Building a Legacy with Brian Dougherty, U.S. Navy Seal and Declan James Watch Co Founder

Brian is a Navy SEAL turned entrepreneur in the midst of starting his first company. Brian is the founder of the Declan James Watch Co. 

He started out in commercial real estate for 6 years, before joining the Navy SEALs at the age of 28, where he served for 8 years including two deployments with Seal team 7 and one shore duty assignment as a BUDS instructor. 

It was an honor speaking to a certified bad a$$ dad, American Hero, and entrepreneur who is laying it on the line to build a legacy for his son. 

On this episode, we had an opportunity to speak with Mark Winkler, author of My Daughter's Keeper.  Mark is a special person and we absolutely enjoyed every minute of the interview.

About Mark Winkler:

Mark has continuously moved towards his goal of helping create a better world by motivating others. His passionate advocacy for families and children eventually led to the co-founding of Manhood Camp, which was established to provide life-skills programs and community engagement opportunities for young men in the Los Angeles area. Recently, Manhood Camp started working directly with fathers via its monthly support group, Fatherhood Circle. Winkler holds a bachelor's degree in psychology and has been working in the community advocacy field for more than a decade. His organization's event, Choose Peace: A Community Celebration and Information Fair, brought together over twenty-six community organizations and received a special appearance and congratulatory speech by the Los Angeles city council president, Herb J. Wesson Jr.

My Daughter’s Keeper is the compelling story of a father’s journey to strive against mounting odds to be present in his daughter’s life. The story reveals the complexities of parenting as the author wrestles with his past to face self-imposed challenges in order to transition from a man given to selfish leanings to an open-hearted and dutiful father.

Check it out here: My Daughter's Keeper

Ice fishing, Iowa State Fair, greased pig chasing, snake bagging, bumps and bruises building character, impacts of crashing a motorcycle on realizing your role as a parent, letting your kids take risks, and appreciating the experience of fatherhood are just some of the topics we covered in this epic podcast with Terry Dooley, 30 year Financial Services Executive, Iowan, Outdoor Enthusiast, and father of two.

Listen in, subscribe, share, and give us five star reviews on iTunes! 

This week's episode from The Dad Corp is with 4x Father, Author, Husband, OCR Spartan Race Competitor, Farmer, and founder of  Daddy Saturday - Justin Batt.

We had a chance to speak about his book Daddy Saturday, the fight for ending fatherlessness, and his principles of being an engaged father. It was epic, listen in!

Also make sure to check out Justin's DadBoss Training about getting intentional and unlocking your potential as a father!

Key Quotes:
"One of our principals and daddy Saturday is that far more is caught than taught.At the end of the day, they will probably take more away from watching you and observing you and modeling what you do than they ever will, what you actually try and teach them"

"We absolutely took some stuff from the corporate world and brought that over. I think  that's something that we often don't do enough in, in life and in fatherhood. And my perspective is we don't borrow what we know from the corporate world and bring that back into our personal lives and into our family. So, you know, we, we set mission, vision values,  dreams, boards, right? We do all those things as a family and we do those individually."

"If I'm insecure about feeling unorganized at work or feel like I've, I'm not living up to the standard that I want to in my physical fitness or whatever it may be, right. That insecurity will come out on other people because it's far easier to push that out on somebody else. And so I may get upset at my kids and oftentimes I'm like, maybe they deserved it, but they didn't deserve to the level that I got upset with them. And the whole reason that happened was because of the fact that I was insecure or feeling ill-equipped or inadequate myself. And that's an important thing for fathers to realize is to examine themselves and have that self awareness to be able to make those adjustments when that happens."

Listener Discounts:

1. Declan James Watches - Enter DC10 for 10% off of their high quality watches
2. The Dad Corp 'Dad Life' Collection and 'Comfort' Collection - Enter Podcast15 for 15% off

Podcast Music Credit:

Shellem Cline - Little Pink Glasses

This week's episode is amazing with Dr. Jack and Sara Gorman, the father-daughter team who have devoted their time to helping educate communities around making rational decisions about health and security through their non-profit Critica and their book, Denying To The Grave. 

1. Founders of Critica - Led by Drs. Sara and Jack Gorman and Dr. David Scales, Critica is a community committed to making rational decisions about health and security. In a culture dominated by polarizing politics, and an abundance of unchecked misinformation, Critica exists to revolutionize the role of science in making rational health decisions.
2.  Authors of the book Denying to the Grave - In Denying to the Grave, Drs. Sara Gorman and Jack Gorman explore the psychology of health science denial.  This book points the way to a new and important understanding of how science should be conveyed to the public in order to save lives with existing knowledge and technology.

