Family Life, Diversity And Differing Experiences With Robert & Heather Tzall

 

Having five kids and two flourishing careers can be a chaotic mess of differing experiences. Our guests on this episode, however, have made it work. Matt Kelly interviews Robert & Heather Tzall to find out more about their family life. They share how they manage their busy schedules and balance their family obligations with their professional ones. Heather and Robert also talk about their respective businesses in legal assistance for assisted reproduction and supply chain diversity. A lively interview that shows how this family makes it work.

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Family Life, Diversity And Differing Experiences With Robert & Heather Tzall

Thank you very much for taking time out of both of your extremely busy days and coming on the show with me. I’m extremely excited to spend the next minutes with you and learn a little something about how you all balanced two very thriving and active careers along with your personal life as a married couple. When you come together after a busy workday, there you are and then with your five children, which makes sure for an incredibly exciting household. It’s amazing that you are balancing all of that. That’s right at the heart of what we are doing here with this show. We’re reaching out and finding couples that have lives like yours that constantly go in all different directions. How do you do it? What’s your philosophy? What are your tricks? Let’s share that with other people so that we have a database and other couples can go to that, learn and find out, “They did it this way. Maybe we’ll try that. That seems to be working.”

We’re like the newlyweds of The Crew because I was reading about some of the other episodes and everyone is like 32 or 24 years.

It’s diverse if you read all of them. How long have you two been together?

We have been married for many years.

Why don’t each of you introduce yourselves? If you want to promo or mention something that you’re involved with or that you want to get out there, now would be the time, along with a little introduction.

This is a very different type of conversation than I’m used to having because all of the other conversations I normally have are about the businesses. I would always like, “I’m Heather Cox, President and Cofounder of Certify My Company and Co-Mastermind of Diversity Masterminds.” On this show, I’m Heather Cox-Tzall because we’re having a conversation about us, and it’s my official last name. Certify My Company is a boutique supplier and diversity consulting company. We work with companies that are owned, operated and controlled by women, ethnic minorities, members of the LGBT community, veterans and people with disabilities who own, operate and control their businesses. We help them navigate the process of getting certified. They can take advantage of procurement opportunities. I know that you and Missy know about that process very well. You’ve gone through it and taken advantage of it. Kudos to that. Diversity Masterminds teaches certified diverse suppliers how to leverage that very powerful tool that is diversity certification

What you do is incredible. It seems like quite a niche.

It is very much a niche. There are a handful of other companies who say that they do what we do but not to the same level and type of cybersecurity or expertise. To add, I’m a wife, mom and community member. We’re very involved in our synagogue locally. We have five kids.

Robert, if you could please.

My name is Robert Tzall. I’m the Principal and Chief Visionary Officer of Contemporary Legal Solutions. We are a small and thriving law firm practicing in four states: New York, New Jersey, Nevada and Utah. We have our own niche too, which are two different niches. We have a family formation and assisted reproduction where when people say, “What does that mean?” My quick line is, “When people can’t have children the old-fashioned way, they’d eventually need to work with somebody like me.” We’re talking to intended parents, surrogates, egg donors and embryo donors. That’s when things go right, which is 99.9% of the time and then sometimes there are other fields emerging like fertility fraud, which is the 0.1%. It makes all the headlines and the news. I also work in legal governance, continuance and risk management, small and medium-sized companies, as well as partnering with larger companies to satisfy the needs of their corporate clients. Speaking of niches, as law firms go, I’m the only certified disabled-owned law firm, practicing what and where I practice. I’m a big fan of niches too and I’m happy to be here. I’m the father of all these five kids.

You can back him up on that one. The family formation, assisted third-party reproduction, is there a lot of legal around that when people want to go down that road or decide that’s what they want to do?

Yes, especially if we’re dealing with third parties, whether you’re using gamete donation, that’s egg, sperm or embryo donation. People have created embryos when they’re done with their family journey and are looking to help others, as well as surrogates and intended parents. In most States at some level, when you’re dealing with third parties and reproduction, you have to have at a minimum a contract. We all see ourselves not to be too haughty but as shepherds of this industry that’s about creating life. It’s not just about what the contract says. It’s what the contract should say, shouldn’t say and as an industry, how we can support best practices and work collaboratively not just in our world legally but also how we can influence the mental health and medical side world these matters? How they can influence us?

