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The Most Important Thing: Exploring Family Culture and Leadership at Home
Danielle and Greg Neufeld
41 episodes
5 days ago
Don't just parent. Lead. The Most Important Thing is a podcast about building intentional family culture. We explore how ambitious, busy families can create connection, meaning, and resilience at home—just as intentionally as they do in other aspects of life. Each episode blends personal stories, research, and experiments you can try in your own family. Because when the world is moving fast, the most important thing is what we build at home. Hosts: Danielle and Greg Neufeld
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Parenting
Kids & Family
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All content for The Most Important Thing: Exploring Family Culture and Leadership at Home is the property of Danielle and Greg Neufeld and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
Don't just parent. Lead. The Most Important Thing is a podcast about building intentional family culture. We explore how ambitious, busy families can create connection, meaning, and resilience at home—just as intentionally as they do in other aspects of life. Each episode blends personal stories, research, and experiments you can try in your own family. Because when the world is moving fast, the most important thing is what we build at home. Hosts: Danielle and Greg Neufeld
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Parenting
Kids & Family
Episodes (20/41)
The Most Important Thing: Exploring Family Culture and Leadership at Home
TMIT 34: “Read the Room, Kid!” — Cultivating Shrewdness as a Family

Envy isn’t a character flaw—it’s human. Shrewdness isn’t cynicism—it’s discernment. In this episode, we explore how to normalize envy and develop the important skill of “reading the room,” so both kids and adults can stay kind while staying protected in real-world situations.

Here’s What We Dive Into

  • Why it’s important to explore the more complex parts of family culture
    While joy, connection, and kindness are essential, building resilience and wisdom means being willing to take a closer look at the murkier, less comfortable emotions too.
  • What shrewdness really means
    It’s the sweet spot between being overly trusting and overly skeptical—recognizing reality for what it is and responding in a way that’s both protective and constructive.
  • The difference between envy and jealousy
    Envy: “I want what they have” (two people are involved).
    Jealousy: “I’m afraid of losing what I have to someone else” (a dynamic involving three people).
  • The power of naming envy
    When we acknowledge envy, we take away its power. Helping kids label it—“I feel envious of ___”—invites understanding and support instead of secrecy or shame.
  • Real-world examples to learn from
    Danielle’s experience of being blindsided by a committee member—and how shrewdness could have protected her.
    Hunter’s win in class that went uncelebrated—and how to interpret others’ reactions without dimming your own success.
    Greg’s upbringing with older kids and hazing moments—and how that led to practical lessons in emotional smarts and situational awareness.

We encourage you to bring these topics into the light in your own home this week.

Ask your kids: “When have you felt envious?” and “How did you read the room?”

These small, intentional conversations can help grow emotional understanding and equip us all with tools for navigating the world with kindness and wisdom.

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5 days ago
36 minutes 34 seconds

The Most Important Thing: Exploring Family Culture and Leadership at Home
TMIT 33: Our Biggest Takeaways from Six Months of Building Family Culture

For the past six months we’ve been deeply studying family culture, and we’re more convicted than ever that it’s The Most Important Thing.

Top 4 Takeaways

  1. Start from strength, not scarcity
    Most parenting content starts from a place of deficit. We’re choosing a competence-first lens: you’re already doing a lot right—lean into those moments.
  2. Parenting is management; family culture is leadership
    Scripts fix moments. Culture shapes momentum. Make values explicit and lead the team, not just each child 1:1.
  3. Rituals = culture in action
    Two kinds matter:
    Alignment rituals (aka “necessary and trust building”): quarterly financial check-ins, weekly standups, and problem-solving within family meetings.
    Connection rituals (aka “fun on purpose”): special meals, family games.
  4. Presence is the reward
    If you’d asked us when we started this journey we would have told you it was about planning for some future state. But we’ve learned the magic is happening in real time.

If you take one thing from this episode, let it be this:
Don’t wait for the right time to start shaping your family culture — this is the right time. Pick one ritual, start small, and build from there.

