TJ was introduced to me by Andrew, Dim Sum Dad, who essentially recommended TJ because of the quality of his character, which Andrew got to know through their years working together as traders on what is known simply as "the desk." Hollywood tends to caricaturize this work environment, but what's true behind those depictions is that the trading desk is a great backdrop for human drama. Long days that demand quick instincts as well as methodical preparation. High risk and high reward. Meritocratic but also fundamentally politically. Collaborative by design, competitive by nature. A culture with its fair share of both big egos and chip-bearing shoulders. In other words, the desk is an ideal pressure cooker for revealing a person's character. And as you know, The Dad Bod is an ideal podcast for telling the hidden story.

Andrew described TJ to me as considerate, wise, thoughtful, and with an off-the-charts EQ. But beyond these specific qualities, Andrew clearly regards TJ as simply one of the most high quality people that he's ever worked with. I find this kind of recommendation - one regular, everyday guy who sees another regular, everyday guy being extraordinary with that very ordinary slice of life known as "work" - to be very compelling, so I entered my conversation with TJ hoping to learn how he became a person that my friend Andrew so highly respected. The natural place to start was by reading some of Andrew's words to TJ: "I would often lean on TJ for counsel in work and in life," said Andrew. "Understanding his thoughtful approach to work and parenting can be a gift to all dads."

Genuine praise like that will make any grown man blush. Fortunately, it also launched our conversation into TJ’s story. The sport of wrestling came up right away. TJ and his brothers all wrestled, so the family spent a lot of weekends at wrestling tournaments. One specific tournament stands out in TJ’s mind. It hadn’t gone well. Dejected and sitting in a random high school cafeteria after getting knocked out of competition, his dad pulled him aside and said to him, "You gotta make a decision. We're happy to take you to all these extra practices, drive you around and spend our weekends sitting in a gymnasium, 12 hours in a day, 12 hours just sitting there watching wrestling. We're happy to support you and do all those things, but you're not doing this for me. You're not doing this for your mom. If you want to continue on and have success, you have to decide that you want this for yourself. You're the only one who can make that happen or not." It was a pivotal moment for TJ, not just for wrestling but life itself. It taught him that it's one thing to merely do an activity as a task, but it's a whole other thing to own that activity as a commitment.

I love that story for its importance to the transformation of TJ the son to TJ the man. It changed his life and it's a moment that he still thinks about today. At the same time, it's also an amazing story about a dad, TJ's dad, seeing his son, understanding where he was at that moment of defeat, and delivering the right message to turn that moment into one of power and agency. And think about how TJ's dad must have felt at that moment. After a full week of work and family, you find yourself at yet another wrestling tournament on a Saturday. You just watched your son lose, but what you saw was a “going through the motions”, lackluster type of effort. In that situation, I think many of us would let it slide - just another tournament in a long season. Some of us would have been upset and maybe come down on the kid - your mom and I bring you to these tournaments, practices, extra practices, do you realize how lucky you are to have that kind of support? TJ’s dad did neither of those things. Instead he saw his son, believed in his son, and then showed him a way out of defeat.

Hollywood gives us dramatized halftime speeches. All-access coverage takes us into the huddle of professional sports. We love seeing these moments because there's something undeniable about seeing a coach turn defeat into victory with their words and presence. As we can see from TJ's dad, we dads - and moms, too, for sure - find ourselves in those moments with our kids as well. It might be after a tough loss at a wrestling tournament, but it can also happen with a tough homework assignment, or trying to get over a fear, or dealing with a social situation at school. TJ's dad provides a great example for all of us when we find ourselves in those kinds of moments.

And yet there's still something more to call out about TJ's dad's work here. When I asked TJ, "what was the imprint that your dad left on you?" TJ said, "He was always very available and very engaged, work a whole day and then come back, and every day, we were either playing baseball in the yard, or he was taking us to wrestling practice, or sometimes driving 45 minutes to get to the extra wrestling practice, always very, very engaged with whatever activity we were into. He was our coach in a lot of sports, spending a lot of weekends, countless weekends, driving us all over and spending your entire Saturday at a wrestling tournament. So I think the big impression was just how much time he invested into the things that we were interested in, taking that interest in what's going on in your kids' lives and what they like to do, what they're focused on. Pouring yourself into that is something that has struck me, sitting here at this point and looking at my own kids." That important moment in TJ's life that took place in the high school cafeteria only happens because TJ's dad was there at that tournament and all the other tournaments and practices. The truth is, we won't always have the perfect words for our kids in their critical moments - after all, this is real life and not Hollywood - but if we can be present and take interest in our kids' lives, we can leave the same imprint on our kids that TJ's dad left on him.