You’re allowing people to create families and if you can’t do it the old-fashioned way, then there’s a way here for you to do it. What an incredibly rewarding part of your career that you do. Heather, do you work from home or do you have an office?

I have a home office and I also go to the office. I like to separate the home-life and work-life because when I get home that way, I can be a mommy when I’m home and then when I’m at the office, I don’t have to worry about running back and forth. For years, I worked from home, but I found that I was then checking emails quickly or doing different things during bedtime. This way, it helps me separate those two components.

 

You stay away from computers and email when you’re at home.

I like to say that I’m diligent about it, but it’s at the palm of our hand all the time and every once in a while, I do try to put it aside. Then inevitably, when I do put it aside, someone’s like, “I was trying to reach you. I really needed to talk to you.” The good news is in my industry, there are no lives at stake. If I missed a call, it’s okay.

There is a timeline that you could get back to people and it’s acceptable. Robert, how about you? Do you go to an office?

I do have an office. I have a very asymmetrical career line. I’ve worked in all sorts of different environments and along the line, I learned that I have ADD. That’s the basis of my certification. If I don’t have separation and very clear-cut rules in places, orders and procedures, nothing gets done. I could have the best intentions in the world and nothing gets done. The greatest thing ever was in the first couple of years of practice. I practiced out of my house. In thirteen, I got an office and it was life-changing. In fifteen, I got an office that I paid for. That was even more life-changing, so I do sometimes work at home. Sometimes I work with clients internationally and it works to take that call earlier at home. I’m a big fan of working.

We share an office. We have two separate offices within the big office.

Missy and I, with our home office, it’s a long desk along a wall. She has one side and I have the other.

We used to do that. You are fortunate that everybody in your house can go to the bathroom by themselves without needing you all the time. That is not the case in our house. There are many interviews and Zoom calls I did, especially at the beginning of the pandemic, when everybody that I talked to knew that my boys were potty training and when they had to poopy because I’m right up in the middle of the Zoom call.

Everybody can understand that.

Everyone was like, “Go.”

That’s funny but they have serious ramifications. I had to be at home for some reason and I was taking a client call. The kids were outside yelling. I had to go take care of that. This was when Zoom was going back many years and I forgot the mute feature. I got a call from the person, “She was concerned because she heard you yelling at your kids in the background.” I’m like, “I see.” If I do work at home, it has to be early in the morning or late at night. I’ll be like, “I’ll use Zoom.” She’s like, “No. Even if it is a short call, you’ll do better and go to the office. It’s only ten minutes away. You’ll do a better job.”

Those days when both of you are out of the home and at your offices, what is going on with the five children?

We’ve been very fortunate that their school has been in sessions since September 2020. They were a few weeks and definitely like a little bit of a wildfire when we went through quarantine weeks but they have been in school for the most part. We have been very fortunate that it was not as much of an issue. At the beginning of the pandemic, we did end up hiring a nanny to come to the house. The older kids always had something to do. It was the little ones. The twins had nothing to do. That was much harder but thank God they’re twins. They had each other to play with, which was very helpful. They’ve been in school almost the entire time in 2020 since September.

In the first three months, we didn’t have anybody. That was in March 2020 and that was hard. It was AM, PM, switching, trying not may be staying at the office for a few minutes at a clubhouse before we went inside to go back.

You have to know your strengths. I’m faster at switching off and on. I can jump into a call then jump off and on. He has a much harder time doing that. We try not to have to read each other’s minds, which did not happen at the beginning of the marriage at all. He’ll say if I have a call. I’m like, “You have to do your bulk day. I can turn on and off.” He does much better when it’s a bulk time for him, then he turns it off altogether.

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It’s the yin and the yang of when you’re at home together and working. Heather, you understand that once Robert locks in on work, don’t try to pull him away. It’s not good. He can be less productive than that. You’re able to whenever the kids need you, then come back, do more work and back doing the kids. Robert, you respect that. That’s a multi-tasker at the highest level. That’s having a wife that produces in the working world, running her own company and at the same time can switch back and forth from being a mom and back. That’s amazing. With your twins, I saw they’re identical. That’s rare and special in itself. They are young to start to see, maybe not too young but as far as personality and the way they handle different situations or are you starting to see them being identical or different in that sense?

We were talking about it because they take turns on who falls apart. Sometimes one of them will be kept together and isn’t falling apart. At the same time, the other one is losing his mind a little bit. It’s funny because even their teacher, who’s had a lot of different twins throughout her class, says that they are the most similar personality-wise with any other twins that she had. They are definitely different. I find that Ash is a little craftier. He gets a little bit feistier than Jakey typically, but that switches also. It could be the opposite. It depends.

