Gui Groscos packed up his family and left Boston for Charleston, South Carolina, knowing absolutely nobody.
No friends. No network. No local community. Just his wife, two boys under three, and a hundred-degree summer waiting for them in the South.
Within the first week, he joined a softball team.
That decision — the instinct to immediately plant yourself somewhere you can meet people — is a metaphor for how Gui approaches everything: fatherhood, business, and the community he helped build for dads across the country.
On the Working Dads Podcast with host Johnathan Grzybowski, Gui — co-founder of Dadgood, father of two with a third due in December — talks about what it takes to build a life from scratch in a new city, why going from one kid to two is harder than anyone prepares you for, and what three online friends he has never met in person would all be in his wedding party.
Community Is Not a Nice-to-Have. It Is a Survival Mechanism.
Gui was the first dad in his friend group. Most of his closest friends from Boston don’t have kids and are still living a life that no longer maps onto his. He moved away from all of them. And he had to start over.
“The first thing I did when we moved here within the first week — I got on a softball team.”
That decision gave him immediate access to men in their 30s and 40s, most of them fathers, who were already embedded in the community. It was a stepping stone to friendships, to neighborhood connections, to building a new local network from zero.
For working dads who are relocating or feeling isolated: you cannot wait for community to come to you. You have to go find it. A sports team. A church. A neighborhood association. A Slack group. Whatever format works — the initiative has to come from you.
The data on isolated fathers is clear. Men who carry the weight of working and parenting without a peer group burn out faster, struggle longer, and are harder to reach when they finally need help. Gui built Dadgood specifically because he had lived through the early version of that isolation.
Going From One Kid to Two Is Harder Than Anyone Tells You — But Sleep Is the Real Variable
Gui did not sugarcoat the transition from one child to two.
“Whoever told me going from one to two was easy was a liar. That jump was really hard.”
His oldest, Enzo, had the undivided attention of two parents for his entire early life. When baby Nico arrived, the older child — the one who actually understands what is happening — needed more attention, not less. Most parents instinctively focus on the newborn. Gui and his wife caught the error quickly.
But the real turning point, the moment their life started to feel manageable again, had nothing to do with scheduling systems or parenting strategies.
“When my youngest started sleeping through the night — that’s when our life kinda went back into this normal state.”
Sleep is not a luxury. For working dads with young children, sleep deprivation is the primary driver of every other problem: irritability, poor decision-making, reduced presence, marriage friction. Before you optimize your morning routine or your productivity system, optimize your baby’s sleep. Everything downstream of that improves.
The Friends You Haven’t Met Yet Might Be Your Closest Ones
This is the moment in the conversation that stopped everyone.
Gui has three best friends he met through Dadgood: Matt Campbell, Chris Walter, and Warren. They have been texting every single day for a year and a half. They have never met in person.
“If I had a wedding all over again, they would all be in my wedding. Which is wild to say out loud.”
This is not a social media story. This is what real community looks like when it is built around shared identity and genuine honesty rather than proximity and convenience. These three men found each other because Dadgood created the container for them to recognize each other as the kind of people worth knowing.
For working dads who say they can’t find their people: they might already be online, in a community you haven’t joined yet, saying the same thing about you.
What Working Dads Can Take From Gui Groscos
Gui moved to a city he didn’t know, joined a softball team in week one, built a community for dads that connected him to some of his closest friends, hired a personal trainer two weeks before this episode and already feels the energy difference, and is expecting his third child in December.
His advice to dads in the trenches is simple: find community. Whatever it takes. Wherever it is. Because you cannot share war stories with someone who has never been in the war.
On the Working Dads Podcast, Gui Groscos proves that the greatest thing you can do for your family is refuse to go through it alone.
Working Dads is the podcast for fathers figuring out work, family, and everything in between. Hosted by Johnathan Grzybowski, co-founder of Penji. New episodes every week.
