Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / What is Family Inc?

Transcript

What is Family Inc? · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:01
  Hi, welcome to the Family Teams podcast. Our goal here is to help your family become a multi-generational team on mission by providing you with biblically rooted concepts, tools, and rhythms. Your hosts are Jeremy Pryor and Jefferson Bethke, and we can't wait to chat about all things family.
• 0:19
  This episode of the family teams podcast is all about family Inc, which is our new coaching platform for helping families launch their own family businesses. This was originally released on the podcast called freedom families and is hosted by EJ where she interviews Jeremy about all things family Inc.
• 0:44
  Welcome back, Freedom Families. I am excited today to talk to Jeremy Pryor about something that has been in the works for the last eight months, something that those who are in the family teams world, especially those who have been in the family teams homeroom group, we knew that something was being put together
• 1:04
  that the Beth Keys and the Priors were really working hard on an exciting project. And finally, last week, they came out and announced their big new project, which is called Family Inc. Thanks for being on with us, Jeremy, to tell us more about this. Yeah, thanks, CJ. Excited to talk about it.
• 1:22
  What I really liked about when I first heard what Family Inc. was is from everything I've read, because we've read your books and followed the work you've done. I've done a Bible study with you and some other things. I feel like this new project is just a natural extension of the other, the values, the vision, the mindset that you have had all along. Would you say that that's the case?
• 1:49
  Yeah, definitely. Yeah, this is, and it's also the biggest question we get, you know, people that get excited about being a family team, they start to implement a lot of things and, you know, they get some rhythms going, but eventually they run into this intractable problem, which is called employment.
• 2:06
  If they work a 40, 50 hour a week job separately, it's like, well, how exactly are we supposed to be a team? Now, there's lots of ways to do that and different kinds of jobs and different kinds of employment. But there are a lot of families that not only are finding it difficult to go as deep as they want to go into being a family team.
• 2:24
  The other thing that I find even more concerning is that they look into the future, 5, 10, 20 years, and that problem is getting worse as their employment, their career, it kind of heats up and becomes less and less integrated with their family. So we wanted to give people another path and say, hey, guys, there is another way. Jeff and I both have taken that way. We've both...
• 2:45
  you know, uh, being kind of allured by employment or have had lots of stints in there and just decided this is a better way to go for our families. And, and, but it is something that can be really scary and really challenging. Uh, and so we do think that it requires some help. So that's why we decided to launch this.
• 3:02
  We'll have some scenarios that I'll give you toward the end of some different things that I think people would bring up to you or want to ask you. But for now, for starting this out, who who had this idea first? I mean, you said that you've had this question asked to you a bunch and Jeff probably has had this question to him.
• 3:20
  When did you realize who brought it up like we should actually try to do something with this question and we can actually do more than just do a question and answer session here and there and try to give our two minute two minute experience and idea?
• 3:36
  Yeah, definitely. Well, yeah, I think, I think for both Jeff and I, we have gotten this question a lot and I, and it was a kind of open question or conversation as to, is this something family teams ought to take on? It's a big, big leap. It's a lot of, it takes a lot of work. Like you said, it's, it's one thing to give a two minute answer or five minute fatherhood on, on how to launch a business is nothing to actually help a family with all the complexity of what that looks like and, you know, coach them for an entire year. And so, yeah, part of it was just kind of taking a big step back and saying, okay, what would it, what, what would be a really good, um,
• 4:05
  a really good way to go about this, a framework that would actually consistently achieve results. And for both Jeff and I, our story really intertwines with this topic. Cause this is really, you know, when we first connected, it was actually around economic issues. Jeff had launched the video. He was a single guy.
• 4:23
  came to me, I had, I owned some companies and it was like, okay, what is this? Like, do I go into ministry? Do I start a business? And so, and I found this has just been a natural extension of all of my disciple making and coaching of fathers and families. And so, yeah, so I think, I think that, that we had talked about it, you know, I think I started getting to the place, especially and what really triggered me.
• 4:45
  my confidence in, in launching this was, you know, in our city of Cincinnati, we have many, many families that have taken this path. And there's a, there's an open question that people always have. And that is, do you have to be wired as an entrepreneur to do this? And so I've watched families make this transition. And what was really surprising to me actually was that,
• 5:06
  that the further down we went over the last 15 years coaching families, the faster they were able to achieve freedom as a family. And what I began to realize is that, you know, for us, it might've taken 10, 15 years to get to a place where we really saw deep integration and a lot of freedom as a family. A lot of the families I'm seeing in our area now are achieving that in five years. And as I looked at that, I'm like, I think it's just because you know,
• 5:31
  um, the network and we're just learning so many lessons and we're able to share them. And it was all kind of like in this little ecosystem that we have in our little network. And I'm like, this has got to be shared more broadly. Like we have to be able to, cause this is, so I, so I think that, you know, somebody who maybe isn't necessarily wired to be an entrepreneur. Um,
• 5:49
  but has access to a network like this and coaching from people that are creative problem solvers, I think they can pull this off. And so, yeah, that's when I was like, hey, Jeff, I think this is something we can actually make happen. Like, I think now is the time. Let's see if we can put this together.
• 6:05
  So there are a lot of coaches out there. If somebody wanted a business coach, they could go find one pretty easily. If they wanted to find a life coach, right? Like that, that is a common term we hear. They're out there. What makes what you guys are doing different?
• 6:22
  Yeah, there's probably a bunch of things. I say maybe the number one thing is that our approach to wanting this as a pathway into being a family team, like that bigger why is what drove both of us into this world. There's a lot of people who are like trying to figure out the best way to make money, the fastest way to make money.
• 6:42
  we're trying to figure out how do you set a family free for generations? And what are the ministry and kingdom implications of having families like this? And part of this is that I've in the Jewish community, I've watched what this what's happened just within their faith communities as they have, you know, so consistently coached and really lifted up this kind of the kind of economic implications of their faith. And they are able to share that much more freely. And within Christian world, there's really a, you know,
• 7:10
  There's a lot of limiting beliefs that are unique to people that grow up in a kind of Christian worldview. I would say it's really strong in the Protestant world, which is that money is evil. It's really good just to serve an employer for life.
• 7:30
  Those are all kind of ideas that are pretty recent. Historically, even a hundred years ago, most people, you know, own their own economic engine, whether it was a farm or other trades. So this is really not a biblical idea. This is something that really kind of flowed out of sort of the church's reaction to the.
