133: Daddy Saturday: Learning how to be intentional with our kids and end abandonment to raise our children to be better adults. The author and Ted X speaker of Daddy Saturday, Justin Batt is leading the charge.

January 10, 2020

Justin Batt

When you have a career, a spouse and four kids, ages 11, 9, 7, and 5 that rightfully require your time, balancing your calendar can be a tricky proposition. Justin Batt in Charleston, South Carolina designed a strategy that worked for him and he called it Daddy Saturday. How did he arrive at this concept? “I found myself at home on Saturdays with four kids and I had them all to myself the entire day to support my wife, but also to engage with my kids. I just found like most dads, I was working in corporate America, traveling a lot. Stressed out, tired, overwhelmed, often times burning the candle at both ends and the end of the week was often the toughest time. I’d come in on a Friday night, and Saturday morning waking up knowing I’m with my kids for 8-10 hours, having to interact with them and engage them and I just wanted more.”

On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with an extremely busy man, Justin Batt, Founder and Chief Daddy Officer at Daddy Saturday, Father of Four, Best-Selling Author, TEDx Speaker, Managing Partner at Hayden Olivia Bridal, and President Growth and Revenue at Kameleon Partners. Being intentional about his activities with his kids on those Saturdays was vastly improving his engagement and connection with them, while improving his relationship with his wife. “Two years ago I was honored to give a TEDxon the topic of fatherlessness, and I learned a whole lot more about the huge epidemic in our country, Mark, with the biological father not being in the home. But also the physically-present, emotionally-absent dad, which is what I was for a period of time. I wanted to create something to inspire them, encourage them and equip them with tools to be that intentional and engaged dad and have the results that I had.” 

Listen to “Daddy Saturday: Learning how to be intentional with our kids and end abandonment to raise our children to be better adults. The author and” on Spreaker.

What You Will Learn:

Justin Batt talks about working with his wife to start a business called Hayden Olivia Bridal: “We named it after our daughter who was born right at the same time the store was opened. This was at the beginning of the recession in 2008. So we leveraged everything we had. We opened the store. I was in corporate America at the time and we had our little daughter Hayden Olivia. So I would stay at home with her on Saturdays as Heather would work the bridal store, wearing all the hats as an entrepreneur.”

Justin discusses the little-known fact that 24 million kids in America are without a father at home and roughly 49 million dads are at home, but are not present. “If we looked at any other epidemic in our country, diabetes, or opioid abuse, or anything else. If you put those numbers up against it and also the societal ills that come from it. It would be a national epidemic by catastrophic proportions. But no one views it that way.” 

What can we all learn about balance from Justin Batt? “Balance is something that I don’t know if you ever achieve. I think that balance is something that you manage. You don’t ever eliminate the obstacle of balance. One of the biggest challenges that I had early on as a dad was I was trying too hard to find balance and the work/life tension was tearing me up because I would either pour too much into work then I would feel the tension that I should be at home when I’m working or vice-versa.”

Being intentional about how he wants to progress as a family man involves unifying his work calendar and his personal calendar all into one to make his life feel less divided and to add priority to everything on his schedule. “I established what I like to call, work-life purpose.’ And I created that purpose for a game plan and a long-term mission for how I wanted to see myself as father of my kids, not only tomorrow, but also in the future, 20-30 years from now and then backed it up and said, what does it take for me to get there and to achieve that?” 

How does a typical day start for Justin Batt in order to include himself into the demands of his daily regimen before spending time with his four kids, his wife, as well as his dog? “I wake up normally between 4:40-5:00am. I will typically do prayer and devotional first thing. I meditate and then I will grab a quick smoothie or something real fast and then I’m out the door and I work out for an hour and then come back in. Often times I will be listening to a podcast or I will read an article or two or a quick book or something right there at the end of that and then the kids are up and they are awake and now I’ve got my time in and I’ve stimulated myself physically, mentally, and spiritually.” 

Child Heroes

Instead of trying to be the central hero in his children’s lives, he allows them to be that by getting the assistance they need that may be beyond his own personal abilities. “I’ve allowed other men to come into my kids’ lives who have expertise in areas that I don’t and serve as additional guides to my children and it is all because I am not the hero. It doesn’t matter to me and in fact it is a win-win-win when you do that and so, serving the guide is a critical role in making your kids the hero of their own story.” 

Creating Excitement with his Kids

During this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast with Justin Batt, he also shares the ways in which he keeps the excitement alive with his kids by making a point to celebrate the first moment that he sees them each day. “I’m almost always up before my kids. So when they come up in the mornings, I greet them like they are running through the tunnel of a locker room coming into the big game. My arms are up in the air. My arms are out. I’m excited. I got a smile on my face. I’m screaming their names. We’re fist-bumping. We’re chest-bumping.”

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