Ep.#1163: Scott Donnell on Raising Confident and Independent Children

Scott: A lot of parents raise kids to be independent. I think that’s a mistake. You do not want to raise kids to turn 18 and leave forever and never come back for holidays, dinners, summers. You want to be the first FaceTime when something good or bad happens. You want closeness. So don’t focus on independent, like my whole goal is to make you fully independent.

No. My whole goal is to make you interdependent. You’re going to be a killer in this world. You’re going to be an incredible value creator, but we’re also going to be tight. And that’s really what legacy is at the end of the day. 

Mike: Hey there. I am Mike Matthews, and this is the muscle for life podcast.

Thank you for joining me today for something a little bit different than the usual programming, something not related to health or fitness, but related to child rearing and specifically how to raise confident, competent, independent kids who go out into the world ready and willing and capable of bringing value into the world.

Making the world a little bit better than they found it. And in this episode, you are going to be hearing mostly from Scott Donnell, who is a serial entrepreneur and expert in family financial education. Although the discussion is going to be about more than just. Family finances, and as you will hear about in today’s episode, Scott has written a book called Value Creation Kid.

He has started a new business called Dinner Table, and in his book and in his business, Scott’s mission is to teach kids crucial life skills in a way that is both educational and enjoyable, in a way that makes it fun as well as insightful. But first, if you like what I’m doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, then you will probably like my award winning fitness books for men and women of all ages and abilities.

Which have sold over 2 million copies, have received over 15, 000 4 and 5 star reviews on Amazon, and which have helped tens of thousands of people build their best body ever. Now, a caveat, my books and programs cannot give you a lean and toned Hollywood body in 30 days, and they are not full of dubious diet and exercise hacks and shortcuts for gaining lean muscle and melting belly fat faster than a sneeze in a cyclone.

But They will show you exactly how to eat and exercise to lose up to 35 pounds of fat or more if you need to lose more or want to lose more. and gain eye catching amounts of muscle definition and strength. And even better, you will learn how to do those things without having to live in the gym, give up all the foods or drinks that you love, or do long, grueling workouts that you hate.

And with my books and programs, you will do that. You will transform your physique faster than you probably think is possible, or I will give you your money. back. If you are unsatisfied with any of my books or programs, the results, anything, for whatever reason, just let me know and you will get a full refund on the spot.

Now, I do have several books and programs including Bigger Leaner Stronger, Thinner Leaner Stronger, and Muscle for Life. and to help you understand which one is right for you. It’s pretty simple. If you are a guy aged 18 to let’s say 40 to 45, bigger, leaner, stronger is the book and program for you. If you are a gal, same age range, thinner, leaner, stronger is going to be for you.

And if you are a guy or gal 40 to maybe 45 plus muscle for life is for you.

Hey Scott, thanks for taking the time to join me today. Absolutely. Good to be here, Mike. It’s going to be fun. This is a, this is not the typical muscle for life. Conversation. However, it’s not irrelevant. I know that I have a lot of parents listening, a lot of people who plan on being parents or who soon will be parents.

And you’re actually the first of a few interviews that I have lined up regarding just helping kids. Do better a little bit of a selfish motive here because I have two kids and I like to see them do well, and I want to see them do better. And today’s topic is a big part of seeing kids do well.

So again, thank you for joining us. 

Scott: Absolutely. I can’t wait to talk about this, man. Yeah, we got four kids as well. And my wife and I were here in Phoenix and this is my life. I love doing it. So there’s a lot to learn. 

Mike: Offline. You had mentioned that this was something that you started because you really wanted to help and you succeeded enough at your hobby.

To get forced into turning it into a business when you were resistant to doing that, because it sounds like you’ve achieved quite a bit in business and you reached a point where you didn’t have to do one thing or another. So what do you really want to do? And this is that. 

Scott: Yeah. So basically what had happened, we had, we’ve had a bunch of exits and.

Thousand employees, a serial entrepreneur. You and I are alike in our creative mind. And our first big company was called Apex. Okay. And I love that this is a fitness show, mostly thinking about nutrition and health. But our first company was the largest fun run company in America for schools. So it was called Apex.

I started with my wife, Amy, cause she taught first graders in a public school. And we ended up becoming the largest school fundraiser in America. For kids and we would do, we go into schools and teach fitness and leadership and character traits and they raise money and we’d run, we run 36 laps at the race for each kid with blow up tunnels.

And so we started that like 15 years ago and it just exploded because the first school made like 50, 000 net and they’re like hassle free. They loved every second. So we just grew it and it became a franchise model. We’ve served millions and millions of families. I think there’s almost a billion dollars raised.

Anyway, that was the first big company and really fun. We ran to the moon and back over 90, 000 times now or something crazy with kids, but Here’s what happened. So during that process, we’re in 10, 000 public and private schools. Elementary middle schools. We quickly realized we’re like, why aren’t these kids like learning critical thinking and like financial competencies and practical skills?

And algebra is probably great for engineering and Excel, but what about taxes and budgeting and laundry or something like, so that’s really how this all started. All right. And so the first thing we did was just a hobby. We started, we did like a children’s business fair. So all the local kids came to the park, they brought their products, they sold them.

We brought in 500 customers and they bought all the kids stuff. Every kid walked away with 300 bucks. They loved it. And they learned like profit, product, pitch, service, economy, micro economy, cost of goods. Incredible. And this was, 10 years ago now. Yeah. And so that’s how this all sort of snowballed.

That was the first thing we did. Now there’s 2000 of these business fairs all over the world every year, and we create a little website for it. And fast forward now we have Dinner Table, which is like the coaching program and an app that helps you implement the family economy system and helping families like learn what the best families in the world do to raise kids, to be rock stars, to blow by the parents in every way, not just money.

But values and mindsets and skill sets and all these things that matter, that’s what we teach. So yeah, it was a hobby turned into a business because a bunch of people said, we need to turn this into a system and get it out to the world. 

Mike: And this has involved studying a lot of multi generational high net worth families, right?

And looking at some of the key differences in how those families approach teaching finances and financial literacy compared to just your average household, right? 

Scott: Yeah. So we’ve had 7 million families go through all of our businesses. So we’ve seen it all, man. But we wanted to narrow it down to the top 100 best legacy families, we call them.

And I’m not just saying richest families because a lot of rich families that ruin their kids. 

Mike: There is a statistic comes to mind. I forget the source on this, but I remember looking into it and apparently it’s legitimate that the typical pattern is you have the generation that makes the money.

And then you have the next generation that doesn’t continue to grow the wealth, but actually starts to contract. And then by the third, by the end of the third generation, in the beginning of the fourth, the money that was made at the beginning is gone. And apparently that pattern holds with large amounts of money.

I’m not talking about 5 million or even 50 million. It could be hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars. 

Scott: That’s right. And it’s, that’s exactly the point of this. In all the studies we’ve done, 90 percent of generational wealth transfer is gone by the grandkids. But underneath that number, it’s worse.

