Zach sits down with Kacy Maxwell — friend, former colleague, CMO, LinkedIn sketch-note artist, and inventor of office croquet-kickball — to talk about the children's book he wrote and illustrated, The Boy with Horns. The book started as a stalling tactic: Kacy's son hitting him with "Dad, can you tell me a story?" every night at lights-out, and one night Kacy saying yes instead of escaping downstairs to the TV. The story that came out — a boy who wakes up with horns nobody else can see — sat on his annual goals list for five years until he posted a publish date on social media and let public accountability drag him across the finish line. The back half of the conversation goes deeper: the horns are the struggles we carry that the people around us can't see, and the book's real payload is what happens when someone finally does see them. Zach shares how the book cracked open a conversation with his eight-year-old ("normally I just don't tell anybody") and connects it to the stuff dads bury — including his own family's miscarriage a year earlier and how talking about it turned out to be a relief for everyone. Kacy's closing advice is the episode in one line: your kids want to connect on their terms and their timing, and those are usually the exact moments you want to be doing something else.
Kids open up on their terms and their timing — the bedtime stall, the Jeep ride with the top down — and those are almost always the moments you'd rather be decompressing. Say no to their timing and you don't get a rescheduled version later; you just miss it.
The Boy with Horns exists because Kacy said yes to a bedtime story request he wanted to decline. He didn't say yes every night — and says so — but the nights he leaned in are where the connection (and eventually the book) came from.
Something in your life the people around you can't see or don't understand. Going internal and powering through creates isolation — and when you internalize it, you usually do other, worse things to make the feeling go away. That's as true for a 40-year-old dad as an 8-year-old boy.
The book's ending: the boy finds someone who can see his horns. Nothing is taken away, but everything changes. Talking about the hard thing (Zach's example: miscarriage) reveals more people have carried it than you'd guess, and it's a relief for everyone.
"Publish the book" sat on Kacy's annual goals list for five years. What finally moved it was posting a publish date on social media before he knew how to do any of it — the daily "how's the book coming?" questions did the rest.
The best kids' books couch a big concept in a story a child can grasp, which creates a bridge for a conversation between parent and kid that wouldn't otherwise happen. Same skill as Kacy's sketch notes: if you can't make it simple, you don't understand it yet.
They haven't removed the horns from us. They haven't removed the weight that we're carrying. But there's something when somebody else really understands what we're going through, when we feel seen, that all of a sudden there's a new found ability to deal with it or to walk with it.
Next time your kid stalls bedtime with "one more story" or "one more question," say yes once this week — that's the opening, not the obstacle.
Learn your kid's connection channel (Jeep rides, bedtime stories, a game) and put yourself in it on their schedule, not yours.
Read The Boy with Horns yourself first, then with your kids — and ask, "What do you think the horns really are?" Let the answer run.
Name one of your own horns — something you've been carrying internally — and tell one trusted friend about it this week.
Got a five-year goal collecting dust? Post a public deadline before you know how you'll hit it, and let accountability do the work.
Practical skills, real stories, and one thing to actually do this week with your family. Written by a dad in the trenches, not a marketing department.
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