• 7:47
  to the industrial revolution. And so we're really pushing back against that. We do not think that was a good reaction. We think that we should have stood up to that. And it's just like a lot of like other faiths like in the Jewish community, but the Christians sort of capitulated culturally to that idea and said, yeah, well, you know, is it just Christ-like to not even think about
• 8:07
  how to build something that you would own. And I think it's really limited our influence. It's caused us to live very disintegrated lives. It's caused mothers and fathers to not be with their kids. It's caused a lot of marriages to separate. It's caused a lot of economic, you know, there's a lot of opportunity and economic costs to that, those ideas. And, you know, part of this is, of course, you have kind of a, you know, there's a pathway that, and I was in ministry for eight years. Within the Christian world, a lot of times,
• 8:34
  you know, our models are people in full-time ministry. And so it's difficult for them, of course, to say, Hey, you know, this is, this is why it's important to be an entrepreneur or to launch a business or to own assets because that, that, you know, I was even told as I was growing up in the church that there was something kind of not, not right about that. Like I really got the message that to be a real, you know, on fire Christian, you can't,
• 8:55
  take on initiatives like that. And especially if they come at the cost of, of giving all your time and effort into ministry. And we've just seen that this is not great for families as, as the evangelical world is losing 80% of the next generation. These other communities that, that understand and integrate economics, family and faith, they,
• 9:15
  in a cohesive way, they're, you know, the statistics are much, much better for how those, they pass on their faith generationally. So I just don't think the church has any real, has it really explored the connections here. So we want to make sure that we're, you know, speaking this message within that world because that's the world that obviously Jeff and I both care the most about. We want to see families flourish. We want to see the kingdom grow. We want to see people's faith deep and we want to see these things passed on generationally.
• 9:43
  You guys have a lot in common with Stephen and Mark at Abraham's Wallet. I'm reminded of some of the things that Stephen and I were talking about in the spring. We were talking about this idea, and you've touched on it, how we...
• 9:59
  have a generation and you make whatever money you can. And you're basically only trying to get enough money for retirement and maybe some for the kids to go to college. And that that's all your mindset is. And then it kind of stops there. And then as soon as the kids are 18, then they start over and they try to start that process again. Also, I was thinking about is how when we talk about the Christian worldview, the
• 10:24
  I almost want to say the Judeo-Christian worldview, or maybe even just say the biblical worldview, because as you were saying with kind of our cultural Christianity as the church in the West, we've taken on a lot of cultural ideas that aren't actually biblical ideas. Yeah.
• 10:41
  we we've gleaned them from the culture and not from the Bible. And so if we say Judeo-Christian worldview, I think that has a different meaning. And maybe, you know, like when I started reading family revision, we talked about that. We had Yon.
• 10:56
  almost exactly a year ago. And I'm telling you how I read that on Matthews in my trip to Alaska. And it's like this light bulb goes on because it's so often we also have this kind of self-help Christianity where it's just like, like do this one thing, or we can give you some, some hacks for this issue that you're dealing with. But the way that
• 11:19
  you guys, your network, the way that you think about economics, the way that you think about your household, your family, education, everything. It's just, it's all together. It's all intertwined. It's this bigger vision. And I know when I started reading that and listening to you and listening to Abraham's Wallet, it got me so much more excited than any of the cultural Christian self-help stuff that seems to be ubiquitous.
• 11:49
  And I wanted to ask you, is this idea of thinking ahead, of thinking of the future generations, your kids and your great grandkids and your great great grandkids, is that very common in Jewish households still today, even those who live in the U.S.? Can you talk a little bit about that? How does the Jewish way of thinking look today here and overseas? Yeah.
• 12:16
  Yeah, I would say that, you know, and obviously I'm not necessarily talking about statistics, but anecdotally, as I've interacted with Orthodox Jewish families, their mindset towards money is very different than your traditional religion.
• 12:33
  evangelical let's say christian family um and when you dive into the root structure of that how did that happen um they are taking you know and a lot of it isn't necessarily that there's there's overt teaching about it there are people like rabbi um lepin who who's been very vocal about you know this topic within and he's actually pointed a lot of his a lot of his content at christians because he's like you guys don't understand
• 12:59
  how much the Hebrew scriptures speak to these economic issues that created a certain culture within Judaism, but because there is some kind of sort of theological virus inside of Christendom that causes us to just discount lessons from the Hebrew scriptures and that we've lost a lot of those things. So yeah, I would say this is much more common within, within Jewish households. And as I was interacting with them,
• 13:23
  you know, there's, and part of it is, as we've talked, um, and, and really trained a lot of families and doing a weekly family meal, I think, I think that the Sabbath, like if you kind of just kind of follow the train, you're getting together every single week for a, you know, a really a meaningful multi-generational dinner with your, with your family and usually three or four generations present, oftentimes at those meals, if you're doing that, you know, once, uh,
• 13:48
  every week or even two or three times a month, there's going to be opportunity for you to think about economics differently because your relationships are at a totally different level than they are in the Christian world where we get together, you know, when our kids grow up, you know, maybe Christmas or Thanksgiving. And so I think that that's part of the culture, but I also think they take a lot of these lessons from the Torah and,
• 14:08
  you know, from the life of Abraham much more seriously. And there are pictures. It's interesting when you talk to a lot of Christians about the picture of the afterlife, right? We talk a lot about, you know, I mean, there's sort of this idea of harps and clouds and very ethereal, right? It's not a scripture. It's not where he's told us and floating around. Yes.
• 14:24
  Very strange. And, you know, the New Testament does not does not present that kind of idea of the afterlife. But if you it's interesting when you read specific passages in the Hebrew scriptures about what the Messianic age looks like.
• 14:39
  you read things like every man under his own vine and under his own fig tree, and no one makes them afraid. It's basically the thriving household that owns their own assets. It's like, what? And so, you know, whatever you, what that picture is of the future really impacts your values. You know, we know in literature that the fastest way to understand the meaning of any story is to really think through how the author chose to end the story. And so there's a new beginning that's launched
• 15:06
  in that messianic age in the Hebrew scriptures and described also in the new Testament, they, they did coincide very well, but there's a lot of talk of the economics of what that, what that place looks like that we're headed. And it doesn't look like a bunch of people being employees.
• 15:22
  So are you making the case that not only is this way of living and growing your family and growing your legacy multigenerationally, that's not only just something you could pick and you could also pick something else that's just as great, but you're making the case that this is actually what God is guiding us to. This is actually what God has laid out for his people as the best way to flourish as a family.
• 15:51
  Yeah, I would say that there's, you know, I like to differentiate between a few things. I don't see this as a moral issue. I see this as a wisdom issue. And so a lot of times when you become a believer, part of what's happening, the renewing of your mind is you're learning, you know, the truth about right, wrong, about good and evil. And that's really important. And, you know, but there's a tendency to.
• 16:12
  Only have, especially again, in there's something there's this another, I think that's something really rooted in Christendom. It's we do, we turn everything into a moral issue. Don't understand a book like Proverbs, or a lot of the things that are that the scriptures describe are not necessarily saying, okay, this is wrong. It's just saying it's not wise. Like there's, there's a path of wisdom.
