From the First Mountain to the Second: Rethinking Success as a Dad
What the first and second mountain actually mean
Nick has read Brooks’ The Second Mountain three times, and every pass gives him something new. The first mountain is the one most of us are handed by default: college, career, title, revenue, proving you can do it. The second mountain comes after the valley, when the climb stops answering the question it was supposed to answer. It’s about giving, presence, and being a good human rather than being an impressive one. Nick spent a decade on the first mountain, and admits he was still on it two years ago.His wife was on the second mountain the whole time
For years, Nick wondered why his wife Carrie, a stay-at-home mom, wasn’t climbing alongside him. It took him a long time to see that she’d been on the second mountain all along, present and giving in ways his own climb had trained him not to notice. He recently texted her something simple and overdue:“Your heart is an inspiration to me. Just how you show up for anyone.”That kind of admission takes a specific humility from a man who spent a decade building something big. It’s also the clearest evidence in the conversation that the two mountains aren’t sequential for everyone. Some people are just born closer to the second one.
The little brother who kept him out of jail
In his twenties, Nick became a Big Brother through Big Brothers Big Sisters. His little was six, and his father had died by suicide. Nick didn’t do anything dramatic: he took him hiking, hung out with him, showed up twice a month for three-hour blocks over a single year. He didn’t know at the time whether any of it mattered. Decades later, that kid, now a grown man, told him:“Nick, if it wasn’t for you, I’d probably be in jail.”What stands out isn’t just the outcome, it’s what Nick says drove him at the time. He wasn’t doing it out of obligation or because it was the right thing to do. He enjoyed hanging out with him. A lot of kids grow up treated like an inconvenience by the men around them. Nick treated a stranger’s kid like a friend, and it’s part of why he’s signing his own family up to do it again.
Nobody tells you the top is quiet
Nick sold most of the business and now works from home, and the adjustment hasn’t been what he expected. January felt like a honeymoon, seeing his kids off to school and home again. February and March were lonely, harder than he anticipated for a self-described social guy who misses the office. There’s no parade at the summit. Just a calendar, and a question he’d never had to answer before: now what? Listen to the full conversation on the podcast, where Nick also gets into the wall he’s hitting with his 14-year-old daughter, the birthday tradition that makes him cry every year, and going from atheist to a man of faith. Learn more at fosterfinancialcpa.com.More About Front Row Dads
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