Mental health, addiction, divorce, violence, destruction, checkout syndrome, entitlement. It’s literally like a generational version of a lottery ticket winner. Like you got a problem here. And one of the main things, so what we did is we tried to narrow down to the top hundred families that what they did is they didn’t just pass on.

money and stuff. They passed on heritage to their kids. So what we say is your kids needed a heritage over the inheritance. That’s a point. They need a last name that means something. This is one of our main lessons we learned from the best in the world. And those families made our list because they had three or four generations of kids that blew by the parents.

Over and over they blow by them in their family values, their depth of relationship, their mindsets, financial competencies, the value creation impact in the world, all of that. And if you do that over and over again, who cares if you’re making a few hundred grand or millions or billions, you have wealth in my opinion, that is legacy in my opinion.

So we just studied the best hundred and we codified into an operating system basically. For the family. And we’re like, Hey, all these hundred families did these 12 things. Do you do them too? And then you’ll have a, over time, even though every family has crazy in it, you’ll over time move in the right direction and have an amazing family legacy.

Mike: Can you talk about a few of the 12, maybe a few of the highest leverage or the or if you want to go in another direction, maybe that, that were surprising to you, obviously. We’ll get into just where people can go to learn about all 12 and get into all the details, but I’m curious, what are a few that you want to just share to pique people’s interest?

Scott: I just mentioned the heritage over inheritance. That’s a shocker to a lot of people. 

Mike: That’s very it’s very Roman. That’s what I think. 

Scott: Yeah. Yeah. The point that really the point is it’s more about what we leave in our kids than to them. A last name that means something is so much more important than leaving crazy amounts of money.

Because then they’re just rudderless. Now they have a ton of money to be crazy with. You have to leave them a heritage. And this is about your family values, how you set it up, the stories you tell, the dinner table conversations. Like we, we go through a pattern, right? All of this is about habits in the home, right?

So it’s really important how you explain your family stories, your background, giving your kids what we call roots and wings. Roots in your family, your values and wings to soar in the world. And that’s how you do it. See, if kids don’t have a rudder and understanding where they come from and what it means to carry on their family values, then they’re going to just get impacted by what the world says, which is a bunch of crazy stuff.

It’s instant gratification. It’s entitlement and victimhood and laziness and anxiety and like that ego. And that’s what the world is trying to get everybody to see. And so if you don’t set the standards in the home and really use the model of sharing stories of the values you care about and building that culture in the house they’re rudderless, right?

And so that’s what we, that’s one of the main strategies and tools that we unpack with families that we coach. And it’s pretty easy. They just come in, they coach with families. We do workshops, we coach them all. But that’s one of the biggest ones we found is like, why is it? Here’s my question to you. Why is it that the whole financial industry.

Their whole goal is to have people like accumulate, protect, and grow wealth until they die. How come that’s the model? 

Mike: And to pay large relatively speaking, fees for assets under management for just essentially shadow indexing. 

Scott: That’s right. And never sell it. Never do anything with it.

Don’t give it away. We need our fees. You have to just die with as much as 

Mike: you’re in your 70s and you’re still hustling to grow your net worth. And that’s all you’ve ever done really with 80 percent of your life. 

Scott: So you can die with as much crap as possible. Just to give your kids another version of entitlement.

Mike: And then even to even talk about, okay. So even if that’s what you’re going to do, the average age of inheritance, I’m sure you don’t, you know this, but people listening may not know here in the United States, it’s 60 something. And so what good is that? On average when now you’re in your sixties and okay, you inherited a bunch of money, but it might’ve been a lot more helpful, even if we’re just talking about money and it doesn’t have to be a lump sum of inheritance, but it might’ve been a lot more helpful when you were 30, trying to establish yourself and build your family to have a little bit of help, like maybe some help with defraying some of the costs relating to certainly now.

Getting a home so you can have enough space for a family and sending kids to school. Maybe to a private school because the public schools are pretty bad where you live and so forth. 

Scott: You want to know the best investment I ever saw from parent to kid? You ready for this? Greatest thing I ever saw a high percentage of these families.

They said, you know what? Instead of just letting this money sit in an account and dying with it. We’re going to take out 15 grand a year. We’re going to send all three of our adult children on their anniversary. We’re going to send them on a week long trip together, and we’re going to take the grandkids.

And we’re going to do that every single year, especially when they have little kids at home from birth to graduation from high school. That’s our, I love you gift to them. It is the greatest investment I’ve seen the heritage. It builds the family values, the connections, the relationship, how much the adult children are so thankful.

And have a sweet aroma in their mind to their parents like that move Is way better than you taking 15 grand and putting it into some Schwab account and dying with it and being stingy. 

Mike: And then you have to pass it on again when your kids are 60 or whatever, and maybe they’ve made money. So it doesn’t even mean anything.

Maybe they have not made money. So technically it could mean something, but they have not made other, they’ve made a lot of bad choices in their life. They’re just not doing so well anymore because of circumstances. And that money represents a lot less joy. At that point than it could have otherwise. 

Scott: And then they fight over it.

I’ve seen so many adults in their forties and fifties thinking that their parents are going to die and they don’t for another 15, 20 years and they all are waiting on it so they don’t risk, they don’t create value, they don’t take that chance, they 

Mike: don’t get that investment opportunity, they don’t grow.

That’s a good point. I’ve seen that. I’ve seen that firsthand from. Wealthy with a big W even families where they knew they didn’t know quite how much is coming because of sometimes that’s withheld but they, yeah, they know when there are billions sloshing around, there’s enough coming to not care.

And I, as you could say, it would take a very unique person to really make something of themselves despite that. That’s 

Scott: exactly it. So that’s why this heritage over inheritance thing is just really powerful. In our workshops and coaching, we help families literally get, Hey, let’s take our family and look at it like an investment.

So let’s take what’s the culture of our family. What are the values of our family? Let’s make it into an acronym. Let’s create a crest. Let’s create the stories. Let’s not just put it on the wall. Who cares about the mission statement on the wall? In 30 years, your kids aren’t going to be sitting around the campfire looking at the wall.

They’re going to be telling stories. Kids think in stories. Kids are very different in the way that they see the world than adults. They still are pure and creative. They don’t have all this stuff beat out of them. They think so much more in story. Kids only learn in two ways, fun and real life experience.

When you mash those together, it’s powerful learning and there’s no school in the world that does that very well. Okay. So that was a big one is that heritage over inheritance. And I know we have 12 of these, but we only have time to go into a couple, but that’s a big one. Like we got to think that way.

I’ll share with you probably the first and most important one that we saw as a pattern. These families, they didn’t just go straight to money. You think like wealthy, successful families. Oh, we’re going to teach our kids to make money. Yeah. Let’s teach them money. There’s so many things that have to be done before that, or else it becomes achievement, status, identity.

That’s what money becomes, or on the flip side, kids actually report to us that money is the biggest fight in the home that they see, and they don’t want to talk about money, so it becomes a negative to them, which is a poverty mindset. So what did these families do? They actually, they took it a step back, and they said, what is money?