It’s funny when one of them is freaking out and the other one says, “Jakey, chill out,” then the roles are reversed.

Is your oldest starting to help care for the younger ones? Can you give a task to her and be confident that it’s going to be done responsibly?

That is an, “It depends,” answer. She is such a good babysitter for other people and people are constantly asking for her. She’s a great mommy’s helper for other people. She doesn’t always want to be helpful in our house. It depends on the day. One time, she was amazing with her brothers but at other times, she doesn’t want to be helpful. It depends on the day with her. If I’m gone, she does much better. She’s very helpful. I can run to the store without having to take everybody, which I couldn’t do years ago. We can go away if we have a local something happening. We can leave her with everybody’s sleeping and she knows what to do if something happens. She has taken the Red Cross classes and a very competent babysitter.

It’s her siblings don’t always make it easy on her is what the situation is. Our kids have quite a few chores compared to a lot of kids their age. Our oldest three all have to do their own laundry and put it away. When the housekeeper comes, she does not touch their rooms. That is on them to clean it, keep it clean, make their beds and change their sheets. One of them made a mistake one time by saying they didn’t want to clean their room because the housekeeper was coming. I said, “That is for mommy.” Ever since then, they are on their own for their room.

How old are the middle two?

We have 12, 10, almost 7 and then the 4-year-old twins.

Were the 6, 10 and 12-year-old responsible for cleaning their own room and doing their own laundry?

Correct.

It’s funny that you say that because I was on some mom group. I was posting that in there. I was getting mom-shamed by other moms that my six-year-old does her own laundry and how dare I? “She’s not ready for it,” and I was laughing. I’m like, “If I said she didn’t do anything, I would be mom-shamed for not giving them enough chores.” I couldn’t win.

That judgment is something that bothers me so much. I’ve heard about it a lot while I’m doing this show and speaking to couples. I hate how people have such an opinion of their way is the right way and the only way. That’s one of the things I’m trying to break down with having a database of these interviews so that people can see there are a lot of different ways to do things and make things work. Pick and choose what’s best for your relationship, like the husband-and-wife team, the life you live, the number of kids you have and the age of your kids. Go through and figure out what’s going to work for you all, how you want to raise them, what you want them to handle and what you don’t.

If it’s working for another couple, like my whole thing, is that I love trying to keep the family together. When you’ve got a team working together, the husband and wife, mom and dad, along with the kids, however, they are doing it to be happy, live their fullest lives, everything is harmonious in the home, you have a great relationship as a husband and wife and a good passionate marriage, that is what works. Don’t listen to other people and what they’re doing. If it’s not going to work for you, you don’t incorporate that into your house. If it’s working for them and keeping their marriage solid, then support it. Let them do it that way.

You have to know your own kids. Some kids wouldn’t be able to do that. A lot of times, they make their own breakfast. They have to make their own lunches every night before they go to school. If they forget it, sometimes mommy can bring it in and sometimes can’t. Sometimes he can bring it and sometimes can’t. We try to instill a sense of responsibility in them because we don’t want them to be those kids who can’t take care of themselves.

 

It is working for you. That’s what I want. I want families to share what works for them. Other couples are maybe struggling because the hardest time in an adult’s life is when you have young children that you’re raising and everything that goes with that. You have elderly parents that are now starting to need your help a bit more than they ever did and you’re starting to realize, “I got to spend time with them. They’re getting towards the end of their lives and this is special,” and you’ve got the maximum amount of bills you’re ever going to have.

Everything is going on a hyper force at this point in our lives and until the kids get off to college, you’ve got the home to yourself. A lot of people like to downsize out of that house. You’ve got the college expenses but you downsize out of a big house if you want, then your careers can flourish without interruption. You’ve got the home to yourself. That’s where you start to take a little bit of a break. Until then, all of us, my kids. It’s one of these things where we all need to work together and help each other figure out what’s working for each individual family unit and take the parts of those that are going to help within our personal household with our personal relationships to children so that our family can flow and stay together.

