Latest / Quarterback DadCast | Intentional Fatherhood & Leadership at Home / Lon Stroschein - Choosing Family, Purpose, And Presence

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Lon Stroschein - Choosing Family, Purpose, And Presence · Quarterback DadCast | Intentional Fatherhood & Leadership at Home

0:03
SPEAKER_01: Hi, I'm Riley, and I'm Renner, and this is my dad's show.
0:13
SPEAKER_01: Hey everybody, it's Casey J.
0:14
SPEAKER_01: Cox with the Quarterback Dadcast.
0:16
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to season six, and I cannot be more excited to have you join me for another year of fantastic episodes and conversations, really unscripted and raw and authentic conversations with dads.
0:26
SPEAKER_01: If you're new to this podcast, it's really it's simple.
0:28
SPEAKER_01: It's a podcast where we we interview dads, we learn about how they were raised, we learn about the life lessons that were important to them, we learn about the values that are important to them, and really we learn about how we can work hard to become a better quarterback or leader of our home.
0:41
SPEAKER_01: So let's sit back, relax, and listen to today's episode of the Quarterback Deadcast.
0:46
SPEAKER_01: Well hey everybody, it's K CJ Cox with the Quarterback Deadcast.
0:52
SPEAKER_01: I am beyond excited for our next guest today because anytime a guest comes to me through referral, uh there's always a mission behind that message.
1:01
SPEAKER_01: And without our our friend Steve Gardy, who wrote Great Fruit, uh today's guest Long Stroke would not happen.
1:09
SPEAKER_01: Uh he is an author of a great book called The Trade, and the cover of the book, it looks like a um fork in the road, which we'll get into.
1:17
SPEAKER_01: He's a coach, he's a founder of Normal 40, we're gonna learn all about.
1:20
SPEAKER_01: He's an executive, he's a pilot, he's a rancher, kind of.
1:23
SPEAKER_01: We'll learn about that, and he's a jackrabbit.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but more importantly, uh Lon is a dad.
1:28
SPEAKER_01: Now we're gonna learn learn more about how Lon is working hard to become that ultimate quarterback or leader of his household.
1:33
SPEAKER_01: So without further ado, Lon, welcome to the quarterback deadcast.
1:37
SPEAKER_03: Oh man, Cassie.
1:38
SPEAKER_03: Casey, it's uh great to meet you, great to be here, and I can't wait to just see where this goes.
1:43
SPEAKER_01: Well, you bet.
1:44
SPEAKER_01: Well, before I get into how we start each episode, I also should should warn people that that Lon, he's a sailor, everybody.
1:51
SPEAKER_01: So there's gonna be a few F a few F bombs that uh get dropped, and I might join him.
1:55
SPEAKER_01: So if you don't want the F bomb, you do, because it's gonna be funny.
1:58
SPEAKER_01: And I can just I can tell we're we're some.
2:01
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna try so hard to be on my best behavior.
2:03
SPEAKER_03: And I promise I don't walk around like Roy can't, but sometimes when I get going, I just can't help myself to drop the year there.
2:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, passion, man.
2:11
SPEAKER_01: I love it.
2:12
SPEAKER_01: Well, I always start out each episode with gratitude.
2:14
SPEAKER_01: Uh so tell me, what are you most grateful for as a dad today?
2:18
SPEAKER_03: Health.
2:20
SPEAKER_03: I've uh, you know, in in my job that I get to do today, I open up my I open up my calendar to people who just want to drop in and and share where they're at in their journey because they see where I'm at in mine and they're aspiring to make a trade similar to the one I've made.
2:35
SPEAKER_03: So I get to meet a lot of people, not unlike you, Casey.
2:39
SPEAKER_03: And some of the stories I hear, some of the heart most heart-wrenching stories I hear are people who are calling me from hospitals or people who have been shaken into a new reality in their life because of um a diagnosis or an overdose or a car accident, or any trip to the emergency room where their world changed immediately and instantaneously.
3:05
SPEAKER_03: And so every morning when I wake up, not only for my kids, but for my spouse and my immediate family, I just am so thankful that we just have our health.
3:17
SPEAKER_01: It's um I think sometimes the cliches in life are meant to be cliches, but if you take them to heart, kind of like the slowdown to go fast, or but like when you don't have your health and it's uh and you're off, you look out.
3:30
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it just it's frustrating, you don't have it, you ask your questioning things.
3:35
SPEAKER_01: So I think it's always a fantastic answer to slow down to just say, Man, I I I'm healthy today.
3:43
SPEAKER_01: When I do my gratitude journal every morning, the first line I always say is God, thanks for waking me up today.
3:48
SPEAKER_03: That's it.
3:49
SPEAKER_01: You know, when I say that, I smile subconsciously.
3:52
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's that's exactly it.
3:56
SPEAKER_03: So if you ask me what I'm thankful for, it's yes that I wake up, but that my body is still I'm still able and my kids and my wife are still able.
4:07
SPEAKER_03: We're in this this um precious stage of life.
4:11
SPEAKER_03: Every stage of life is precious.
4:13
SPEAKER_03: But we're also at the age, I'm 51, I'm at the age where I won't always have the physical health that I that I'm enjoy today.
4:22
SPEAKER_03: So to be able to get out and just do anything, even if it's a walk, but a walk that leads me to trees and a sunrise and to flowers and to other people, that's a blessing.
4:33
SPEAKER_01: 100%.
4:34
SPEAKER_01: Well, today what I'm most grateful for today is so we're recording in in October, which feels crazy to say.
4:42
SPEAKER_01: This episode will come out um soon.
4:46
SPEAKER_01: And uh yesterday I saw my son compete in a college golf tournament where he had uh resilience.
4:53
SPEAKER_01: The the resilience lessons of life hit him.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: And and as the f as the dad watching him go through this, it was like heart rate, heartbreaking and heart wrenching and getting a paper cut and just a slow bleed out, and then watching him like just take it head on.
5:10
SPEAKER_01: And are you golfer, Lon?
5:13
SPEAKER_03: No, but I can relate to everything you are talking about, but through a different sport, and I just can't wait to hear how this ends.
5:21
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
5:21
SPEAKER_01: So he was in a second round of his um golf tournament in college, and he had a um, so like it was a it was a he started out great, birdie first sold a couple pars, had an unlucky double.
5:33
SPEAKER_01: Due to I mean, he was in balls in a divot, then he had balls on these two sticks near sticks, he couldn't move it.
5:38
SPEAKER_01: Long story short, he took a double, which he was okay with.
5:40
SPEAKER_01: Bum, but like okay, you bounce back.
5:43
SPEAKER_01: And then two holes after that, he he takes a big number.
5:46
SPEAKER_01: He took us, he got a seven on a par three, which he never does.
5:50
SPEAKER_03: And that's my type of score.
5:53
SPEAKER_01: Oh, horrible.
5:54
SPEAKER_01: And how how he how it happened was just like almost like a series of like unlucky breaks, but it happened, and that's golf, and it like loves to kick you when you're down.
6:04
SPEAKER_01: And it was like this choice where he literally dug deep.
6:06
SPEAKER_01: He has like, I'm gonna either quit and mentally lose it.
6:10
SPEAKER_01: But I think all the life mindset work he and I work on together and just helping him build resilience and confidence and self-talk and you know, next being the next thing up mindset, like he freaking battled, man.
6:24
SPEAKER_01: And for the next like um, so he was six over after five holes, four holes, and ended up shooting 74.
6:37
SPEAKER_01: Had five birdies.
6:39
SPEAKER_01: Uh, it was like I felt like I watched Rudy and The Natural and every other sad sports movie, but my son was the main character, and I'm like fighting back tears, watching him, and I was like, probably one of the most proud moments as a dad because not before what he shot, but just how he had to bounce back.
6:57
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, this is life, bro.
6:59
SPEAKER_01: And when you get in business or you're whatever, life's gonna throw you a you know, a left hook that you're not ready for, and what are you gonna do?
7:07
SPEAKER_01: And it was just so cool that he answered the bell and bow.
7:10
SPEAKER_01: So it's like super grateful day or today.
7:12
SPEAKER_03: Oh man, I love it.
7:13
SPEAKER_03: It's it's fun to watch your kids have to negotiate with themselves for the first time in a very major way.
7:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
7:23
SPEAKER_03: And you just talked about the negotiation he was making in real time, probably step for step as he's walking up to the ball after shot number five and six on the power three.
7:33
SPEAKER_03: This this conversation that you know was going on in his head.
7:37
SPEAKER_03: I can give up and turn out frustrated and check out of this.
7:44
SPEAKER_03: Or I can dig down, erase it, and I can pick up what this has left me.
7:51
SPEAKER_03: And man, I'm telling you, uh, he did the hard thing.
7:54
SPEAKER_03: He did the hard thing.
7:55
SPEAKER_03: He did the thing that you hoped he would do.
7:58
SPEAKER_03: Um, and it he did the thing that makes a parent really damn proud.
8:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was so cool.
8:06
SPEAKER_01: Well, all right, enough about my Disney story.
8:08
SPEAKER_01: Uh, bring me inside uh the Stroch, the your the huddle.
8:12
SPEAKER_01: Bring me inside the family.
8:13
SPEAKER_01: Tell me about maybe how you and your wife met and uh maybe a little bit about each member of the team.
8:19
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, my wife and I met like every modern couple meets in the mall in front of the gap.
8:27
SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's that's uh and that is a true story.
8:29
SPEAKER_03: We actually did it, but the story goes on from there.
8:32
SPEAKER_03: We met in the mall in front of the gap in the late 1990s, and um uh actually in the early 2000s, geez, I gotta get my gotta get my years right.
8:43
SPEAKER_03: Uh, in the early 2000s, and my roommate and her friend knew each other.
8:50
SPEAKER_03: So the four of us mate in the middle.
8:52
SPEAKER_03: I introduce myself and I'm like, wow, this girl is a knockout.
8:55
SPEAKER_03: Uh and I have no idea what she thinks of me, but I'm gonna, you know, do everything I can do to impress her in the 38 seconds we're gonna stand here and talk.
9:02
SPEAKER_03: So before we left, we said, Hey, we're gonna go to this this weekend, we're gonna go out, we're gonna go to this bar.
9:07
SPEAKER_03: There's a band playing, you should show up there.
9:09
SPEAKER_03: Three days later, we go there and she's there.
9:12
SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, oh man, I've got it.
9:14
SPEAKER_03: I've got it.
9:15
SPEAKER_03: So I stand at the bar, uh, you know, like you do when you're 27 and whatever, think you're cooler than you really are.
9:24
SPEAKER_03: And um, I can see her across the bar, and I'm not going over there, and she's not coming over to me.
9:28
SPEAKER_03: We hadn't made eye contact.
9:29
SPEAKER_03: Well, finally, after more time than I cared to let pass, uh, she comes over to me.
9:36
SPEAKER_03: And she, and we're in this circle of friends, this community of friends, she goes, Hi, my name's Mindy.
9:40
SPEAKER_03: I don't think we've met.
9:41
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, oh man, here.
9:44
SPEAKER_03: I thought she was here for me.
9:45
SPEAKER_03: And reality is she didn't even remember meeting me only a few days earlier.
9:51
SPEAKER_03: So uh I had some recovery to do, but I'll keep a very long, entertaining story short.
9:57
SPEAKER_03: And needless to say, that uh three and a half years later we were married, and five years later, we had our first child, Grace.