Money is a store of value. Okay, let’s take this back to first principles thinking, let’s take this back to value creation first and money is only a store of one type of value. It’s called material value. So what they said is let’s teach our kids to create value first, not money. Money is a store of only one type of value.

So then when you take that lens to see your family and your kids, this value creation lens, now you’re turning them into value hunters. Where everywhere they go, they’re learning to create value in the three different ways. The first one is material value, right? That’s what you think of as business and solving problems for a profit, doing gigs around the house, wants and needs.

Money is usually the result, the reward for creating that kind of value. But the second kind is emotional value. Emotional value is the kind of friend you are. The mindsets, the way you feel, how you make others feel and think better, right? That’s a most, that’s a whole different type of value, but it’s still creating value.

And this one is what makes for amazing siblings, great sports teammates, great classmates. The captain of every team is the emotional value driver. The leader, this person gets the job first and the promotion, most likely not just material value. And then the last one, spiritual value, which is a wholly different bucket than the other two spiritual value.

It’s basically your, how you get outside of your own ego and pride and connect to something bigger. Connect to a higher calling, a mission, for me, it’s God, right? Like connect above yourself, stop being selfish and ego and pride and woe is me and anxious because of it and get out to something bigger than yourself and be of service to others.

It creates spiritual value in the world. When we said we were going to go to the moon in the sixties, remember that? You and I weren’t alive, but when we said we were going to go to the sixties and bring a man safely home from it, by the end of the decade, the whole country rallied, everybody rallied.

It was like the last time we were all so connected. Immense spiritual value, very different than the other ones. So those are the buckets. Material, emotional, and spiritual value. And these families were extremely intentional about helping their kids learn to create those types of value. And so they measured it.

They talked about it. They asked their kids every day, what value did you create in the world today? Who did you create value for? And then the kids had a world view to see it that way, not just going after making money. Kids don’t even care about making money. Only one in 20 kids does. You don’t even want them to think that way.

You want to think about value creation first. So that is that was the Eureka moment, the first big Eureka moment from all of these interviews, hundreds of interviews and tons of, hundreds of pages of notes traveling all over the world for 10 years, meeting these people. That was big, great value.

Mike: You’ve talked about the home. Economy, the, this system, what do you mean by that? 

Scott: Yeah, that’s actually one of the most practical ways to create value in the house. It’s the whole point. We call it the family economy now, because we found out that Vanguard owns home economy and they don’t do anything with it, but they’re squatting on the trademark.

So 

Mike: that’s funny because a software company called Bentley owns legion. com for my sports situation. And it’s possible that it could be purchased because that actually just forwards to some software product of theirs over at Bentley. com or whatever. But it’s a big company. Last I looked close to probably a billion dollars in revenue.

And so unless I’m willing to pay, it’s going to be a small seven figure sum. It’s not even worth talking. And so unfortunately, I love it from a branding perspective. But ironically, we have, SEO has been a big part of at least brand awareness for us. Like our website, we’ve received probably, I don’t know, over 40 million views.

Visits since I started a company and we have thousands of articles. And so unfortunately, at this point, it probably be a bad idea. And I’ve spoken to SEO experts and basically the consensus is don’t buy the domain. Don’t 301 everything because it could actually significantly hurt your SEO. And so now I’m stuck with this URL that I hate legion athletics is too long and athletics is unnecessary.

And anyway random URL rant. And 

Scott: link tagging and algorithms have changed so much because nobody can get the exact domain they want anymore. It’s so difficult to do. I literally just saw dinnertable. com when we started and it was just sitting there and I’m like, what? And I just grabbed it in 10 seconds.

Wait, you mean you didn’t 

Mike: even have to buy it from somebody? It was you just registered it? No, it was wide open. I got so lucky. So lucky. So somebody’s auto renew, like the credit card bounced or something. That was a mistake. 

Scott: Yeah, it was never there. And 12 grand and bang. I’m like, 

Mike: Oh, but no. So you did have to pay from somebody.

You had to pay to somebody who was squatting on it. Nope. Go daddy. But GoDaddy, they were they’re a broker, right? No, I think they owned it. It wasn’t a broker. Yeah. Oh okay. Good. But regardless, you got it for a very reasonable sum. It was a steal 

Scott: anyway. You get the point.

Any entrepreneur who’s seen this laughs about what we’re talking about, because it’s so hard to get that right. Okay. So yeah, the family economy is what we’ve changed it to. That is basically this system in the home that helps kids learn financial skills by creating value because allowance doesn’t work.

Allowances all of the studies that we’ve done and read link allowance to a lack of motivation and an aversion to work for kids, it’s codependency. Some would say it’s socialism. 

Mike: Okay. 

Scott: In a box 

Mike: UBI, which continues to fail at least study after study that I’m seeing. 

Scott: A hundred percent. And some people go I pay allowance for chores.

Okay now you’re giving them a salary and you still fight over all the chores every week. And half those chores you should never pay for. That’s their role in the home. And the other half of those chores you should pay one off so they understand the value created for the reward. So that’s why we came up with The home economy, the family economy.

So it’s three E’s. Okay. So expectations, expenses, and extra pay gigs. That’s the three E’s. And if you do this system, your kids learn budgeting. They learn delayed gratification, price of goods. They never ask you for money and stuff. No more conflict over chores, five massive wins in one. And so I just, and we have an app inside of dinner table, people join, they get the app for free and they just implement the home economy with a printout for the fridge.

So first thing expectations, this is your role in the family. Kids, there’s no money attached. It creates emotional value and all the other values for our home. And it’s just part of being in our family. Making, you should never pay your kids, make their bed, clean their room, homework, do your homework first when you get home or dishes, trash, like that’s your role.

This is to live under our roof. Here’s what you’re doing. Table stakes to stick with the the table stakes, the dinner table stakes. There you go. So that’s the expectations because kids need to understand not everything they do is going to be for money. There’s things that create other forms of value.

Then the second E is critical. It’s the expenses because then what people do is they try to, they think that their kids care about money as much as they do, kids don’t care about money unless they have a motive. And the motive is give them expenses to be in charge of. So when you give them expenses that they’re in charge of, it’s an act of love.

It’s a greater act of love than buying everything for them and entitling them. So when you give them expenses, it’s like birthday presents for friends, parties. That’s how they actually learn generosity. Social outings. If they’re going to play baseball, guess what? You’re in charge of the helmet. You’re going to buy the bat.

You’re going to buy the cleat, whatever it would be like, toys. Or if we’re going to go to the movies as a family, we want you guys to be in charge of the popcorn. Make your kids responsible for certain things and then they rise to the occasion because they want to get those things and they need those things, you want to go to the your friend out with your friends on the fun thing when you’re 12 years old.

Okay you need to have that money set aside. So that’s where, and then when parents do that, by the way, they save hundreds of dollars a month because now the kids are in charge and then they can use those, that money to help the kids with the 30. Okay. Which is extra pay. So this is a list of things that kids can do called gigs.