• 16:31
  And so, yes, I would say that in scripture, you know, and then there's also, you know, trying to understand the essence of things like what is a family supposed to be, you know? And so because of the fall, all of our families are broken and all of our families are shadows of that sort of ideal reality. But we need to understand what that ideal reality really is because we're trying to aim at that.
• 16:53
  And so when we when we kind of try to piece together what God's design was for family, that's when we start to understand it as a multigenerational team that works together all the way from Genesis one. I think that that's one place where you just see that really strong. Another place, I think, where you can really understand the essence of families, Deuteronomy six. And one of the things that.
• 17:12
  You know, it says, I kind of did this thought experiment once when my kids were pretty young and we were trying to decide, you know, different kinds of schooling options for them. And we're really wrestling through that. I started saying, okay, if I like, okay, a seven-year-old, a nine-year-old, a 12-year-old, if I just had scripture and I didn't have any cultural wisdom at all, I just had the Bible, what would I do with my kids that are seven, nine, 12, you know, 14? What would I do? Like, how would I...
• 17:40
  what would they do? Is there anything in the scripture that would say, Oh, what they do is they, you know, of course you need to establish a school and sending them off. And they would spend, you know, seven hours a day, you know, learning math and science and, you know, this list of topics, you know, again, that's not nothing. Again, I'm not talking good or bad. It's really like a wisdom question. And so I started to just search the scriptures for what's the clearest idea of what a child does. Um,
• 18:09
  in scripture. Like what, what, what do they spend their time doing during the day? You know, and what we learn is in Deuteronomy six, they spend their time hanging out with their parents. It says very clear, you know, I mean, this is one of the most important parts of the, of the Hebrew scriptures. It's the Shema. It starts, you know, with,
• 18:25
  With hero Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one, love the Lord, your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all of your mind. And then he goes on to say and teach these things to your children as you walk, as you get up, as you lie down, as you walk along the way, you know, like, so there's this picture that Deuteronomy six gives of, of the faithful family. And that faithful family is spending tons of time integrated with their children.
• 18:47
  And so how do you do that? Like we have designed a lifestyle as a culture that makes achieving Deuteronomy six virtually impossible. You know, even if you homeschool your kids, how are they supposed to be with their dad? Like if their dad works or if their mom works, their dad homeschools like there's a.
• 19:05
  I don't know that any of these things are the answer if you do not address the economic problem. And so that's something that I really was worried about as a father who wanted to provide really well for my family and provide for the generations and really be faithful to the description of family life in Deuteronomy 6.
• 19:25
  And so I just wanted to have a trajectory towards that over time. And so I just saw what happens to a family that has a Deuteronomy six kind of opportunity where you can take your kids to work once a week, where you can integrate them in different parts. So you demystify things where they can even have little roles in the business where, you know, like there's, there's so amazing what can happen. And so I just want to, I,
• 19:46
  you know, a lot of us that were choosing career paths when we were in college or in high school, we're sitting in front of a counselor and saying, here's my skills. What, what do you think I can do to make money? You know, I don't, I don't, I don't think there probably was a counselor, a career counselor, you know, on the planet that was saying, okay, um, now is one of your, your objectives to spend as much time integrated with your kids as possible while you're making money? Like that, that's not a question that comes up. I don't, that I know of, but there are career paths that I'll, that make, that make that possible. You know,
• 20:15
  And they're career paths that make that impossible. And so what happens, what we're concerned about is there's a lot of family teams that are, that, that, where that value is creeping up. But maybe it was value number eight. Then it's value number five. Then it's value number three. It starts to become this really important value. And now for a lot of family teams are like, this is, this is an essential value of our family. We are a team. We work together. We spend time together. We teach our kids, you know? And so, but yeah.
• 20:38
  because they've, they're already, you know, far down a career path that doesn't allow for that. You know, they're like, well, what do I do now? Like, and I was in a situation, you know, I was in, I was in, it was, you know, I definitely faced that problem and I had no training. I had no skills that would have allowed me to turn around and start something. And so, you know, we definitely did it the hard way as a family. And that was a very challenging transition, but I absolutely would not have done it any other way. And so I wanted to definitely be
• 21:07
  you know, in a position to help other families that are also going to go through a very challenging transition and say, Hey guys, it's worth it. There's ways to do it. Let's do this together.
• 21:15
  I think it'll be very helpful that you went through that transition yourself versus, you know, maybe you were told at a super young age and you started right out with this idea in mind, but the fact that you had to go through some seasons that I'm sure were a lot more hours than you wanted to have to put in, but you were working toward something, you were working toward a season, a much longer season, and that's why it was beneficial to do that.
• 21:42
  Let's get into the specifics of Family Inc. What exactly are you guys going to provide? What is this coaching program?
• 21:51
  Yeah. So we, we've, we're trying to meet that sweet spot between coaching, which is very time intensive where you're like spending time and, and actually getting this out to a whole community of families at once. And so we found that a sweet spot is to, to really embrace a, you know, a, a program that, that really weaves together content and coaching and community. So
• 22:16
  Those are the three things that we are creating. And so I have a seven step process that over a year's time, a family will go through and, you know, they might only get through the first three or four steps in the course of the year. But that's, you know, and there's options to continue on after that. But the seven steps, I'll just say real quickly, are prepare your team, choose your target, launch your business, grow your revenue, upgrade your systems, integrate your family and secure your legacy. Yeah.
• 22:42
  Those are the steps we've gone through. Those are the steps we've been coaching people in. And, you know, those are those are pretty intense transitions, each of those seven steps. And so what we're doing is we have content, you know, I've recorded Jeff and I have made a bunch of videos where we walk people through how to get through all those steps, where the assignments, what are the ideas, you know, what are the kinds of things that will cause you to do that.
• 23:02
  And so people are going to go through those seven steps. Then I'm going to, I do, um, six coaching calls a month. And so you can come to, we want people to come to at least two of those, uh, per, per month. Those are group coaching calls where we do, you know, real time and problem solving. If you're stuck, please talk about it. What step are you on? How can I help you?
• 23:20
  And then there's a motherhood and fatherhood coaching. My wife does April is going to do a motherhood just sort of like, let's talk about, okay, let's, you know, push the business aside for a second. How, how is this impacting your family? How is this impacting your marriage? What's going on? You know, cause we are trying to do this in a way that will really bless your family. So I want to definitely be checking in separately with dads and moms on, on how that's going. So that's sort of the coaching component.
• 23:44
  And then as also a part of the content, I am absolutely like raking through my entire network. I have one of the largest networks I'm guessing of families who have actually made this transition. I think I know at least a hundred families that have done this. And so I'm, I'm been going through every one of them and interviewing them. If they've hit a place where it's sort of at the seventh step, you know, they, they've got a successful business. They're integrated as a family. They're securing their legacy. Let's talk about how you did it.
