An Important Announcement and Guest Calee Lee, President and Creator of Xist Publishing.

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercam. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode one hundred and twelve, which is first airing in late September twenty nineteen. We are going to be talking with Callie Lee today. Callie is a very inspiring entrepreneur who has a great story of starting her own digital mostly children's publishing business. How she sees the opportunity of new digital tools to bring stories to kids, modern kids in a brand new way. So we're going to hear from her about that. But first, But first, oh man, I feel like we shouldn't reveal it in the title. I want people to just yeah, no, I can just be a prize and find out when they're listening. Yeah, so we have a little personal announcement here that the best of both world's family is growing. We will have to re record the intro that this is Laura, my family and I. We are definitely Laura, Laura, not Sarah. She's like, no, no, no, no, no, no no, but we are actually expecting another baby in January, so number five joining the crew. I know. It is so exciting, it's totally cool. Yeah, so how are you How are you feeling. I'm feeling good getting into it'll be a five plus months at this point that this is the reveal is coming out, And don't worry, We're going to talk more about this in future episodes. Plenty of FOD so entirely dedicated because why not, there's just so much to unpack here and whatever Laura is willing to share about her new adventure. Everyone I know is going to be excited about that, especially like you know, big bat age spreads that you're now gonna have. Yeah, yeah, I know. It's it's it's kind of crazy because my eldest is twelve at the time the baby's born in January, will have twelve year old, ten year old, eight year old, almost five year old. So yeah, we've got quite a spread. But I'm really you know, excited, like this is just so fun to have the family grow. I mean, to look at cute little baby clothes again and to think about all that. Let me say, baby GOLs, I do get the tiniest bit jealous. Baby clothes are the best. Baby clothes are the best. They never get really baby clothes, No, They're so cute. And of course babies themselves are cool and they turn into cool children, and that's you know what I think about. Like, I so, you know, love my four children, and I'm like, and there's gonna be another one. I'm so cool to see that amazing combination of jeans is going to turn into his or her say his, it's his. We do this well, I knew, but I wasn't sure if you were going to reveal the gender on the base. Yeah, that's fine. Part of being of advanced maternal age, as listeners know I am, is that you wind up being screened for various things. And I've had all sorts of sonograms related to that and to other things, you know, being an older mom. And so yeah, definitely know that it is a little boy. So it means your middle child is it's so interesting because like she can never complain about being middle because well, yeah, exactly, yeah, I know. I mean it'll be a very masculine household, which is one of the reasons that we ask CALLI in the interview part of out Books for Little Boys, because that's certainly something that's true. Little boys don't exist. But when you asked that question, I was thinking of like all the sci fi series that I see, and I always feel like those look very like mailed I don't know, well, we have certainly have our fair share of graphic novels in the house, and certainly the number of truck books is ridiculous. But you still have all your baby stuff. I hope you do, know. But it's it's not because I was giving it away because I was like, I'll never have another child, obviously, But it was because Alex has destroyed everything because he is that kind of kid. Uh So the crib is gone because he broke it, the you know, car seats that probably would be too old anyway, but he you know, pulled all the stuffing out. He is uh you know, we we we'll see you get to get new stuff, get to get new stuff. I mean, we'll see if this little boy is like him, but maybe he'll be totally like calm and you know, actually, because they're so different. Yeah, I mean I can see that with my three little boys already. But yeah, we're really excited. And so Sarah is actually in the midst of a baby explosion among her circles, friends and her family. So I told her, she was like, you're not the only one I got the news from you. Well, my my sister's going to be an aunt on the other side of my family, which I'm so excited about. My sister is due with her first a baby girl, just within a week of Laura's due dates, so that is super cool. In fact, I always know what wek Laura is because my sister's always sending me pictures. And then one of my best friends from college is having twins. So yeah, it's just going to be like a baby explosion. And I will be honest that I'm I'm happy that this time I'm it's not mine and I just get to celebrate with everyone else. And actually I will mention just for full circle, we finally weaned, so yeah, you're done with this twenty months of age we did ended after our trip, so just as you're entering into that realm again, I have officially left it. So yeah, we're gonna have to talk and upcoming episodes about all the you know, new baby