Don’t say chores. That’s a cuss word because gigs are way better than chores anyway, because we add in brain gigs to it. So gigs are, it starts with what you’d think maybe chores, but sweep the garage, wind, wash the windows, clean a bathroom, make a meal, laundry, something in the yard, pool, pet, whatever yard work, those are hands and feet gigs.

But then you add in the secret sauce, which is brain gigs. This is where kids use their brain to create value, which is what you and I do every day as adults. Kids need to learn that. So this could be like a podcast or an article or a Ted talk or a book or no sugar for a week. And the kids like do it and they tell you what they learned and what they’re going to apply to their life right now.

And they get a few bucks, three, five bucks, two bucks, whatever you want. And it’s a way for them to make the whole list of gigs really fun. Like they just get self motivated for the whole thing. Cause it’s really fun. And they learn a bunch of capabilities and they learn confidence from it. And then you can get them ready for the real world by giving them those gigs.

So like we just gave our daughter, Reagan, the family vacation challenge. She was in charge of budgeting the summer to the lake. So figured out how we’re going to get there. Flights, best deal, three flights, get the best deal. We’re going to eat. What we’re going to do. She’s saying just like two grand dude.

It was awesome. She’s eight. She learned all these skills. And guess what? She owned the trip. Lifetime memory. Cause she owned it. So that’s just one of a hundred examples of like brilliant things to help your kids that they’re never going to teach in school. So if you do that model, a lot of the families did that many of those hundred families many, like a significant majority did that.

And it just makes it really easy for them to learn the right skills, understand the right view of money and create value. And it’s just way easier as a parent, less stress, more fun. You feel more confident. We have everyday parents like, yeah, my kids went from arguing over who has to do chores to who gets to do gigs.

That’s a huge win for us. They never asked us for money and stuff. This is awesome. So that’s the, that’s one of the 12 as well. 

Mike: And these things that make sense when you say them, it’s just not the common way of doing any of it. And part of it, and I’m guilty of this as well. And my excuse, if I can offer an excuse is I suppose.

Being very busy with work and then not having, although I guess I haven’t maybe looked enough for one resource I could go to, to just tell me what to do can we just, I could take the time to read 25 books and piece all this together. I could, I’m not saying I couldn’t. But I have not, and that’s one route because getting it all put together in a way that really works, it’s not something that we can just muddle our way through as parents.

Let me just sit down and think about this, and I’m just going to figure this out here in a few hours, and then I’ll implement my system. No, you have to go to people who have already done a lot of this work and somebody like you who spent years and years putting all this together and then packaged it up and say, here it is.

And then you got to be able to find that and then implement it. And so that’s one element of it. And then there is that element of implementing it, which I’m sure for people listening who are very busy, they feel a bit of friction. I can see that myself, although I’m quick to diffuse it just because I know what that really means.

It just is, you have to be willing to change what you’re doing. And go through a process of where not everything is perfect and it’s and it does take a bit more work on the front end and you have to commit to that mentally. I don’t know if you want to just comment on next. I’m sure you’ve run into that a lot where parents that they know they’re not doing a great job in this regard.

Maybe they’re not egregious and they’re not ruining their kids, but they haven’t been very deliberate with any of this and they like what you’re saying. But again, run up against that friction of. Is this going to add another, I don’t know if I have another five hours a week or 10 hours a week to give to another thing that I have to manage.

Scott: I’ll tell you this. We deal with parents every day who are busy, stressed, worried, and they’ve got just so much going on that they barely have any time for anything. So our whole goal was let’s create a 12 month operating system that is like. The littlest amount of time possible. We just check in with families every month in groups.

We give them the smallest amount of like goals with a simple lesson and they unpack it with other families. And it’s like little tweaks, little changes, five, 10 minutes. And then once you get the thinking you share with other parents, learn best practices, and you’re often doing it. So tiny momentum, tiny goals.

That build over time. So we take that approach to it because parents are just busy. And so every month, and then every six weeks we do a deep dive. It’s Hey, we’re going to get together on a Thursday night or a Saturday afternoon and all the families, we’re going to deep dive for a couple hours into this specific results based thing.

And you’re going to walk away with it done, ready to go. How to talk to your kids about it. And you are set. So it’s very results driven for families. And then we celebrate the heck out of families because it’s hard, right? So everyone’s celebrating and sharing what’s working. What’s not asking questions.

That is how the needle gets moved. Cause we, we launched the book and it became a huge bestseller. And then hundreds of parents would come to me and be like, I loved your book. I read it three times. I’m like did you do it? And they’re like, no, we were, not yet. I got the app. I downloaded the app. I’m like, okay you’re doing it.

They’re like, no, families just need accountability. Everything that we talk about with transformation in life, you need tiny habits and you need accountability. So that’s what we’re there to be. We teach you the little movements, little habits. You can get them right away and we encourage you and keep you accountable to actually do the change in the family because your family is your number one investment.

It has to be, and you are in your family. You are a, you and your family are your most important investment. And unfortunately, so many families don’t think that way. They’re just trying to keep everybody alive and fed. And Tibet on time and get to the basketball. And so that’s what we say is, Hey, if you’re a family man with a business, not a businessman with a family, then come this way, we’ll help you.

Same with women. If you’re a business woman with a family, we’re probably not the right fit, but if you’re a family woman first with a business, are you working in a business? We’re the right fit. So that’s the thing here is you have to enroll mentally and be like, yeah, we want to make the little changes that help our family thrive.

And all it takes is one pain point, man, one issue with an estranged kid when they’re 23 years old or a kid that doesn’t care about the money or they’re deep in debt or they give up or they struggle or they. Fall away or whatever. One of those, everyone would give everything. They have all their money, all their stuff, all their time to change that one thing.

Same with grandkids, same with cousins, same with siblings. Like you’ve got to put that investment in your family. And so we just made it super easy. It’s cheap and you just come in, stay accountable, go through the operating system, and then it’s like a dashboard. We teach you how to do the family meetings.

We teach you how to do the pay to appoint plan, the home, the family economy system, how to work on the relationships of the kids, the sweet spots and love language stuff. Like we do all that to help families thrive and it’s super fun. 

Mike: And where is all that? That’s separate to the app.

It sounds or this is all in the 

Scott: app. The app is part of dinner table now. Okay. So once you join our dinner table, like people can go, I’ll give you a link. It’s like the scott. dinnertable. com is my personal link. I’ll give you a specific one for your audience that gets them in to just see how this works.

And then we coach everybody up. I got a team of people. We do mass calls, fun workshop style, and we give everybody the dashboard to work on. So that’s, yeah, scott. dinnertable. com and they get the app, they get the book. Everything’s a part of that. 

Mike: Research shows that getting enough omega 3 fatty acids in your diet can benefit you in many ways, including reducing the risk of heart disease, increasing muscle growth, increasing cognitive performance, increasing fat loss, decreasing inflammation, improving mood, reducing muscle soreness after exercise, and more.