We covered a number of topics including:

1. The Scientific Method: "The scientific method is basically a mode of inquiry that's followed in the scientific field. It works really a little bit counter-intuitively through this idea of falsification. When you're doing a study, you set up a hypothesis that there's no effect of what you're looking at, and you try to disprove that. As time goes on, other people try to either replicate your findings or disprove them.  After a while, a consensus is sort of achieved on what they actual science shows on a given time."  
2. COVID-19 Opening Guidelines: "We can start looking at the science and the science is that children are clearly as able to be infected and spread infection as adults, even though they don't get as sick as adults and schools have lots of adults, they have teachers, they have kitchen staff, they have janitorial staff, children go home to their parents and their grandparents and other adults.  Just because the children themselves don't get that sick, that by opening schools, you're going to prevent spread of the infection. And therefore this has to be done extremely cautiously. It can't be, let's just open the schools, no matter how much we want, because those children will be vectors for the virus and make people sick."
3. Should you send your kids to school: "It wold be good to understand - What's going on in your local situation. How high are cases and how well is the health department keeping track and testing?  If the cases are very high, or if the health department is not collecting good data, then you might be on shaky ground. I would ask a lot of questions to the school on precautions. Are people wearing masks? You want a lower number of people there so they are not too close to each other. You want to know how well the facility is cleaned,m how close of an eye or is everyone keeping on the trend in the data? What you don't want to happen is to get behind a re-occurrence.You want to have some advance warning about that." 
4. Misinformation: "Never in our lifetime, have we been so challenged by the dilemma of, on the one hand? You do want any information that might be lifesaving to get out there as quickly as possible. With, on the other hand, we want accurate information to get out there. We don't want to fill up the news wires with stories about things that may or may not work that are not true. And that's very, very difficult."
5. Loving our Children: "As a psychiatrist,  one of the things I observed it did, it's very rare. It was very rare in my experience that you did much damage by loving [00:51:00] kids too much.

With Coronavirus cases still on the rise, a key debate in the United States is if schools should open or not. 

To help answer this question, the DadCorp Podcast is joined by Dr. Suraj Saggar, an infectious disease specialist and physician who was on the front lines of the COVID-19 virus in New Jersey. He is a wealth of knowledge on the subject and even provides regular medical updates on FOX 5 News in New York. 

Dr. Saggar’s New Jersey facility was in the epicenter of the virus. His team experienced the dangers of COVID-19 first-hand. He discussed the subsequent PTSD they all faced. He compared the onset of the virus at their hospital as a Tsunami. Patients would go from stable to escalated in hours. Dr. Saggar and his colleagues would enter the facility every day to around 60 people on ventilators knowing the survival rate would be around 20%. He describes the personal pain of witnessing young patients in their 30s or 40s asking to Facetime their children to say goodbye.

As a father of an 11-year-old son, he describes how difficult it was to be present during those months for fear of bringing the virus home to his family. He slept in a different room, used a different shower and didn’t start wearing street clothes again at work until June. 

The question becomes: With the Coronavirus still out there, are we better prepared now to start sending our children back to school? Dr. Saggar asserts the importance of taking emotion out of the equation and focusing on the science.

Dr. Saggar explains that in order to feel comfortable with his own child returning to school he would pay close attention to the guidelines that the education system is putting in place. Whether or not kids are wearing masks, if desks are placed six feet apart and adequate air filtration systems are some of the key factors. He asserted that we have a better understanding of the disease, more access to testing and effective treatments.  He explains that the existence of t-cells in your body might be  plausible to protect you and have become the source of a lot research and optimism among the scientific community towards reaching the ultimate goal of herd immunity. 

In addition to his regular segments on FOX 5 News in New York, you can find Dr. Suraj Saggar on Youtube by searching his name as well as Instagram, LinkedIn and his own podcast. He co-hosts a medical podcast called Recommended Daily Dose with his colleague Dr. Clenton Coleman. They seek to put a unique spin on healthcare by incorporating humor and both of their own diverse backgrounds. 

3 Key Takeaways from the Discussion:

1. COVID-19 is not a hoax. As someone who was on the front lines and experienced first-hand the effects of this disease, Dr. Saggar described the virus's devastation. When things don’t directly affect us, we tend to not completely understand them. We need to gather knowledge and look at the perspectives from our health heroes in the field.

2. When considering whether kids should go back to school in the fall, the focus needs to be on science. Although we understand the quarantine fatigue and desire to return to normal life, the emotion needs to be removed. Instead, we must look at the cases in each specific area as well as factor in all the important preventative methods.   

3. We are better prepared now in dealing with COVID-19 but that does not mean that the virus is gone. With more access to testing and a better understanding of the different distinct phases of the virus, physicians are better equipped than they were months ago. We know now that masks and social distancing are still important to help prevent the spread of the virus. 