products and things. I mean, but partly being I wasn't on Instagram for Alex and I am now and I'm getting all these ads and like, you know, pumps that promise your life. You don't have to get pregnant. Of course it does. It knows way before other people. You're not publicly pregnant on Instagram, so how does it know? Oh my god, I'm kind of creeped out by it because of what you search for, right like, and so if I was searching for breast pump once, like, it's like it's forever forever you're getting ads. So yeah, the creepiness of modern been tagged for the next time. However many months Instagram knows before anything else. But anyway, so more on that to come. But after that big reveal, we are going to go into our great interview with Callie, so stay tuned for that. Sarah and I are excited to welcome Callie Lee to the podcast. Callie, can you introduce yourself? To our listeners. Sure. My name is Callie Lee, and I am the founder and president of Exist Publishing, which is a children's book company for toddlers through ten year olds. And I'd love to hear the story of how Exist came to be because I think when I first started corresponding with you a great many years ago, you were sort of in a you're doing like freelance work. Your husband was in a different job, like family situation, very different. Can you talk about how this came to be and how this has all evolved? Sure? And I definitely credit you, Laura, as somebody that's been really influential in this journey. So I appreciate all your help over the years. When I was let's see, back in twenty ten, my daughter was four, my son had just been born, and I got a Kindle for my birthday and so not ten, Yes, goodness, I got a Kindle for my birthday and it was the old, clunky, black and white kind And I was sitting on the couch and my daughter said, Mom, will you read me a story? And I said, of course, honey, you know we read stories in this house. Sure, And we went on the Kindle store, which was very limited at that time, and there really weren't any for children. So my background was in writing. I went to film school. I was doing a lot of corporate video production at the time, and I said, honey, I'll make you one, and so very quickly I discovered why no one else was making them because the technical limitations of the of the system at the time were really really not designed for children's books with illustrations and text. But I developed a process and over the course of about three months, but I joined a GM to start this project. But instead of working out, I used the gym daycare, which was fantastic and the gym coffee shop, which was also fantastic, to start figuring out how to make children's ebooks. And over the course of a summer we went to the gym three times a week, I worked out all of once. But I developed a system for turning illustrated content into children's e books. So in twenty eleven we launched with three titles that summer, and then by the end of the year, I think we had eight total, and it was kind of chunking along. We just did a really interesting data dive into the history of our revenue, and that year we paid for childcare out of the business and that was about it. But that Christmas, the kindle Hire came out and so we were one of the very few people making books for digital devices, and the market exploded. So twenty twelve, I think we published around eighty titles, and we very quickly started getting emails from parents saying, you know, my kid loves this ebook. Can I buy a paperback version for a birthday party? So we added paperbacks. About three or four years later, I started getting emails from librarians saying, you know, your books are lovely. Do you have them in hardcover editions that we can put in our library. So today we have a catalog of around seven hundred and fifty unique children's books. We sell paperback, hardcovers, digital schools, libraries, retail outlets, and it's been a really, really fun ride. Yeah, that's so cool, and I feel like it's probably backwards from what most places do, right, Like they start with all this paper and they're like, Okay, we have to go digital, and you guys prove that you created your own path. You went the other way. That's so cool. It is completely opposite, and it's always really fun when I'm at kind of industry sorts of meetings and pitching our story for the first time because I get that look of how did you do that? That's completely opposite, but it's worked for us. Yeah. And one of your interesting parts of your business model when you and I were talking about this earlier, Cali, there's ebook subscription services, right, and so that's a big part of it. That the whole business model is entirely different than the sort of one off purchasing that goes on with paperbacks and hardcovering exactly. So you know, we ship books all the time, but I absolutely love the e book subscription model. And you know, it's like Spotify or Netflix for children's books. And we have a couple of different partners, one of which I will recommend to your readers over or your viewers over and over, which is called Epic and Epic Books Books for Kids is absolutely fantastic. There's twenty or thirty thousand e books in their catalog and kids just click and a lot of them have read a lout audio and it makes story time, whether they're reading individually