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1 week ago
27 minutes 36 seconds

The Most Important Thing: Exploring Family Culture and Leadership at Home
TMIT 32: Cliff Weitzman, CEO of Speechify, on How Family Builds Greatness

When you meet Cliff Weitzman, founder and CEO of Speechify, his magnetism is immediate. He knows exactly where he’s headed, and he’s willing to think harder and work smarter to get there. It’s the same energy that’s made Speechify the #1 text-to-speech app used by over 55 million people.

But this episode isn’t about Speechify. It’s about the family that built him.

Cliff grew up one of five siblings in a home fueled by ambition and unconditional love. His parents pushed the couches back on weekends for dance parties, spent time explaining how the world works, and invited the whole family into big decisions.

When the Weitzmans decided to move from Israel to the U.S., his parents didn’t make it about sacrifice. They used story to set the vision and framed it as an adventure: “If you write a book in Hebrew, seven million people can read it. In English, seven billion can.”

It’s also why Cliff describes his upbringing as maximizing the surface area for serendipity.

If something sparked your curiosity, you were encouraged to chase it — to muck out stables for a free horseback ride, to learn gymnastics from YouTube, to code, to build, to explore.

And when one sibling applied to college, the whole family pulled up chairs around the dining table, red pens in hand, turning Thanksgiving week into a group edit session. In the Weitzman family, nobody goes at it alone.

The message we are taking away is clear: High standards + High support + Shared purpose.

In Cliff’s words: “You can’t fail unless you quit.” With a family like he has behind him, quitting seems very unlikely.

Follow Cliff on Instagram

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2 weeks ago
55 minutes 6 seconds

The Most Important Thing: Exploring Family Culture and Leadership at Home
TMIT 31: The Collison Brothers (An Extra Ordinary Family)

We’re kicking off a side quest called Extraordinary Families — stories of real families whose everyday cultural habits added up to something remarkable.

This week, we’re diving into the upbringing of Patrick and John Collison, the Irish brothers who went on to found Stripe, one of the most successful fintech companies in the world. But this isn’t a story about money, luck, or talent; it’s a story about culture.

Here’s what we explore:

1️⃣ The Paradox of Environment
How the Collison boys grew up in rural isolation without the internet but were surrounded by books, curiosity, and the freedom to explore.

2️⃣ High Standards + High Support
The parenting balance that gave them both autonomy and accountability (including the month they were left home alone at ages 10 and 12!).

3️⃣ A Bigger Picture Perspective
How parents modeling their own ambitions and exposing their kids to the wider world shaped the boys’ mindset for lifelong learning.

Along the way, we connect lessons from Carl Jung, Daniel Coyle, and David Yeager to family culture — from how we normalize boredom to how we help our kids earn status through contribution.

Maybe raising extraordinary kids isn’t about doing more. Maybe it’s about creating the space for ordinary moments to grow into something extraordinary.

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3 weeks ago
23 minutes 53 seconds

The Most Important Thing: Exploring Family Culture and Leadership at Home
TMIT 30: Mindset Reset Part 2 – Building a Culture of Growth at Home

In the first part of our Mindset Reset series, we broke down common misconceptions about growth mindset and explored how it plays out in the everyday dynamics of family life.

Now in Part 2, we’re taking things further by shifting the focus from the individual to the cultural level.

Inspired by Mary Murphy’s Cultures of Growth, we dive into:

  • How comparison, competition, and results-focused thinking lead to risk aversion and hiding mistakes
  • A different approach: fostering an environment that normalizes mistakes, supports effort, and celebrates the process of learning
  • Redefining competition: it’s not about who’s the best, but how everyone contributes to the family’s progress
  • How we can talk about achievements in a way that motivates everyone, instead of stoking competition

This isn’t just about mindset. It’s about rethinking leadership within our homes. If the most successful organizations thrive in a culture of growth, why can’t our families too?