You both have a very big brand, especially on the entrepreneurial side with Heather and the law side with Robert, with diversity in the workplace and being a big supporter of that. My diversity goes as far as I think women need to get a much fairer shake in the workplace. When I’m speaking for women, I’m speaking for all nationalities, all religions and everybody. Many of you can go into your experience. Heather, you’re head of a Diversity Mastermind. You’ve been doing that for a number of years. Robert, talk a little bit about diversity in the workplace, which you see. Maybe if you have some stats or some information you could throw out that I and the audience don’t know of, that we could talk about and go in that direction.

My work typically focuses on supply chain, so when companies, whether they’d be small mom-and-pop companies all the way up to Fortune 100 companies, all the goods and services that they’re buying to open their eyes to the possibility of including these diverse companies into their RFPs, bid opportunities and the company that they’re looking at. The same old breathes in order to get that chance to find something else that might work better. That’s why you need to have diversity within your supply chain. You don’t want just one specific demographic to be your customer that limits your potential for growth. You don’t want this one type of person working in your company because that limits the diversity of thought of how you’re going to run the company.

It’s the same thing with your supply chain. You want to make sure you’re bringing in different experiences, workflows and everything that comes along with the way that you are brought up in this world. The Certify My Company and Diversity Masterminds focus on that supply chain component. One of the things I always say is that my goal is to make the business world more closely resemble the real world as far as numbers and statistics.

Some of the things we talked about a lot are consumer power and women because those are being spoken about a lot and there are lots of statistics and metrics out. Women control over $5 trillion of consumer spending in the US. They make up between 83% and 86% of all consumer decisions. That is a lot of power. I’m always talking to people, “When you are buying something that you are voting for, you are showing people what’s important to you by how you shop. Are you shopping intentionally or are you just shopping?” It’s important. We want to know. We’ve seen one thing, if nothing else, the past has shown us the importance of small and diverse businesses to our economy by going out and making sure you’re buying from these small and diverse businesses.

That’s why the certification is important because anyone can say they’re a woman-owned business, black-owned business or Hispanic-owned business. Without that certification, it’s only their word. That’s why certification is important because you can’t measure what you can’t count. You have to have that certification to know. There are a lot of statistics about what women want to buy, and the most famous one is the Walmart study. Are you familiar with that study?

No. Let me know about it.

Years ago, Walmart did a study of their consumers knowing the power of the female consumer. They asked their female customers. I’m paraphrasing so it’s not verbatim. For example, if you’re going to buy shampoo, you went in and there are two choices. One was easily identifiable as women-owned and the other one wasn’t. Would you be more likely to buy that product that was easily identifiable as women-owned? What percentage of women do you think said they’d be more likely to buy that product?

98%?

90% exactly. It’s up there. Lest you think that was a fluke, Wine Intelligence magazine did the same study. This is pre-pandemic, so the number is probably higher now but 70% of all wine purchases in the US are made by women. They wanted to know, “Would these women wine buyers be more likely to buy a product if it was easily identifiable as women-owned?” What percentage do you think said maybe more likely to buy it?

90%?

That is why it’s such a powerful time to be an entrepreneur and understand your power. Whether you’re a large corporation or in your own family, what you buy is to know that you can do a lot of change by what you buy.

Heather has it, so I have nothing to add from the corporate side. I say yes, but I’ll say this. People think about this, especially because of infertility. You’ll forgive me in future years when people will read this blog and they’ll find that term outdated. They’re trying to find different terms to use than infertility. The reason people can build families with all this great technology and medical science is that they have the money. It’s not a cheap process. It can be as cheap as $30,000 if you have one very successful IVF cycle. It can be as much as $150,000 if you’re having donor gametes, you need surrogates and cycles fail. That’s a lot of money. If you don’t have that money, people at a simple point can’t do it.

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Additionally, people aren’t even paying attention to you. Your needs are not being taken care of, addressed, listened to, etc. As an industry serving people who are trying to build families, we’ve done a poor job of that. Diversity not only includes gender and race but sexual identity, disability and veteran status. Our veterans have terrible infertility care in this country, that sacrifice themselves aren’t there. For example, a couple of years ago, TRICARE didn’t support egg freezing and IVF. When we’re saying we have this great technology, are we creating avenues for access? In areas where professionals use the concept of pro bono, are we meeting our obligations in that role here?