or parents reading to kids, so much more fluid than going to the store buying a book, going to the library, having to bring the books back. We we absolutely love it. And one of the cool things about this as a publisher is you can see what people are clicking on instantly and you can see if they abandon stuff, right. I mean, that's so theoretically someone is seeing that. We are not someone to say that you're not You're not immediately from that, but you get more data than you than you would get from like what are my library checkouts over time like that that's a very delayed market. Yeah, we do. We get pretty good data, and you know, we make decisions based on that data, which is really fun. We have a very very popular series of joke books, and so we make more joke books and it's been really, really fun. It turns out that they are perennially popular. Who would have thought? Who would have Well, I could tell you from from the humor in my house around the dinner table. But you know, we sort of you meet the market demand. What can I say? So? I mean, one of the things I've we wanted to talk with you about is about really good children's books that have stood the test of time. I mean, both you as a parent reader and what you see in the industry. You know, so if we're thinking about books to give as gifts, or books we might want to check out or buy for our own children that they're going to want to read six times, and we won't be sad that they want to read six times in a row. I wonder if you could give us some suggestions of good titles for that sure. So I think you know, one of the things that's as hard as a parent is that our kids keep changing. It's wonderful that they grow up, but just when you hit that groove, then they're they're over it again. So with books, it's the same thing. And you know, for your baby's and toddlers, they're not going to be listening to the picture books that you maybe want to listen to. But we love Stack the Cats as a board book is hilarious and involves a lot of counting in math. And you know, my son maybe listened to the Little Boot, Blue Truck books over and over and over again, and so One Duck Stuck was another favorite board book in our house. And so kind of you finding those board books. You know, you get to make the decision as a parent when they're little that you don't mind reading over and over and you know once again, go to the library, go to subscription services and get lots. My big philosophy with children's books is more is always better. Not every time you know, do you want more in your life, But with children's books, the more you have, the less you have to read the horrible ones over and over again. And there are some horrible ones out there. But before we segue into that, we're just going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. Listeners. We know that hiring isn't as simple as just putting an ad in the paper or posting to a job board. It's far more complicated than that. 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Go to LinkedIn dot com slash best of Again, that's LinkedIn dot com slash best of b E stof to get fifty dollars off your first job post. Terms and conditions apply. Okay, where we left off we were talking about Now We're obviously not going to ask you to name names here because I'm sure that all the publishers and authors probably know each other, and we don't want to trash anyone's hard work. But what do you think, what are the characteristics of some books that tend to be maybe only looked at once or not gotten all the way through. We made it our mission to publish books that inspire discovery and delight in children. And so when when I've read picture books as a parent, the books that I really hate are the ones that are very didactic they're trying, you know, to teach my kid to use manners or something, or they're trying to force something on children that they don't care about. Whether it's all sorts of different things that can end up in a book. They're no fun for kids and they're no fun for parents. And so if a story can inspire discovery, they want to learn about the world, They want to count, they want to learn their ABC's, they want to learn facts about get goos. Those are the books that were really interested in. And then I think make great picture books. Whoever publishes them, Yeah, that's great. And we talked a little bit about board books, some good ones there. What about as we get to older readers. I know that, particularly for my older children, I'm having trouble sort of understand what series are out there right now that they might get into, and particularly if you know you've got a son. So it seems to me that a lot of books are kind of aimed at girls, and I would like to be able to recommend so we're aimed at boys. Actually though, I feel like, yeah, I want some gender neutral recommendations, some gender neutral or even you know, ones that may be aimed at boys, but that there's some reluctant readers that you know could could use some good books. So how about for older children, what do you recommend there? So for older children, I think there's two paths, So one is when they're reading independently and one are read alouds. And it's been our policy in our house that I read at bedtime for somewhere between fifteen and thirty minutes every night that I'm home. And