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1 month ago
33 minutes 40 seconds

The Most Important Thing: Exploring Family Culture and Leadership at Home
TMIT 29: Mindset Reset – What We Get Wrong About Growth Mindset

Mindset isn’t just “fixed” or “growth.” It’s a spectrum—and once you see that, you’ll understand yourself, your kids, and your family in a whole new way.

In this episode of The Most Important Thing, we translate insights from Mary C. Murphy’s Cultures of Growth into family life. What starts as a book about organizations becomes a practical guide for leading your home with clarity and calm.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

  • Why everyone flips between fixed and growth mindsets depending on context
  • The four predictable triggers that shape mindset: evaluation, high effort, critical feedback, and the success of others
  • How to recognize a performative state—and why it’s the worst time for feedback
  • Reframing high effort as progress, not failure
  • How to weigh critical feedback with discernment
  • Turning others’ success from a jealousy trigger into an inspiration spark

Takeaway:

Mindset isn’t static—it’s a spectrum we all move along. Seeing it this way unlocks compassion, resilience, and a culture of growth at home.

Resource:

Book: Cultures of Growth: How the New Science of Mindset Can Transform Individuals, Teams, and Organizations by Mary C. Murphy.
Get the book here.

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1 month ago
48 minutes 42 seconds

The Most Important Thing: Exploring Family Culture and Leadership at Home
TMIT 28 : How We Divide, Conquer, and Connect – The Shared Operating System Behind Our Marriage

Every couple has to navigate how to divide responsibilities, whether it’s managing groceries, handling finances, or aligning on long-term goals. For us, the breakthrough happened when we shifted away from addressing everything on the fly and instead put a shared system in place to prioritize what matters most.

What we’ve realized is that the specific system you use isn’t as important as simply having one. A system creates intentional spaces for conversations, moving them out of the daily chaos and into a structure that lets you focus less on managing tasks and more on truly enjoying time together.

This week, we’re breaking down the framework we’ve built to divide responsibilities, stay connected, and work as a team. From long-term planning discussions to weekly check-ins and daily task management, we’re sharing how these rhythms have helped us replace frustration with trust and a sense of partnership.


What We Cover in This Episode:

  • How resentment showed up in our relationship and what changes helped us move past it.
  • The four parts of our shared “operating system”:
    • Vision discussions (planning for 3–5 years ahead)
    • Quarterly planning (Greg’s 12-week structure vs. Danielle’s vibe-focused goals)
    • Financial check-ins (facts over feelings)
    • Weekly reviews (logistics, chores, and family schedules)
  • Why writing down next steps is essential for reducing mental load and staying on the same page.
  • The psychology behind these practices—like cognitive load theory and the Zeigarnik effect.
  • Why the ultimate goal isn’t just productivity—it’s creating space for connection, fun, and presence.

Resources Mentioned:

  • The 12 Week Year by Brian Moran & Michael Lennington
  • Getting Things Done by David Allen
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1 month ago
39 minutes 3 seconds

The Most Important Thing: Exploring Family Culture and Leadership at Home
TMIT 27: Parenting Gurus and the Business of Anxiety

🎙️ TMIT 27: This week, we explore a topic that hits close to home and raises some big questions: the booming industry of parenting advice — and how it’s built on the back of your anxiety.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Parenting challenges don’t reflect failure; they reflect purpose. The hard stuff? It’s what builds strong families.

Here’s What We’re Breaking Down:

  • Why so much of today’s parenting advice feels rooted in fear
  • How post-pandemic influencer culture plays on guilt cycles and moments of vulnerability
  • The psychology behind pain-point marketing (think negativity bias, availability heuristics, and identity triggers)
  • The business strategies driving influencers like Dr. Becky (Good Inside) and Big Little Feelings
  • Why phrases like “you weren’t set up for success” might do more harm than good

This episode is your reminder that:

  • You don’t need a script to be a good parent.
  • You don’t need a subscription to know your kids.
  • And you definitely don’t need to believe the story that says you’re unequipped.