10:05
SPEAKER_01: Love it.
10:06
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
10:06
SPEAKER_03: So Grace, uh Grace is our oldest.
10:09
SPEAKER_03: She today is 21.
10:11
SPEAKER_03: She uh will probably end up talking quite a bit about Grace.
10:14
SPEAKER_03: She is a rock star human being.
10:18
SPEAKER_03: Um, there's a whole bunch of different scorecards you think you will have for your kids before you have kids.
10:24
SPEAKER_03: And then the moment they're born, you realize that's that was stupid.
10:27
SPEAKER_03: Uh, you just kind of let the scorecard you build a new scorecard for them as they go.
10:32
SPEAKER_03: Your scorecard for your son, you just talked about probably included him standing, you know, holding a trophy at the end of the day.
10:39
SPEAKER_03: And what you realize now as a dad, that that's never the most important thing.
10:43
SPEAKER_03: And and the same is is true for Grace.
10:45
SPEAKER_03: And so she was a in high school her whole life, she was a gymnast.
10:50
SPEAKER_03: So when you when you told the story about your son and it was a mental game that he was competing against himself, gymnastics is the same thing.
10:59
SPEAKER_03: When you get on a balance beam and you fall, you've got to decide right then and there if you're gonna forget about that fall and pick up your routine where you left off, or if you're gonna let it bounce around in your head and carry it with you through the rest of the day.
11:12
SPEAKER_03: And to watch, as a parent, you can see the conversation happening in your head and you hope that they're listening to the right voice.
11:19
SPEAKER_03: And so when they actually do it, it's fantastic.
11:22
SPEAKER_03: That translated beautifully into cheer for her.
11:24
SPEAKER_03: She uh is a college senior and is a college cheerleader.
11:29
SPEAKER_03: Um, but for me, the best part of watching her on the cheer team, honestly, was to watch her go girl to girl before they competed and pump up the cheer team.
11:40
SPEAKER_03: While all the other girls at like the state competition were just quiet and trying to walk off their stress.
11:47
SPEAKER_03: Grace was going face to face, nose to nose, hand on shoulder, just calming them down and pumping them up at the same time.
11:56
SPEAKER_03: Just being human.
11:59
SPEAKER_03: And I got, yeah, of course I loved the three minutes that they were on the floor doing their routine, but I was so much more excited to watch Grace be Grace in the 10 minutes before they walked in the mat than than I f actually ever really was when they were on the mat.
12:14
SPEAKER_03: It is just her gift.
12:17
SPEAKER_03: And uh, and so that's Grace.
12:20
SPEAKER_03: She's got a son.
12:21
SPEAKER_03: Uh, I've got a son.
12:22
SPEAKER_03: She's got a younger brother, 17 months younger.
12:25
SPEAKER_03: Uh, his name's Dawson.
12:27
SPEAKER_03: He is he is an old soul.
12:30
SPEAKER_03: He's the dude from a young age who would talk to anyone.
12:34
SPEAKER_03: He gets into character at age four.
12:36
SPEAKER_03: He would be into character.
12:38
SPEAKER_03: I think he spent most of his age of six as Indiana Jones.
12:42
SPEAKER_03: And when I say as Indiana Jones, I mean the hat, the shirt, the satchel, the whip, the pants, everything.
12:51
SPEAKER_03: He was Indiana Jones.
12:52
SPEAKER_03: He went to school as indie, he was went to Halloween as indie.
12:55
SPEAKER_03: He was just Indiana Jones.
12:56
SPEAKER_03: That's just who he was gonna be for a while.
12:58
SPEAKER_03: And he was cool with it.
13:00
SPEAKER_03: And, you know, eventually he rotated out of that.
13:03
SPEAKER_03: Um, but Dawson, very uniquely, is very comfortable and very clear on who he is being called to be next.
13:17
SPEAKER_03: Not all kids have that, not all humans.
13:20
SPEAKER_03: Look, I coach people.
13:21
SPEAKER_03: My job today is to take people from the C-suite or the ER or the boardroom, people who are at the highest end of their professional career.
13:31
SPEAKER_03: And they've checked, they've they've spent 20 years getting to the pinnacle of where they thought they wanted to be.
13:37
SPEAKER_03: And they call me because they're not sure that they want it anymore.
13:41
SPEAKER_03: So it's so inspiring to me that my son, who's 19, knows exactly who he's here to be, exactly what he's supposed to be doing next.
13:49
SPEAKER_03: And what he's doing is he's living in a small village in Mexico teaching English to 11-year-olds in a small Christian school.
13:59
SPEAKER_03: And here's the here's the kicker, Casey.
14:02
SPEAKER_03: Uh he doesn't speak Spanish.
14:04
SPEAKER_03: When he applied for the job, it's not because he could speak Spanish and apply.
14:08
SPEAKER_03: He not only doesn't he doesn't speak it poorly, he doesn't speak it, but he just felt called to go do this.
14:18
SPEAKER_03: And that's what he's doing.
14:19
SPEAKER_03: That's where he's at.
14:20
SPEAKER_03: And guess what?
14:20
SPEAKER_03: He's learning Spanish.
14:21
SPEAKER_03: He's figuring out to him, knowing Spanish to teach English is just a detail.
14:25
SPEAKER_03: He'll figure that out along the way, and that's what he's doing.
14:28
SPEAKER_03: Um, and then the last of the last of the tribe is my son Oliver.
14:32
SPEAKER_03: He's 12.
14:33
SPEAKER_03: Uh, he's 13, just turned 13.
14:36
SPEAKER_03: And um he uh he's a gapper, he's a little bit over six and a half years distance between Dawson and Oliver.
14:44
SPEAKER_03: And Oliver is the most curious mind that you will ever imagine.
14:50
SPEAKER_03: I mean, even at age like three or four, you know, he'd be asking questions, and pretty soon you just start giving them, you know, answers that you're kind of done with the questions.
14:58
SPEAKER_03: And he'd be like, no, that doesn't make sense.
15:01
SPEAKER_03: No, I think I think I think I need a little bit more here.
15:04
SPEAKER_03: And so he is always the one to be solving, asking the right next question and and then pondering it and looking for the answer.
15:15
SPEAKER_03: So that's that's my crew.
15:18
SPEAKER_01: All I your kids sound amazing, but Oliver might be my favorite because I'm obsessed with curiosity.
15:24
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, man.
15:24
SPEAKER_01: He really don't ask the second, third, and fourth level question, which is I always say where the gold's at, specifically in like sales, sales leadership, business development.
15:37
SPEAKER_01: Most people ask one question and they start they pounce like a cat after just sniffing catnip.
15:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
15:42
SPEAKER_01: And when you're patient and you let like you ask really good questions, people are gonna sell themselves, whether they need you or not.
15:49
SPEAKER_01: And I'd rather have someone close themselves versus me trying to close them because if it's I'm trying to close them, but that deal is not meant to be.
15:56
SPEAKER_03: Right on.
15:57
SPEAKER_03: Totally agree.
15:58
SPEAKER_03: I should probably say one more thing, and this is really important.
16:01
SPEAKER_03: My wife.
16:02
SPEAKER_03: Of course we met.
16:03
SPEAKER_03: She she was a teacher when I met her, an elementary school teacher.
16:06
SPEAKER_03: She quit teaching to raise our kids.
16:09
SPEAKER_03: And uh six years ago, she went back into the school classroom full-time, and she's a kindergarten teacher.
16:16
SPEAKER_01: Very cool.
16:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
16:18
SPEAKER_01: Well, we have that and come.
16:19
SPEAKER_01: My wife, after nine years, hung up the cleats, and then she came out out of retirement and now she's working part-time and loves it.
16:26
SPEAKER_01: Loves it.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: It's actually it's kind of neat because I think sometimes kids, when they're raised by a stay-at-home mom or stay-at-home parent, sometimes that's that's the stereotype or that's the their label or how they're viewed.
16:38
SPEAKER_01: And I think being a stay-at-home parent's harder than harder job than I had in corporate because I gotta talk to parents, I could talk to adults and constant stress.
16:46
SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, you go on a work trip, I could have a few beers.
16:50
SPEAKER_01: You can't have a few beers on you raising kids by yourself.
16:53
SPEAKER_01: That's probably mommy I can look to.
16:56
SPEAKER_03: As much as you would need it, it's really not possible.
17:00
SPEAKER_03: No, my my wife uh has had the harder job in our relationship forever.
17:05
SPEAKER_03: Raising kids, much harder than being a public company executive.
17:09
SPEAKER_03: Being a kindergarten teacher, much harder than uh doing mergers and acquisitions and uh helping people transition in a career.
17:18
SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's it's orders of magnitude harder.
17:20
SPEAKER_03: I told her if, look, if they if if we had to switch roles, you'd probably have to visit me in the county jail because I would do something on the first day that would land me in a bad way with our judicial system.
17:35
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I love it.
17:36
SPEAKER_01: Well, Juan, bring me back to what was life like growing up for you and talk about the impact that mom and dad had on you now that you're a dad.
17:44
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
17:44
SPEAKER_03: Well, I grew up as a fourth generation, as the fourth generation on a multi-generational family farm uh in South Dakota.
17:53
SPEAKER_03: Um, my great-grandfather purchased, uh he was, we believe he was the second one to own the land after the homestead.
18:00
SPEAKER_03: He didn't homestead it.
18:01
SPEAKER_03: He that homesteader went bankrupt, and my grandpa bought it.
18:04
SPEAKER_03: My grandpa had it for about 15 years, and he lost it in 1929 when everybody lost their farm.
18:11
SPEAKER_03: My grandpa bought it back in 1945, and my dad spent a good chunk of his life buying it from his dad.
18:19
SPEAKER_03: So I grew up in that system of multi-generational family farm, and I've got three siblings.
18:26
SPEAKER_03: And a weird thing kind of happens in multi-generational farms, typically, and not always, but there's typically one of the children who is kind of presents themselves as the one who's going to take over, take over the operation.
18:41
SPEAKER_03: And the others just kind of go find their way doing something else.
18:45
SPEAKER_03: Usually there's one who can't wait to leave, usually there's one who stays local but does something else, and usually there's one who just does something crazy that you couldn't have imagined.
18:55
SPEAKER_03: And that sums my family up perfectly, all individually incredibly successful.
19:01
SPEAKER_03: But I was gonna be the one who was gonna get a college degree and come home and farm.
19:06
SPEAKER_03: And that was the plan right up to my senior year of college, which I'll get to, but I'm gonna come back to your question.
19:11
SPEAKER_03: What was life like growing up?
19:14
SPEAKER_03: Life for me growing up was fantastic.
19:16
SPEAKER_03: My closest neighbor and best buddy to this day, um, my best lifetime buddy, I would say, to this day, even though we talk once every four or five years, is Anthony, a kid who grew up two miles from me.
19:32
SPEAKER_03: And, you know, I don't need to tell you that this was a time before cell phones.
19:36
SPEAKER_03: It was almost, you know, back on the farm, yes, we had landlines, but my older siblings remember the party vine.
19:44
SPEAKER_03: My older siblings remember, you know, different rings on the phone.
19:48
SPEAKER_03: I don't remember any of that.
19:49
SPEAKER_03: But it was before um wireless phones.
19:52
SPEAKER_03: I mean, like when I wanted to call a buddy, there's two phones in the house, and I had to get on one and go run into the closet and close the door and stretch the cord out, you know, eight feet longer than what it was supposed to, and sit on a bunch of coats and have a conversation.