so my son is nine now and he is reading on his own, and he was very, very pleased that this Monday the latest dog Man book dropped and so it was met with great rejoicing and all was happy in the house. And graphic novels are a godsend for kids who are reluctant readers or even voracious readers who just want something different. We've loved the Ambulet series in our house, and Zid of the Space Girl is a very It has a girl character, but there's boys in it. And both of those serieses are fun graphic novels that really can appeal to kids at that kind of age in reading range. One of the things we've done as well in the Reader Outside is you know, yes, I have read a few more contemporary books to them, but I've really tried to focus on at least every other book reading something from the classics, because it's not something that he's going to pick up and read on his own. Usually that first chapter is a little slow, so you know, we just all have to kind of get through it. And I'm not afraid to abandon books. I have tried reading Treasure Island like three or four times, and I absolutely hate it. And I know that, you know, lots of people feel very differently, but it's not for us. And so he loved The Call of the Wild. He loved the Pollyanna books, which you wouldn't think. He's a big, rough and tumble boy, but Pollyanna is a great story, and there's a sequel when she's a young lady and it's really really well done, and I didn't realize that until I read it. So interesting, I feel like, yeah, I tried Little House on the Prairie a year ago, and I'm willing to try it at least one more time. But it didn't go over well. And if it doesn't go overwell, that's okay. There's a yeah, a certain pacing element of books that were written like one hundred years ago, which you just have to remember they didn't have cable, they didn't have you know, cell phones, so that you were stuck with the sort of entertainment options you had, and lengthiness was not a problem in these circles. It was a benefit of benefit because you're trying to fill time. And I did want to clarify with you. So you said that you do reading time every night. Do you still read aloud with your kids or this has now become their own reading time or so. My daughter is twelve now and she has really moved on, which is kind of a bummer but kind of part of life. She's reading on her own. It's okay. Yeah, but read to my son and when the story is of interest to her, she will pop back in for that. Totally cool. Yeah, it's hard. It's it's hard to you know, you begin that ritual when they're so young and then it evolves, and I guess it would be very bittersweet to see it stop. But at some point then you can embrace ooh no, I get to read my own novel while immerses themselves. Yeah. Well, I'm curious what other ideas you have for parents who are trying to bring up readers. I know a lot of listeners of this podcast love books and love reading, and it's always one of those things that people tell me they'd like to spend more time doing, and it's something we'd like our children to do. So what are some good sort of household rules, household strategies that parents can put in place to encourage reading among their kids. So all of the data shows that, like I said, quantity is actually key. The more books you have in your house, the more likely your children will grow up to successful adults. So sometimes it's just a matter of having the books around and then modeling that behavior as a parent. So when your kids see you reading, and even if it's reading on your phone, some people say, oh, it's got to be in the paper book. But as long as you, as a parent are making it very clear, hey, I'm reading on my you know iBooks or Kindle app on my phone and this is what you know, I'm finding interesting. Discussing that with your children obviously when it's you know, appropriate, or you can find something that they might be interested in, really models that behavior of readers. Another thing we've done is we love audio books, so putting audiobooks on for long car rides. We do a couple of those a year, putting audiobooks on sometimes just for the short drives when you need some quiet listening to a story building. That habit of listening and ingesting stories, I think is part of what makes us human. And so the more kids have stories in their lives, the more they are going to seek it out on their own. Cool, Well, do you want to give us some of your specific favorites. We definitely have a couple of our own, and I don't know, Laura, if we want to share it here, maybe more in the intro, But well, what's getting read in the Unger household right now? I mean, what's what's on rotation there? Well in the you know, we've got multiple levels of books going on. You know. One crowd pleaser that will will please my almost two year old to my seven and a half year old is basically anything by Moe Willem, Like really, you can't go wrong, from the Knuffle Bunny to all the like Pigeon books to all of the Elephant and Piggy Like, seriously, my two year old, I will actually sit there because I think there's something about the different voices in the word bubbles that keeps her interested. And then my seven and a half year old, who can obviously read her stuff, still loves to like sometimes she'll want to play a role or whatever. So I would say that's