Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 310 | Stage 5 of Parenting: Co-Founder

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Ep. 310 | Stage 5 of Parenting: Co-Founder · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  You have to treat each other increasingly like equals during this stage.
• 0:08
  What's up guys? Welcome to 5 Minute Fatherhood. So we are in part five of a series called The Skill of Stage-Based Parenting. We talked about the comforter stage, the coach stage, the counselor stage, the consultant stage, and now we're in one that you will see entirely missing from most modern Western ideas of parenting, and that is the co-founder stage. And this is really the longest stage of parenting for most people,
• 0:33
  This can happen when your children are around the ages of 25 to 45 or 50. So you'll be in this stage for a long time. But if you think about family multigenerationally, if you think about family as a family line, then, man, this is where the work is actually done. I think about all the other stages like building the house. This is like living in the house.
• 0:54
  And if you read the Old Testament and think about the multi-generational families in the Old Testament, most of the stories about those families took place in this stage. They considered all the other stages of parenting, which is what we think of as basically all that family is, as really preparation for this moment.
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  when you begin to build the family line and begin to work together across generations. So the goal of this stage is to partner in a specific family building projects. We call the style of this stage. We have a four word sort of style for each stage. This is low tension, high trust. This is when you are entrusting resources
• 1:28
  to your children. This is when, and this could look like a family business or ministry. This could even just look like building the family from a parenting perspective, childcare, helping with educating your children's children, your grandchildren. So there's a lot of things that can happen during this stage. But,
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  There's a verse that I think of when Jesus says, "...no longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I've called you friends. For all that I have heard from my Father, I've made known to you." And virtually every single parable that Jesus tells in the Gospels is about this phase when he talks about a father and a son. He's always talking about this time when you begin to entrust resources to the next generation,
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  So this was such a common, and this was really the goal. When you think about almost how parenting was done in ancient times, it was constantly with this stage in mind. How do we build a relationship and how do we build a family with my sons and daughters in such a way that when they are adults, we will be working and building the family together? And so this is a really, really fun stage. And if you are thinking about building a multigenerational family,
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  You need to be designing your life in such a way that this phase is even possible. So we talk a lot about the implications of that, that you need to have things that your family team is trying to accomplish. You need to have a mission that matters that you're actually working towards so that your children will have something that they could engage in. And the reason why we say the style of this is low tension, high trust.
• 2:59
  is because you don't want to, the goal isn't to sort of force your kids to work together or with you. This should still be like an invitational thing. You want them to do it because they see the value in it. And that could come and go and change in various seasons. But you really want to create an opportunity that is really attractive to the next generation. And this could also look like your kids going out, taking new ground for the family and you supporting them.
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  So the reason why I call this a co-founder stage is because you have to treat each other increasingly like equals during this stage. And that could mean that not only your kids may be supporting you and things that you want to do or things that you've started, but this could look like you going and supporting your kids and things that they want to do and things that they've started.
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  And so the co-founder mentality is I'm not going to act like, you know, you're a little child. If you do that, then you're going to create a dynamic that your kids are going to want to run away from, especially if they're excited to build things. You want to create an environment where they feel like, man, this is a dynamic.
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  this is like the best thing in the world. Not only do I get to do things that I've been dreaming about, but I get the support of my mom or dad, or I get to help my mom or dad and work with them during this season. Man, that's amazing. So this is a stage that I'm very excited about. Every time I see a family that has actually made it into this stage, which is like 1% of modern Western families, I just get so excited. I wanna talk to the dad or the mom, I wanna talk to the kids.
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  Um, and it just, it's one of the most, um, joyous blessings. There's lots of pitfalls obviously that can happen, but man, if you make it into this stage and do it in a healthy way, um, you're going to see a legacy come out of your family. But yeah, Jeff, what are your thoughts about this one?
• 4:44
  Yeah, I feel like the only things that I've noticed, too, when you try to find similarities is the couple things I've noticed of like, man, aspirationally, I want to be this family or that family because they seem to have gotten to that co-founder stage. First of all, I love the language. I think it's so helpful. Two, I think the variable I find that's consistent across the board to that 1% of families is most of those families that have those type of families, the kids have been given enormous ownership. Right.
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  almost more ownership than most kids get, right? Of like the family's either assets, the family's kind of resources, just the family's like stuff, speaking into the family philosophy, like kind of like believing and trusting that your kids are deeply powerful and gifted and talented to take the baton, right? I was reading...
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  I just forgot. I forgot about the story. I was just reading like the story of, I forget where it was. It was talking about family, but I think it was the story of enterprise rental car. And like the dad just built this multi-billion dollar, you know, beast and then like gave it to his son at like age 27 or something like that. Just like, I'm over it. Here you go. And he had plenty of years where he still could have ran it. He wasn't that old. You know what I mean? Like he just based, it was almost like he was waiting for the first,
• 5:51
  first moment where his son could even be semi able to do it. And he said, take it. It's yours. And I'm like, Oh my goodness. What, you know, some of us would look at that and maybe say, maybe he wasn't ready. Maybe it was his nepotism, whatever. But like, that's how many of us would give over a multi-billion dollar asset to one of our, we would probably, so many of us would be like, no, I don't think so. Not yet longer. Right. Um, and I just was, and if you know the story, then it's like that he's been even more successful since then and taking it and taking it farther. But I'm just like, man, that's a crazy story. Um,
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  The Rockefellers are a really good example, too, of I think this, too, of like not forcing your kid into like just your vision, but letting them have their own vision that they can kind of expand and connect to the family. You know, because the Rockefellers are not known for oil. The Rockefellers are known for philanthropy. But the very first generation where they got all their money was oil.
• 6:38
  Right. But every generation since has stewarded philanthropy and those resources. So, and if you know the story, it's because, uh, you know, Rockefeller only had one son, which was, you know, to pass the business down to, um, and you would think, especially then he would say, you know, uh, you got to take it, you got to move it on, et cetera. And he, he didn't, the son said, I'm actually care. I care a lot about like serving people and helping people and making the world a better place through, you know, uh,
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  a lot of different means. And so the father said, okay, I trust your vision with our resources. Go ahead. Right? And now the multi-hundred-year Rockefeller family is a philanthropy family because the first generation trusted the second generation's co-founder vision. Right? And I think all those are metaphors. None of us are going to have those levels of wealth, but those are all really good metaphors of how you pass down vision and how you trust your kids and allow them to be true co-founders. So good. And guys, if you are finding yourself...
• 7:32
  stewarding some assets and are building a business and are asking a lot of these same questions that Jeff and I are really teasing out in this episode, we really wanna invite you guys to consider joining our father's mastermind called Integrated because this is kind of the group, the think tank through which Jeff and I are trying to figure out this stage in particular, prepare ourselves. It's basically a group, right now we have a little over 20 guys who are all business owners.
• 7:58
  who all are trying to build family, multi-generational teams on mission. And so we're all trying to figure out together, how do we do this well? How do we prepare our kids for what they're going to potentially inherit? And so if you are finding yourself asking these kinds of questions and are thinking about this, even with a young family, then go to familyteams.com slash integrated. We meet up twice a year. We've got monthly calls. It's an amazing tribe of men who are really,
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  trying to help each other and prepare each other for doing this well. We only get one shot at this, you guys, with our kids. We don't have lots of reps, so we want to do this well. So yeah, check that out if you own a business or you really are asking these kinds of questions, familyteams.com slash integrated.