20:06
SPEAKER_03: Same was true when I had tried to talk to girls in high school.
20:09
SPEAKER_03: You know, it's the same awkward thing.
20:12
SPEAKER_03: Um, but growing up was awesome.
20:15
SPEAKER_03: When I was 11, we had a dose of reality hit us.
20:19
SPEAKER_03: And that dose of reality was a pretty real farm crisis.
20:24
SPEAKER_03: A farm crisis that when my dad was in his early 40s in growth mode, like like I think most of us spend our time in growth mode, financial growth mode, whether we work for a company or work for ourselves, that's the time in our life when you really get in and grind it.
20:39
SPEAKER_03: And he had had years of success and now he was in that place.
20:42
SPEAKER_03: And he had borrowed money to expand.
20:45
SPEAKER_03: And in the mid-1980s, interest rates went from about where they are now to 18 and 19% compounding quarterly.
20:57
SPEAKER_03: So on the$100,000 he had borrowed in two years, the interest expense of that alone had ballooned to over$880,000.
21:06
SPEAKER_03: And he was he was in a pretty bad way.
21:10
SPEAKER_03: Me, um, I didn't realize it.
21:13
SPEAKER_03: I I mean, I didn't my my parents just went about the work of being parents, and they went about the work of running the business the best they could.
21:21
SPEAKER_03: I know that my dad was working his ass off, and we all were.
21:25
SPEAKER_03: And I know that my dad invited me to do work that an 11-year-old shouldn't really be doing.
21:33
SPEAKER_03: He invited me to run big machinery that 11-year-old shouldn't have been running.
21:38
SPEAKER_03: And for me as an 11-year-old, are you kidding me?
21:41
SPEAKER_03: Being in a 100-horsepower tractor, pulling a 70-foot piece of equipment, that's that was a gift.
21:50
SPEAKER_03: It was a gift to be able to do that.
21:53
SPEAKER_03: But what I didn't realize is that it was a lifeline for my mom and dad because they needed more help than they had, and they had more bills than they could pay.
22:05
SPEAKER_03: And so looking back, I know exactly what it was.
22:08
SPEAKER_03: But in the moment, it was just my opportunity to do the stuff that I eventually said, like I told you, I knew this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life anyway.
22:17
SPEAKER_03: So it wasn't until um later that same year that I'm talking about that it dawned on me what was really going on.
22:25
SPEAKER_03: I was standing in the driveway of our farm, and uh two semis came down the hill, and that's not uncommon.
22:31
SPEAKER_03: Semis would come and go to deliver and take cattle, to deliver equipment.
22:36
SPEAKER_03: Semis coming and going was just kind of what happened.
22:39
SPEAKER_03: But these were different.
22:40
SPEAKER_03: These semis were empty and they were flat and they were white and they were following one another.
22:46
SPEAKER_03: And as soon as they drove in the yard, instead of my dad going up and talking to them, he turned and walked into the shop and he shut the door.
22:54
SPEAKER_03: And I'm standing in the yard, and my sister is there, my older sister, she's seven years older than me.
22:59
SPEAKER_03: So she was, you know, 17.
23:02
SPEAKER_03: And she knew what was going on, and she started crying and went running into the house.
23:07
SPEAKER_03: And then the semis pulled in and they started loading up our equipment, started loading up parts of our farm.
23:14
SPEAKER_03: And that's when it dawned on me that um, oh wait, there is a problem here and things are things are changing.
23:23
SPEAKER_03: So um, I'm happy to say that the farm survived that.
23:28
SPEAKER_03: Family survived that, my parents' marriage survived that.
23:33
SPEAKER_03: Um, they celebrated their 60th anniversary this year, but wow, I can't imagine what a challenge that must have been for them to have gone through.
23:43
SPEAKER_03: Then I'll say one more thing, and this'll this will resonate with some people more than others.
23:46
SPEAKER_03: But I've had a lot of heart-to-heart talks with my dad about that moment in his life, about that pressure, that stress, and to be that far behind and not be able to work yourself out of it.
24:01
SPEAKER_03: And he had an option, he my mom and dad had an option at that time, but they they had two options.
24:09
SPEAKER_03: Um one was to file bankruptcy, and that's what most people did, to file bankruptcy and have their debt forgiven and try to start over at uh at a new baseline and try to keep what they've got together and continue to grow it.
24:27
SPEAKER_03: The other thing you can do is liquidate portions of your assets and make your debts whole.
24:37
SPEAKER_03: And that's what they decided to do.
24:39
SPEAKER_03: And the land that they sold, by and large, was my mother's inheritance.
24:46
SPEAKER_03: So for my dad, the thing that he really hangs on to, um, like only an 85-year-old farmer and rancher can do, is the regret of making decisions that led to the loss of his wife's inheritance.
24:59
SPEAKER_03: But I bring all that back to this that their marriage survived it, and me as a 10-year-old kid was happy that I could participate in trying to I didn't realize I was, but I felt happy and safe to participate in it.
25:17
SPEAKER_03: So when you ask me how my childhood was, it was pretty damn good, Casey.
25:24
SPEAKER_01: If you were to think of specific reasons why your parents uh made it through it, um tell me what comes to mind.
25:33
SPEAKER_03: They do what's right.
25:36
SPEAKER_03: So I mean, when you say make it through it, there's I gotta it falls into two buckets.
25:41
SPEAKER_03: There's the relationship makes it made it through it.
25:44
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
25:44
SPEAKER_03: And and there's that whole element of teamwork.
25:50
SPEAKER_03: And so look, when this was going on, my mom went from a stay-at-home mom who was there to wash clothes and make breakfast and send us off to school and have dinner and when we get home, to a person who had to contribute financially, had to have the insurance, had to have whatever she could make.
26:07
SPEAKER_03: Now, thankfully, my mom was educated and she she had her teaching certificate and she was going on to get her master's degree, kind of independent of all this.
26:16
SPEAKER_03: And she was able to land a job that she loved doing.
26:21
SPEAKER_03: And it provided just this little bit of relief.
26:24
SPEAKER_03: In the grand scheme of a farm, the money she was making could easily get lost.
26:30
SPEAKER_03: But in the bucket of who's contributing, who's doing what they can, who's showing up to be a team member, holy shit, man.
26:40
SPEAKER_03: She was right there the whole time.
26:43
SPEAKER_03: And they're operating as a team to try to save their name, preserve the farm, keep the family together, do what's right, and get back to where it to where they used to be going.
26:54
SPEAKER_03: And so um that's that's how I think the marriage and the farm and their mental health survived all that.
27:06
SPEAKER_01: Um how long did it take to I guess if you can what you can remember, like how long did it take for the day the trucks arrived to the day that, okay, this adversity, this turbulent error is we're gonna get smooth now.
27:21
SPEAKER_01: Like how did you how did they get from point A to point B or point A to point D?
27:26
SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm just curious, like what what helped them get out of that mess?
27:32
SPEAKER_03: Just a few decades of a lot more work.
27:35
SPEAKER_03: Um and and that's literally what it was.
27:38
SPEAKER_03: My dad, there again, you know, you you're you're a product of your experiences.
27:45
SPEAKER_03: And the experience my dad had was that when you borrow money, you lose a part of your soul.
27:52
SPEAKER_03: There's a chance you could lose a part of your soul.
27:55
SPEAKER_03: And so my dad from that point on got really conservative from a business standpoint, got really um, really conservative.
28:05
SPEAKER_03: I mean, there's there's no better word.
28:06
SPEAKER_03: He was, he was always, he always believed that land as it was going up, which the last time land really went down was the mid-1980s.
28:16
SPEAKER_03: It's been on an upward trend for the 40 years since 1985.
28:21
SPEAKER_03: But he always kind of thought in 88, in 91, in 95, that there'd be a big correction and that that would be his opportunity then to be ready to go back into the market.
28:31
SPEAKER_03: But it never cracked down like that.
28:33
SPEAKER_03: So he just stayed conservative, which is it is what it is.
28:38
SPEAKER_03: You know, you can you can put on one hat and say, boy, you missed a lot of opportunity to buy and expand and grow during a better farming cycle and an upward swing of land values.
28:49
SPEAKER_03: Sure, you can make that argument through the rear view mirror.
28:51
SPEAKER_03: It's really easy.
28:52
SPEAKER_03: Um, but you can also make the argument of you're you're never at risk again of losing or putting at stake what you'd already built again.
29:01
SPEAKER_03: And you can sit here through the rearview mirror and say, well, that was pretty smart too.
29:06
SPEAKER_03: So, but he did the latter.
29:07
SPEAKER_03: And and uh, and so it was just a long slog of buying back some of the land that he sold, a few quarters he sold to his dad.
29:17
SPEAKER_03: And his dad didn't give him any food.
29:19
SPEAKER_03: My my dad tells me stories about my grandpa, and that as much as he was there to help and that he did buy some of the land, he also sold it back to my dad for the increased in value that had happened in the three years from he sold it.
29:36
SPEAKER_03: So I was like, my grandpa was a pretty shrewd businessman, apparently, even with his own son.
29:40
SPEAKER_03: So look, my dad had to, he still had he just to keep what he had, he still had debt against it to pay off.
29:47
SPEAKER_03: So it was uh, it was status quo remained hard work, don't risk it, keep what, keep what you've got strong and protective.
30:01
SPEAKER_01: Man, I a lot of that speaks.
30:04
SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, that last story you said it kind of speaks to me and my our my journal.
30:09
SPEAKER_01: Like I got into the market when I was like in 23 years old, 20, I mean younger, 25, whatever.
30:16
SPEAKER_01: I remember like our first pretty good chunk of money we me and my wife put in.
30:20
SPEAKER_01: We lost it like in three months.
30:22
SPEAKER_01: It was like one of the first corrections.
30:24
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, what the hell just happened?
30:26
SPEAKER_01: And I it it made me go get conservative.
30:29
SPEAKER_01: And you know, not I mean, we and I I just because I never wanted to be that guy that had to you had to sell something to make a house payment.
30:38
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes even like the financial people are like, yeah, man, you gotta leverage your debt.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I don't want to leverage my debt.
30:44
SPEAKER_01: I want to freaking pay things off so I have no stress.
30:47
SPEAKER_01: So if I do my lose my job, I don't have to worry about it.
30:50
SPEAKER_01: I can just go find a different job and I have no debt.
30:52
SPEAKER_01: And so two different mindsets.
30:54
SPEAKER_01: Some people like like the risks, and you know.
30:58
SPEAKER_01: I just like, I don't know.
30:59
SPEAKER_01: For me, that's where you're you're I guess like I I could I can I can resonate with what your dad went through because it's like when you lose something quickly, it's like whoa.
31:10
SPEAKER_01: It just it kind of like it's kind of like when your kids get if like your kid gets sick or consistently get sick like that, it takes you back to that like almost like flashback, like I don't want to deal with that again.
31:20
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
31:20
SPEAKER_01: Um well if you're just I mean, those are some amazing stories, and one I think it's a huge testament to your your mom and dad for getting through it, setting an amazing example for you and your siblings.
31:34
SPEAKER_01: Um most families would have got divorced, most families would have quit jobs, most families.
31:39
SPEAKER_01: I I think it's a very uncommon thing they did, and they should be applauded for it.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: Hello, everybody.