like our go to and we will. We will at the bookstore, like if we see a new one then we don't have, well, we'll grab it. We'll get that excited. And then my other favorite favorite author for more of Annabelle, so my seven year old's age, is Abbi Hanlin. She is a writer. She does these like illustrated chapter books under a series called Dori Phantasmagry and the Hero. It is a girl figure as a but it's not a girly series at all. And her pictures are just like they're they're just adorable. But it's like kind of like a little bit snarky too, and it's just it's great. It's my favorite. I think the adorable and snarky is is helpful a good combo. I gotta say my kids have go for the slightly snarky or slightly subversive. We have one book that most of my children have loved called I Really Want to Eat a Child that is about a young alligator or crocodile perhaps who has this idea that he really wants to eat a child. And it goes back and forth with his parents about this, and you know, at the end he meets a child and it doesn't turn out quite the way he's hoping. But it's it's it's sort of subversive or the who stole my hat? Or where this this is not my hat? The John John is a class Yeah, yeah that he's He's won awards for that. But yeah, they're a little bit subversive. I mean, you know, the characters get eaten and it has to be done right though, you know, like there's like this fine line terrifying and just like naughty, and I think if you're slightly on the naughty, which is as Callie's found from her her series of fart joke books, is uh, you know, that's a good place to be to keep keep people interested. We found there was a picture book called Do Not Open This Book by Mikela Montine that they loved, like this was an every night kind of rotation and it was it was very meta about a pig who's writing a book, and it's very snarky, and those sorts of things really get kids engage when you can find that. Doctor DeSoto by William Steig was my favorite picture book as a kid, and my kids loved it too. And it's you know, it's a and tis too has to you know, fix a tooth on a fox. And I think kids really love when they have those situations where they can sort of take control or see a character taking control of the world in a really fun and unique sort of way. Yeah, I think, And as you were saying, I mean the books that are too didactic, like let's all learn our numbers together, because learning our numbers it's fun. You're like, not like that, it's not so let's uh, you know, you can move work it in somehow. But so Actually, Sarah and I have a disagreement on a one book that maybe we can get you to weigh in as as a third vote, which is Richard scary? Is it scary or sorry? Okay, all right, we don't really have a disagreement. I'm not gonna sit here and say like it's a bad book. I am just I find it so annoying. Cars and trucks and things that go by the way. I am very familiar with cars. Yes, my problem with the book is that each page has that little gold bug guy, and my kids get into like a war over who will find it first, that like it, it's not good, so's there's conflict over gold bug. And it's four pages long, every single exactly, it's like repeated conflict, and I just I like sort of had to hide that book after a while. I have never been a fan of and I can't remember cars and trucks and things that go has it, but the books that have story and then labels for all of the things, because at a certain level, the kids would realize that you weren't reading all of the labels, and then you had to stop and point and go through. Like sometimes you could just skip and read one on a page, but I am I'm not that parent that wants to point out all of the details on a sixty four page book. So maybe I've just stopped reading the books to kids at the point where they become literate enough to realize that you're not reading all the words. So we can zoom through cars and trucks. But we've also brought it along as a book on a vacation because then it's like one book, but it can fill a lot of time, which is sometimes a good thing, and we'll only we for whatever. My kids have seemed to be okay with the rule of like, oh, we're only going to read ten pages of this, So I think if you know you have that, then we know both of us are like that, go over, that's good. Yeah. Apparently I'm just less good at reading because after we can stop. Now, I don't think mine. I think mine just don't want to go to bed. I don't. I think we could be doing like organizing the socks, and they probably would be like, no, we could go to all the socks. Well, Kelly, so what what are you reading? Now? Like we you know, do you have any particular times of day that you read? And I know that probably being in the publishing business, you got to read all sorts of stuff that you may not wish to read. But when you get to your your pleasure reading time, when is that? How do you fit it in in your busy life? And what are you reading now? So I read most of the time. My son was a fantastic baby. He was one of those magic baby sleepers. However, once he had his own bed, that magic baby stopped and I got in a habit of sitting in there and waiting for him to fall asleep, which we're you know, seven years into that habit, and so it will it will end because it you know, my daughter is on her own. But that's usually when I read. Is