Hello and welcome to Co-Parenting Beyond Conflict. Today I'd like to talk about the podcast, the reason why it exists, and what you can get out of it by tuning in. Additionally, I'd like to talk about the Best Interest app, why I created it, and what it's good for. I'll cover how I got here, what fuels me, and my goals for the podcast and the app. My own co-parenting journey started eight years ago with the birth of my daughter. At the time, I was deep into the tech world, and I had been very fortunate. That career allowed me to make the decision when our daughter was born to leave the tech scene and to become a full-time dad. Now, as life would have it, life gives us joys and sometimes it gives us challenges. And my marriage started falling apart, and that was not ever part of the plan. I definitely didn't expect it. And it was really challenging. Divorce is both an incredible challenge, one of the most difficult moments in a person's life, and it's also an opportunity for growth. There's this concept of post-traumatic growth where people that go through divorce and separation end up going through a period of differentiation from their partner, from the way they used to define themselves in that relationship. You may have lost and gained friends. You may have different perspectives on who you are and what you like. There's a lot of things that can shift when something as big as a marriage unravels. And that's one of the core tenets of this podcast. How do we, as co-parents, show up as better parents? How do we take divorce and turn it into an opportunity for growth that we can take into all aspects of our lives? I know that I'm a better dad because I went through divorce. Co-parenting has been more difficult than I ever expected. On some level, I thought, well, if we just get through this divorce, if we just split our finances and be done with it, then we're gonna be good. We'll be able to create independent lives, find new partners, and move on. That was not my experience. My experience was challenging. Through that challenge, I continued going to therapy. I joined support groups both online and in person. And through that process, I got to know many other co-parents. Here I am feeling incredibly alone, feeling like I'm the only one going through this. But then discovering that so many other co-parents are going through sometimes almost the exact same situation, men and women. And I'm a tech guy. Early on in my co-parenting journey, I hired a former colleague of mine who helped me with customer service at one of my old startups. I said, Could you be the customer service agent for my relationship? Could you handle the incoming messages? Obviously, you won't get triggered in the same way I do. And can you just tell me what's important? What do I need to know? I was surprised by how effective it was, and there were obviously problems. It wasn't something that I could create a product out of. Flash forward to uh about two years ago now, I first heard about Chat GPT. I've actually written children's books for my my kids. I love telling stories with them and I love bringing them into storytelling. We would co-create a story together using Chat GPT, and the stories were really good. One night after I put them to bed, I thought, gosh, if Chat GPT can understand language this well, I wonder if it could understand the messages that I'm receiving that I find so challenging. So I fed some messages in and my breath was taken away. I suddenly felt seen and understood. I was given ideas on how to respond in a way that wouldn't perpetuate the cycles. That's when I knew from that moment that this was something that could get behind. Here I've been on the bench for it was about five or six years. I just knew I had to build this for other co-parents that were struggling. I knew that I had to take my skills to bear on this problem. Co-parenting can be, especially when you're dealing with high conflict dynamics, it's a silent struggle. Co-parents don't know where they can speak up, they don't feel understood by their family or friends. You have this situation where here is someone that for whatever reason, you decided I don't want to be in that relationship anymore. Or maybe they said that to you, but you have kids with that person. Now you have this high-stakes relationship that you're both emotionally attached to. You may resent that other person and they may resent you. It's really hard. So I thought if I built an app that helped people to communicate better with one another, that could have dramatic impacts in the lives of so many co-parents and their children. That's why I created the best interest app. If you've ever been in a family courtroom, you hear that term all the time. What is in the best interest of the kids? Well, what is in the best interest of your kids? It's your presence, your love, your ability to be with them and support them. Not to be on your phone, responding, defending to your co-parent. That's not effective. The most effective is you spending your time being present with them, playing with them, enjoying the precious moments you have while they're still young. That's the mission of the best interest app to help make co-parenting peaceful again and to bring peace into the lives of the kids of these relationships. Now, if you've ever spent much time on TikTok or YouTube searching out co-parenting, codependency, narcissism, there's a lot of fear. There's a lot of vilifying the other. If a co-parent comes to me and says, I'm in a lot of pain, my co-parent is controlling, they're manipulative, they're cruel in their communication. We don't need to diagnose our co-parents to know how it feels. This podcast is not going to be about diagnosing ourselves or our co-parents because that's not helpful. This podcast is about learning how to clean up your own side of the street so that you can continue showing up in the best way for your kids. That is a tall order. I completely understand. And it's going to take a lot of growth. We're here for the growth. We're here to be better, to show up in a better way. The adage, it takes two, is victim shaming. It's not helpful. I do think that there are so many relationships, especially co-parenting relationships, where one side is the emotional abuser, coercive control. Those relationships exist in abundance. And if you're listening to this podcast, you probably are in one and you're probably in a lot of pain. By me saying clean up your side of the street, I'm not saying you're doing anything wrong. I'm saying you have an opportunity. Your co-parent, they're