Brendan Fallis gives new meaning to the term, hustle. Between him and his wife, Hannah Bronfman, the pair have their hands in a multitude of pots - from DJing to content creation, to real estate, investing and more. But Brendan’s most important role is dad to son Preston, 4, and daughter, Claude, 1.
At Nanit, we applaud the entrepreneurs and parents who make it happen every single day, whose joys lie in the constant juggle. And their back pocket secret weapon is Nanit - which not only helps Brendan build sleep success strategies at home, but allows him to never miss a tender moment, whether he’s DJing in Ibiza or having dinner at home.
Here, we sat down with Brendan to chat parenting, dad superpowers and how Nanit helps his family keep it all together.
On how he balances parenting and entrepreneurship….
It comes with its challenge. We travel quite a bit, but luckily, we can take our kids with us often. If not, then I try to get back as quickly as I can so that I don’t miss too many moments. We are fortunate to be able to do what we're doing. To be entrepreneurs, creators and DJs means we work for ourselves. So it’s beneficial in the sense that we can stay home when we choose or need to. If our child is sick, we can work our schedules around that, versus being confined to certain office hours. But everything has pros and cons.
On the relationship between parenting and technology….
Tech is very important, but it's a love/hate, especially in parenting. It's hard to think about how much iPad time my child gets because obviously, he sees us on our phone, and he’s like, ‘Why can’t I watch my Ipad?,’ so it becomes a bit of a weird dialect in your own head. But in general, I think it's allowed for a lot of freedom and good transparency within parent life.
On life with his Nanit….
We swear by Nanit. That's been our choice of monitor since our kids were born, but it's allowed us to have the freedom to be out at dinner, and even though there's a babysitter there, we have eyes on our children, as well. It’s comforting rather than having a monitor that's in our home but we can't see it from anywhere. I think that's been a huge win for us - to know that our kids are fine and to be able to see them from anywhere in the world at any time, even when I'm traveling. I can check in, see them sleeping, it makes me smile.
There's not a ton of tech devices we use for our kids. Nanit is the mainstay and then a digital photo album in the kitchen. I'll actually be interested to understand if our children will remember more from years one to five because we're being fed photos all the time. There's so much documentation now. My son will look at our Google Home and say, ‘Oh, that was my first birthday.’ So I think it'll trigger more memories from a younger age, which is cool.
On his favorite Nanit features….
There are tons of features on the Nanit that I find incredibly valuable. From day one, just being able to go back and see your memories, because it saves them. On the first night we brought our daughter home, our son brought his little stool over to her crib and stepped up to peek in because she was crying. It was the sweetest memory of all time, and we have it saved. We also have all the freakouts, but we don’t watch those often.
Split Screen is another huge feature, which now that I have two kids, I can’t live without. Having both kids on the screen is incredible. Even the nightlight feature sometimes - you know, it gets scary for him in the room. So we turn that on to give the room a little glow.
I also love the two-way audio feature. My son understands that we’re watching, and he knows there's a microphone. One night, he didn’t want to wake up his sister, and he goes, ‘Mama! Papa! I need to pee!’ Sometimes if he's freaking out, we can hold down the microphone and say, ‘We'll be down in a few minutes.’ And sometimes we say we're coming down, but we know he's so tired that he’ll fall back asleep. So then we don't actually have to get up, which is great.
And then white noise on Sound + Light is a great feature, because sometimes when we travel, we only bring one sound machine, and it's nice to put on some birds at 7am when he wakes up.
But the most important thing - the feature I sell my friends on - is that your phone becomes a monitor, so the background audio is so important, because your phone can be asleep but you can still hear the sound as a monitor. It’s incredible and it works from anywhere.
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On the relation between sleep and wellbeing….
Sleep is arguably the currency you have the least of when you're a parent, and it becomes your most sought after luxury. Nanit, from day one, has given us a sense of comfort. But then most recently, the Sound + Light has been the best, because not only is it a sound machine, but it helped when our three-year-old went through a sleep regression. We'd wake up at 3 am and have to negotiate with him for an hour because he was like, ‘I'm up and I want to hang! Let's eat breakfast!’
So now we just program the Sound + Light to be green at 7 am (AKA it’s okay to wake up), and we encourage him not to leave his room until it's green. And then sometimes if he wakes up at 6 am, it’s an hour before that green light is on, but he won't leave this room. So it allows us to sleep a little more. That's been a really fun and functional feature that I don't think we can live without.
On his one piece of dad advice….
The cliche is that time goes so fast. So any time you can find to spend with your kid, take it. There’s this idea that everything's a fire drill - like, I’ve got to get up and answer these emails right away! We're all programmed to think that we work to live. I think we have more freedom and luxury of time than we all think. Also, there's going to be moments when you can't be around, so try to be present as much as you can.
On his dad superpower…..
I don't I don't know what my superpower is. Every day feels like a different superpower. Especially when your kid starts talking versus just feeding. Now that we have a three-year-old who's talking and negotiating with us everyday, I feel like my superpowers are coming out in all sorts of different ways. I would say that if I knew I had one superpower, that would be so limiting. I have many powers, none of which are super, but they're all important.
On his goals as a parent, husband and entrepreneur….
To raise good kids with good heads on their shoulders, who have the drive to create something they're proud of. It’s so interesting to have children, because you reflect on your own life. But It’s about having respectful kids, who are polite and work hard and that work towards something they want to do. That’s the most important thing.
In my marriage, we try to subscribe to the idea that without us, there is no them. So we try to make time for ourselves. We go on dates, take trips and travel. That’s what makes my wife and I the happiest, whether it's with our kids or not. I think most of my knowledge comes from traveling. I didn't travel until I was in my late teens or in my 20’s more globally. It’s taught me a lot. I think showing the world to our kids and introducing them to different cultures and languages is important.
Workwise, I want to continue to evolve. I never put myself in a box and I try not to put my kids in a box. My wife is up to a whole new thing. I'm about to be on a whole new journey, and I think we should just always evolve if we can, but that's also the life of our career paths.