If I had to pick just one word to encapsulate TJ's dad, it would be "consistent." It's a good word for his mom as well. At the surface, TJ's parents' collaboration places his dad as the primary parent covering sports and his mom as the primary on education, but the throughline was modeling and teaching character. About his mom, TJ said, "My mom was always the quietly resolute one, taking care of what's in front of her, taking care of whatever thousand things she had to do that day, never complaining." He also notes her quiet strength, and that his mom got that from her own mom, TJ's grandma, who TJ described as "the golden example of never complaining. You physically can't get her to say something negative. She'll find the positive in any situation."

I'm extremely grateful for the eight dads who have shared their stories with me thus far. Across all of them, one of the big lessons on fatherhood that I've taken away is that our kids will either imitate us or emulate us. Either we model high character worth emulating or we influence them in ways that they can't help but imitate. TJ's grandma is the golden example that TJ's mom succeeded in emulating, and now TJ is trying to emulate his mom's quiet strength as well as his dad's presence and interest in his kids' lives.

Another personal insight that I can share from producing The Dad Bod so far is that it's a lot of fun trying to come up with a title for each dad. Sometimes it's really hard to think of a good one, but in TJ's case, "7 Habits of Dad" came to me quickly and felt perfect right away. It's a reference to TJ's go-to book, the seminal business and self improvement book by Steven Covey, "7 Habits of Highly Effective People." In our interview, TJ cites a few specific habits from the book. Sphere of influence - how focusing on what you can control (that is, your "sphere of influence") and editing out what you can't actually increases rather than limits your sphere of influence. Sharpening your ax - the overlooked value that taking care of and bettering yourself can have on your effectiveness. Value-based alignment - the concept that if a person focuses on their own inner attitudes, principles, and behaviors then the outcomes of external arenas such as career, relationships, and money will take care of themselves.

A consistent theme across all three of these habits highlighted by TJ is that inward focus and care maximizes outward effectiveness and results. It reminds me a lot of…well, the kinds of things that TJ identified in his dad, mom, and grandma. Oftentimes a book can change your life by showing you something you never realized, but for TJ and "7 Habits", I think the book changed his life not by showing him something new but rather by putting words to the values that were modeled to him his entire life. And that's why TJ is the 7 Habits of Dad.

To close out this reflection, I want to return to Andrew's quote about TJ where he uses the word "gift" when saying that "understanding TJ's thoughtful approach to work and parenting can be a gift to all dads." Like me, a lot of my friends grew up with immigrant Chinese parents, an experience marked by living with constrained choices and a constant reconciliation between the culture and values exchanged at home versus those of "America." As a result, even if you were born in America, you still feel like you need to assimilate. Even if your parents speak fluent English, you still learn to play the role of cultural translator. I've always felt that my character - the good parts as well as the bad parts - was shaped in large part by these and other rough edges planned by nobody, and because my kids' lives don't have those kinds of rough edges, I worry that there will be something missing in their character and values because my wife and I fail to teach them the things that "life" taught us.

In the everlasting debate within parenting of Nature versus Nurture, Nature says that a person's character is predestined, Nurture says it is shaped. I think most people, myself included, say that it's both, which is a useful viewpoint because it helps you appreciate the contributions of both talent and effort. Talent is the stone that effort shapes into a sculpture.

And this is where I received the gift that Andrew was talking about. In TJ's story, character itself emerges as a third element complementing the nature-nurture duo. Character, like nature, is God-given, and like nurture, it is shaped slowly over time. It is simultaneously nature and nurture, and yet it has a distinct quality of its own: character forms and begets character, and in TJ's story in particular, we see that good character forms and begets good character.

Thank you, TJ, for sharing your story.