A large part of that was lost pre-pandemic because everyone was coming to the United States to do safe, reliable, assisted reproduction. A lot of people were chasing dollars. With that market being closed off and reopening up, it’s been an opportunity for me to say, “I’m a professional. I have my little corner of the world. What can I do to improve it?” When someone comes and says, “I can’t pay my fee.” What do I do? How do I adjust that? How do I find a place for that? How do I find partners to work with me to do those things? How do I advocate that it doesn’t have to be pro bono? How insurance should cover infertility like it covers Viagra and Cialis? Most states don’t cover IVF, which is the simplest of invasive types of reproductive technologies. Most people have to pay out of pocket. Chance for fertility preservation, almost no insurance would pay for that. These are real issues of access that we have the skill and access to. Are we going to be mindful enough to try to bring everyone along in that process?

Additionally, I know my field. It’s very non-diverse. I’ll give you an example. I was at a conference for attorneys. This was in 2018 and people were talking about their experience by being marginalized communities. You had several white women speak and about fifteen minutes, the chair said, “We’ve heard everybody’s thoughts on the matter.” In the back, the only black attorney in my profession raised his hand and said, “As the only black person in this room, do you mind if I give my story?” I’m not imputing anything on anyone there, but the point is that you have to understand that everyone’s there. We have to be mindful that if we have these amazing gifts, ways for people to build their families and help people have such success, are we making it accessible as a value? If not, why not? I certainly hear the business argument but it doesn’t come until it’s a value that people want to bring into their everyday lives.

When you’re talking about the $30,000 on the low end and $150,000 on the high end to go through the process to have a child in a third-party away, is that the margins for the companies involved in this? Is there a tremendous amount of profit and built into that? Is that already like they’re doing what they can and probably can’t cut any fat off that?

I can’t tell you their margins but I can tell you that gone are the days that most of your local fertility clinics are owned by the doctor who went to the Ivy League medical school. Most of the well-known names are owned by hedge funds, while some say that the doctors have. Ultimately, the people who make the money decisions are not the doctors. It’s a different world than it was many years ago where people might say, “In my community, I want to support and I’m going to personally do this,” but now they’re part of a large hedge fund-owned group. They might have a say in one part of their practice. In other decisions, they don’t have a say, especially when it comes to the money. I can’t say, “Can they trim the fat or not?” I can say when you have that type of ownership involved. You are incentivized to look to try to maximize profits.

The hedge funds answer the investors. They’re constantly looking at what their returns are and it’s in the wrong hands. It ended up in the hands of organizations that saw an avenue to make a lot of money and that’s where it’s landed. I don’t know enough about it to speak any further than that but from that, this should be something that is accessible to more people and looked at as better for society as a whole and not something that should be a profit center for certain organizations.

I do have one further question that I like to ask that I ask everybody at the end of the interview because I find it to be something of severe importance for our country. When I was doing homework to organize this show and see if I’m going down the right path, I learned a stat from the Smithsonian that we have approximately 400 statues of women prominently displayed throughout our country and 5,000 statues of men. That hit me like a ton of bricks.

There’s no reason for it to be that big of a discrepancy at all. It should be equal because there are 5,000 women out there that deserve statues. If their plaques are on the statues, we can see them standing there on that pedestal and read about their accomplishments. It’s only going to move everything forward to where everybody’s going to realize how incredible these women are, what they’ve accomplished in their lives and what they’ve given to everybody as a whole. Let me know what woman from any period of time in history would you recommend for a statue and why?

I’m not a history buff. That is definitely his expertise over mine but when I was trying to think about who I would want to see a statue of, I had two different opinions. I’m sorry I couldn’t choose one. I have 30 opinions but I narrowed it down to two. You should be very proud of me for doing that. The first was Martin Ginsburg’s mother, Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s mother-in-law. Why did I choose her? Martin Ginsburg was way ahead of his time as far as supporting his wife, her career and choices. I’m hoping that my kids will turn out great because I’m a good mom. She had been a very strong personality and female influence in his life to have him that far ahead of his time to respect his wife and choices.

The other women in his life that you could see, whether in the biographies or the movies we’re at least externally, didn’t show that same position. She was there, ready to step up, help and make sure that they both were able to fulfill their goals. Most of the time, especially in that era, the women were like, “Your goals do not matter. Sit down and raise your family.” Neither he nor his mother had that opinion, so she would be one of them by virtue of imparting values to future generations and not holding them back.

The other people were two women during World War II who would lure the Nazis into the forest by seducing them to help capture them. People will use the word manipulation as a negative all the time but it’s not always negative. Sometimes to manipulate a situation means that you’re creating the vision that the person needs to see in order to get the results that we have to arrive at. Their names were Freddie and Truus Oversteegen. That was what they did. That was what they gave to the war. They lure these Nazis away from their fighting by seducing them away from their positions. They were very successful at it. Manipulation can go toward a positive result. The two of them only got their award in 2014 for recognition for the feat that they did during World War II.