31:44
SPEAKER_00: My name's Craig Coe, and I'm the senior vice president of relationship management for Beeline.
31:50
SPEAKER_00: For more than 20 years, we've been helping Fortune 1000 companies drive a competitive advantage with their external workforce.
31:56
SPEAKER_00: In fact, Beeline's history of first-to-market innovations has become today's industry standards.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: I get asked all the time, what did Casey do for your organization?
32:06
SPEAKER_00: And I say this, it's simple.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: The guy Flat Out gets it, relationships matter.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: His down-to-earth presentation, his real world experience apply to every area of our business.
32:17
SPEAKER_00: In fact, his book, Win the Relationship and Not the Deal, has become required reading for all new members of the Global Relationship Management Team.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: If you'd like to know more about me or about Beeline, please reach out to me on LinkedIn.
32:32
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't know Casey Jacks, go to caseyjaycox.com and learn more about how he can help your organization.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: Now, let's get back to today's episode.
32:43
SPEAKER_01: As you think about the values either that you learned or were taught, uh, and if maybe there's a story that can kind of further um enforce those values, tell me what a couple that come to mind for you.
32:56
SPEAKER_03: I kind of break down life into four buckets.
33:00
SPEAKER_03: And in in my book, not that it's just where I illustrated it for the first time, and the the listeners can picture this.
33:10
SPEAKER_03: Imagine a clock with hands, so with numbers one to 12.
33:16
SPEAKER_03: And every three hours or every hour is seven or eight years of your life.
33:22
SPEAKER_03: So if your life is one 12-hour clock, by the time you get to about the three o'clock hour, you've lived the first 24 years of your life.
33:32
SPEAKER_03: And I call that phase of your life your inheritance.
33:35
SPEAKER_03: I mean, everything we've talked about to this point, Casey, is just what I inherited.
33:39
SPEAKER_03: I inherited the fact that I was a farm kid from South Dakota.
33:42
SPEAKER_03: I inherited the fact that my parents had a better than average marriage.
33:47
SPEAKER_03: I inherited the fact that there wasn't drugs and alcohol in my house.
33:51
SPEAKER_03: I inherited the fact that we were Lutherans, but we didn't attend church all that regularly.
33:58
SPEAKER_03: I inherited the worth ethic.
34:00
SPEAKER_03: I inherited all of these things.
34:02
SPEAKER_03: I just, because of where I was born, I didn't earn it and I didn't deserve it.
34:06
SPEAKER_03: I just inherited it.
34:07
SPEAKER_03: And certainly for your first 18 years, but even longer than that, it's just what you get.
34:14
SPEAKER_03: And the next phase of life, from the three o'clock hour to the six o'clock hour, this is your endowment.
34:21
SPEAKER_03: This is where you get what you've given.
34:27
SPEAKER_03: This is where you get return on the decisions you made.
34:31
SPEAKER_03: This is where you decide: am I gonna get married or not?
34:35
SPEAKER_03: Am I gonna stay in a happy marriage or tolerate a bad marriage?
34:38
SPEAKER_03: Am I gonna do drugs and alcohol or not?
34:41
SPEAKER_03: Am I gonna go to church or not?
34:43
SPEAKER_03: Am I gonna work my butt off to beat everyone else to the top of the corporate ladder or not?
34:50
SPEAKER_03: Is my wife, are we gonna have kids or not?
34:52
SPEAKER_03: Are we gonna homeschool or not?
34:53
SPEAKER_03: Are we all of these things?
34:54
SPEAKER_03: These are all decisions that you make on your own accord based on your what you have learned from your inheritance.
35:01
SPEAKER_03: And you now apply to your endowment.
35:05
SPEAKER_03: And then you get to roughly the six o'clock hour, which is about age 45, when most people are like, holy shit, I've got, I look where I'm at.
35:13
SPEAKER_03: I've got everything I set up to get.
35:14
SPEAKER_03: I'm doing the thing that I told people I was gonna do 20 years ago.
35:17
SPEAKER_03: I'm making more money than I thought possible five years ago.
35:20
SPEAKER_03: I've checked all the boxes of my life, I've done all these things, but I don't feel like I wish I did.
35:26
SPEAKER_03: What the hell is wrong with me?
35:28
SPEAKER_03: And I tell everybody, that's when you're moving into the best quarter of your life.
35:32
SPEAKER_03: This is what I call the normal 40 quarter.
35:35
SPEAKER_03: This is where everything kind of kind of shifts.
35:38
SPEAKER_03: And you take everything, your inheritance and your endowment, and you figure out how to put those things together to do what?
35:44
SPEAKER_03: Build the inheritance and the endowment for the people behind you.
35:48
SPEAKER_03: It's a clock, it's a circular matter.
35:51
SPEAKER_03: So you asked me the question, you know, what are what are some of the things that I inherited?
35:56
SPEAKER_03: And if if this wasn't live to tape, I would grab a booklet right behind me.
36:03
SPEAKER_03: Because in COVID, when we were all locked down, long before I had a podcast, long before I knew I was going to quit my corporate job, I bought a little microphone and I podcasted my parents.
36:13
SPEAKER_03: And I podcasted my parents through these four lenses.
36:17
SPEAKER_03: And I asked my parents individually and together, what did you inherit from your parents?
36:23
SPEAKER_03: What are the traits that I have because you see it in me, you, and your parents and your grandparents?
36:29
SPEAKER_03: And at the end of all that, and it took hours.
36:32
SPEAKER_03: We I interviewed them for hours what they inherited.
36:34
SPEAKER_03: And then I talked about their first date and who they dated before one another.
36:38
SPEAKER_03: Is there something they've never told one another that they've always admired or despised?
36:42
SPEAKER_03: You know, all of these little things that are beautiful and romantic.
36:49
SPEAKER_03: But at the end of it, I created this list of things that I wanted to gift to them.
36:55
SPEAKER_03: And it was a list of things that I believe I inherited from them.
36:59
SPEAKER_03: And I don't, I like I said, it's sitting right behind me.
37:03
SPEAKER_03: And I I have to draw from a lot of memory, but it was things like sense of humor, the ability to see things through, to know what it means to be a neighbor, to have a quick wit when it's required, to know when you've had enough.
37:24
SPEAKER_03: You know, it's just these things to show up when nobody else will, you know, to see the pain and know that it's your job to go there.
37:31
SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's just it's just these things, and I just inherited it.
37:34
SPEAKER_03: And they're gifts to me in what I do, but they're things I inherited through what I witnessed.
37:40
SPEAKER_03: And so your question, what I inherited, I inhib I inherited, I've inherited nothing financially, but I've inherited everything I need to build my own endowment.
37:53
SPEAKER_03: And uh, and it's and in that, so now when I like I said, I'm entering into the third quarter of my life, and my job is to do those same things, to endow my own kids with the skill sets of making the decisions, to having the faculties they need, the mental faculties they're gonna need to make good, reasonable decisions about what they should and shouldn't do with the next year of their life.
38:22
SPEAKER_03: So that's the whole premise of the circle and why I wanted to talk about a clock.
38:27
SPEAKER_01: No, it was visual as I love visual, and actually I was writing down and um I could see it, I could I've experienced a lot of that stuff.
38:34
SPEAKER_01: And I think it's sometimes it's good just to think through.
38:37
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like, you know, um Mark Cuban one time, he was asked, his his kid asked him, Hey dad, are we rich?
38:43
SPEAKER_01: He's like, I'm rich, you're not.
38:47
SPEAKER_01: But like you're you, yeah, you are born into your circumstance, but I think to a lot of these families, it doesn't need to be your circumstance.
38:54
SPEAKER_01: We can that's it can be a crutch, like, oh, this is where I was raised, but what but doesn't mean you have to stay there, it doesn't have to be you're stuck in that way.
39:01
SPEAKER_01: And just because life's great, maybe you're you know, affluent and you're lucky as a kid doesn't mean you're gonna be guaranteed that same life when mom and dad post 18.
39:10
SPEAKER_01: Like what's gonna happen?
39:12
SPEAKER_01: So um, if there was one one thing that you're most grateful for that's maybe helped you in your life as a dad from that's been passed down from your parents, what tell me what comes to mind?
39:22
SPEAKER_03: The power and connection from place behind me, and I know that this is just an audio podcast, but behind me is a tree on our family farm that I return to every single time I'm home, not just to walk past, but to literally be present with the tree.
39:46
SPEAKER_03: And there's I'm fortunate in that I can still return home to the farm in South Dakota and have place.
39:55
SPEAKER_03: The same place, by the way, I was born on, the same place I've spent countless hours of my countless years of my life.
40:04
SPEAKER_03: And so I've got place, but it it has taught me the value of home for me in that tree and in the farm, but the value of home for kids when they leave and want to come back, and because they just want their place, they want the peace of their childhood, even though they are still children to us, they want this place where they can just go back to that they remember from their youth and and um hug and sit quietly around or be loud and party around, but this incredible value of place.
40:46
SPEAKER_03: And so my wife and I may work really hard to make sure that our kids know, our kids who don't live with us anymore, that this is their place and it will be whenever they want it, be it for a day or a week or a month.
41:00
SPEAKER_03: We have limits after a month, but uh, but they haven't had to use it after that.
41:05
SPEAKER_03: And so I just think that there's there's something beautiful in being able to trust and preserve this physical space that you can return to, and uh and it allows you to connect with a part of you you remember.
41:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's um other stories were like you know, my my parents got divorced and I was a second year in college, so I didn't have to I didn't get to go back to the house.
41:32
SPEAKER_01: Um I have great memories of that house.
41:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, great memories of the house before the house.
41:37
SPEAKER_01: Um I had buddies growing up, and when we got to college, they their parents transition, like you know, that they want to leave their empty nesters, they're gonna move, which you know, we're about to enter that life.
41:47
SPEAKER_01: And I I mean we're gonna we have probably too much house for just two people, but then I I what you just said is like, well I know, but like is it worth me having too much house?
41:55
SPEAKER_01: But also having a place for my kids so they can come home and bring their kids and friends and family, and um it's it's I go back and forth on that, but maybe your your story is helping solidify the uh the the answer for me, but uh good thing I'll have to decide today.
42:11
SPEAKER_03: But that's you you get to redecide it every day, in fact.
42:16
SPEAKER_03: So uh yes.
42:18
SPEAKER_03: You've already decided today.
42:20
SPEAKER_03: You're keeping the house tomorrow you'll decide again.
42:23
SPEAKER_01: Tell me what would be um uh two or three uh the the the values that are most important to you and your wife um that helped you raise or continue to raise three great kids.
42:35
SPEAKER_01: Tell me what comes to mind.
42:38
SPEAKER_03: You have to position things as a team.
42:43
SPEAKER_03: Everybody's gonna want, you know, especially kids, they're kids.
42:46
SPEAKER_03: They're gonna want to not do things.
42:48
SPEAKER_03: They're gonna want to do what their friends do.
42:51
SPEAKER_03: They're not gonna be phased by it if uh a husband and wife are working 50, 60 hours a week and then putting food on the table and then cleaning and then doing laundry and then mowing the yard and then cleaning the pool and then going to a meeting for the for their um gymnastics team or their football team or their soccer club.
43:14
SPEAKER_03: They're gonna be unfazed by that.
43:18
SPEAKER_03: Uh so you need to communicate with them an expectation that we as the parents, of course, are gonna do that.
43:26
SPEAKER_03: But this is a team.