There are many parallels between entrepreneurship and raising a child. In the beginning, you cannot be fully conscious of the outcome. Both also can be exceptionally difficult at first but eventually you’ll start to see the results. As a society we place a large importance on the end result. Whether it be your business making headlines, finishing a big race or your child eventually growing up to be very successful; we often praise the end rather than the journey itself. 

This week, the DadCorp Podcast is joined by Tim Demoures, co-founder and managing director of Eloquens; the leading platform for sharing and selling professional best practices. He’s also a new father to 7-month old Rafael. 

Jonathan and Tim speak on this notion that the journey needs be appreciated instead of the end result. They apply this to entrepreneurship, raising a child and even video games. The guys go on to discuss the possible benefits associated with video games and screen time while also weighing the drawbacks. It’s interesting to consider the fact that these games can open kids up to valuable building skills, allow for creativity, development of strategy and even working with a team. These are all skills that can be applied and transferred to any business or career later in life. 

 Tim expresses the desire to place  focus on providing his child with the right tools, skills and qualities to find his “star.” He dislikes the more “old school” approach to education that has such a narrow emphasis on only certain disciplines. Math, literature and science are at the forefront and all the other subjects are considered secondary. In a system like this, “it’s hard to measure success but it’s easier to measure grades.” This method used in the educational system creates limitations around creativity and the building of an entrepreneurial spirit. Quoting Sir Ken Robinson,  when it comes to your child’s education, the key is not the knowledge itself but rather, how you lead your child to know their passion. There isn’t a one size fits all for education. 

 According to a TedTalk by Jennifer Senior, happiness for parents is a very high bar. For Jonathan, this changed his entire perspective on parenting. He started to view it for what it is, a crisis. The parents of today are anxious, stressed and nervous about providing the best upbringing for their children. 

 However, you cannot anticipate what your child’s future will look like. Tim asserts that since we cannot predict the outcome, as parents, we need to shift our focus to the journey and giving our children all the necessary tools to succeed. 

 3 Key Takeaways from the Discussion:

 1. Your child’s future is uncertain. We need to work towards knowing and understanding our children so we can provide them with the proper tools to succeed.  

 2. Raising a child is a lot like building a business. Both can be very challenging in the beginning phases, require a ton of work, pre-preparation. You will learn from your experiences and start to see the evidence of your efforts, it’s all worth it.  

 3. The way children learn is constantly evolving. With technology and the easy access to information, kids can learn things at a faster rate than older generations. Something that would take sifting through a 300-page book is now a quick Google search. It’s important to be open to actually learning from your kids, once in a while, instead of the other way around. As a father, it’s completely acceptable to not always have the answer. 

Trauma experienced during childhood has a strong ability to influence your future. Many of us have had to endure pain or even abandonment in our past. However, it comes down to not allowing a difficult childhood to define us and this is especially true with this week’s guest. 

Jonathan is joined by Steven “SJ Sherwood” Smith, author of The Denounced trilogy. Steven had an especially hard upbringing. He grew up with a mother who was a malignant narcissist, a father who was not present and an alcoholic step-father. Because of his experiences growing up, Steven originally did not want to be a father. He was afraid that the sins of his parents and pain of his childhood would be reflected on his son. 

For Steven, it was a 7-day program, The Hoffman Process, that changed his life. The Hoffman Process is a personal growth retreat specifically for people who feel that they may be stuck in some aspect of their life. The program allows you to analyze experiences in your past for any negative patterns, behaviors or ways of thinking. They provide you with basic tools to help break these patterns that were conditioned in childhood. 

Hoffman gave Steven the ability to accept the very simple thought that he could change. Instead of continuing to blame his past and make excuses, he realized that he had the power to break this cycle, make a change in his lineage and be a great father. He is now the father of a 10-month old baby boy named Caesar. 

An overarching theme of this discussion is the importance of emotional intelligence in dealing with yourself and others. Steven connects this theme of emotional intelligence to a TEDx Talk by Marilyn York, a divorce attorney who specifically represents fathers and speaks on the power of fatherhood. In this talk, she explains how fathers have the same basic parental instincts as mothers. They have a genetic bond with their children however, for fathers, it’s underdiscussed and severely undervalued. 

Steven’s work, The Denounced trilogy draws strong parallels between Steven’s upbringing and the circumstances of the main character, Ned. Described by one of his readers as “Black Mirror meets The Hunger Games,” at its core, it is a story of abandonment and coping with the pain associated with it. 

You can find more information about Steven and The Denounced trilogy on his website, www.sjsherwood.com. All three books, “A Grey Sun,” “Shifting Horizons,” and “Creaking Dawn” can be purchased on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google Books, Apple Books and Kobo. 

3 Key Takeaways from the Discussion:

1. “Circumstances and what other people do to you can make you something that you’re not.” For Steven, it was his childhood experiences and interactions with his parents that caused him to originally not want to be a father. However, through self-reflection and discovery, he understood that this was all fear based. It was ultimately his choice to not let his past experiences ruin his future.  