That takes as many guts and determination as you could possibly muster up, putting their lives at stake every single time they did that and not like you’re going to be killed quickly. That would be torture if they caught them. I’m glad you shared that story. That’s a unique story. I don’t know if I would have come across it very often. Thank you so much.

The name I don’t have, but here’s the inspiration. Everyone wants to say when I do this to my wife but that’s lame so you can’t do that. I thought, “What’s an attribute of my wife?” Whether I like it or not, receive it or not, my wife has given me a lot of good advice that I listen to but for her giving it to me, I would’ve listened to it and not as good consequences would have happened. I thought about that and weirdly, they kept saying we’re big in our synagogue. In Torah Portion, it talks about a man named Korach, who got angry enough that God opened the Earth and swallowed him up.

All his sons and son’s sons, according to tradition, are still living under the Earth, suffering from their punches, except for one son. That son had a wife who realized, “This is not something I want my husband to be involved in.” The night before they were supposed to do their big siege and take over, she said, “Why don’t we just hang out together? Why don’t we have some wine?” They had 1, then 2 bottles and I don’t know how many bottles they have, but they retired for the evening.

 

After that, he fell asleep. He was late for the rebellion. He woke up after everything went down and all the naysayers were swallowed. It was because his wife was looking out for his best interests. It’s because he listened to his wife’s advice saying, “Don’t go or plan with them. Come here and stay with me for a minute,” that he survived. I think about it, perhaps not as dramatically. I hope I don’t have to get swallowed by the Earth. If you think about one of the benefits of a relationship, it’s to have someone’s not just advice and help that you can receive but you can trust and be able to be. It’s good that you can see it back in your life and reflect on how you live with that. To that fine woman, I would have a statue of her as an example of one of the great things that can come out of marriage.

She was also crafty because he probably wouldn’t have listened straight up but she was like, “If we have some wine together, there’s a chance he’ll sleep in. He’ll see down the line what I’ve done for him.”

I do think it’s funny that seduction was part of both of ours.

That’s why I liked her to go first because it made mine sound better.

We’re going to go full circle here and route this back to your family with the five kids. The kitchen is such a big part of any home. When we eat there, we spend so much time in the community spot. I saw somewhere in your write-up, Robert that you enjoy cooking. It relaxes you. It’s one of your pastimes. How do you divide up the two of you, cooking, cleaning up the kitchen as you are feeding yourselves and the five children?

I’ll give you the 30,000 front views of it. Every Friday to Saturday night, we observed the Sabbath, so there are big meals involved. During the week, he typically takes care of the weekday meals. He enjoys it. He doesn’t like to eat a salad, which I would serve to everybody for every meal. He wanted a little bit more diversity in the dinners. He took it upon himself to do that. Our eldest child also loves to cook. Probably once or twice a week, she’ll cook dinner for the family. She has not mastered the cleaning part. We are working on that and then I handle the weekday cooking, holiday cooking and bigger projects that take a look at more multitasking skills to them. He will handle the weekday cooking for the most part.

Cleaning is like all hands on deck for that one. We try to have the bigger kids help clean up. We call them a citizen of the household chores because if you live in the house, you participate in the house. These are things that you don’t get an allowance for. It’s an expectation of being part of the household. They will unload the dishwasher and one will have to do the dishes or sweep up the floors. Sometimes we have to go back and assist but we try to get everybody involved. The twins get out of a lot but soon, they’ll have their own chores.

I love the way that it gets separated, yet it is a unity all at the same time.

I thought you were going to ask us how we ever get away. That’s usually the question I get. People say, like, “How do you ever get away with five kids?” It’s because I’m sure you’re shocked but it’s not so often we can find someone who’s willing to take all five kids for us so we can go away.

Do you two getaway as a couple?

Yes. We’re very good at that. We try to probably once a month go away, even if it’s for a night to even a local hotel or if we go to my mom’s, we’ll leave the kids there and go across the street to a hotel.

For the first eight years, we went nowhere.

You can tell it by the way we got along. I’ve seen so many people that are a few years older than us that once the kids leave, they have nothing in common because all they had was business meetings between to run the household for all those years. We both don’t want that to be the outcome. We try to get away, go on date nights and have a good time together, separate from the kids, be like Heather and Rob having fun together so that we still have our own relationship outside of the kids.