I read to him, We say prayers, we turn off the light, and then I sit in there with my phone and read for you know, fifteen twenty minutes, and then I'll either continue that if it's early ish, or that'll be my personal reading time for the day. The other thing that I love about my life is my kids are really self reliant. In the evenings, we work from home. We've set up our business schedule around their school schedule, and then once dinner's over, my husband and I almost every night head out to the backyard. Maybe we light a fire if it's cool out, and we'll sit and have a glass of wine and either read out there or a lot of times we listen to podcasts, podcasts sometimes audiobooks most of the time, and so we've gone through quite a few over the last few months. And so I absolutely love right now a book called Alchemy by a guy named Rory something. And Rory's book on Alchemy is a fantastic way of looking at the way we make decisions and the way marketing and things like that happen in the world. But you know, it's very accessible in a way that you wouldn't have to be looking to market a particular business or something would be So we really really enjoyed that. We've really enjoyed. We listened to a book about the history of math recently, which was really not something I thought I would ever enjoy, but trying to find something different to think about that's not you know, children's books for toddlers, that's what I typically I am reading. Well, that sounds so lovely. I'm just picturing you in the backyard and your fire pit, and wow, but what happens when you don't hear I was? I was? I was thinking about my future fire pit that I never had thought I wanted before, but now I kind of do. The Alchemy author is Rory Sutherland, for anyone interested in I just looked it up. Well, so, Kellie, we always end our interviews with our love of the week, so we can go first. I mean, Sarah and I will probably do books. But you know, you just told us your favorite book storright up the moment, so you can do something else, something that's you know, rocking your boat this week. So Sarah, what do you what do you have for us? Well, I decided I did have to pick a book for this episode, and I chose Save Me the Plums, which is a memoir by Ruth Reichel, the former editor of Gourmet magazine, which is sadly now defunct. No spoilers because that's part of the book, but everyone knows. And it was just really fun. I read it on the plane and it was very quick read and one of those books where you're like in a very fascinating world of this like magazine industry and the food industry combined, and yeah, I recommend it. Yeah. So I don't know if I have a specific title right now, but what we're saying about the ability to read books on phones, I mean, this has opened up so many possibilities for just getting a book quickly. So between the Kindle app and now Libby, which I also use the library borrowing app, you know, I could just find so many books so quickly or put a hold on them for the future if I want them to you know, if I want to wait for them. But you can just read in situations where you wouldn't have necessarily brought a paperback before, and so squeeze it into five to ten minutes here and there, or if you decide you want a book, quickly can get it and so you know, I know I've said this before, but that ability is just awesome and I definitely love the you know, the ebook options for kids that are now available. My kids all have Kindles and they do some of their reading on there. I mean, yeah, they play a lot of Minecraft too, but there are at least options available, and they certainly read some titles that I wouldn't have picked out for them, But in general I like them to be reading, so I kind of generally have a hands off approach on that one. I will jump in with. I'm going to agree on that reading on the phone or reading on the iPad sort of thing. We love Epic. My kids are just starting to age out of that, which is really a bummer. We love scribbed Script is a subscription service that my daughter has read probably twenty books on this summer, and it's that kind of instant gratification, Oh, her friend's talking about this, you know, she can read it there. Libby is fantastic. The Kindle app is great. I would say for one last book recommendation for older kids, we just listened to A Wrinkle in Time on our latest car drive, and I was really really pleased to see how well that book's held up, how much my twelve year old girl and my nine year old boy really got into it, and even my husband had never read it before. And it was a good family read a lot. Well, that really cool. That's awesome. All right, Well, Kelly, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for having me. It's lots of fun. And now we're going to transition to our question and answer, which comes from a dedicated listener who says she has listened since the beginning. She writes, we have three kids, ages eleven, nine, and seven. When my oldest was born, we hired a house cleaner. Best decision. Ever, as we've added more children to the family and our kids' activity schedules filled up, we've outsourced more and more household tasks, mowing the lawn, grocery shopping, grocery delivery, having dress shirts pressed at the dry cleaner, hiring a handyman for small repairs, etc. And it's mostly great. I