There is a problem though, it’s hard to get enough of these vital molecules through diet alone, and that’s why fish oil is a popular supplement. It is a safe, easy, and healthy alternative to eating a lot of fatty fish, for example, and that’s why I created Triton. It is a high potency, molecularly distilled fish oil.

with 2, 400 milligrams of EPA and DHA per serving, and those are omega 3 fatty acids that have been specifically linked to a lot of the benefits I just mentioned. And Triton also has vitamin E and lemon oil to prevent oxidation, rancidity, and nasty fish oil burps. Triton is also produced from deep water Peruvian anchovies and sardines caught by fisheries approved by Friend of the Sea.

And Triton meets the very stringent purity standards of the European Pharmacopeia Reference Standards, the Council for Responsible Nutrition, and the global organization for EPA and DHA omega 3. And all that is why I’ve sold over 100, 000 bottles of Triton and why it has over 900 four and five star reviews on Amazon and my website.

So if you want to optimize your physical and mental health and performance, and if you want to reduce the risk of disease and dysfunction, you want to try Triton today. Go to BuyLegion, B U I Legion dot com slash Triton, T R I T O N and use the coupon code muscle at checkout and you will save 20 percent on your first order and if it is not your first order you will get double reward points which means you will get 6 percent cash back and if you don’t Love Triton.

For any reason, just let us know, and we will give you a full refund on the spot. No form, and no return is even necessary. You really can’t lose. Go to buylegion. com slash triton. Use the coupon code MUSCLE at checkout and save 20%, or get 6 percent cash back. And try Triton risk free, and see what you think.

Let’s let’s talk about healthy struggles and the topic of allowing kids to, to bump themselves around without breaking themselves and not giving into the urge to coddle and overprotect. Yeah, 

Scott: the coddling of the American mind, John and Nate. Okay. So let’s think about this just practically for a second.

The only way a human grows is through struggle. It’s the only way they grow is through overcoming and learning and growing and being like stretched. Okay, nobody wants to it’s very difficult for someone to create the habit to do that on their own. You need that transformation moment that is just human nature.

People get healthy when they’re near sick or well sick, right? I don’t even realize. Yeah, that is what it is. Healthy struggle is the catalyst for all growth and it’s the catalyst for creating value in the world. You’ve got to be able to be unshaken by the things that come your way in the world.

And that’s what all parents want for their kids. That’s what we want for ourselves, for God’s sakes. It’s resilience. It’s grit. It’s all about healthy struggles and not unhealthy struggles. We should never put on our kids and put in our family and make them happen. That’s like trauma and addiction.

And abuse and neglect and tough love, all these things like that should just go away from one generation to the next. But you know what? Healthy struggles are great. Any athlete or academic or kid overcoming something to learn a certain skill, emotional skill, practical skill, business skill. These are all healthy struggles.

And we have this cycle that we have in our book and we teach it in dinner table. It’s the value creation cycle. And here’s the cycle. It starts with a healthy struggle, which has two rules. You are on the kids team and it’s a safe environment. Mostly Jordan Peterson, make kids do dangerous things safely.

That’s always fun, but yeah, you’re on their team. You’re not against them and it’s a safe environment. And then kids learn to overcome and they learn like all these awesome skills. When they do that, they get capability. That’s the second piece of the four in the cycle. When you overcome healthy struggle, you learn a capability.

And then when you learn the capability and you apply it, you get confidence, inner confidence, not outer confidence. Patting your kids on the back every day is fine. I love you. You’re smart. You’re brilliant. Good job. But inner confidence is the lasting kind. And it comes from the inside. When kids are overcoming things and learning skills, and that ultimately when those three things happen, now they’re ready to create value for other people, that’s the value creation cycle, healthy struggle, capability, confidence, value creation.

And the more that we can help our kids go through those healthy cycles on their team, cheering them on where their coach, not their caretaker, the more we can do that with kids, the stronger they become, the more value they create. So a lot of parents shy away from this. They fight the teacher for better grades, they fight the coach for more playing time, they bring the lunch and water the moment the kid has, myth forgets it.

They clean up all the messes, they buy the stuff for the kids so they don’t have to have the fight. Or the tantrum. These are all not letting the kids go through a healthy struggle. And if you solve a kid’s problem for them all the time, they will grow up into what we call a lazy victim.

It’s worse than entitlement. Like entitlement slides into lazy victim because, when they grow up, they reach an obstacle. You’re not there anymore. And they give up or they blame everybody else, right? It’s my parents fault. It’s the employer’s fault. It’s the government’s fault. We got millions of those people and the way to protect them against that is to go through that cycle.

So that’s why struggle is so critical. It’s how you grow muscle. It’s how you grow everything. 

Mike: And what are some examples of healthy struggles that are very productive that it sounds like you. May want to intentionally include in your family and in some of this stuff that you’ve been talking about in your system, so to speak, that you’re using to run your family.

Scott: Yeah. So the home economy is one version, right? Every gig that a kid gets, every expense they’re in charge of as a healthy struggle, because you want to give kids specifically things that they can do that learn a capability, right? So like my daughter just did the coupon hunt. She found a bunch of coupons for groceries.

Save 28 percent on the grocery bill. That’s a healthy struggle. Now she knows how to get groceries and save a bunch of money. She saved us 50 bucks. That’s a healthy struggle that now she has a capability for life and confidence to go repeat it and do it again in her own family or with her friends.

So here’s a crazy little controversial idea, but I think that skills beat degrees, hands down. Like I’m saying college is fine for certain trade, like certain things, not trades, like certain, like a doctor. 

Mike: Yeah, no but trade schools would make a lot more sense for a lot of people, way more, 

Scott: way more people, or do a gap year and don’t just travel the world.

Do apprenticeships and go create value and see what you love and let that dictate. Do you want to go back to college? You want to go to trade school? What are you going to do? 

Mike: I saw a news article semi recently that apparently there’s a bit of a trend among zoomers in this direction, because apparently there’s a segment of them, at least who have realized that there’s very little commercial value in so many of these degrees that they could go get that would entail burying themselves in debt, they could do that, or they could.

Go this other direction and actually get their education paid for at one of these trade schools, learn to be an electrician or and something that even if AI developed, even if it delivers on what it’s, what some people think it’s going to deliver on, there are trades that are very future proofed even in an AI dominated future, even 30 years from now, again because these trades are so in demand, they can go find a potential employer and Agree to work for that employer for a period of time, get their education for free, and then learn something that is allows them to come right out of trade school, making anywhere from what I was reading 70 to a hundred thousand dollars a year with no debt, and then they go and work and they make money and they also now are learning how this business works.

So if they’re entrepreneurial, they don’t have to go start a business, but if they have that spark in them, they’re now seeing. They’re getting paid good money to see from the inside how this business works. And then they can start their own HVAC or electrical or whatever business, if they’re so inclined and they can ride that to becoming a multimillionaire.

Exactly right. 