She talks to people and she’s like, ” We have five kids.” I’m like, “Yes.”

Sometimes to manipulate a situation means that you're just creating the vision that the person needs to see or to get the results that we have to arrive at. Share on X

That’s because I want them to know. I wanted to look like a 25-year-old to be like, “Why don’t you look like that?” “It’s because I’ve got five babies.”

It’s a good point to get out, be a couple and separate yourself from that. It’s hard. Missy and I do that but it’s hard to not talk about your kids. It’s such an integral part of your life. It’s nice to be away from the house and a new environment wherever you’re exploring or hanging out, our conversations tend to be much more lighthearted and we’re laughing about the things that they do versus when you’re at home and you’re in the midst of all that.

That’s why he came with me to the Pinnacle event because it was a nice way for us to go away and brought it all together. There are such social dynamics to those kinds of events. For some of my business events, I can’t because I’m working from 7:00 AM to 2:00 AM but for his conferences, there are three hours of work, then they just hang out. For the Pinnacle one, there’s that whole evening socialization. In those kinds of conferences, we try to also make a getaway as well.

I’m so glad that we met there. How cool was that? Missy was like, “Two nights in Phoenix. It’s going to be the mid-‘90s. We’re staying at a little hotel with a pool.” I was like, “I’m there.” Thanks for the overtime here. The extra time, I appreciate it. The readers are going to get a lot out of this. You have such an incredible story. I look forward to seeing you and hanging out as we meet up on other events going forward. Thank you very much for your time.

It’s our pleasure.

Thank you so much, Matt.

Enjoy the rest of your day.

You have a great one.

Very cool.

Bye.

Important Links:

• Certify My Company
• Diversity Masterminds
• Contemporary Legal Solutions

About Robert Tzall

Robert M. Tzall is the Principal and Chief Visionary Officer of Contemporary Legal Solutions.

Robert is admitted to practice law in Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New York and New Jersey. He received a B.A. in History from the University of California, Los Angeles, and received his J.D. from the University of Miami School of Law. After law school, Robert completed a postgraduate fellowship in Talmudic Law at the Tannenbaum College of Judaic Studies.

He began his own law practice in 2008 primarily serving closely-held/family-owned business during periods of growth and transition and Women/Minority/LGBTQ/Veteran (“DBE”) certified companies Based in Henderson, Nevada, Robert enjoys spending time with his wife and five children, an active group that includes identical twin boys. An active volunteer, Robert serves at his children’s schools and his synagogue. He relaxes by exercising, cooking and researching the transportation history of the U.S.

About Heather Tzall

Heather Cox is a tireless advocate for diversity. She is a business executive, seminar director, public speaker and marketer whose business venture is helping to make the business world more closely resemble the real world.

Heather co-founded Certify My Company after her own frustrating exposure to the WBE certification process opened her eyes to the challenges facing small, diverse businesses. While networking with other businesswomen, she and her co-founder discovered a need for expert guidance in this area, and the company was born.

As president of CMC, Heather works with both diverse businesses and corporations. She assists diverse businesses with all aspects of certification, helps to increase their visibility in supplier markets, and connects certified businesses with the corporations eager to do business with them. Heather educates corporations about diversity practices and collaborates with managers of supplier diversity programs to help them reach their diversity goals, including a coveted seat at the Billion Dollar Roundtable.

Heather enjoys being a corporate matchmaker, facilitating relationships and the sharing of knowledge through networking events and seminars. She is an accomplished sales and operations executive with over a decade of experience, primarily with small to medium-sized businesses; a natural teacher and thought leader and a motivating presence on any stage.

Heather’s passion for supporting diversity in business extends beyond her roles at CMC. She currently serves on the national and regional forums for Women’s Business Enterprise Council – West (WBEC-W), and has held past posts with the Women Presidents’ Educational Organization (WPEO-NY), WBE-National Council, the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) and the Advisory Board for Super Bowl XLVIII.

Away from her many professional pursuits, Heather enjoys not relaxing with her husband and five small children. This former acro-gymnast, tightrope walker and juggler knows just how to balance her hectic life – with yoga, DIY projects and baking. A seasoned traveler and student of the world, Heather earned her BA in Spanish Language from the University of Texas at Austin, and still remembers most (some?) of it.