Parenting is hard because it matters — not because you’re failing. The strength, intuition, and joy you’re looking for? It’s already inside your home. You just have to know where to look.

Instead of focusing on tantrums and meltdowns, we created a list of 100 family culture moments — proof that joy, connection, and belonging are already happening in your home.

This isn’t a to-do list. It’s an already doing list. A reminder that you’re not “underequipped”… you’re already doing great.

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1 month ago
35 minutes 55 seconds

The Most Important Thing: Exploring Family Culture and Leadership at Home
TMIT 26: Sometimes Adults Suck – Leading Our Kids Through Conflict With Grownups

🎙️ TMIT 26: Sometimes kids run into conflict with other kids. But sometimes kids run into conflict with grownups—teachers, coaches, camp counselors, even random adults in the community. And when that happens, most of us as parents want to swoop in and handle it ourselves.

In this episode, we share a different path. One where we don’t jump in to solve the problem, but instead equip our kids to handle it directly. We call this leading from the bench, and it’s one of the best ways to help our kids grow their leadership skills and build family culture.

We walk through:

  • Why “sometimes adults suck” is a simple fact our kids will face.
  • The sweet spot where saying something is necessary—but it’s more effective coming from our kid.
  • How research shows that giving stretch assignments—challenges just outside their comfort zone, with scaffolds for success—is the #1 driver of leadership growth.
  • Why the trusted ally in the situation shouldn’t always be you, and how to support your kid in finding that person.
  • How to equip your kid with language that aligns with your family values.

We also share a real story from tennis camp that left our kids feeling unsafe. And for the first time ever, our daughters are on the pod! You’ll hear directly from Hunter how she handled it and how (in her view) it changed the outcome—for her, for her sister Jade, and even for the adult involved.

By the end of this episode, you’ll have a new way of thinking about what to do the next time your child comes home saying: “An adult misunderstood me… and it didn’t feel okay.”

Because as much as we want to protect them, the real gift we can give our kids is the confidence, language, and resilience to navigate conflict on their own.

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2 months ago
38 minutes 11 seconds

The Most Important Thing: Exploring Family Culture and Leadership at Home
TMIT 25: Culture Eats Parenting for Breakfast

TMIT 25 🎙: This week we’re talking about the difference between parenting and building family culture, using a framework from Scaling People by Claire Hughes Johnson. Parenting is a lot like management—it creates stability through routines and logistics. But building family culture is leadership. It’s about shaping values, vision, and identity.

We share how this shift in language helped us better understand what we’re doing at home—and why it matters now more than ever.

In this episode:

  • Parenting = management: routines, schedules, discipline, logistics
  • Culture = leadership: vision, values, identity, belonging
  • Where this idea comes from: leadership drives change, management creates stability
  • What it looks like at home: family meetings, shared rituals, catchphrases
  • Why now: we’re not in survival mode—we’re ready to build
  • What it’s really about: not achievement, not optimization—just enjoying life together and giving our kids something solid to stand on

We’d love to hear how you’re thinking about culture at home. If you’re trying something—rituals, values, systems, whatever—send it our way. We’ll try it and share what we learn.

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2 months ago
53 minutes 48 seconds

The Most Important Thing: Exploring Family Culture and Leadership at Home
TMIT 24: How to Build a Dopamine Moat Around Your Family
TMIT 24🎙️: From sugar crashes to screen-time meltdowns—what’s really going on in our kids’ brains?

In this episode, we unpack dopamine: the energy juice that fuels motivation (and sometimes chaos). We explore how to build a “dopamine moat” around your family—so your kids can develop resilience, focus, and joy in a world of instant gratification.

We talk about:
• Why the crash matters more than the high
• How to flip the seesaw and earn your dopamine
• Simple tools for building motivation and buffering burnout
• Sleep, breathwork, and what parmesan cheese has to do with it

Whether you’re raising toddlers or teens, this episode will change how you think about mood, motivation, and modern family culture.
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2 months ago
1 hour 18 seconds

The Most Important Thing: Exploring Family Culture and Leadership at Home
TMIT Teammates #4: Celebrating Girlhood with Tween Magazine Founder Mary Flenner

What happens when your 10-year-old asks for a magazine and you realize there is not a single one you feel good about handing her? That is the moment Mary Flenner faced, and it led to Tween Magazine.