Scott: Exactly right. And if skills beat degrees, then we should be working with our kids to build skills and capabilities. And these are not taught in school. School’s an assembly line model. Like you can’t outsource your parenting on this. I want my kids to go learn as much as they want and can about cars and tech and it and lawn mowing and art.

And what’s your goal is to take what your kids are good at and what they love to do and throw fuel on it in any way. Comes alive, go to the museum on it, watch, YouTube videos on it. Give them gigs on it. Like just let them run with stuff and they will learn a hundred times as much as they learn in school.

Literally 100 times as much. So that’s the thinking here. And I don’t want to go on a tirade about college. I went to college, I had a good experience now. This is 20 years ago, but I had a good experience, but it’s crazy to think that, 56 percent of college students get debt.

And don’t graduate. They don’t get the degree. 82 percent of college graduates is the last staff that I heard. I could be a little bit off, but it’s not far off. They don’t use their job. Their career doesn’t even relate to the degree they got. It’s what are you doing here? You four, you pay four years and a hundred grand.

Show that you can complete an assignment and learn how to drink from your friends. It’s wait a second. Let’s think twice. Not saying it’s a bad thing, but think twice. Yeah, these are all healthy struggles that we want kids to do. And the more healthy struggles that kids go through, the more they’ll be unshaken in adulthood.

The more they’ll learn delayed gratification, which is the cornerstone of all financial competency, value creation, delayed gratification. That’s how you become an investor. That’s how you become a giver. That’s how you become smart at saving and spending. So that’s why this is such a critical category, but a lot of parents out of love, they want their kids to have all the things they never had.

They want their kids to have all the comforts and not have to deal with the problems they had growing up. This is what happens with a lot of parents because they love their kids. But that’s why I said earlier, it’s a greater form of love to help them become the person that 

Mike: they could become.

There’s a lot to be said for how that approach can help with anxiety, self doubt, which according to studies I’ve seen are at all time high levels, especially among younger people. That’s right. We see it as if a kid has 

Scott: high capability, but low confidence, it immediately breeds entitled or it breeds anxiety and self doubt.

A lot of mental health issues when they’re like so many teenage girls, they’re so gifted, they’re so talented, they’re so capable, but they’re terrified to ever use it in the world. They’re so scared of bullying and clicks and popularity and social media that they’ll never, branch out and use it to serve others and create value.

And then they just get riddled with anxiety. What are other people going to think? That’s what happens. That’s why the full cycle is so critical. I was just on the, I was just on the phone with Laura Morton. She’s created Anxious Nation, the documentary. She’s friends with Jonathan and the Anxious Generation.

That documentary is powerful documentary. And I encourage everybody to go watch it. It’s such a, it basically takes the book that Jonathan did, brings it to life in a documentary. 

Mike: Do you want to speak to a statement that I’m sure you’ve heard many times, but it just comes to mind that I’ve heard from parents and it’s that if we model these types of behaviors.

Then we’re a lot of the way there, meaning we don’t need to be as deliberate as what you’re talking about and implement a system per se. But if our kids see us living out the values that we want to instill in them and see us bringing value into the world and being a good person and so forth, that’s enough.

What are your thoughts? 

Scott: Yeah, it’s true that more is caught than taught. Okay. I do. Kids are way smarter than we give them credit for. They’re watching all the time, but I think far too often parents are outsourcing their parenting when they shouldn’t be. We outsource kids to school, to learn sports, to learn discipline and character traits, to camp, to learn extracurricular, to church, to learn about God, that you just outsource it, hoping they’re going to get all the information and experience, and they just don’t.

I think I talked to countless older parents. They’re like, where did I go wrong? What did I do wrong? We thought we did everything right. Paid for all the things we needed to. And it’s you can’t outsource parenting. But I think the, I think a better way to look at this is let’s do more with our kids instead of for them.

That’s the way to look at it. It’s, of course we want our kids to see us doing the right stuff, working hard, being loving, being a great spouse to their other, their mom or their dad, like living out, practicing what we preach. That’s a good thing. But more important is let’s do more with our kids than for them.

So here’s a good example. We just got back from a trip and my five year old Sawyer, we get to the airport and we were taking a commercial flight because it was last minute. And we walk in and with our bags and we’re like, okay, Sawyer, what now? He’s five. He’s we got to go to our plane. What do we got to do before the plane?

He’s Oh, we need tickets. I was like, yeah, okay. We’re okay. What airline? We’re like Southwest. And he’s Oh, okay. So he finds Southwest. He goes up there to the lady. He’s Hey, we got to take a flight. And she’s Hey, what’s up, man? How are you? He’s we’re late. She goes, okay I need your ID.

He goes, what’s an ID, right? So he gets our IDs, gives them to her. He goes through the whole process. It takes three minutes longer. And everyone around us is smiling. They’re not mad. And the lady’s happy. He figures it out and we get our tickets. It’s okay, now what, buddy? So now he’s got to take us through TSA.

He’s got to find the gate. He’s got to figure out when we board. See, we could have done all that saved five minutes. But he does it and he learns. We’re doing it with him. There’s a thousand opportunities like that can be coaching moments for our kids rather than doing it for them to be efficient.

That’s critical. See, because you’re going to do stuff for your kids until you do it with them enough where they can do it on their own and then you’re free. 

Mike: Any other just high leverage examples of doing with rather than for that you recommend? 

Scott: Oh, we hunt for this all the time. It’s a mindset, but here’s another great idea.

We got this from one of our hundred families that is in dinner table. They’re now in dinner table, but they were, we studied them. They own a hundred Burger Kings, amazing family, four generations in a row. They said, we always treat our kids two years older than they are as they grow up. Because when you give them more responsibility, they always rise to the occasion.

A seven year old can cook dinner. A six year old could do laundry full, right? I can, an eight year old can chop food and manage the pet fully. Like a nine year old can do the whole trip, family trip, plan it all. I was driving at 12 years old, not on streets, but like off road to get ready for driving.

Okay. Like we should be treating our kids two years older and talking to them that way. So many parents, baby, their kids, and they keep them stuck. 

Mike: Yeah, I was going to say, unfortunately, probably, usually the opposite, two years younger at treating them. Parents 

Scott: don’t realize they’re doing all these things for the kids that the kids could be doing on their own.

When you’re getting up, you know how many parents come into dinner table and they’re like, that 30 minutes before school in the morning is terrible for us. So many reminders, so many arguments, so many like frustrations. I’m exhausted by 9 a. m. One of our tools literally makes it so the kids are really doing everything in the morning, starting at age five or four, even like they’re doing every single thing and doing it right, not just mailing it in.

So you got to fix all of it to doing it right 

Mike: or intentionally doing it wrong. So you learn your lesson that you just need to do it. 

Scott: But I think you need to do everything again for them until they’re 15. Yeah, it’s, this is the thinking that is important. Treat them older than they are.

They always rise to the occasion. Our job is to raise future adults, not more children. 

