He Struck a Chord on TikTok for His Candid 'Dad Chats.' How It All Started with a Dare (Exclusive)

Tabitha ParentMon, April 6, 2026 at 1:00 PM UTC

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Dillon White gives one of his signature "Dad Chats."Credit: dadchats/Tiktok -

Dillon White is pretty chatty

Online, the Minnesota attorney and dad of four is known for his digital "Dad Chats," which often feature him pouring a haphazard cup of coffee in the front seat of his car

The beginnings of his social media fame are as haphazard as his coffee pours, as he initially started his TikTok account as a dare

Dillon White is perpetually ready to spill — both his coffee and the tea.If you've come across the Minnesota-based attorney and dad of four online, you'll likely have seen him in his most natural state: in the car before he heads off to work in the morning, drinking an open mug of coffee as he chats to his camera.It's indicative of his online (and real-life) persona that his coffee is always on the verge of spilling.Drinking the coffee in an open mug in the car is a personality trait that his wife Suzanne has never "been in favor of." However, despite Suzanne's protestations, Dillon's raw, relatable morning chat videos struck a chord with the TikTok community.

Dillon White.Credit: dadchats/Tiktok

He now boasts three million followers online, who tune in each morning as he offers his thoughts on life, parenting, the state of the world and occasionally, since he's an attorney, legal issues.The Minnesota-based dad of four had quite enough in his life to fill his coffee cup without adding his incredibly popular TikTok account, DadChats, into the mix, which is why it makes sense that he didn't intend to start his TikTok page at all.Instead, @dadchats was born — like many great ideas — from a dare. Dillon met Suzanne while coaching a speech and debate tournament. Around 2020, the pair were joint coaches and graduate students for a speech and debate team, and attended a tournament with their group — "which is obviously a super cool story because we're such cool kids," he tells PEOPLE.

"We had a couple kids on the team that were pretty popular on TikTok and they had 40,000 followers or something," he explains. While at the tournament, Dillon recalls coming across one of his students in the hallway while she was supposed to be in her round. Dillon asked her what she was doing."And she's like, 'Stop talking to me. I'm recording a TikTok,'" he recalls."I was like, 'First of all, what is TikTok?'" he remembers asking the student. "She gives me that up-down and she goes, 'You're too old for TikTok.'"

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Dillon White.Credit: dadchats/Tiktok

"I was like, " Well, that's offensive. So first off, please go to your round,'" he laughs as he remembers what he told her.But, determined to prove the student wrong, the then-speech and debate coach made a bet: for 20 dollars, he would have more followers than her within 30 days."Day 29, I had some random video to get 20 million views or something, and I passed her in followers," he recalls."It was a different type of algorithm," he says of getting on TikTok six years ago. "I didn't know what I was doing. I think I impersonated my dog. It was a different time back then."Once he had won the bet, Dillon was prepared to say goodbye to TikTok. Except that all of this was going down during COVID-19 times, and quite frankly, he was just "so bored.""Our creative outlet for a really long time was speech and debate and coaching," he says. "But once that became virtual and everything was by Zoom, it's obviously just not the same experience."Left with a lot of time on their hands, Dillon began recording videos in his car, which "took off." Suzanne also boasts her own family handle: MomChats.

Dillon and Suzanne White.Credit: dadchats/Tiktok

"She was trolling me and she was sending messages and comments and stuff, making fun of me," Dillon explains of his wife's similar handle. "And I thought it was just some random stranger that was being funny, but also kind of rude."He says he didn't have any indication that this is where his account would end up. "We feel very fortunate in that way," he says. "And so one of the things we've tried to do a lot and we've been really successful doing, I think, is giving back to the community. So just in the last two or three years, we've helped donate and drive over three or $4 million to different organizations."What helps in driving traffic to his page, Dillon says, is that the stories he's telling are "real stories.""It's things that are happening. It's not like I'm having to come up with a short story or fiction and then try to figure out how to weave it in and tell it," he says. "I'm just talking about things that happen. And so that's helpful too in terms of making it less of a time pull."In addition to being a content creator, Dillon is also a full-time attorney and a dad to four. Asked how he manages it all, he says,"I'll jump around a little bit, but I've gotten pretty good. I think at streamlining the time it takes on social, I mean, I'm probably down to less than 20 minutes a day that I'm producing content. And obviously I'll consume stuff at night.""When I was making content originally, it never even occurred to me to be like, 'Oh, I should just do what I would normally do,'" he says. "Because I think when you first start, you're thinking less about that and more about just a story instead of like, oh, I'm always pouring coffee in my car as a regular human being."I used to remember in law school, I would carry a thermos with me every day and then a regular mug and I would just pour it in class. I'm sure I was not well-liked for the annoying habit. But yeah, I mean, that's just how I've always done things as a person. And I think when we coached speech and debate, there's a couple of events that always involved humor and jokes and being funny."

on People

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”