Can working dads really have it all? What happens to career ambition, marriage, work-life balance and success when you become a father? 🎙️🔥

In this episode of Storytime with Lori, Brad DeLee gets brutally real about fatherhood, adoption, working dads, career and family, work-life balance, marriage, leadership and what choosing family first actually looks like when you're still ambitious as hell.

Brad and his wife spent two years trying to build their family through adoption. They experienced two heartbreaking adoption attempts before the call finally came about their son, Brooks. Brad describes what kept them moving through the grief as “ruthless optimism” — the willingness to open your heart again even when opening it was exactly what allowed it to get broken. ❤️ His story takes us through adoption loss, private grief, the NICU, becoming an adoptive father and finally bringing their son home.

But bringing Brooks home is where this conversation really starts.

What happens when you're a working dad and suddenly that conference, flight, promotion or 5 a.m. meeting has to compete with bottles, diapers, your marriage and a tiny human who couldn't care less about your calendar? 😂 Brad talks about how fatherhood changed the way he thinks about business travel, career growth and the companies he's willing to work for. He hasn't become less ambitious. He's become much more intentional about what he's ambitious for and what he's willing to sacrifice to get there.

Then we flip the damn script. 😏

Women have been asked these questions forever: How are you going to balance motherhood and your career? Who stays home when the baby is sick? What happens when your partner has the more important meeting? Can you really give 100% to your career AND your family?

So I asked a dad.

And Brad's answer took us into a much bigger conversation about working mothers and fathers, gender bias in the workplace, modern fatherhood, men in leadership and why we continue asking women questions we rarely ask men. His answer wasn't that we should start interrogating fathers too. Maybe we should finally stop asking working parents these ridiculous questions altogether. 🔥

We also go straight at the word provider. Brad challenges something we hear constantly from successful professionals: “I'm working this hard for my family.” His response? How much of that is really about providing...and how much is ego? 👀

This episode is for working dads, working moms, adoptive parents, new parents, ambitious professionals, business leaders and anyone trying to figure out how the hell career success and family are supposed to live under the same roof.

Because maybe having it all isn't actually the goal.

Maybe it's knowing what deserves the most of you — and having the guts to give it that. ❤️

🎙️ Storytime with Lori
Real people. Bigger conversations.

👇 YOUR TURN: Has becoming a parent changed what success means to you, or has it changed what you're willing to sacrifice to achieve it? Drop it in the comments. I want to hear the real answer.

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