Mike: Looking ahead, what do you see as some of the most important, we could save, Financial skills, but maybe value creation skills, and that’s one area of value. But I think going back to these three different areas of value, maybe be an even better question looking forward to the future for this generation.

That’s coming up. That is going to be inheriting the world and that we’re going to be counting on to Hopefully bring humanity into a slightly better state than it currently is. What are some of these skills as you see it, that are going to be crucial that we want to instill in our kids? 

Scott: Yeah, this is just subjective, but there’s, there’s high level things and then more intricate things.

The high level thing is the value creation mindset is the, one of the greatest superpowers you can ever give your kid, because now they’re going to go figure that answer out for themselves. To create the biggest value, the most value for everyone around them for the rest of their life. That’s the superpower, with that, it’s delayed gratification, this idea of waiting for something greater in the future, compounding interest.

It’s all abundance, mindset, self reliance. Like these are high level things, character skills, financial competencies. Now I think the future. The truth of the matter is in probably 10 to 15 years, half the degrees people get in college will be obsolete and there will be millions and tens of millions of more jobs that are, we’ve never even thought of right now.

If you asked me this question six months ago, I would have said AI prompt engineer. I’m like, no, the AI is going to be figuring that out on their own. But there’s all these different things like understand machine learning, quantum field, IT technology, but a lot of different trades are going to be still critical for the future.

They might be some of the most powerful skills in the future. But I boil it down to this, teach kids to learn how to learn. You’ve got to learn how to learn because information just comes faster and you got to be able to weed through it. It’s critical thinking. 

Mike: And I would say you. You have to learn how to enjoy learning if you have high standards for yourself and what you want to achieve in your life, just because being able to grit your teeth and get through it is fine, but that’s only going to take you so far, in my opinion.

That’s correct. 

Scott: And I think kids only learn through fun and real life experience, which I mentioned before. And so we need to make learning fun for our kids. We have this saying in our home when we talk about our values every day with the kids at dinner. It’s not some, miserable experience.

It’s awesome. We now have a system and a culture in our home. Our kids say it to each other. They call it out. They cheer each other on. We have this saying until further notice, celebrate everything. Okay. With your kids, it’s such a critical thing, like throwing fuel on what they love to do and what they’re good at is going to set them on fire to learn and they need to fall in love with learning, right?

Like our daughter read 80 books this summer and we did not push her to do that. I’m jealous. Yeah, me too. It was amazing. And many of them were awesome, fun gigs that she loved to do. She gave us all these presentations on toddle twins, always awesome books. But like my sons did a bunch of engineering stuff to learn all about boats.

They were picking up wood at the lake, they’re making giant piles of wood every morning because they knew that was their gig and they, we never told them to. So this is the power of making things fun and mixing them with real life. And I think the more we can do that with our kids, we’ll just enjoy the experience.

Kids are a joy, man. So many parents if you’re, if you have kids right now and you got some pain points, screen time, conflict over chores, behavior issues, they ask you for stuff, you’re worried about entitlement, and you just want the structure, literally click and find me. I want to help you not for your money, but because I want to solve your pain.

I don’t want you to feel that way because you only get 18 years with them. 93 percent of all the time we get with our kids is 

Mike: gone by 18. And unfortunately, another common experience is they’re almost gone before that. There’s a day. Before they’re 18, when they no longer ask to do anything with you anymore.

And that’s it, that’s the end of that. And they will never ask again. And I’ve had this discussion with with a number of people who are older now. And this, in some cases very financially successful in their career and prestige and everything. But this is a common regret in discussions that I’ve had is.

I should have just paid more attention to my family. I should have done some of these things that you’re talking about because, and you had mentioned this earlier, now I have all this money and I’m so cool because I’ve done so many things, but I’m only as, as happy or as satisfied as my unhappiest kid. I 

Scott: mean, that’s a painful reality.

And I know a lot of really rich people, man, they would give it all back for that fix with a marriage fix with a kid issue later in life. You have to actually believe that you, your family is your number one investment. And if you’re going to treat your family like an investment, you need to invest in them.

Kids are not an expense, they’re an investment. Just like employees are not an expense, they’re an investment. You’ve got to think of it that way. 

Mike: And with kids, I guess the return as I see it, if we want to look through the lens of value that you shared is it’s emotional and spiritual. That’s the real return.

If we’re talking about why make this investment very selfishly, what’s the ROI for me? That’s what it is aside from maybe. Contributing to society and we need people or everything collapses. But again, coming back to what’s in it for me personally, 

Scott: there will come a time later in the kid’s life.

They’ll reach their hand back up for yours. If you do this right, like you want a sweeter relationship as they grow older and you’re older than them, you want that sweet coach turned into wise counsel turned into sage in fact I’ll say this is controversial. Okay, so maybe clip this out, but a lot of parents raise kids to be independent.

I think that’s a mistake. You do not want to raise kids to turn 18 and leave forever and never come back for holidays, dinners, summers. You want to be the first FaceTime when something good or bad happens. You want closeness. 18 is not the goodbye cutoff. Maybe it’s where you close the bank of mom and dad.

That’s a good idea. So there’s no more of that weird attachment and entitlement. But what I want is interdependence, not independence, interdependence. You want kids to have, that’s where the roots and wings come from. Okay. You want kids to fly in the world, like just soar and succeed and make a huge dent and create a lot of value, but you also want them interdependent with you where they’re just tightly connected.

They want to be with you. They want to connect. They want to bring their kids around. That’s a sweet grandpa and grandma time. So don’t focus on independent. Like my whole goal is to make you fully independent. No. My whole goal is to make you interdependent. You’re going to be a killer in this world.

You’re going to be an incredible value creator, but we’re also going to be tight and that’s really what legacy is at the end of the day. Like I, I heard a guy, a really old guy say this. He goes, this is last year. We were sitting and he’s a billionaire. And he just goes, man, Scott, I’ll tell you what.

You can raise your kids, right? And then you can have some fun as a grandpa, spoiling them. But if you spoil your kids, you’re gonna, I guarantee you, you’re gonna raise your grandkids. You’re gonna be the parent to your grandkids. He goes, it’s one or the other. There is no middle ground. It’s one or the other.

So pick it wisely, right? I’m like I’ll do the first one. 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Because when he says race, he means race, he doesn’t mean the fun grandpa stuff where you just get to have your fun time. And then once they get a little bit cranky, you’re like, okay, I’ve had enough back to the 

Scott: right. 

Mike: He means 

Scott: scooping.

He means, zooming in and taking care of them because there’s a nightmare with the entitled spoiled kids. They raised that are victim mindset, anxious adults and craziness. That’s what happens. I digress. I think we get the point. I think we just want to help families all over the place. And just like you focus on your health, you focus on your business, you focus on all these different quadrants of your life.

You got to put your family right there at the center because nobody at their deathbed cares that they like lost one more percent body fat or made that extra million. Or spent that extra time in work. They want the people that love them and they love right around their bed, holding their hand. That’s all they want.

