Front Row Dads with Jon Vroman

The greatest gift you can give your kids has nothing to do with them. Episode 2 of Walk With Jon. No studio, no script, no guest, no editing. Jon Vroman on a walking trail near his house, thinking out loud, this time with his dog Davy along for the walk. The audio is rough on purpose: wind, footsteps, and a dog on a leash are part of the deal. Jon has been doing interviews for the Front Row Dads b...

Fatherhood is a series of windows that open and close. The one you're leaving usually never opens again. For years we've been asking guests on this show some version of the same question: what do you wish you knew before your first kid? For the last day of NEW DAD WEEK, we pulled four of the best answers and put them back to back. No commentary, just four dads who've been through it telling you wh...

You're exhausted, so we made this one short. Two things worth your tired attention. First, a nearly free trick for kids' bedtime that works with their biology instead of against it: no arguing, no negotiating, just light. And second, a genuinely kind word for couples who've been short with each other lately: sleep-deprived people are not their best selves, and that's not a character flaw. This is...

We asked what advice he'd give a new dad. His answer had nothing to do with the baby.   Steve Olsher's advice for men entering fatherhood is to prioritize your wife, above the kids. It sounds backwards, especially when there's a newborn in the house who genuinely needs everything. But his reasoning is hard to argue with: the most important relationship in a family is the one between mom and dad, a...

Suzanne Yatim Aslam had postpartum depression after her son was born, and in this conversation she tells dads exactly what it looked like from the inside, including the part almost nobody says out loud: for a while, she blamed her baby for ruining her life. Her husband didn't know. She never asked for help. She just kept saying she was fine.   This is part of NEW DAD WEEK, five short episodes for...

Your wife is struggling, and everything in you wants to solve it. That instinct is the problem. Welcome to NEW DAD WEEK. Five short episodes for guys who are expecting or in the thick of the first year. We're starting with Jason Kreidman on the skill that matters most early on, and it isn't tactical. It's empathy, which he calls the single biggest game changer in how he parents and how he loves hi...

There are two lessons available when something in your life keeps hurting. One is to get tougher. The other is to walk away. Most men only ever get coached on the first one.   WHAT THIS IS This is the first episode of something new we're calling Walk With Jon. No studio, no script, no guest, no editing. Just Jon Vroman on a walking trail near his house, thinking out loud. In his words: "What I don...

Most men think attraction is something you do. It's something you are. Dr. Robert Glover, best-selling author of No More Mr. Nice Guy, gives about as direct an answer as you'll get: the feminine is highly attracted to a man who's comfortable in his own skin and knows where he's going. From there he gets into why your own thinking is the thing sabotaging you, why time away with other men comes home...

Everyone is talking about the male loneliness epidemic. Here's the less comfortable version: a lot of it is self-inflicted.   Dr. Robert Glover, best-selling author of No More Mr. Nice Guy, gets into what actually keeps men isolated, and he doesn't let anyone off the hook, including himself. He talks about the father wound underneath why men don't trust other men, why some groups of guys go deep f...

His wife said he hadn't told her he loved her all day. He had screenshots proving he'd said it five times. He kept them to himself, and that was the whole lesson. Part three of our five-part week with Dr. Robert Glover, best-selling author of No More Mr. Nice Guy, and probably the most immediately useful one. Glover draws the line between a factual statement and an emotional statement, and makes t...

You think boundaries keep people out. They're actually what lets people get close to you.   Dr. Robert Glover, best-selling author of No More Mr. Nice Guy, runs a full crash course here, and it starts somewhere unexpected: how a lack of boundaries quietly wrecks a man's friendships with other men, not just his marriage. He didn't learn any of this until his thirties, when a therapist laid a string...

The Nice Guy and the jerk are doing the exact same thing. Same shame, different mask. This is part one of a five-part week with Dr. Robert Glover, best-selling author of No More Mr. Nice Guy, and we start at the root. Glover argues nice guy syndrome has almost nothing to do with being polite. It comes from a belief formed before you could speak, that something is wrong with you, and it shows up as...

Most of us tell our kids they did great. Almost none of us tell them what we actually saw.   It's one of the practices Jon Vroman is best known for around here, and the whole thing fits in a sentence: catch them doing the right thing, then make a record of it. The reasoning is solid. Peter Drucker said great leadership brings out strengths until weaknesses stop mattering. John Gottman can predict...

