we have so much to learn from each other.

Until next time, laugh, learn, and live the dad life.

 

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