Everything they ever owned. They would burn it all in a fire to have that 

Mike: with a bunch of shared 

Scott: positive 

Mike: memories, experiences, 

Scott: right? Here’s a thought to ask yourself. If you could pass on one thing to your kids, what is it? All your stuff, all your knowledge, or all your experiences. It’s. Pick one.

If you just thought about it from that money and stuff, your knowledge or your experiences, which one is it? So it’s a powerful question at dinner to ask your family. I love dinner table combos. I got 200 of them that are just all killers like that. But yeah, like it’s a lot of people say, some say knowledge.

No one says stuff. Everyone says most everyone says experience. Cause that’s where wisdom. Wisdom comes from experience. Kids learn through 

Mike: story. You could say though that I guess it depends how you’re defining knowledge, right? Because a lot of knowledge can come from experience too. And wisdom is just a form of knowledge.

So that’s my thing is I think knowledge is the high, that’s the highest leverage one there. Cause it, it’s it incorporates experience at least to some degree. This we’re coming up on time. So I want to be respectful of that. And again, this is a great discussion. I’m going to sign up myself.

I’m inspired. And it’s actually funny that this is that we’re having this conversation now, because I read books on a rotation of genres, depending on. What is relevant to me now? I like to treat my reading and my study in a just in time manner rather than just in case. What is in front of me right now?

And what do I want to learn about? What do I need to learn about? What am I trying to do? And so parenting is in there and it’s not. I read a lot more about other things in parenting, but it is in there and I do come back to it. And I was Thinking recently that it just, I don’t, I feel like I’m not doing a good enough job.

That’s just being honest. I don’t think I’m doing a bad job by maybe some standards, but so this is serendipitous for me personally. So I’m sold. I’ll be I’ll be signing up. Awesome. 

Scott: I’d love to have you in there. And yeah, I think most parents feel that way. I feel that and I’ve been learning this and doing this with millions of kids for 15 years.

I feel the same way. I think a lot of it is parents don’t, all right, in your business, you have metrics, you have EBITDA, you have revenue goals, you have CAC, cost per acquisition, you know how to track success. I don’t think any parent, number one, no parent has ever been given a roadmap to follow.

You just get a kid. And you leave the hospital or your bedroom pool or whatever, your hot tub, with a kid. And you just, there’s no roadmap, there’s no playbook, and there’s no success metric. And I think that’s a difficult thing because parents always feel like they’re not doing enough. They always feel like too busy, not enough time.

We didn’t get to everything on the list. They’re in the gap, not the game. And they don’t have those metrics. And I think that’s why our operating system is for dinner table is so good because our whole goal is to be like, Hey, there’s little things to track. You don’t have to do everything. We want tiny movements in the right direction that we can celebrate together.

And then that creates compounding, right? Consistency compounds. And you just need to know which levers to work on. And then the needle moves big time. And that’s really what I want for parents is there’s no amount of work you can do for your kids or all these things that are going to make you feel, Oh man, we nailed it, right?

You’re not going to know for 30 years. So our whole goal is to help parents get that confidence, get that peace. I know my kids are going to go to the world unshaken. They’re going to crush. We’re going to be tight. I’m going to have peace and it’s going to be joyful. More margin. That’s the kind of stuff parents need, man, because my highest respect goes towards parents.

Highest respect. I’ve met all these amazing people, business people, billionaires, founder, all these incredible people. But parenting is that one thing where I go, man, hats off. You’re carrying the torch. We need more humans. We need a billion more. That’s right. We need holistically like value creating humans that enjoy life and they carry the mantle forward of our universe.

That’s an important mantle to hold as a parent. So I’ve seen so much go on with families. It’s a thankless thing, right? You’re planting seeds for the long haul. You don’t know how it’s going to go. And you want to make sure that like you get it right. Cause it’s such a critical thing, but I’ll say this parenting is good.

It’s hard in all the right ways. So anyone listening to this, it’s I don’t have kids. I can’t bring kids in this world. Forget this. Like it’s a terrible place. No. Being a parent is like so good for you in all the ways that you want to become an awesome person. It’s the best way to learn sacrifice, and selflessness, and care, and the character traits, responsibility it lifts you up Resilience, not just making excuses.

That’s exactly right it just, it wakes people up. It’s such an incredible. Opportunity. So just like sleeping eight hours is not easy. You got to plan it, eating the right nutrition, like staying healthy. You got to work. It’s hard. It’s a struggle. I was just going to say, it’s a healthy struggle. It’s a healthy struggle.

Parenting is one of the greatest healthy struggles in the world. And so that’s why my highest respect is for family people. There you go, ma’am. 

Mike: That’s my hobby turned business. And again, dinner table dot com, right? It’s where everybody that’s where people should go. Is there anything else you want people to know about?

You’re going to get me some links. Those are going to show notes. 

Scott: Yeah. So scott dot dinner table dot com. We’ll send people there. I’ll give you a link in the show notes to give to everyone. They can follow me on social. I just, I’m scott donald. We give content every day for families. Our book is value creation kids.

It was a Wall Street Journal bestseller. We got another one coming out soon I’m working on. Maybe I’ll tell you off screen what it’s about. But yeah, that’s, those are the main places people can find us. And then last thing too is we have corporate we’re launching our school and business Corporate training program.

So all of employees of businesses get to go through our coaching for cheap. It’s I think it is like a benefit, but it also works on their family. It works on their personal finance. And then we coach them through their actual jobs, how to create more and more value in their work. So we call it the value creation team.

And it really it’s like It’s the best coaching I’ve seen in terms of getting people in unique ability, getting them to go through the next healthy struggle that adds the highest value to the business, driving on all three buckets of material, emotional, and spiritual culture build. So it’s like half family, half value creation at work.

And I think a lot of employers have loved that because they just, they really want to let their teams know Hey, you’re my goal. Like I’ve had a thousand employees. They’re my focus. They, if I serve them well, train them well, support them, give them everything they need, they go crush it. For our company and our clients and they change the world.

And so that’s what we put together to help businesses. So anybody that’s listening that wants to be, learn more about that, they can just message us and we’ll have a call. Love it. Thanks again for taking the time, 

Mike: Scott. Great talk. Thanks, Mike. This was awesome. Have you ever wondered what strength training split you should follow?

What rep ranges you should work in? How many sets you should do per workout or per week? I created a free app. It’s a 60 second training quiz that will answer those questions for you and others, including how frequently you should train each major muscle group, which exercises you should do, what supplements you should consider, which ones are at least worth taking, and more.

To take this quiz and to get your free personalized training plan, go to muscleforlife. show, muscleforlife. show slash training quiz. Answer the questions and learn exactly what to do in the gym to gain more muscle and strength. I hope you liked this episode, I hope you found it helpful, and if you did, subscribe to the show because it makes sure that you don’t miss new episodes.

And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more Easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn’t like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, Mike at muscle for life.

com muscle F O R life. com. And let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you’d like to see me do in the future, I read everything myself. I’m always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.