• 24:11
  Walk me through the journey. You know, what, what is the actual business you started? How did, what are the codes you cracked in that business to make this work? How has this impacted your family and integrated them? And so I have a library of business ideas. That's a part of this program so that people don't need to come in with a business idea. I know that's super intimidating for people at first. They're like, I don't, I don't know what to start. I don't know what idea I have. And so, and in some ways I kind of like that people don't have a business idea because sometimes when they do,
• 24:38
  it's not going to really achieve their goals. And what's great about these interviews is that we know these business models will achieve those goals because that's how that's the filter I'm using for the interviews. And so every one of these families I'm interviewing, it's like, okay, they did it. And so tell me how you did it. Um, and, and there's a lot of patterns by the way that you begin to pick up. So I want people to kind of live in that library for a while, because they'll see the patterns, um, uh, that, that, that families that have been successful have created. There's certain kinds of businesses. They start first,
• 25:04
  There's certain things they stay away from. There's certain ways they handle expenses. There's certain, you know, thought patterns in terms of how they think about their marriage, how they prepare their family. And then what they do when they start to achieve a certain amount of success, the kinds of things that they begin to do to establish that lifestyle. So
• 25:21
  So those are, those are the things I really hope people pick up over time in the, in the group. So those are the three things. And then we have a community as well to where, you know, we're constantly interacting and, and sort of chatting about like these things and giving feedback. And, and so those are, I think with those three things in a year's time of real focus, I think we can make an enormous amount of traction in, in getting, getting families through this transition.
• 25:45
  Absolutely. You're not going to find another community coach or program like this out there. There's none that are integrating everything that you are integrating. And that library of all those families who have done this, like absolutely invaluable, or even just the being able to sit down
• 26:06
  with April and check in on motherhood stuff. And you might find a business coach, but you're not going to find a business coach that's been a mom to five kids who's gone through this herself and can help with advice and tips and even just like talking through issues that are going on in the household. You're not going to find that anywhere else. That's really great. Talk through the three types of businesses, the freedom, the scale, and the legacy business.
• 26:33
  Okay. Yeah. So a big part of our, our model, and this is, this is something that I didn't,
• 26:39
  you just think up as a theory. I just kept watching it happen and go, what is that? Like, and so as we coached families after about five years, they would invariably, the majority of them end up owning three LLCs, three separate businesses. We did it, so many of our friends did it. None of us talked about it. It just kept happening over and over again. And I'm like, what is this? How did this, you know? And this was a pattern that I noticed of those who were the most successful in making this transition.
• 27:08
  And so, and so I'll walk you through what that pattern is. So that, so what, what people have done is they would, they will start with what I call a freedom business. And I find one of the, one of the most persistent mistakes that families make when they, if they're trying to do this kind of business for this reason to be kind of together as a family is,
• 27:27
  is they'll launch first a scale business. And that's the most common thing we think of as a startup. A scale business is really, you know, you're creating a product or service, you know, that solves sort of a global problem. So this could be something, you know, oftentimes an online solution to a major problem.
• 27:45
  And so I'll talk about why that's a challenge, but that often takes a lot of time before you make money, a lot of investment. Oftentimes you have to get investors involved in that kind of a business. And so what we do is we, and I've, a lot of the people I've noticed, I did the same thing is I launched a scale business first, spent five years desperately trying to make it work and then backed into a freedom business. A freedom business is much simpler. Right.
• 28:09
  Okay. A freedom business is where you're providing a pretty simple service. Um, and your goal in the freedom business isn't to make a ton of money is to get control of your time. And so you, you need to have financial stability for your family and you need to not have, you know, a constant need to, uh, to work, um, at somebody and somebody else's business in their hours and
• 28:30
  So how do you do that? So a freedom business is a business in which you provide some kind of, oftentimes it's a service-based business where you can pull all the money out of the business every single month and not hurt the business. The problem with so many scale businesses is that they're really designed for a return in the future. And so every time you pull money out of a scale business, oftentimes it really hurts the business. Then you have to go out, get investors, delete your equity, deal with having other people controlling your time.
• 28:55
  Before you know it, you basically are in the same situation you are as an employer and as an employee. And so we don't want that to happen. So we recommend starting with a freedom business, get control of your time. And we have like lots of examples of different kinds of service based businesses that allow you to do that. The family plan calendar is the new way to keep your family team organized. Plan your rhythms, menu, household chores and notes for the family all in one place. Visit familyteams.com to purchase.
• 29:25
  Then the scale business is a business where, you know, you oftentimes what happens is you take a lot of both the money and the expertise created in the, in the freedom business. And you, you create a business that you can disentangle from your time. Oftentimes freedom businesses are still entangled with your time. You can scale those through maybe new employees and things, but you can't necessarily create the kind of.
• 29:49
  financial return that you can get out of a scale business. So scale business oftentimes is look, and oftentimes what happens to people is they crack a code in their freedom business. And it might've taken them years to figure it out and it made a massive difference. And so they've actually, this is really valuable. Like they've created, they understand how to do this.
• 30:07
  There are probably a thousand other businesses that are floundering looking for the solution that you created. Like, can you deliver that to them at scale? Will that create something that's totally disentangled from your time? There's a very small implication in your time, but major financial implications for that kind of a business. We recommend launching that second, not first.
• 30:29
  And so you launch your scale business. Now these combined, your freedom and your scale business, combined to create the capital that you're going to need for your legacy business. So legacy business is where you hold the capital intensive assets of the family team. And so, you know, if you look at families that do have
• 30:45
  you know, the kind of inheritances they can pass on generationally, oftentimes they will hold those assets into a separate LLC. So like in our case, in a lot of cases, because I love working on real estate with my family, you know, let's say you hold real estate assets in that LLC. And so you end up with three businesses. Right.
• 31:03
  And so like, again, I just kept seeing this happen over and over again. I'm like, what is that? Like, and I'm the biggest mistakes I did, I would say the two biggest mistakes I made in business. One was I started with a scale business instead of a freedom business. And the second one was I assume my scale business was my legacy business. And so I kept trying to force.
• 31:21
  things into my scale business. And I, I didn't, it took me 10 years of growing a scale business before I realized that I was inappropriately kind of hindering the scale business while trying to get my family more integrated into it. When they were very excited to be a part of the legacy business, once I launched it, I didn't understand the difference. I didn't understand how, you know, how these could work together. And so that, that was a, I, you know, it's very difficult to even quantify the, the,
• 31:49
  The challenges that created and how much easier would have been had I realized that these were separate ought to be and probably in most cases ought to be separate entities. Can you give us a couple of samples? I'm thinking of someone who starts building furniture for people. What type of business is that? Or it could be anything like maybe they make T-shirts or something out of their house. I'm thinking more of side hustles. What would those be considered?