2. Emotional intelligence is an incredibly important skill to teach your children and navigate through your own life. Possessing the ability to manage and understand your emotions can affect how you interact with yourself and others. Whether it be in the workplace or disciplining your children, emotional intelligence is essential for building and maintaining quality relationships.  

3. Tough love isn’t always the answer. Using tough love on your children is the easy route because it doesn’t require much consideration or thinking. It’s often an emotional driven reaction that can actually hinder your child’s development if done improperly. 

As fathers and men, it’s in our nature to maintain this impression that we always have everything under control. We never want to appear, to our children, as weak or like we’re failing in some way. However, true strength lies in vulnerability, authenticity and always giving your best effort. These values can not only be applied to raising kids, but also to our careers and daily lives.  

We are joined today by Spencer Colbert, Vice President of Revenue Connect, bodybuilder, men’s health advocate, father of three and self-proclaimed “#1 black Radiohead fan.” 

Spencer speaks on his bodybuilding journey and how his kids and his desire for a higher quality of life inspired him to compete. In his first competition he placed second and the validation he received from his family was unmatched. Getting a better grip on his health and hitting the gym has given him the outlet he needs as a father and a successful businessman. Spencer voices the importance of being a positive role model to his kids and the power behind leading by example. He also expresses his joy towards seeing his son imitate him by doing push-ups and flexing his muscles. 

At The Dad Corp, we understand that not as much support exists for fathers and men in general. We tend to suffer in silence and can have difficulty communicating. Spencer explains how having a proactive approach on your health is beneficial but beginning the conversation with your doctor is somewhat taboo in our society. As we get older and because of increased amounts of stress, we start to lose testosterone. This is something that isn’t normally talked about and should be. Being an advocated for hormone replacement therapy, Spencer describes the need to speak with a professional, get a physical and have your hormone levels checked. Just like your vehicle needs frequent tune-ups, your body needs to be optimized. 

When it comes to our careers and corporate America in general, Jonathan and Spencer discuss the need to reemphasize that family comes first. Also, they break down parental leave and the labels of primary and secondary caretakers. To society, women are just expected to be the primary caretaker, whereas men are viewed as being responsible or even noble if they’re active fathers. They’re praised for doing something “unexpected,” in the eyes of the public, even though it should be expected. As a society, we need to push the narrative of fathers being more active and engaged in their child’s lives. 

You can follow Spencer on Instagram or Twitter at @blackradiohead for more fatherhood insight, fitness inspiration and foodie adventures!

3 Key Takeaways from the Discussion:

1. Be authentic with your children. As a father, you cannot worry about being perfect. It’s all a learning process and you and your children will grow along the way. Don’t be afraid to apologize to your kids when you make mistakes. This shows vulnerability and expresses your humanity.  

2. The journey is the destination. For Spencer, his bodybuilding journey was all about the process. We often focus too much on whether we lose or win instead of enjoying the journey. If you’re giving your best, then you’re on the right track. 

3. As men, it will pay off to have a proactive approach to your health. Regardless of income, people who are healthier are happier. Working out can also give you an outlet. Ultimately, your children are going to emulate you and it’s important that you’re setting good examples. 

David Thompson is James Dean cool.  I first met Dave about five years ago in Jamaica and within a few minutes, Dave is one of those types of people, you want to be friends with that guy. He exudes confidence. He is hilarious. He's got such a cool perspective on life. He's so much fun to be around and  his perspective and his personality is contagious.

And so we hit it off. We went scuba diving three times a week. Our families hung out. We've kept in touch ever since,  one of the really cool things about Dave is that he is just one good person from the core. Maybe a year later after we had met, I put a Facebook donation out and he was one of the few people that donated. He barely knew me outside of that one week in Jamaica, but he stepped up and that's just the  person he is. 

He's actually the  person that I would be willing to call if I had an issue, because I know he would say yes. And so he's such a great dude and a good father, a good husband. He's got his priorities in place.

He's been very successful in business. THe started his own company at a very young age, in his early twenties. It's successful construction company. And his wife owns a flower shop. They reside in New Jersey. They've got a couple young kids. 

Whatever Dave is doing.  If he's working hard, if he's playing hard, he's having fun. He's laughing. He's having a good time. He's joking around. And he even talks about that being the trademark of his personality and his life philosophy, even during COVID-19, which has been one of the most devastating impacts to small business owners in the United States.

Dave has kept a positive outlook and talked about how it's allowed him to reflect on priorities in life and spend time with his family. It just can't get a better person than that. And, he's just hilarious. The technique that he implemented with his daughter to teach her the people skills and customer service is next level of genius. I absolutely cannot wait for you to listen to that. 

So listen in, like, and share.