The more you can give your kids, the easier it is to spoil them. That's the quiet worry of every dad working hard to provide, so we went into the vault for this Deep Cut and pulled a teaching that's stuck with our members for years. In a member-only Front Row Dads workshop, financial planners Andrew Lisi and Adam Stock of Next Level Planning Group lay out a simple framework for raising grounded ki...

On a topic dads argue about constantly, we found near-total agreement.  In this Dads Agree episode we play four takes from past Front Row Dads guests who — without ever comparing notes — all landed in the same place: work-life balance is a myth.  Chris Ducker calls it a myth outright.  Tucker Max says balance is "bullsh*t" because work is part of life. Dave Allred argues "the price of greatness is...

The words you repeat about your kids become the story they believe about themselves. In this Deep Cut we  share a summit teaching from Chris and Melissa Smith of Family Brand.  They tells the story of how they accidentally made thier own son "shy" , just by repeating the word,  and then shows how to use language to build your child's identity on purpose. The core idea: "Language is the fundamental...

Nick Foster has been a Front Row Dads member since 2021. He's also the founder of Foster Financial, a husband to his high school sweetheart Carrie, and a dad to three kids. This week, Nick sits down with Jon to talk about what happens after you build the business. Nick spent 10 years building his CPA firm to $2.7 million and 13 employees. Then he stepped back and hit the question a lot of successf...

What can a few days on Richard Branson's private island teach you about being a better father, husband, and man? In this episode, Jon sits down with Adam Holt and Derek Notman, the founders of Rebl Dads. Rebl is a community a lot like Front Row Dads, built to serve high-performing entrepreneurial men who want to be great dads. We love showcasing other groups that are doing real work for fathers, a...

This week on the show, All-In Front Row Dads member Dave Powders pulls out a decade of notes and shares the 5 best lessons he's learned in 10 years of brotherhood. These are the tips that have made him a better father, a better husband, and a more present man at home. Short, practical, and worth your time. What you'll hear in this episode: Tip 1: Your calendar reflects your priorities. From Adam S...

Before we get into it, a quick favor. We're working on making the podcast better for you and we'd love your feedback. If you have 2 minutes, please fill out our podcast survey: forms.gle/JnJQUZR9Pt7d7fvG7 What if your child has been listening, understanding, and forming thoughts the whole time, and you just didn't know how to hear them? In this conversation, J. Brad Britton sits down with Jon to s...

Today's episode is a Father's Day roundtable. Jon sits down with three Front Row Dads, Mike Chu, Scott Seymour, and Austin Distel, for an honest conversation about what it actually means to be a great dad. Before we get into it, we have a quick favor. We're working on making the podcast better for you and we'd love your feedback. If you have 2 minutes, please fill out our podcast survey here: form...

What if the reason you're tired, foggy, and burned out has nothing to do with stress or sleep? Most high-performing men assume their fatigue, brain fog, and inflammation come from doing too much. But there's another conversation happening in functional medicine that most doctors miss completely. Dr. Torrie Thompson is the founder of Meraki Wellness Center in Austin and specializes in mold, heavy m...

Ben & Jessa Greenfield have been playing card games and board games with their family almost every night for years. Their twin sons River and Taryn just turned 18 and are now designing and selling their own card games as a business. That didn't happen by accident. In this conversation with Jon, Ben and Jessa go deep on the small daily traditions that built their family. Not the big vacations. Not...

What happens when a CEO with a young family decides to ride 2,000 miles from Mexico to Canada in 13 days to serve families he's never met? Matt King is the CEO of GoBundance, a mastermind for entrepreneurial men, and a dad to three young kids. He wasn't a cyclist. Five and a half months ago, he had never ridden more than 10 miles on a bike. Then he stood on a stage in November and announced he was...

What happens when you raise boys with earth-based traditions, rites of passage, and the wilderness as their classroom? Tim Corcoran has spent 25 years answering that question. He's the founder of Twin Eagles Wilderness School in North Idaho, a rites of passage guide, wilderness mentor, and father of two sons. He's mentored kids from age 6 through adulthood, taken over 100 men through vision quests...