am grateful we're able to take advantage of all these conveniences and spend time doing the things we really enjoy. But there's a flip side. Someday, of course, the kids will leave home and live on their own. Before they do so, I want them to have the practical s skills needed for daily living, cleaning a bathroom, doing laundry, fixing things when they break I Earning a shirt for a job interview, cooking a quick and healthy meal, et cetera. Sometimes I worry that outsourcing so many household tasks, we are depriving our kids of the opportunity to learn life skills that will serve them well when they're starting on their own. For the record, we do have our kids do chores like empty waste baskets, setting the table, emptying the dishwashers, watering the plants, et cetera. How do you handle this in your family? Do you ever have the same concerns? I love this question. I think it's so interesting, and I will let you answer it first, but I just want to say that I still have no idea how to iron a shirt properly, and she's never had to. So there you go, and yet has been gotten jobs and is gainfully employed. So yeah, I would put this in the question in a category of things not to worry about. And not only that, I feel like this is one of these questions that is put on people that just doesn't need to be because people are trying to make parents and women in particular feel guilt about outsourcing things and you should not. You know, there are people who want women to do this by themselves, and then the kids still aren't learning it right, So that's not exactly the either or that people think it is. But you can definitely, you know, lighten the burden on yourself and the rest of the family by outsourcing things and know that you know it's going to be fine. First in our house at least, there is more than enough work to go around for everyone. Like even if some stuff is getting outsourced, other stuff as not, Like you know, Monday through Thursday meals might be outsourced, but say weekend ones or not. We make breakfast in the morning. I've had the kids help with that, so you know, even if dinner's being outsourced, like breakfast is one that they can help learn how to do, you know, things like picking up your room, like even if somebody is cleaning the house, you can still have the kids pick up the room before somebody is cleaning the house. You know, there's plenty of other things, like just because grocery shopping sometimes gets outsourced, doesn't mean that X, Y, Z, other errand doesn't get out theirs point being there's so much work to do that everyone can do something and learn something, and it's not like any of us is getting completely off the hook. Agree. And also a lot of these things that you mentioned, they probably don't take years and years of repetitive practice to become good at them. Like laundry, you could probably give a kid heading off to college a crash course very quickly and they would glean the important things and the rest they could learn by doing. Saying with simple types of cooking, cleaning. You know, I was thinking back, and I'm like, did anybody ever like sit down and teach me to clean? Like I feel like that skill was transferred to me at some point, but I don't think there was that much instruction provided. And in the age of YouTube, you know, if you really want to learn the right way to do it, I'm sure there are many videos out there that will show you you know the various nuances of cleaning your bathroom in the perfectly hygienicus article I've read in real simple like ten times, you know, so I'm pretty sure I always skip those, skip that one. But and yeah, the earning the shirt, I'm like, you know what, maybe the job interview would be the time that they could invest in that one one time that they actually get a clean press shirt. Yeah. Now, I thinking I learned to do laundry when I went away to camp after like seventh, eighth, and ninth grade. I went to an academic camp that was three weeks, and of course you can't pack three weeks of clothes, You're gonna have to do laundry at some point in there. So that's when I learned. You know, we obviously we did laundry ourselves at the house, but I think my mom had always been doing it, and I just learned it because I had to for that. And yeah, it was fine, No no giant consternations with with that. And I learned to cook because I had an internship the summer after my freshman year of college that I was in an apartment and like, you know, you got to cook, like you got to figure it out, and I'm sure that there was a lot of ramen at the beginning because I could figure out how to boil water. But you know, it got better. So yeah, this is not really rocket science. And in general, when people need to learn something, they learn a lot better. Obviously, you can involve kids in the meals that aren't being outsourced, you could involve them in the errands that aren't being outsourced. But I would definitely put this in the category of things not to worry about too much. Love it all right? Well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been talking with Callie Lee in addition to some other exciting best of both world's news, and we will be back next week on more with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of Both Worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.