43:27
SPEAKER_03: This is a team sport.
43:29
SPEAKER_03: Being a family is a team sport, and sometimes it's a full contact team sport.
43:35
SPEAKER_03: And so that when some when things get that when things get to the place where they need to get done, sometimes mom will do it, sometimes dad'll do it, and sometimes one of our kids will do it.
43:47
SPEAKER_03: And we don't want to always have to ask because the uh shortstop doesn't ask the first baseman to catch the ball when he throws it to first to throw the guy out.
43:58
SPEAKER_03: He just knows or she just knows that's where they're supposed to be.
44:02
SPEAKER_03: So it's this element of talking about responsibility as a team sport because it's got to get done and it's not fair or even decent for one person to have to do it.
44:14
SPEAKER_03: And uh, and I'm thinking about this as we're recording this, and I had a busy day, and my wife had a busy day.
44:21
SPEAKER_03: We were both working, and she got home, and by the time I got done with my last call, she's already making dinner after she went to the school at seven, she got home at five.
44:29
SPEAKER_03: I got off a call at six, and she's already making dinner, and I'm thinking, boy, I really didn't pull my.
44:35
SPEAKER_03: I was a pretty bad teammate today.
44:37
SPEAKER_03: So, but I the the key is I'm aware of it.
44:41
SPEAKER_03: So I'll I'll make I'll be a better teammate tomorrow.
44:45
SPEAKER_01: But that's a real that's a good point, though.
44:46
SPEAKER_01: So, like when that happens though, I think we as dads have a uh a choice.
44:51
SPEAKER_01: Like when those nights happen.
44:52
SPEAKER_01: So have you read the book, The Slight Edge?
44:54
SPEAKER_03: I have not.
44:55
SPEAKER_01: Great book by a guy named Jeff Olson.
44:57
SPEAKER_01: I I read it, it really um when I wrote my book, one of my cult former college teammates was part of my soft launch team, and he he one of his favorite books, and it kind of like when I saw your fork in the road and you're on the Which is the farm, by the way.
45:12
SPEAKER_03: That is that's all our land right there.
45:15
SPEAKER_03: That is the farm.
45:15
SPEAKER_03: I took that on a morning walk.
45:17
SPEAKER_03: That's real fog and a real photo taken with my iPhone when I was at the farm contemplating do I stay in my corporate job or do I go do something I can't even define yet?
45:27
SPEAKER_03: That's that's home.
45:29
SPEAKER_03: That tree, if you know where to look, is it this tree behind me is actually in that picture.
45:33
SPEAKER_03: But anyway.
45:34
SPEAKER_01: It's serendipitous right there.
45:35
SPEAKER_01: That's why I I stopped using the phrase, oh, it ironic it randomly happened or ironically happened.
45:40
SPEAKER_01: No, it didn't.
45:40
SPEAKER_01: It's serendipitous.
45:41
SPEAKER_01: I think if you look for meaning, it's always in front of us.
45:43
SPEAKER_01: You gotta just slow down to see it.
45:44
SPEAKER_01: And so um, but back to your story today, it's like so like I love the word vulnerability and humility and curiosity.
45:54
SPEAKER_01: So you have a great, I think if I was if I'm you, like Lon's got a great opportunity.
45:58
SPEAKER_01: He could be like, you leave this call with this crazy guy with a sick mustache.
46:03
SPEAKER_03: He's totally sick, dude.
46:06
SPEAKER_01: And you go and totally awesome.
46:08
SPEAKER_01: Or or it's like maybe you say, Hey honey, you know what?
46:11
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I was you know, sorry, maybe you say this I wasn't the best teammate today.
46:17
SPEAKER_01: Like, some dads don't want to do that.
46:18
SPEAKER_01: Some dads will say, like, you know what, hey, I'm doing my part.
46:22
SPEAKER_01: And but sometimes I think slowing down to really check our ego as dads.
46:26
SPEAKER_01: And like one of the best questions I have for me, my opinion, is that I learned from a guy named Matt Miller on this journey.
46:32
SPEAKER_01: He's he says sometimes you can go to his mom, his wife, or his kids, and he'll say, Hey guys, tell me how I can be a better dad this week.
46:39
SPEAKER_01: Like, what a great question.
46:41
SPEAKER_01: And like, do you really want to know, or do you just want to ask the question?
46:44
SPEAKER_01: Dads, but like, what if you really ask that?
46:47
SPEAKER_01: Or what if you what if you actually slow down to say, hey guys, sorry I was not my best day?
46:51
SPEAKER_01: Or that's where I think the power of like, some people disagree and they can't.
46:55
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to try to convince anybody, but I think the power of like saying you're sorry when you when you messed up or saying sorry when, or just being vulnerable to say, how can I be better?
47:03
SPEAKER_01: How can I be a better teammate to make it have empathy for someone else?
47:07
SPEAKER_01: Like, watch what that watch how much that will strengthen a foundation.
47:11
SPEAKER_01: Found so I'm my my hope of not bringing that up to you is my hope is that someone at home is listening that might be thinking, like, shit, is he talking to me?
47:19
SPEAKER_01: You know, because I mean I I interviewed a buddy of mine, and we all the episode was like season one was about apologizing when you should.
47:28
SPEAKER_03: Man, I tell you what, I don't know what it is for dudes, and I'm talking about me now.
47:32
SPEAKER_03: There's something about that word.
47:35
SPEAKER_03: And I I um I see one of my sons has no problem saying it again and again, like just owning it.
47:45
SPEAKER_03: And the other one would be petrified to have to, and and it's not I mean, it it's hardwired.
47:51
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's learned, sure, it is a learned behavior.
47:54
SPEAKER_03: I can't just say that, but I think it's also hardwired for some reason for some of us for a certain personality to just find it damn near impossible to just say you know what yeah, I'm sorry.
48:13
SPEAKER_03: That that was a bad move.
48:17
SPEAKER_03: It's hard for me.
48:18
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I I it's it was easier for me, and I want you to think about this, and then here's confession time.
48:26
SPEAKER_03: It was easier for me to go in and ask my CEO for uh a title change and a raise.
48:35
SPEAKER_03: I did it one time in my life, and that's a horrible conversation to have to have because you just want them to do it on their own and not have to ask.
48:43
SPEAKER_03: But um I did.
48:44
SPEAKER_03: I went in and asked, that I deserved it.
48:47
SPEAKER_03: And that takes some metal and it takes some courage and it takes this.
48:50
SPEAKER_03: Go on, easy.
48:51
SPEAKER_03: You know, I yeah, and and I had the spreadsheet, I knew whatever, but I did all, you know, I spent a day preparing for that conversation.
48:59
SPEAKER_03: That conversation, that conversation with him is sometimes easier than for me to have to sit down across the table, make eye contact, say, hey, look, I'm really sorry about filling the bike.
49:13
SPEAKER_03: And it's something small.
49:14
SPEAKER_03: It could, I'm really sorry that I didn't take time to make dinner tonight and that that was on you.
49:19
SPEAKER_03: For some reason, for dudes like me, that is wicked ass.
49:25
SPEAKER_01: Any idea why you think?
49:28
SPEAKER_03: You know, um, I I wish I knew.
49:31
SPEAKER_03: I wish I knew.
49:32
SPEAKER_03: Um, and I'm sure we can probably draw some character traits out of it.
49:37
SPEAKER_03: Um but I I don't I don't know why that is.
49:42
SPEAKER_03: Yeah but I warned, I weren't, you know, so I'm a coach now, so I talk to dudes all the time.
49:47
SPEAKER_03: And one of the things I make sure before we get working on anything else is the strength of a marriage.
49:52
SPEAKER_03: What does your team look like?
49:53
SPEAKER_03: The same question you asked me.
49:55
SPEAKER_03: And one of the here's a question um that I give to men and women, but elite performers and always the provider in their home.
50:06
SPEAKER_03: When they're when they're unsure of how their relationship is or wish it could be better, which is almost everybody talks to, their relationships with their spouse is good, but not great.
50:15
SPEAKER_03: And their relationship with their kid is barely good because they're so absent.
50:21
SPEAKER_03: And they don't know how even how to, they don't know how to have this conversation.
50:24
SPEAKER_03: So I tell them and I warn them, it's gonna be hard.
50:27
SPEAKER_03: It'll be harder than asking for a raise.
50:28
SPEAKER_03: It'll be miserably hard.
50:29
SPEAKER_03: So prepare yourself.
50:30
SPEAKER_03: But then my questions are sit them down and just say, either to your spouse or your kids, what do you need more of from me?
50:39
SPEAKER_03: But here's the kicker.
50:41
SPEAKER_03: When they answer their first answer, you said this earlier.
50:44
SPEAKER_03: When you were talking about salespeople, their first answer is gonna be a joke.
50:48
SPEAKER_03: It's gonna be a throwaway comment because they don't even know what in the hell you're doing when you want to sit down and have this conversation.
50:55
SPEAKER_03: So if you're having, you know, with a 17-year-old son, what do you need more of from me?
51:01
SPEAKER_03: Uh, I could use a bigger allowance.
51:03
SPEAKER_03: Ha ha ha.
51:03
SPEAKER_03: Okay, great.
51:04
SPEAKER_03: What do you need more of from me?
51:05
SPEAKER_03: I'd like a later curfew.
51:06
SPEAKER_03: All right, we can work on that.
51:08
SPEAKER_03: What else?
51:09
SPEAKER_03: The thing is that every time they give you an answer, the only thing you can reply with is what else?
51:15
SPEAKER_03: Not engaged, not yeah, I can see where you're coming from and try to buddy them up.
51:20
SPEAKER_03: No.
51:21
SPEAKER_03: No.
51:22
SPEAKER_03: You say, what do you need more of from me?
51:24
SPEAKER_03: They answer, and you say, what else?
51:27
SPEAKER_03: And you say what else at least four times, and then you're getting to the good stuff, exactly what you said.
51:32
SPEAKER_03: And if you can get to six or seven times, you're gonna get the stuff that matters.
51:36
SPEAKER_03: Then you ask a better question when they've exhausted that.
51:40
SPEAKER_03: You say, Okay, what do you need less of from me?
51:45
SPEAKER_03: Now the pot the the pump is primed because they've already answered what else.
51:49
SPEAKER_03: They're given gold.
51:50
SPEAKER_03: Now you ask the question what you really want.
51:52
SPEAKER_03: What don't what the what don't they like about you?
51:54
SPEAKER_03: What do they wish was different?
51:55
SPEAKER_03: What is the one thing they could change if they could wave a magic wand?
51:59
SPEAKER_03: And now you've given them permission, you've only asked what else, and they're gonna give you something that can change your life if you open the door to it.
52:07
SPEAKER_03: What do you need less of from me?
52:09
SPEAKER_03: And I've gotten calls and emails back after people have done that and they are blown away with how simple it is to make a little change that makes a world of difference for the people they share a roof with.
52:25
SPEAKER_01: I love that.
52:25
SPEAKER_01: It's I think it's really, really good.
52:27
SPEAKER_01: Uh when you're saying that, I think the one thing that came to my mind lawn is if someone has the courage to ask that and lean into that, then they really have to have the courage for that last question to whatever they learn and not get defensive and not not try to justify and not try to, it's versus just like take it and say, Great, thank you.
52:47
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't know how how you would operate, but like that's how when I was hearing you say that, I'd be like, because it's it's wasted energy if if someone says, Well, no, you're just an idiot and you know what you're talking about.