• 32:16
  Yeah, they could be freedom businesses. Again, the big thing I would, I would really want to be careful of in those two models is can you pull most of the money out every month? And if you can, there's ways to design t-shirt and furniture businesses where you can, and there's ways to design them where you can't. And so some of those are scale businesses. If it's like, I'm going to create a big furniture store, I want to have like four 50 employees, and we're going to really take over. We're going to mass produce this product or mass produce this t-shirt and have a ton of inventory, you know,
• 32:43
  you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars of t-shirts sitting around those would, then I would say those are scaled businesses. But if there's a way and there are business models, you know, we'll share, there are ways to do both of those things as freedom businesses. Um, and so we want to make sure that your family gets a regular income from your business so that you can get, can control your time.
• 33:02
  So those could be examples. I would say the most common examples are in the service industry. And I think that probably the most successful way to scale that are serving businesses, actually. So if there are services, you can provide businesses, you know, where and there's so many of them that you just look at. And this is...
• 33:24
  and businesses love this by the way. I mean, so as an owner of multiple businesses that had to get a lot of these kinds of contractors, it was so much easier for me to, to hire a 1099 contractor that had a business that served my company. And so I didn't have to hire another employee to do that job. I know this company, I know that they know what they're doing. They provide a service, they've cracked the code. They're doing it for 10 other companies. Like, great. Like, why don't you do that for us? And so, yeah,
• 33:50
  There are trainings you can take that take like a week or two that'll really give you the skills to be able to serve a business in a niche if this especially is something you're wired to do. And so that's why we want to have that library of business ideas because there are certain things that people are really good at and they're just designed to produce that service. And a lot of times a family might say, well, I don't want to do that because if I do that, then I'm still working 40 hours a week. But I'm like, hold on, like...
• 34:18
  That's like, there are so many, this totally different than working for an employer because you now do own a business. You could hire and subcontract out from your, you know, you're being contracted. You can subcontract a lot of those skills out to those tasks, out to others. There's all kinds of ways to use. And then if you do start to have that expertise
• 34:38
  your network's growing and the businesses you're serving or the families or the individuals you're serving, then you can start to offer that service as a scale business. And so that's, that's why I really believe this path does make a lot of sense, but oftentimes it's counterintuitive for people because again, they think, well, if I want time with my family, I'm going to have to do a traditional startup, get into an accelerator, get investors involved, like really go for it. You know, even though there's maybe only a 10% chance of success after two or three years of working and we're, you know, we're very, very bootstrapped in terms of income. Um,
• 35:07
  I just so many families I've seen take that. There have been I've there's a handful of families in our network that have successfully done that. Oftentimes they were single when they started. It's very difficult to do that with with a young family. And so that's why in most cases we'd recommend this path instead.
• 35:22
  I'm sure there are certain situations that someone could be in where jumping into this right now isn't the right time. But I think that there are a lot of people also who might say they're not ready or not yet. And they would always say that. So can you talk a little bit about the person or the family who's like, Jeremy, I love this idea. And like, I want this for my family, but it just doesn't seem like the right time. And I don't know what the right time would be.
• 35:52
  Yeah, well, that's that's the real question. If to me, the family that could potentially be one that is is waiting for the right time. If there is a if there's a life event that's about to happen, you know, is going to happen. We're going to have a baby in three months. That to me is very understandable.
• 36:12
  Like if you have very little margin and you know you're about to hit, you know, a crazy life event as a family, let's wait until the life event is over and then we'll launch something like this. I think that's totally reasonable. However, if people are saying, I don't see anything changing, like we're really maxed out now and I don't see anything getting better in the future.
• 36:31
  then I don't know that there is a right time. And therefore, you just have to make a decision about what your priorities and goals as a family are. And if this is one of them, then there's going to have to be a season where you bite the bullet and do this. So that's why I think the real ultimate question is, is this something you're planning or wanting or desiring or feel called to do? Is this a goal of your family that you want to do this? And for most families, it gets harder to do this, the older families.
• 36:55
  they get the more kids, the more complex their life becomes. And so it's better to launch this when you are at whatever level of complexity you're at now before things get more complex. Now, if you're in some stage where you can see that going the other direction, your kids are getting older and then that might be another reason to wait a year. If you see that, that your life's going to actually get simpler in a year. But if you're just headed for more complexity,
• 37:20
  And I would say, you know, decide if this is the thing you want to do and you probably want to do it sooner than later.
• 37:25
  Let's say you have a family that they think I only make our family only makes 60 K a year. How could I possibly do something like this? Because if I wanted to start something from scratch or I think when you were talking about doing something for a business, would you be saying like a plumber or somebody who can fix, you know, dishwashers and restaurants, refrigerators and things like that? That's what you meant, right? When you were talking about doing things for businesses.
• 37:54
  Yeah, that would be like an example in the trades, right? And I would say that what you'd, the thing that you really wanna be aware of that a lot of people don't understand is that there are in every industry and serving businesses in the trades or in other kinds of services, software as a service, consulting, marketing services, all the different kinds of business services out there. There are well over a hundred and we can show you guys lists of them. In that world, there are what I would just think of as sort of like,
• 38:23
  Very, very common, you know, types of types of services that have been around for 100 plus years. And so you could go into those and you will, you know, be competing directly with people who are also in that space. But then when you're launching a business, there's a magical thing you get to do, which you get to pick the vertical you're in.
• 38:46
  That's an incredibly important moment because you get to pick the exact arena in which you compete. And so before you say, I want to be a plumber, like say, is there a kind of plumbing that has just come online the last five years that I can carve out a niche in that world that exists in my region that exists in my region?
• 39:05
  And go into that first and really try to do the work up front and figure out what is happening in the industry that is opening up a brand new opportunity. You know, so that is huge. I mean, another thing that's happening, if people are into trades, man, I can't tell you the number of opportunities there is for this, which is you can find somebody with a big book of business in some kind of trade who's about to retire and has no idea what to do with that business.
• 39:31
  And so, you know, you could, and they're, so you could go and say, Hey, look, you know, over the next two or three years, I will, I will pay you, you know, this is the most money you're probably going to get for this business because, you know, one of the things that's happening is that reliable people in the trades, this is a serious problem we have in this economy.
• 39:49
  They're getting more and more scarce. If you notice a lot of the most reliable people that show up to your house to do a lot of this kind of thing, they're older. There's not, you know, the guys in their early or mid 20s or early 30s that are doing this work. There are some, but not compared to the way they were in the past. So, yeah, there's ways to buy businesses at very cheap prices. There's ways to basically do kind of earn outs of existing businesses. There's a way to move businesses like that into business.