probably not going to change. When we're faced with such an impossible situation, what do we do? Well, we have to shift. If you take this opportunity to grow, you will become a stronger person in all of your relationships. You'll be setting better boundaries, you'll be attracting better relationships into your life, and you'll show up as a better parent. Now, if I heard this podcast five years ago, that would have felt like a very tall order. How do I grow? I'm in an impossible situation. That is the reason why I've built the best interest app. When you receive a message from your co-parent, whether or not they're using the app, they might just be texting you. We will automatically filter that message of everything but the child-focused content. Any of that demeaning, negative language that you might have been receiving before gets stripped out. That allows you, as a co-parent, to navigate the already difficult task of taking care of your kids while being responsive to everything that matters. Additionally, the app protects you from yourself because I don't know about you, but when I'm triggered, I don't always communicate in the best possible way. And that can end up costing you in court. All it takes is one defensive text message to paint a picture of you out of context that will sway a judge and affect custody decisions. None of us want that. So when you send a message, Best Interest will review that message. You'll get advice on how to keep it simple and keep it focused on the kids. This keeps you out of court. It also keeps you out of the cycles that might have otherwise continued. One of the especially interesting features about the Best Interest app is the ability to use the app on your own. Other apps like Our Family Wizard or Talking Parents require you to either get your co-parents' agreement or to get it as part of a court order. And as you know, getting a court order is time-intensive, very challenging, and oftentimes very expensive, especially if you're using an attorney. With the Best Interest app, you'll give your co-parent a new number where they can text you and they can continue using iMessage or whatever they use to send texts. They won't know anything has changed other than your number. And all of their messaging will go through the best interest filter. And when you send a message, it'll go through the review and be sent to them over SMFs. So you don't need to get your co-parent to agree. And depending on your situation, that might be a godsend because it's hard to get certain co-parents to agree to anything, let alone using a co-parenting app that might reduce conflict. So that's solo mode. In addition, this is the first time that a lot of co-parents will be able to set a boundary with their co-parent. I've always struggled with setting boundaries with the people in my life, and it's taken a long time to learn how to set effective boundaries. One thing the best intercept does is it allows you to tell the app how often you would like to hear from your co-parent. And if your co-parent is an over-communicator, meaning you get multiple messages in a thread a mile along, the app will allow you to say, I just want to receive messages at 10 a.m. or even weekly communication. There's always that fear in every co-parent's mind, well, what if there was a true emergency? Or what if there was an urgent change to a schedule? I want to get those messages right away. Because best interest understands every message. We're able to ascertain if something truly is an emergency and we'll break past that filter and show you the message right away as an urgent notification. This gives you peace of mind while allowing you to set a communication boundary with your co-parent. When I first started developing best interest, I knew I wanted expert guidance to help me on this journey to build something truly impactful. And early on in my co-parenting journey, one of the experts in this field, Dr. Romini, I would watch her videos and learn so much about myself, my family system, and the experiences I was having in relationships. So when I thought of who I would like to be involved in this new venture, I immediately thought of Dr. Romini. And then I said, there is no way that she'll even give you the time of day. And yet I reached out to her and I said, This is what I'd like to build. Would you like to talk? Surprisingly, I got a response back and we set up a time to talk. I told her about my idea and she said, This is incredible. And yes, I'm on board. I want to help you. It has been a rewarding relationship in helping create and craft the perfect app for co-parents facing difficult circumstances. Just like Dr. Romini talks about in her videos, there are a lot of systemic issues around co-parenting and the family courts. A lot of people don't understand how difficult it can be to co-parent under these circumstances. My desire on this podcast is to bring light to this situation, to help expose the challenges that co-parents in difficult circumstances face without feeling like they can speak up for themselves. My goal is for listeners going through this to feel seen and understood, maybe for the first time, about what they're going through and to feel supported in ways that they can empower themselves to change. When we change ourselves, we naturally change all the relationships in our lives. As you go through this process of self-discovery and growth, you may lose friends. You may choose to lose friends. You may lose family members, you may choose to step away from family. You are learning how to love yourself again. Fear is not going to allow you to grow, keeps you stuck in this cycle. I wake up every day to work on best interest, to work on this podcast because I want to bring peace into the lives of co-parents everywhere. I want to bring light to this silent struggle. There are so many experts that I look forward to interviewing. And I look forward to hearing from you, co-parents out there that are going through their own unique experiences. Want to hear from you, want to learn from you. I'm so excited to find out what is in store for the Co-Parenting Beyond Conflict podcast and the Best Interest app. I hope you'll join me on this journey. Subscribe, leave your comments, shoot me an email, connect with me on LinkedIn. I want to hear from you. I want to hear how I can support you. I can't wait to share this journey with you. Let's dive in. Thank you for joining us again on CoParenting Beyond Conflict. Download the Best Interest app today and enter code BEOND10 for 10% off. Thanks for listening.