52:56
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, no, for sure.
52:58
SPEAKER_03: You you have to that's that's the trick.
53:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
53:02
SPEAKER_03: There's two major tricks.
53:04
SPEAKER_03: Three.
53:04
SPEAKER_03: One, you gotta ask it.
53:06
SPEAKER_03: Two, you have to compose yourself to only say what else.
53:13
SPEAKER_03: Because you're gonna want to, even when they're saying stuff you agree with, you're gonna want to say, yeah, I can see that.
53:17
SPEAKER_03: I I know I'm gonna work on it.
53:18
SPEAKER_03: No, no, no, no, no.
53:20
SPEAKER_03: You're not even, you're not, your job isn't to affirm or deny.
53:24
SPEAKER_03: Your job is to get the truth.
53:26
SPEAKER_03: And the only way to do that is just say what else until they're exhausted.
53:30
SPEAKER_03: When they're looking at you like, there is nothing.
53:33
SPEAKER_03: Then you've got what you need.
53:35
SPEAKER_03: Then you ask the next question and you say, what else until they're exhausted.
53:38
SPEAKER_03: And then you just say thank you.
53:41
SPEAKER_03: And you take it and you digest it.
53:43
SPEAKER_03: And you you if if you do something with it, it can change, it can change the relationship with the child or a spouse in a week.
53:52
SPEAKER_03: And if you do nothing with it, it can damage your relationship with your child or your spouse for a decade because they don't trust that you'll hear them.
54:02
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
54:03
SPEAKER_03: So you gotta be ready.
54:04
SPEAKER_03: You gotta be willing to take what you hear and do something with it.
54:10
SPEAKER_01: Love it.
54:10
SPEAKER_01: Love it.
54:11
SPEAKER_01: Hopefully everybody's taking notes.
54:12
SPEAKER_01: I have two, I'm on my second page, everybody.
54:15
SPEAKER_01: Um, what would be an area of your dad game that if Lon was coaching Law and you're like, hey man, this is a gap.
54:23
SPEAKER_01: We gotta, we gotta get this thing fixed.
54:25
SPEAKER_01: Um, for me, I'll lead, I'll lead my witness and uh to to humble the room.
54:30
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes my competitive nature gets the best of me.
54:33
SPEAKER_01: And uh so patience is something I'm always working on.
54:37
SPEAKER_01: I think interviewing over 3 almost 30 dads, my patience has 100% got better.
54:43
SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's still I'm not perfect at it.
54:47
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I'm flawed human like most of us.
54:50
SPEAKER_01: But for you, tell me what's an area dad game that you could say, man, there's here's an area game that I I gotta get better at.
54:57
SPEAKER_03: Oh, damn it, Casey.
54:59
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna done without this question.
55:01
SPEAKER_03: I was thinking I was pretty good until this.
55:04
SPEAKER_03: Um, look, I still have the critical character flaw of um I'm pretty busy, son.
55:15
SPEAKER_03: I'm pretty busy.
55:17
SPEAKER_03: And he'll wanna do stuff that a 13-year-old kid wants to do, and I'm doing stuff that a 51-year-old business, former business executive thinks he should be doing.
55:32
SPEAKER_03: And as much as I've definitely gotten better at it, I'll reflect back um to moments even earlier this week where I'm like, oh dang it, dude, knock it off.
55:42
SPEAKER_03: Just just go be more present.
55:45
SPEAKER_03: You quit your job to be more present, and I am, but man, it's still really easy to fall back into the into how some of us are hardwired.
55:56
SPEAKER_03: You're hardwired to be competitive.
55:58
SPEAKER_03: That's a hard thing to have to mentally calibrate.
56:03
SPEAKER_03: It really is.
56:04
SPEAKER_03: Um, and for me, I'm hardwired to um just be doing the next thing for the next person who needs it.
56:13
SPEAKER_03: And that is that turns out to be unfortunately unfair in my all of not just my youngest sons, but all of my kids' lives, where that's a thing, that's a demon I constantly wrestle with.
56:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
56:30
SPEAKER_01: Man, I love it.
56:31
SPEAKER_01: I love the vulnerability, love the honesty.
56:32
SPEAKER_01: I know it's gonna speak to a parent home.
56:34
SPEAKER_01: And the everybody, I always remind my guests and everybody listening at home that the goal is not to let's let's try to air some guy out.
56:40
SPEAKER_01: It's like let's we all have a lot more in common.
56:43
SPEAKER_01: And if we can kind of share stories together, and you don't need a podcast to have these type of stories, you just need a friend in a phone or a colleague in a phone, or uh go to a coffee shop and just ask some of these questions that me and Lon have talked to each other about and watch what happens.
56:59
SPEAKER_01: And maybe use Lon's uh strategy of saying what else?
57:03
SPEAKER_01: Maybe not to your kid, but to your to your buddy, and watch you learn about yourself, watch learn about your friend.
57:07
SPEAKER_01: And uh I think if if you're finding yourself listening to this episode and you're like, maybe I maybe I can be a little bit more curious.
57:13
SPEAKER_01: I would encourage you to lean in hard on that because when we're curious, when I I love that this what else framework, it's if you truly mean it, it God, what a talk about digging for gold or panning for gold.
57:29
SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't even know what rivers go through South Dakota, so I'd be making one up, but well, just say the Missouri River.
57:36
SPEAKER_03: It cuts a state in half.
57:37
SPEAKER_03: You're gonna you're gonna please everyone with that one.
57:41
SPEAKER_01: Um, okay.
57:42
SPEAKER_01: I would love to learn.
57:44
SPEAKER_01: Um when did you know the time was right for you to say, I gotta go?
57:49
SPEAKER_01: Because I know there's maybe a dad listening or maybe a mom listen.
57:52
SPEAKER_01: It's like, I gotta, I am so done with this corporate journey.
57:56
SPEAKER_01: Not because it's bad, just because something in your voice, something said it's time to go.
58:00
SPEAKER_01: Um what maybe what walk us through uh like what triggered that and then how can people find you?
58:07
SPEAKER_01: Because I want to make sure that people can learn more about what you're doing and what a lifetime up to something is all about.
58:13
SPEAKER_03: For me, the journey to something new started around the age of 45.
58:19
SPEAKER_03: At age 45, I was um a public company executive.
58:23
SPEAKER_03: I was a named insider of a public company leading mergers and acquisitions.
58:28
SPEAKER_03: I had gone further in my professional life than I ever thought I would.
58:32
SPEAKER_03: I was making more financially than I ever thought I would make.
58:35
SPEAKER_03: I had more responsibility than I ever thought I would have the opportunity to have.
58:42
SPEAKER_03: Um, lived in a great neighborhood, married to a great um, to my my great spouse, had great kids, would drive my nice car to my nice office where I would sit at my nice desk.
58:56
SPEAKER_03: And I was always the first one there because I'm a farm kid and I'd turn on the lights and make the coffee and read the Wall Street Journal.
59:02
SPEAKER_03: And then I would do a whole bunch of good work and I'd go home, usually in a grump ass mood, tired, exhausted, um, didn't really have time for anybody.
59:12
SPEAKER_03: Uh, and then I would open up my laptop and I'd get to work trying to catch up from a day, trying to catch up from a day, even though I could spend a whole day working.
59:21
SPEAKER_03: I was trying to get caught up on emails, and that was just kind of my rotation for a long period of time.
59:26
SPEAKER_03: Well, like I said, around my 46th birthday, I went into my work.
59:31
SPEAKER_03: I drove from my nice house and my nice car to my nice office building, went up the elevator to my nice office, and I sat there and I sat down and I looked around and I thought, well, is this it?
59:43
SPEAKER_03: I mean, the age old question.
59:44
SPEAKER_03: I was like, am I gonna keep doing this?
59:48
SPEAKER_03: Am I happy?
59:49
SPEAKER_03: Am I real if I'm being honest with myself, am sitting here, am I even happy?
59:57
SPEAKER_03: And I couldn't answer that question, yes.
1:00:00
SPEAKER_03: So I'm like, okay, well, what's wrong with me?
1:00:04
SPEAKER_03: Because I've got everything I wanted.
1:00:06
SPEAKER_03: Look where I'm sitting.
1:00:07
SPEAKER_03: Look what I have.
1:00:08
SPEAKER_03: Look what I've achieved.
1:00:09
SPEAKER_03: Look who's around me.
1:00:10
SPEAKER_03: There's one person in this entire company who wouldn't change jobs with me, and that's a CEO.
1:00:15
SPEAKER_03: And on a good day, he might even change jobs with me.
1:00:17
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, I had everything I had set out to get.
1:00:21
SPEAKER_03: And so when I got to that place and I'm like, here I am, and I can't be happy.
1:00:26
SPEAKER_03: What in the hell is wrong with me?
1:00:28
SPEAKER_03: And so what did I do?
1:00:30
SPEAKER_03: I put on the good old fortitude hat of a farmer, and I said, figure it out, dude.
1:00:36
SPEAKER_03: Show up here again tomorrow and put on a smiley face and push through.
1:00:40
SPEAKER_03: Push down the feelings and push through.
1:00:42
SPEAKER_03: And that would get me through another quarter, maybe two.
1:00:45
SPEAKER_03: And then I'd show up to my office.
1:00:47
SPEAKER_03: I'd drive from my nice house and my nice car to my nice office, sit at my nice desk.
1:00:51
SPEAKER_03: Six months later, I'd be like, is this it?
1:00:54
SPEAKER_03: Am I happy?
1:00:55
SPEAKER_03: And I did this a few different times.
1:00:58
SPEAKER_03: And I started to realize that the best work of my life was still in front of me.
1:01:06
SPEAKER_03: I'm 46.
1:01:07
SPEAKER_03: I've been uniquely prepared for something incredible.
1:01:13
SPEAKER_03: And I was coming to believe that the work I was doing while great was never going to be able to be the best work of my life.
1:01:25
SPEAKER_03: The problem I had, Casey, was I had no idea what it was.
1:01:30
SPEAKER_03: I had no idea what I was going to do instead of what I was doing.
1:01:34
SPEAKER_03: So I started doing what I do to this day.
1:01:38
SPEAKER_03: I just started writing.
1:01:39
SPEAKER_03: I started journaling to myself, doing some things.
1:01:41
SPEAKER_03: And then I went and I thought, well, I'm going to become a coach because while I don't want to hire one, and this is this is not the right move.
1:01:49
SPEAKER_03: Spoiler alert to anybody listening, I do not recommend this path.
1:01:53
SPEAKER_03: I figured if I can't figure myself out, maybe I should go become a coach.
1:01:57
SPEAKER_03: Two reasons.
1:01:58
SPEAKER_03: One, I love grooming up and helping and uh coaching future executives.
1:02:03
SPEAKER_03: So I'll just do that inside my company.
1:02:04
SPEAKER_03: I'll use, I'll use my skill set that way.
1:02:06
SPEAKER_03: And two, maybe I'll learn something about myself that then I can figure myself out and what I want.
1:02:10
SPEAKER_03: Well, I certainly did the prior.
1:02:12
SPEAKER_03: I don't know that I really figured myself out all that much, but I did discover that I love coaching.
1:02:18
SPEAKER_03: I love it.
1:02:20
SPEAKER_03: And so now I kind of had this side hustle.
1:02:23
SPEAKER_03: Although I wasn't charging anybody for it, I was just doing it inside of my company.