• 40:13
  you know, niche areas that are just emerging where there's almost no competition. There's even ways, and I've, you know, I have a friend who's involved in this right now. He's in a niche that's so rare that people will fly him all over the country to do a really basic install. And, you know, the charges, you know,
• 40:31
  thousand dollars an hour. I mean, it's just very rare. So again, you need to take the time before you, you know, sort of just blast into something that's traditional. And, and to ask the question, what is the realm in which I want to compete and I want to win in that. So you have to, you have to before you choose the industry and the vertical you're in, give yourself an unfair advantage, give your family that advantage so that you can immediately start making money and you can, you know, pull that money and bring it home and then get, you know,
• 41:00
  through this freedom business and then get into that scale business and then get into the legacy business. Like I'm saying people that are making these decisions very carefully are getting through all three models and, and, you know, and something like five years. And like I said, it took us 15, 20 years to get through all three of these because I mean, I was making so many mistakes along the way. I didn't have a pathway to follow.
• 41:19
  But man, people that do, the predictable success is much higher. You know, there's always going to be risk in every business venture. There's going to be unforeseen things. You have to work hard. You have to make wise decisions along the way. However, I would say this is a great time to do that. One of the things that, you know, maybe just to mention too, that's...
• 41:39
  one of the reasons is you guys, the economy we're moving into is really not great for employment, right? We've seen stagnant wages just persist. This problem seems beginning worse. We have inflation that's growing. And so most salaries are not keeping up with inflation, but there is something that does keep up with inflation. It's called a business.
• 41:59
  You know, what creates inflation is businesses raise their prices. And so when you own a business, guess what you get to do? You get to raise your price according to what's happening in that market into inflation. And so part of this is just, again, like, why aren't we having these kinds of conversations as people that are part of the kingdom? There is some giant block that we have that makes us, you know,
• 42:23
  not be as financially savvy. And I really appreciate the Dave Ramsey's of the world who have really helped, you know, Christians think about, you know, the problems with things like consumer debt. But there's not a lot of help when it comes to actually, you know, building legacy kinds of environments for our families. And a big reason we got into this because we wanted to spend more and more of our time doing ministry.
• 42:47
  And so the kingdom implications for our family have been massive. As we've seen success in our businesses, we would turn down our time in business and we would go on the mission field for months at a time with all of our kids, everything paid for through our business. We would, you know, we would be able to open up our house, you know, and be working on hospitality 10, 20 hours a week for free for people in our neighborhood so they can meet Jesus. Like these are huge opportunities, but you know, it's like, I want to see this being done at scale.
• 43:13
  And so that's kind of why we wanted to start this. There's not a really isn't the kind of tension people think between being in a in a situation where you're you're owning owning assets and you're seeking first the kingdom of God. These things need to be, you know, kind of brought together. And that's that's what I really want to recommend people begin to do.
• 43:31
  You're already starting to coach us, and I just want more of this. You are talking about how this is part of discipleship. God knows every part of our lives, and He cares about every part of our lives. So when we talk about being disciples who make disciples and raising children who become disciples who make disciples, this is part of it. It's not just all these individual lives, and all we're doing is...
• 43:57
  And maybe teaching, teaching them how to be a little nicer or something like that. No, it's an all encompassing idea of how to live as part of the kingdom here and now. And so I just this is so good. This is so good. I'm really enjoying hearing your heart behind it and also learning a little bit about starting a business as a family. How well does something like this work? Because I could see it working really well with a family who does do home education. Yeah.
• 44:25
  Yeah, I think great. I mean, this, you know, you, you really want to think about creative ways to involve your kids in the kind of work you're doing. And so we have a whole section of the, of the family freedom path, these, these seven steps and step number six, you know, is all about how to integrate the kids and how to integrate as a, as a spouse, as spouses. And so one of the things that, you know,
• 44:48
  that we start with instead of saying, because there are so many scenarios that are hard for us to predict. You've got kids at very different ages. You've got all kinds of different things. You're trying to teach your kids in your homeschooling. And then you have a business that you're, you're, you know, running and you, and that has its own rhythms and its own needs. And, you know, you're trying to meet the needs of clients or customers. And so what we like to recommend is that, is that families do what we call experiments in integration. Right.
• 45:15
  OK, so this would be like, OK, you would have a family meeting, you know, and this can be, you know, we coach families to do this just like as a family in general. But it becomes critical when you're running family businesses. So you sit down and you say something like, OK, what is one experiment in integration we can attempt this week? Like, OK, so you look at your kids, you look at your business. Is there something that one of our kids could try to do?
• 45:39
  Or could we spend some time, what happens if on this kind of a meeting, so I started taking my kids to board meetings, when they were seven years old, I would, I tried some of these experiments and people would look at, even if they first hear about it, they're like, no, no, no, these things don't mix at all. You don't take your kids to board meetings. You don't like have, well, let's try it. Like, whoever said you can't do this, my business, it belongs to our family, like we're gonna try it. And so I would have these situations where I could bring my kids into meetings,
• 46:08
  You know, they would be there. I would then debrief a meeting with them. What did you learn? What did you hear? What did you think about when this person said this? We'd be driving home. I would talk about the day. And then there's some meetings where we're like, okay, there's a major HR concern. Honey, can you wait outside while we have this meeting? You know, and so we kind of learn about like, okay, what meetings are appropriate? What kind of meetings are not appropriate?
• 46:28
  You know, this is, we started experiments like, okay, I'm going to take one of my kids to work with me every day. And even though, you know, I might do three or four hours of work on a computer, I started creating these rhythms with my kids where, you know, they would be doing their work and then I would take a 10 minute break and I would spend time with them and say, okay, what, you know, what are you working on? What, what kinds of
• 46:45
  you know, a booksy reading or like, and so I could review their work. This made homeschooling for my wife a lot easier because now, now there's one dynamic that sort of plucked away is you could focus a lot more on a couple of the other kids. And then we could even see what that dynamic would do to the family. Sometimes people, there's a lot of times when people think about integration that they have, I've noticed that their picture is, you know,
• 47:06
  you know, let's say they're a family of six, all six of us all the time doing everything together, or we're all doing everything separate. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Like that is really extreme. Like, yes, there's lots of business things you can't do with, you know, a two-year-old, a four-year-old and a seven-year-old and I mean, a homeschool. No, no, no. Like, that's why you gotta, you gotta do, you gotta be really thoughtful and creative about this. And you're trying to make one experiment and, you know, and you, and sometimes it fails and you're like, let's not try that again. Yeah.