Mary is a mom of three girls, a longtime marketing and content writer, and the founding editor of a lifestyle magazine designed just for tweens. Instead of pushing girls to grow up too fast, Tween celebrates silliness, creativity, individuality, and the joy of being a kid.

In this conversation, we talk with Mary about:

  • ​The origin story of Tween Magazine and why she chose print in 2024
  • ​How media aimed at tweens and teens has missed the mark, and what she is doing differently
  • ​Balancing sustainability with aligned advertising partners
  • ​The most popular features so far, from “Real Girls Who Rock” to the pen pal program
  • ​How her daughters have become her co‑creative directors
  • ​What she hopes every girl feels when they open Tween: seen, celebrated, and free to be goofy


Mary also shares her vision for the next five years of Tween Magazine and why giving girls permission to be kids is a powerful countercultural stance.

🎧 Tune in to hear how one mom’s creative leap is giving a generation of girls a magazine they can call their own.


Visit tweenmag.com or @tweenmagazineforgirls to learn more.


TMIT Teammates #4: Celebrating Girlhood with Tween Magazine Founder Mary Flenner

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2 months ago
26 minutes 38 seconds

The Most Important Thing: Exploring Family Culture and Leadership at Home
TMIT 01: Family Meetings (Re-Release)

TMIT 01 🎙️: Our very first episode, now with video! (Spotify and YouTube only)

“What works about the family meeting is that it’s a regularly scheduled time to draw attention to specific behaviors. If you don’t have a safe environment to discuss problems, any plan to improve your family will go nowhere." – David Starr

What makes a weekly family meeting not just happen—but matter? In this episode, we kick off a conversation about one of the most recommended tools in family culture building. We dug into books, courses, and expert advice to identify the patterns, and we distilled them into a simple, actionable starting point for our family, and hopefully, for yours too!

TMIT Family Meetings Recipe:

Be consistent + keep it short + focus on fun

TMIT Family Meeting Agenda MVP:

  • Call to order (Trying the Drum Roll!)
  • Compliments & Appreciation (Ping Pong)
  • Family Learning (1 thing) – vote from list day prior
  • Family Problem Solving (1 thing) – vote from list day prior, and bring 1-2 solutions!
  • Snack
  • Game

Resources (best of our research!):

  • The Secrets of Happy Families by Bruce Feiler
  • Agile Practices for Families White Paper
  • Positive Parenting Solutions (Step 6)
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2 months ago
13 minutes 36 seconds

The Most Important Thing: Exploring Family Culture and Leadership at Home
TMIT 23: Why We Started The Most Important Thing (The Backstory Episode)
Why We Started The Most Important Thing (The Backstory Episode)

TMIT 23 🎙️ Every journey has a beginning, and this is ours. We recorded this episode a few days after 01 Family Meetings. We didn’t release it at the time because, well, it felt premature. But we also didn’t want to wait too long, so here we are.

At the time, we really didn’t know where we were going but we did have a feeling: that family culture matters and more people will want to talk about it.

In this conversation, we unpack the moments and micro-decisions that led us here. We talk about:

  • Why building a strong family culture feels like our most important work, and why now.
  • How our professional experiences with high-performance culture inform what we want to create at home.
  • The kind of community we hope to build with this podcast.
  • Why this project is as much a time capsule for our kids as it is a resource for other parents.

This episode is a peek at why we’re here and what we hope to create together with all of you.

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2 months ago
26 minutes 9 seconds

The Most Important Thing: Exploring Family Culture and Leadership at Home
TMIT 22: Turning Family Vacations into Family Adventures
Turning Family Vacations into Family Adventures

TMIT 22 🎙️ What if your next family trip could be more than just a change of scenery? In this episode, we’re talking about how to transform a typical family vacation into a true family adventure—one that creates lasting memories, builds connection, and leaves everyone feeling fulfilled (even when things don’t go perfectly).

