Struggling to learn with Bob Moesta

2 Cent Dad Podcast

Struggling is essential to learning. We know this intuitively but it’s easy to forget with kids. It’s also a careful balance of letting our kids struggle while offering them just enough guidance in the process. The topic of struggling moments is what today’s guest specializes in. He helps companies with innovation by identifying these moments. He’s also a father of 4 and we talk about some of the ways he helped his kids find their career path after college. He’s a repeat guest on the show and always a pleasure to talk with.

Where to Find Bob
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Book
Book on College
Past Interview

Transcription below (May contain typos...):

[00:00:00]Bob: [00:00:01] So progress is the main thing that actually helps kids build confidence. And most people think is if I it's, so my thing is you can't build confidence without them failing. I, I don't, maybe you can, I don't know how to do it.

Mike: [00:00:19] But why does everyone want to avoid the failure?

Bob: [00:00:21] Just cause they don't want to be judged as a bad parent.

It's the focus is actually more on them than they are as the kid. Yeah. And it's that notion of at some point to, it's almost like a paradox, right? if I let my kids struggle, that actually means I'm a bad parent. And the fact is that the fact that you're letting your kids struggle means that you're actually a good parent. you got to fail and you got to fail fast,

Mike: [00:00:46] Struggling is essential to learning. We know this intuitively, but it's easy to forget with kids. And it's also a careful balance of letting our kids struggle while offering them just enough [00:01:00] guidance in the process. And this topic of struggling moments is what today's guest specializes in. Bob Mesta helps companies with innovation by identifying some of these moments. he's also a father of four and we talk about some of the ways that he's helped his kids find their career path after college and helping them through that struggling moment. So he's a repeat guest on the show and he's always a pleasure to talk with. Let's roll the interview with bob

today on the podcast we have Bob Mesta, who is a re repeat guest and he was on about three years ago, which we were chatting.

And, it's surprising that it's been three years already since we spoke Bob, but it's nice to have

Bob: [00:01:39] great to be back. Thanks for having me, Mike.

Mike: [00:01:42] you originally were on your, you're a father of four married for over 30 years.

Bob: [00:01:48] Yeah, I'm old. Yes.

Mike: [00:01:52] That's a huge

Bob: [00:01:52] accomplishment. And I think that's

Mike: [00:01:53] the reason I wanted to have you on is because I'm originally because of that and, that your success story in that regard, Bob [00:02:00] and I really look up to you in a lot of the work that you do with jobs to be done, but mostly to.

The fatherhood and staying successfully married for 30 years. So I think that's pretty awesome.

Bob: [00:02:10] it takes two. And, I would say if you've met my wife is a Saint. I think about it as I've done seven startups seven and she's still. We're still happy and we're, she's just very tolerant, but she's also stern, which is good.

Cause I'm all over the place. So we're I would call us opposites and we compliment each other well, and we don't try to change each other, which is, I think part of the key is that we're there to help each other be better versions of ourselves. So how have you, I'm sorry.

Mike: [00:02:41] So tell me a little bit about that journey to get to that. It sounds like that's a mature, taking years of experience of trial and error to get to that point because

Bob: [00:02:49] I, or is that not the case? I don't think that's the case. I think the fact is that we were both, it's one of those things where I guess it's one of those, and maybe we just learned this when we were young, but it's like that [00:03:00] anybody who, and again, I'm going back more than 30 years, but.

my friends who dated or, when, whenever I dated somebody who was and tried to change them, it never worked out. yeah, like you had to accept people for who they were and it was about helping them be better versions of that. And it was that aspect of, no I'm going to, I'm going to make them better and it's no, they need to be better.

And so it's, it follows some of the underlying. Principals of jobs to be done, which is, you don't people make progress, you make your progress and I can help you make progress, but you make the progress, not me. And so it's that underlying principle and it's the same thing for kids, right?

Like at some point I gotta be able to empower my kids to make progress. I can't give my kids the answer or the solution. They have to figure it out and that requires struggling. And so I think the. to me, it's that combination of struggle and growth and all of that together. And so I think, me trying to want or wanting to change somebody is not, it's just not, it's not a useful concept to me.

[00:04:00] Mike: [00:03:59] Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Bob: [00:04:01] I don't know if I really answered it, but that's that, it's just observation if you will. That's how we got

Mike: [00:04:05] there. Yeah. No, I think you definitely answered it, but you brought up the struggling moments for kids, which we hit on last time. and to me, that's a really fascinating topic because you, it seems to me that new parents want to remove any struggling moments from their kids, brand new parents.

And then you see the importance of that, but you don't necessarily know how to manufacture them if there's not naturally existing, struggling moments.

Bob: [00:04:30] and there's a, the thing, there's a hard part because we don't have that decision line of where's danger. Where is it actually dangerous?

And where is something that's just struggling? And so we because we don't have a clear line of which is which, and it's this could lead to these other things that we don't want them to lead to that. And it's one of those things where it's for me, I would say I struggled a ton as a kid being dyslexic and, going in through special ed and all these other places.

And you're just one of those things where it's like, how. like it formed who [00:05:00] I was. And and it enabled me to develop different skills than in some cases, other people. And it made me a better. And though, despite the fact that they tried to make me be like, but he also didn't turn out like everybody else.

And so I think the struggling moments are the things that shape us. And so in removing those, it doesn't, it's like blue ocean strategy. When you have a, when you have a business, it's let's just think about all the possibilities it's like, Yeah, I don't know what to do cause there's just too many options.

And so part of it is those struggling moments helps shape where we wan...