• 47:32
  man, if you do an experiment integration and it succeeds, what have you just learned? Like you've just captured two more hours a week with that child for the rest of their, their time growing up in your house, potentially. Is that not worth an experiment to try? Like, and so we just kept finding these ways to integrate our kids. And so, yeah, it's, it's really, this is the pathway that I think
• 47:56
  makes the most sense. Um, and man, it's fun and kids are wired differently. And so, you know, some of our kids are like, you know, they'll, they're like, Oh, let me answer the phone, you know, do all the customer service calls, you know, and other kids are like, I don't know what, like, I don't know what to say. You know, like you just want to work with your kids, they're wiring how, how they're built, you know, and then sometimes you do need to coach your kids and okay, let's, let's try to, let's try to push past that resistance, you know? And, uh, you know, people don't know what's going on. We've had lots of situations where people, um, are like,
• 48:26
  Oh, child labor. What do you, you know, why do you have a seven-year-old in here doing that work? I'm like, there were, we're, we're this thing called a family. I know it's weird. You know, we work together where, you know, we like to be with each other. We don't, there's nothing in the Bible that says, you know, thou shalt put your child in school for seven hours a day, or you are abusing them all. By the way, a lot of people don't realize this, but when they pass all the child labor laws,
• 48:50
  You know, and there was good reason for them. People were, you know, putting their kids in factory work for 12 hours a day, seven days a week. I mean, that's horrible. Yes, let's make that illegal for sure. But in the child labor laws, there's every single one of them. I think in every country, there's an exception for the family business. Like there literally is no, because back then this was so common.
• 49:10
  And so they said, of course, if you're working with your family, with your dad, we can't make that illegal. Like that's just called family. Now, so a lot of people don't know that, and there needs to be this really clear distinction between me literally hiring my child out to somebody else so that I can profit off that. And me just being with my child and saying, you know, is it illegal that when we're together that they do something wrong?
• 49:35
  that's productive economically. Like how terrible, like, no, that's amazing. Like, like what a cool thing to be able to give your kids an experience like that. So I think this is a great education, you know, and, and, you know, we, we found with our kids as they got older, one of the things that was, you know, I mean, this was, this has been a good thing for us. We didn't know what to think of it, but because our kids have kind of grown up with us just launching businesses and then working with us when they turned 18, you know, they didn't really understand.
• 50:03
  see the need to go to college, they just started businesses, you know? And, and so, you know, and, and they, or they would want to go and work for an entrepreneur to be able to, you know, learn that skill and launch that business. That's kind of the way all of our kids were, are wired. And, and so we believe in lifelong education, but when it comes to economic concerns, we work as a family. And so that's, that's our conviction. And there are seasons where my kids will go to work for others to, in order to learn an entrepreneurial skill that I can't teach them.
• 50:32
  Um, but, but ultimately it's always, you know, like they're always asking, you know, what is the business implications? When can I get equity in this business? When can I buy this out? When can I start my own? Um, because they see that that's really the pathway to, to family flourishing. That's when we can really live and, and work together.
• 50:50
  And then when your kids go out to learn something that you're not able to teach them, then they are building the family toolkit per se. Then when they have kids or their nieces or their nephews or grandchildren want to learn that, they know that. And you guys have five kids. So just think about the multiplying effect of that. It's very exciting. And I keep going back to, in my mind, the Deuteronomy 6 message.
• 51:16
  that you brought up earlier and how all this time that you're spending with your kids as you take them along with you and you're talking about God and you're talking about life and you're talking about your family and how fruitful that must be, not only for what they're learning as you were just saying that you're,
• 51:34
  your teenagers are asking about equity and things like that that most teenagers wouldn't be able to define, but also your relationship. Can you talk a little bit about the dynamics within your home, within your relationships between you and April, as well as your relationships with your kids and how having a family business and working together spouse and spouse and working with your kids changes the culture of your home?
• 51:59
  Yeah. Yeah. So there's, you know, one of the things that I would say one of the dynamics in our family is that, you know, because I love coaching, I love strategy, you know, as our kids are getting involved in different businesses, my wife calls it like get your dad's business brain, which is because I kind of start burning out after about 5 p.m. And so my kids get on my calendar. They're like, OK, dad, we need to strategize this idea or April does the same thing. Like, you know, anyone.
• 52:26
  EJ use, use my Calendly link. Um, I send that out to people. I love it. Cause it's, it's just the hours I work. And so, um, and so yeah, April will schedule time like, okay, let's strategize in this business. Like this is, I'm feeling stuck here or, you know, as my, now that my kids are older, I'm getting to do that more and more with them and with their business, um, their businesses. And so this, so, so part of my role now is, yeah, I, I spend some of my time on my own businesses, but
• 52:53
  more and more, I've got a lot of time freed up to help my kids in their business. And so, so that's one of the ways that it works for me, you know, for April, she's, you know, very integrated in it. Like when she goes into the quilt shop that she owns with my daughter, Kelsey, you know, the girls are there and they're like,
• 53:08
  you know, talking and figuring stuff out in real time. And, you know, and there's employees there and they're, you know, talking through how to do those things. And so I just think that those work hours are precious hours. I think like if you come home and you're tired and basically you're ready to veg out in front of the TV or just, you know, grab a drink and relax. And that's your family's experience of you, which really, you know, was tough for me because I mean, I, you know, I don't, there's some people that just have endless amounts of energy on,
• 53:37
  I'm not one of those people. Like after I work an eight hour day, I'm really tired, especially socially and emotionally. And so I just love the fact that I can hang out with my kids in the middle of the day. We can work on things together. They're getting the best part of me. The best hours. Yeah. My best hours. I'm most awake, most excited, most energized. I'd like to relax with my kids too, but I want them to experience
• 53:59
  that part of me, you know, I don't want just to be the dad, you know, who's tired and trying to relax and, you know, and having a hard time engaging or, you know, following a train of thought, you know? So that's another reason. And, you know, that's for different people. If you, if you have, you know, more of a wiring like me, then I would say that's, that's another really big reason to really embrace the Deuteronomy six kind of lifestyle with your family.
• 54:19
  I think you might maybe even mentioned this book before. And I know that Stephen likes this book, but Thou Shall Prosper by Rabbi Daniel Lappin. Yeah. I think that'd be a really helpful book for people to read, to try to. You were talking at the very beginning about kind of how when you were growing up in the evangelical church,
• 54:41
  you had these ideas of basically, and I've caught some of these as well. And I know other people have really, really caught these ideas of almost that you, you shouldn't be wealthy. That wealth is almost a sin in which certainly cheating and different things like that, fraud, greed, those are sins, not wealth in and of itself. I just wanted to mention that book because it can be helpful for people to see biblically these ideas
• 55:10
  and how they work within a family. What do you say to a family? They're living paycheck to paycheck, and not because they have a bad budget, but just because maybe both spouses work, maybe one spouse works and the other stays at home, but they're only making the bare minimum, and they think, well, yeah, that's,
• 55:31
  That sounds like a great idea for somebody who has more money than I do, but they don't think that there's a way out of the current way of living. What would your advice or encouragement be to that family?