We’re heading out on our own 14-day trip across the Pacific Northwest—Olympic National Park, Mount Rainier, and Seattle—and we’re sharing how we’re planning to approach it differently this time. Instead of just “living our lives in another location,” we’re intentionally designing the experience to bring out the spirit of adventure in all of us.

What you’ll hear in this episode:
  • Why most vacations with kids feel like “just a trip” (and how to change that).
The CREATE framework we’re using to shape our family adventure:
  • Co-create the trip (give everyone a say)
  • Root in intention (know your why, and recall it along the way)
  • Embrace shared challenges (growth comes from the hard parts)
  • Amplify moments (focus on the peaks and the ending)
  • Tell the story (capture and retell the experience)
  • Extend it home (bring the best parts back into everyday life)
  • Practical ways we’re balancing creature comforts (yes, blackout curtains and Amazon lockers made the list) with exploration and spontaneity.
  • The role of boredom, “adventure jars,” and letting kids lead the way in building family connection.
  • Why embracing the Peak-End Rule changes how your kids (and you) remember the trip.

If you’ve ever returned from a family trip feeling like you need a vacation from your vacation, this episode will help you reframe how to travel as a family so it feels like a shared adventure worth remembering.

We can’t promise perfection, but our intentions are perfectly packed. 😉

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3 months ago
27 minutes 43 seconds

The Most Important Thing: Exploring Family Culture and Leadership at Home
TMIT 21: Seeing & Being Seen

📺 Episode 21: Seeing & Being Seen

In this final episode on the Wholehearted Parenting Manifesto, we talk about what it means to truly see and be seen.

“I will not teach or love or show you anything perfectly, but I will try to let you see me, and I will always hold sacred the gift of seeing you – truly, deeply seeing you.”

Over the past 11 episodes, we’ve explored courage, compassion, boundaries, accountability, and joy. Here, we tie it all together with what might be the simplest practice of all: showing up as we are, and really seeing the people we love.

In this episode, we talk about:

  • ​Why “seeing and being seen” is the heart of connection.
  • ​A bike ride breakthrough with Maverick and how it taught us about reflecting kids’ strength back to them.
  • ​The challenge of truly seeing our kids for who they are—not just who we want them to be (or don’t).
  • ​What it means to be “too much,” breaking cycles from our own upbringing, and choosing to let our kids’ light shine.
  • ​How being imperfectly human in front of our kids can actually be healing.
  • ​“Do you want to be helped, heard, or hugged?”

TMIT about Seeing & Being Seen: It’s about showing up vulnerably while pausing to recognize the strengths and imperfections in those around you—especially when they can’t see it yet in themselves.

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3 months ago
35 minutes 35 seconds

The Most Important Thing: Exploring Family Culture and Leadership at Home
TMIT 20: Daring Greatly
🎧 Episode 20: Daring Greatly

In this penultimate episode of our Wholehearted Parenting Manifesto series, we reflect on one of the most courageous lines in Brené Brown’s manifesto:

“The greatest gift that I can give you is to live and love with my whole heart and to dare greatly.”

What does it mean to dare greatly as a parent? For Danielle, it’s reclaiming personal ambition and giving herself permission to live a full life outside of motherhood—without apology. For Greg, it’s stepping into deeper emotional vulnerability, particularly around his role as a dad.

We talk about:

  • Why daring greatly looks different for everyone
  • Climbing our own mountains while still being present with our kids
  • Releasing guilt, comparison, and the myth of doing it all
  • Letting our children witness us pursuing meaningful goals
  • How family can be a base camp, not the entire expedition
  • Our personal experiments in emotional honesty, outsourcing, and intentional presence

Whether you’re building a business, raising a family, or figuring out what lights you up outside of both, this episode is a heartfelt permission slip to live with more courage, truth, and fullness.