1:02:27
SPEAKER_03: But so when I say side hustle, I mean I just had this thing that I loved.
1:02:31
SPEAKER_03: And I didn't care if it paid me or not.
1:02:33
SPEAKER_03: I just knew I was good at it.
1:02:34
SPEAKER_03: People loved it.
1:02:35
SPEAKER_03: It was creating ripples.
1:02:37
SPEAKER_03: They wanted me for me.
1:02:39
SPEAKER_03: They didn't care that I was Lom, the executive director of a corporate company.
1:02:43
SPEAKER_03: They didn't care that I was a vice president.
1:02:44
SPEAKER_03: They didn't care that I was an insider.
1:02:46
SPEAKER_03: They cared that I cared.
1:02:49
SPEAKER_03: And so I'm like, okay, wait a minute.
1:02:50
SPEAKER_03: There's something to this.
1:02:52
SPEAKER_03: Um and then something happened.
1:02:54
SPEAKER_03: I was the mergers and acquisition guy, and our company sold.
1:02:58
SPEAKER_03: Um, and obviously, when your company sells and your public company, all of the executive team is very, very busy during that time.
1:03:07
SPEAKER_03: But I was the mergers and acquisition guy.
1:03:09
SPEAKER_03: Like that was my baby.
1:03:11
SPEAKER_03: And when we sold, um, I'm getting to your the heart of your question now of how did I know it was time?
1:03:18
SPEAKER_03: When we sold, I was wrestling.
1:03:20
SPEAKER_03: I thought I would get canned because I was the sell side MA guy, and we always get let go.
1:03:24
SPEAKER_03: I had done eight or nine deals in the last seven years.
1:03:26
SPEAKER_03: I always let the person in my position go.
1:03:29
SPEAKER_03: It was a synergy.
1:03:30
SPEAKER_03: So age old word.
1:03:31
SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's just so I wasn't romantic about it.
1:03:34
SPEAKER_03: I wasn't upset about it.
1:03:35
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, this is just how it's gonna work.
1:03:37
SPEAKER_03: But a weird thing happened.
1:03:38
SPEAKER_03: The company that acquired us gave me an offer to stay that was incredible.
1:03:44
SPEAKER_03: So now I had mentally prepared to be let go.
1:03:47
SPEAKER_03: I was kind of thinking, what am I gonna do instead?
1:03:49
SPEAKER_03: I had started writing on LinkedIn, and now I had a reason to stay.
1:03:55
SPEAKER_03: It was a raise, it was, I didn't have to move, it played in my strengths, what they were offering me.
1:04:01
SPEAKER_03: And at the same time, another company came and offered me a position as a president of their company in my same hometown.
1:04:07
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:04:08
SPEAKER_03: My wife and I, all the while all this was going on, my wife and I were going to a concert in Minneapolis, which is about a four-hour drive from where we lived in Sioux Falls.
1:04:14
SPEAKER_03: And on the drive up, we were going to a George Strait Chris Stapleton concert.
1:04:18
SPEAKER_03: Nice.
1:04:19
SPEAKER_03: I'm a I'm a country kid.
1:04:21
SPEAKER_03: So it was an all-day affair with four or five bands, and those two are the headliners.
1:04:26
SPEAKER_03: So in the drive up, my wife grabs my arm and she goes, Hey, I want to talk to you about something when we when we get when we get to Minneapolis.
1:04:32
SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, ah crap, this can't be good.
1:04:35
SPEAKER_03: No, at no point has she grabbed my arm and said, Hey, I want to talk to you about something and it lead to an outcome that I was looking forward to.
1:04:43
SPEAKER_02: Right.
1:04:44
SPEAKER_03: So I said, Well, do you want to talk about it?
1:04:45
SPEAKER_03: Now she goes, No, we'll talk about it later.
1:04:46
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, okay, fine.
1:04:47
SPEAKER_03: Kind of let it go.
1:04:48
SPEAKER_03: Went to the concert.
1:04:49
SPEAKER_03: After the concert, we go to this and we're sitting at the corner of the bar and we're facing one another, just having some small talk.
1:04:57
SPEAKER_03: And she goes, I want to talk to you about something.
1:04:59
SPEAKER_03: And I said, Well, is this the conversation?
1:05:01
SPEAKER_03: She said, Yeah.
1:05:02
SPEAKER_03: She said, I know you've been wrestling.
1:05:07
SPEAKER_03: I know that you've been wondering what you should do.
1:05:12
SPEAKER_03: I know that you've got an opportunity to stay with the case that's the company that was that had acquired us.
1:05:17
SPEAKER_03: And I know you've got an opportunity to go to work for this other company.
1:05:21
SPEAKER_03: But she said, I've seen you different in the last three months.
1:05:27
SPEAKER_03: I've seen you coaching people in normal 40, and I see you light up.
1:05:31
SPEAKER_03: I see you impacting people and I see how it impacts you.
1:05:35
SPEAKER_03: I see you giving your time and energy to people one at a time and in small groups, and I see it mattering.
1:05:41
SPEAKER_03: And she said, When I see you do that, I see my husband back.
1:05:46
SPEAKER_03: I don't want you to take the I should nope, that's not what she said.
1:05:49
SPEAKER_03: She said, I don't think you should take the job with case.
1:05:54
SPEAKER_03: I don't think your future's there.
1:05:56
SPEAKER_03: I don't think you should take the job with this other company.
1:05:59
SPEAKER_03: I don't think your future's there.
1:06:00
SPEAKER_03: She said, Your future's in normal 40, in whatever you want that to be.
1:06:04
SPEAKER_03: Because keep in mind, normal 40 didn't really exist yet.
1:06:07
SPEAKER_03: I didn't know what it was.
1:06:09
SPEAKER_03: She did.
1:06:10
SPEAKER_03: She knew what it was.
1:06:12
SPEAKER_03: And she's the one when I was standing at the brink.
1:06:14
SPEAKER_03: Do I stay or do I go?
1:06:15
SPEAKER_03: I'm looking over the cliff.
1:06:18
SPEAKER_03: She's the one that says, You're ready.
1:06:20
SPEAKER_03: And she pushed me over the edge.
1:06:22
SPEAKER_03: And in that moment, we talked about teamwork.
1:06:26
SPEAKER_03: This was my teammate saying, I'm with you.
1:06:30
SPEAKER_03: And she continued to say, she's like, look, if it means we have to sell the house, we'll sell the house.
1:06:36
SPEAKER_03: If it means that one day we have to stand in a breadline, I'll be standing with you.
1:06:41
SPEAKER_03: She literally said these words.
1:06:42
SPEAKER_03: And I'm crying in this bar because my wife, my teammate, is giving me permission to go place a bet that we are uncertain how it's going to be.
1:06:52
SPEAKER_03: It's kind of bet on you.
1:06:54
SPEAKER_03: It's on us.
1:06:55
SPEAKER_03: It's on us.
1:06:56
SPEAKER_03: It's not on me anymore.
1:06:58
SPEAKER_03: One of the things that I ask people, what does your spouse want for you?
1:07:02
SPEAKER_03: And the answer is always, well, they want me to be happy.
1:07:04
SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, well, that's good, but it's a bullshit answer.
1:07:06
SPEAKER_03: It's not helpful.
1:07:08
SPEAKER_03: Of course they want you to be happy.
1:07:10
SPEAKER_03: What do they want for you?
1:07:13
SPEAKER_03: What when do they see you happy?
1:07:15
SPEAKER_03: You they need to answer a better question.
1:07:18
SPEAKER_03: Not what do you want for me to be happy?
1:07:20
SPEAKER_03: Duh.
1:07:21
SPEAKER_03: What do you see me doing when I am happy?
1:07:23
SPEAKER_03: Help me connect those dots.
1:07:25
SPEAKER_03: That's a great spouse.
1:07:26
SPEAKER_03: And that's what my spouse did.
1:07:28
SPEAKER_03: I see you happy.
1:07:29
SPEAKER_03: I see the guy I married in these moments.
1:07:31
SPEAKER_03: And I think you this is the journey you should go on.
1:07:35
SPEAKER_03: And I'll go on that journey with you.
1:07:38
SPEAKER_03: And look, it's uh um, I mean, it's a testament to the incredible individual I'm married to.
1:07:45
SPEAKER_03: But um, it was you asked about the moment, it was that moment.
1:07:48
SPEAKER_03: And it was that moment at that bar through those tears when I said, Maybe I'm not quitting.
1:07:53
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, maybe my work here is just done.
1:07:56
SPEAKER_03: I'm finishing.
1:07:58
SPEAKER_03: I'm not quitting, I'm not leaving anybody in lurch.
1:08:00
SPEAKER_03: I'm the MA guy and we sold.
1:08:02
SPEAKER_03: I'm done.
1:08:03
SPEAKER_03: I just have to go figure out what's next.
1:08:05
SPEAKER_03: That was the moment.
1:08:07
SPEAKER_01: Love it.
1:08:07
SPEAKER_01: I know she's betting on us, but she's also betting on you.
1:08:10
SPEAKER_01: I think what I mean by that is like she says, like, listen, and I think when uh when wives do that or spouses do that, it's like a superpower for dudes.
1:08:20
SPEAKER_01: I think it I've that I've there's many stories.
1:08:23
SPEAKER_01: Lon, I've talked to that.
1:08:24
SPEAKER_01: I wrote, I mean, there's a gentleman by the name of um buddy of mine, Casey Bell, his dad, Steve Bell, battling cancer right now.
1:08:31
SPEAKER_01: Hope he's praying he's doing okay.
1:08:33
SPEAKER_01: They have a company called Belmont Cabinet.
1:08:35
SPEAKER_01: There's a story, literally, when he lost almost everything when they started the business.
1:08:39
SPEAKER_01: That's a really, really successful company, international belt like cabinet company, you know, killing it.
1:08:45
SPEAKER_01: But his wife, I remember one time, like when they when they were like in the 80s or something, he's in the kitchen almost crying.
1:08:54
SPEAKER_01: He is crying, like, I've lost everything.
1:08:56
SPEAKER_01: What am I gonna do?
1:08:57
SPEAKER_01: And his wife just went down to him, like, she goes, I'm betting on you.
1:09:00
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna figure it out, and I believe in you.
1:09:02
SPEAKER_01: And she's he's like, it like freaking lightning hit him.
1:09:06
SPEAKER_01: Like, wait, and and not like you you didn't have confidence, but sometimes like when the person you marry, like you, you know, you trust more than anything, just says gives you that, which I don't think probably you knew at the time, but like even when my wife kind of gave me the green light to saying, dude, if you're if you're done, like let's figure this out.
1:09:23
SPEAKER_01: Like, I know you're gonna figure something out and you're gonna be successful whenever you decide to do.
1:09:27
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what it is yet.
1:09:28
SPEAKER_01: And I didn't know what I was gonna, I didn't know I was gonna get into coaching either.
1:09:31
SPEAKER_01: But it's like this journey found me, and I just keep surrendering to it.
1:09:35
SPEAKER_01: And um, but I'm uh so how how can people find out about you?
1:09:40
SPEAKER_01: What's the easiest way I can I can make sure we link this in the show notes so people can find you?
1:09:44
SPEAKER_03: It's really pretty easy to find me.
1:09:47
SPEAKER_03: Normal40.com, normal40.com.
1:09:51
SPEAKER_03: Um, that's that's where I mean it's a traditional classic website.