• 55:44
  I would say decide on the income level that you really think would cause your family to thrive generationally, and then don't stop until you get to that level. And that's gonna require you to own a business. That's what I would say. So like, I think that for so many people, they do put up with that forever. And I'm just saying like you guys,
• 56:04
  You know, that, that, that's actually a much more of a mindset problem than a work problem. You know, poverty is a spiritual issue. It's not primarily a material issue. We need to understand that, that, that if, and you know, part of this is, and just to get really practical, you know, one of the first things you want to do when you're stuck in a situation like that is look around and ask yourself, is everyone, you know, basically in that situation?
• 56:29
  Because you tend to be, especially men tend to be this way. They're the average of their five closest friends, you know? And so I think what started happening in our community is that when more and more families started getting free and started making more money, like particularly the men, they
• 56:44
  they suddenly went from a mindset to say, I don't know what else to do. I guess I've just stuck. I'm just going to put up with this to like suddenly saying, you know, Oh my gosh, this is abnormal. Like I'm going to do something now. And then bam, you know, they start working out these ideas and start to, to, to, to go down a different path. And so you need to get into a different kind of community. It doesn't mean to say goodbye to all your friends. It does. It means you need, you need another kind of community where people are going to push you. And they're going to set, they're going to define normal differently.
• 57:13
  And so when I, if I, you know, when I'm in a group of guys that are all doing that, I don't, to me, that's not normal. I'm always asking them like, okay, what's the plan? Like, okay, what, you know, what are you doing? What's the next step? How are you going to get out of that? Can you get equity in that business? Can you, can you get out of that situation? Like, what's the next step? What skills do you have? Oh my gosh, you could start. Have you met this person? This person just did this last, you know, like I, so I just started like.
• 57:35
  I can't stop myself, but I just like will constantly be feeding them ideas, connections, you know, books, beliefs that get, you know, that will get them out of that mindset. Because that is, I know what that looks like 10, 20, 30 years later and what it could look like, you know. And so that's why, like, I like to talk about this from a perspective of freedom and not necessarily wealth.
• 57:56
  I don't I definitely don't think is a problem with being wealthy. There are traps, like it says in first Timothy six. But I do think that there's a family problem with this trajectory. And that is that the biggest expression of that is that if you desire to create a multigenerational family, the way that careers work, they're designed to work this way, is that when you are in your late 40s and your 50s.
• 58:19
  you are at your peak earning potential. Everyone knows this is kind of normal. You've created, if you, especially if you stick with a particular career path, you will hit that point. And what that means is your responsibility will be at its height. It's not going to be easy for you to go part-time when you're 53 years old and you're at your absolute peak of your earning potential. Like this, this is the, this is the moment where you cash in on being faithful and growing that skill and working in that industry for the last 20, 30 years. Yeah.
• 58:46
  But that's also the moment your kids are turning 25, 27, your grandkids are being born. And so what will begin to happen when you basically send the signal out to your entire family that you're going to be probably working this job until you're 65, maybe past that, is that you're all on your own.
• 59:02
  You know, and we will see you at Christmas and Thanksgiving and maybe on some weekends we'll get, you know, we'll have a vacation to Lake House. But we're not we're not going to work together because dad's not available. Mom's not available. We're busy. We are we are bearing the responsibility of another another person's family with these shareholders or whatever. And so that's if you're at in that stage, that's predictable. If you're 25, 35, you know, and you see that coming.
• 59:24
  that's going to really make it hard for you to have a multi-generational family. Imagine the difference between that trajectory where you basically just, you're, you know, stressed and working 50 hours a week, all the way until you're 65 to somebody who owns, owns a business or owns a couple of different businesses and can begin to dial down that time and just invite their family as they're, as they desire into those businesses or as your kids are launching things, you are helping them, you know, like, like that is a totally different kind of thing where, and this, I had this epiphany where,
• 59:54
  watching a man in his mid sixties, it was an investor in one of my businesses. And he, he was working with all three of his sons who were, you know, in their late twenties, early thirties. And I sat there and watched this man over the course of the couple of years that, you know, we were working together. And I was like, this guy spends more time with his sons than, than anyone that I know that has kids in the house. And, you know, I just thought this was, this is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. You know, they were working together. They were team, they're strategizing, they're, you know, they were buying businesses. They were, I was like, I'm like,
• 1:00:24
  You know, I was young. I was a young dad, you know, little kids at home. And I was like, I don't know if my kids are going to want to do that, but I want that option. I want to be able to say to my kids, if you want to work with your dad, you can. Like, I will be there either helping you with your thing or you can kind of come help me with something I'm working on. I just thought, I mean, I just want to have that option.
• 1:00:43
  But I knew that that would probably take 10, 15, 20 years maybe to build that option. And so, and I did, it took me 15, 20 years to get to that place. But like I said, I don't really think it takes that long now. Like, man, if you really know a pathway to get there, you can get there much faster. So, so yeah, I, I, that's, that's my heart is like, I want to work with my family and I want to seek first the kingdom of God. I want to get control of my time so that, so that, that's, that's, that's, that's,
• 1:01:09
  I can get to explore all of those things. But I also want to be really careful in this economy where people are, you know, I think in a, in a, in a real struggle potentially where we're, you know, we're looking at the first generation who's going to make less money than their parents. You know, we're, we're, we're,
• 1:01:26
  The strategies that were being handed aren't the best strategies for how to be flourishing, especially in the next 10, 20, 30 years. But there are pathways where this economy is amazing for so many other things. And so you definitely want to be aware of those pathways and what are the ways in which
• 1:01:44
  You know, the trajectories of this economy will work in your favor so that your family can can have the financial resources in a time that is required and not be, you know, pounding your head against a brick wall going down, you know, a pathway that's that's, you know, just full of obstacles and frustration. I just I'm like, we got to talk about this, you guys. There's other ways to go.
• 1:02:05
  Plus, if you are working for somebody else, once you get to that, you were talking about mom and dad are busy. We have this something completely separate. But yes, we bring money home to the family. But other than that, we're completely separate until you turn 65.
• 1:02:21
  Another thing with that is when you're done working for that other employer, when you were just an employee, then you're done. And unless you invested some money, you're not going to get anything else out of that business when you're done working for that employer. Whereas when you have a business that you've grown
• 1:02:39
  then it will continue to grow and you will be making income from that business. And then your kids take it over and just love it. The lovely of asset ownership and the kind of inheritance creation that, that, that, that, that creates it. It's, it's,
• 1:02:55
  Yeah, there are so many other benefits besides just what happens in the now that we need. And so the father and mother with the longest term vision wins. Like we need to understand that. The thing that made Abraham an amazing father was he had such a long term vision. So if you have a very short sighted vision, then it's going to be very difficult for you to see a flourishing multigenerational family. You want to create a multigenerational family, you need to have that long term vision.
• 1:03:24
  Thank you for listening to the Family Teams podcast. If you're enjoying this content or have learned something new, please make sure to leave a rating and review and share with a friend. To stay up to date with our events, new content and products, you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Family Teams.