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3 months ago
27 minutes 5 seconds

The Most Important Thing: Exploring Family Culture and Leadership at Home
TMIT Teammates #3: Noah Zaltz on Building Family Norms

🎙️ TMIT Teammates #3: Noah Zaltz on Building Family Norms

In this episode of TMIT Teammates, we sit down with our friend Noah Zaltz, a fellow investor, deep thinker, and someone who brings the same intention to family life as he does to his work.

We explore what it means to create a family culture that feels like home, not through rigid rules, but by shaping a sense of “normal”—the daily rhythms, values, and habits that help kids feel safe, grounded, and capable of becoming their best selves.

In this conversation, we cover:

  • Why “normal” is a feeling, not a strict set of rules.
  • The role of labeling exceptions (treats, adventure days) to maintain family balance.
  • How family norms emerge from both our upbringing and conscious new choices.
  • Nutrition, sleep, and outdoor time as pillars of a healthy family baseline.
  • Potty training and other milestones as opportunities to honor a child’s readiness and agency.
  • The importance of having an “in here” family culture as a safe base for exploring the world.
  • Why this generation of parents is reframing conversations about family and culture.

TMIT Teammates is about learning from families we admire, trading stories and hacks, and building intentional home lives together.

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3 months ago
32 minutes 40 seconds

The Most Important Thing: Exploring Family Culture and Leadership at Home
TMIT 19: Belonging

🎙️ Episode 19: Belonging


From the Wholehearted Parenting Manifesto:

“We will always have permission to be ourselves with each other no matter what. You will always belong here.”


In this episode of The Most Important Thing, we dive into one of the most fundamental human needs: belonging.


We unpack the tension between raising kids with a strong family identity while also giving them the space to become their own people.


Along the way, we explore:

  • The difference between fitting in and belonging (thanks, Brené + 8th graders!).
  • What it looks like to foster individuation at any age.
  • How childhood wounds around belonging shape us as adults.
  • The risk of a strong family culture becoming unwelcoming.
  • Why tolerance, trust, and dialogue are essential as kids absorb outside influences.
  • What we’ve been doing—versus what we might experiment with—when a child comes home with “someone else’s energy.”


TMIT about Belonging is that our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self‑acceptance.

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3 months ago
32 minutes 54 seconds

The Most Important Thing: Exploring Family Culture and Leadership at Home
TMIT 18: Facing Fear & Grief

🎙️ Episode 18: Facing Fear & Grief

In this episode, we explore one of the hardest lines from Brené Brown’s Wholehearted Parenting Manifesto:

“Together we will cry and face fear and grief. I will want to take away your pain, but instead I will sit with you and teach you how to feel it.”

Danielle shares how she lives with acute medical fear and anxiety, and where it stems from.

Greg reflects on watching both of his parents slowly fade before they passed—and how grief sometimes shows up not in death, but in disconnection.

We talk about:

  • Why fear can feel harder to sit with than grief
  • What it looks like to walk alongside a child in a spiral
  • Danielle’s rollercoaster joy and her blood pressure dread
  • How Greg’s grief lives more in the imagined present than the past
  • Surrender, safety, and why joy sometimes depends on trust

TMIT about Facing Fear & Grief:
We are not here to rescue one another or our children from these difficult emotions, but it really is an opportunity to be present with one another and to be connected in a new way.

If you’ve ever tried to fix someone else’s pain—or hide your own—you’re in good company. And if you’re wondering how to help your kids face big feelings without rescuing them, this conversation is for you.

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3 months ago
43 minutes 57 seconds

The Most Important Thing: Exploring Family Culture and Leadership at Home
Don't just parent. Lead. The Most Important Thing is a podcast about building intentional family culture. We explore how ambitious, busy families can create connection, meaning, and resilience at home—just as intentionally as they do in other aspects of life. Each episode blends personal stories, research, and experiments you can try in your own family. Because when the world is moving fast, the most important thing is what we build at home. Hosts: Danielle and Greg Neufeld