1:09:56
SPEAKER_03: You can find the things that I do and the things that I talk about and how and my coaching style.
1:10:01
SPEAKER_03: The other place that you can really find me as I show up every single day in conversations just like this is on LinkedIn.
1:10:07
SPEAKER_03: Every single day, I would say 350 days a year, anyway.
1:10:12
SPEAKER_03: I post I write something in the morning, post it that morning.
1:10:17
SPEAKER_03: Um, that's just on my mind.
1:10:18
SPEAKER_03: A conver uh on my mind from a conversation I had in the day or hours before, or something I've witnessed.
1:10:26
SPEAKER_03: And the following of my newsletter and the words I put out has been just incredible.
1:10:33
SPEAKER_03: Um, and they're free.
1:10:36
SPEAKER_03: You can take them or leave them, but I'm doing them with the intent of creating a ripple and should giving you a path and showing you options and reminding all of us that we have there are moments in your life and there are periods of your life that are windows, and they eventually close.
1:11:00
SPEAKER_03: Every single window in your life closes.
1:11:03
SPEAKER_03: And you're in one now.
1:11:05
SPEAKER_03: There's a window that's closing, and before it's closed, and the window that's closing is probably what you were feeling when I was feeling in 2022.
1:11:14
SPEAKER_03: Maybe my work here is done.
1:11:15
SPEAKER_03: Is this it?
1:11:16
SPEAKER_03: I'm on the cusp of the best year of my the best decade of my life.
1:11:20
SPEAKER_03: I'm not sure that I can live it here, but I don't know where I'm supposed to live it.
1:11:24
SPEAKER_03: That that's who I write to, and that's the guidance I try to give.
1:11:28
SPEAKER_03: And uh, and you can show up there and follow me and tag along and reach out and ask for a free ramble.
1:11:34
SPEAKER_03: I still do free rambles multiple times a week.
1:11:37
SPEAKER_03: I've done more than a thousand of them, and they're still I learn something from every single one of them.
1:11:44
SPEAKER_01: So cool.
1:11:45
SPEAKER_01: Please, everybody, follow Lon on LinkedIn.
1:11:48
SPEAKER_01: Go to normal40.com, listen to his podcast, get his book.
1:11:53
SPEAKER_01: Uh I am so grateful that Steve Garretti introduced us because um it was meant to be.
1:12:00
SPEAKER_01: Um, I love when I meet people that have that we go through these similar journeys, and you're not alone, and there's uh a big following of people, everybody that are following along.
1:12:09
SPEAKER_01: So don't be bashful.
1:12:11
SPEAKER_01: Go go find him tonight or to wherever you listen to this podcast.
1:12:15
SPEAKER_01: Um if you are a country guy, which I know you are, check out Adam Hood music.
1:12:21
SPEAKER_03: All right.
1:12:22
SPEAKER_01: Former guest on the podcast.
1:12:23
SPEAKER_01: I saw him play in Nashville and uh beast of a dude.
1:12:27
SPEAKER_01: Really good, really good.
1:12:28
SPEAKER_01: He's got a couple of really I I love his music.
1:12:31
SPEAKER_01: Um, okay, Lon, before I let you go, it's now time to go on to what I call the lightning round.
1:12:36
SPEAKER_01: This is where I show you the negative hits of taking too many hits in college, not bong hits, but football hits.
1:12:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:12:42
SPEAKER_01: Uh your job is to answer these questions as quickly as you can.
1:12:46
SPEAKER_01: And my job is to try to get a giggle out of you.
1:12:48
SPEAKER_03: All right.
1:12:49
SPEAKER_01: All right.
1:12:50
SPEAKER_01: Uh true or false, you once threw for 4,000 yards as a jackrabbit.
1:12:55
SPEAKER_03: False.
1:12:56
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:12:57
SPEAKER_01: Um, true or false, you drive a John Deere to work.
1:13:01
SPEAKER_01: False.
1:13:02
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:13:02
SPEAKER_01: I almost giggled at my own joke on that one.
1:13:04
SPEAKER_03: I know.
1:13:04
SPEAKER_03: Uh dang it.
1:13:05
SPEAKER_03: I and there was a time when I could have answered true, but I not today.
1:13:09
SPEAKER_01: Um, true or false, you've climbed that tree on your ranch.
1:13:13
SPEAKER_03: True.
1:13:13
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:13:14
SPEAKER_01: Um, if I was to go into your phone right now, what would be the one genre of music that might surprise the people you coach?
1:13:22
SPEAKER_03: Tupac.
1:13:24
SPEAKER_03: Let's go.
1:13:24
SPEAKER_03: And Snoop Dogg, man.
1:13:26
SPEAKER_03: Are you kidding me?
1:13:27
SPEAKER_01: Nice.
1:13:29
SPEAKER_01: Well, gin and juice.
1:13:30
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely, baby.
1:13:32
SPEAKER_03: The stuff that I love to listen to, but I have to turn off when my kids get in the car.
1:13:36
SPEAKER_03: Well, not my older ones anymore.
1:13:38
SPEAKER_03: They listen to stuff way worse than that now.
1:13:39
SPEAKER_03: But yeah, that's stuff.
1:13:42
SPEAKER_01: If I came to your house for dinner tonight, what would we have for dinner?
1:13:45
SPEAKER_03: Steak.
1:13:46
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:13:47
SPEAKER_01: Uh, favorite comedy movie of all time is Dumb and Dumber.
1:13:51
SPEAKER_01: Tell me there's a chance.
1:13:53
SPEAKER_03: I am telling you.
1:13:54
SPEAKER_01: There you go.
1:13:55
SPEAKER_03: Don't you realize what you've done?
1:13:58
SPEAKER_01: Totally redeemed yourself.
1:14:00
SPEAKER_01: Um, if you and your wife are gonna take a vacation, no kids, tell me where you're taking her.
1:14:05
SPEAKER_01: Hawaii.
1:14:06
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:14:07
SPEAKER_01: If there was to be a book written about your life, tell me the title.
1:14:11
SPEAKER_03: A Dude Who Gave a Damn.
1:14:13
SPEAKER_01: Dude Who Gave a Damn now.
1:14:15
SPEAKER_01: Lon, you're never gonna believe this, but every airport we're trying to go to, it's sold out.
1:14:19
SPEAKER_01: Amazon can't print enough copies.
1:14:21
SPEAKER_01: Barnes Noble, they're sold out.
1:14:22
SPEAKER_01: Everyone's getting pissed, so they said we gotta make a movie out of it.
1:14:24
SPEAKER_01: You're now the casting director, and you can't star yourself.
1:14:28
SPEAKER_01: I need to know which Hollywood character, which Hollywood actor is gonna star you in this critically acclaimed hit new movie.
1:14:34
SPEAKER_03: Well, uh boy, you stumped the panel on that one.
1:14:38
SPEAKER_03: There's there's no way you can answer this and either not appear like some pompous, arrogant, like are you serious?
1:14:46
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
1:14:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, you know, like Jeff you do kind of look like Jeff Bridges, I think.
1:14:53
SPEAKER_03: All right, well, I'll take that.
1:14:55
SPEAKER_03: I'll take that because I I was gonna say Steve Buscemi, but I'm like, well, I don't wanna I don't want to quite ding myself that hard, but uh you'd be surprised.
1:15:02
SPEAKER_01: I've had people say, like, um, you know, the the the you know the hottest act actors of all time, though this they're uh they own it.
1:15:10
SPEAKER_01: I would choose Will Farrell for me.
1:15:13
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I like it.
1:15:14
SPEAKER_01: So okay, and last question, the most important question.
1:15:17
SPEAKER_01: Tell me two words that would describe your wife.
1:15:20
SPEAKER_03: Hot mama.
1:15:22
SPEAKER_01: Hot mama?
1:15:23
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so good.
1:15:24
SPEAKER_03: She is both of those things.
1:15:26
SPEAKER_03: She's a mama to her family and she's a mama to her kids.
1:15:29
SPEAKER_03: Uh her students, I mean.
1:15:31
SPEAKER_03: Love it.
1:15:32
SPEAKER_03: And she is beautiful.
1:15:35
SPEAKER_03: Like, I overmarried.
1:15:37
SPEAKER_03: Like, there's there's like unfair, and then there's like what in the hell happened here?
1:15:42
SPEAKER_03: I'm the latter.
1:15:43
SPEAKER_01: You outkicked your coverage, what you're saying.
1:15:45
SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh.
1:15:46
SPEAKER_03: Not even, I mean, it's like embarrassing.
1:15:51
SPEAKER_01: Well, I uh I outkicked my coverage of my wife's ability to, she's more handy handy than I am, so I definitely kind of lost my man card with that one, but I'm completely okay with it because I know my strengths.
1:16:02
SPEAKER_01: There you go.
1:16:03
SPEAKER_01: It's a mustache.
1:16:04
SPEAKER_03: There you go.
1:16:05
SPEAKER_01: I I actually I look handy.
1:16:06
SPEAKER_01: I said I'm not handy.
1:16:07
SPEAKER_01: That's true.
1:16:08
SPEAKER_03: You do look very handy.
1:16:09
SPEAKER_03: I didn't I'd assume you're wearing a tool belt right now.
1:16:11
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
1:16:12
SPEAKER_03: How do you know I'm not?
1:16:13
SPEAKER_03: Well, I I I have come to decide that I think maybe your wife is actually wearing the tool belt right now.
1:16:20
SPEAKER_01: Well, no, I have one on.
1:16:20
SPEAKER_01: I just have Crayola and like scissors and markers in there for my tools.
1:16:25
SPEAKER_03: It's your handy manny tool belt of plastic cartoon characters.
1:16:29
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:16:29
SPEAKER_01: All right, everybody.
1:16:30
SPEAKER_01: Enough for shenanigans.
1:16:31
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening.
1:16:32
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for your support.
1:16:33
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for um staying with us.
1:16:35
SPEAKER_01: If this episode's touched it, please share it with a friend.
1:16:38
SPEAKER_01: Share it with another dad or mom or whoever you think could benefit from our conversation today.
1:16:42
SPEAKER_01: If you have not taken time to leave us a review wherever we wherever you consume our podcast, please do.
1:16:48
SPEAKER_01: That'd be a huge gift you can give us that would help um reach another dad that might be inspired by some of the conversations we've had.
1:16:55
SPEAKER_01: Um with that, though, brotherman, I'm grateful Steve introduced us and I appreciate your time.
1:16:59
SPEAKER_01: And I can't wait to hopefully have a chance to meet you in person one day.
1:17:02
SPEAKER_03: Likewise.
1:17:03
SPEAKER_03: And I'll say just one thing.
1:17:04
SPEAKER_03: I know that doing a podcast is a lot of work, dude.
1:17:08
SPEAKER_03: And I know that um you put out a lot of incredible podcasts.
1:17:12
SPEAKER_03: So thanks for doing what you're doing.
1:17:13
SPEAKER_03: It's incredible work.
1:17:15
SPEAKER_03: You'll never get to appreciate all of the ripples you're creating, but I appreciate that you're here doing the work.
1:17:20
SPEAKER_03: It matters, man.
1:17:21
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, man.
1:17:21
SPEAKER_01: That means a lot.
1:17:22
SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
1:17:22
SPEAKER_01: Have a good rest of your week.
1:17:24
SPEAKER_03: You too, man.
1:17:25
SPEAKER_01: Bye.