Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 614 - Redefining Fatherhood with Ned Schaut

Episode Date: October 25, 2021

Ned W. Schaut has a mission to redefine fatherhood. He is a husband to one, a father to five, and a friend to many. He is an Author, Podcast Host, and business owner. He lives in California and can be found outside exploring with his family. Ned has found his greatest opportunity to leave a mark on this earth by embracing his opportunity as a father. He wants to help other fathers make that same discovery to enjoy their adventure of fatherhood. He believes every father who embraces their role intentionally will change the world. His mantra is: Rebel against the view that our actions have little impact, together Create lives engaged in mastering the craft of fatherhood. Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Vuori Performance Apparel: Visit https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order! ➢Magic Spoon Cereal: Visit https://www.magicspoon.com/powerproject to automatically save $5 off a variety pack! ➢8 Sleep: Visit https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT15 for 15% off ALL LABS! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Subscribe to the Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz Time Stamps: #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Did you hit the right button? Fuck, I hope so. Yeah. I think so. I think we're good. Dude, you moved to Hawaii? Yeah. That doesn't suck.

That's not a good idea. How does that actually feel? Do you have, like, island fever? I just heard about that the other day. Not yet. Not yet. People say that you stick it out for two years. What's island fever?

Like, you fall in love with the islanders? No, I think island fever. Ba-dum-ksh. Sorry, I got not only bad jokes, but bad taste as well. Oh well oh man i feel like there's gonna be a lot of dad jokes that fly today but go on oh yeah i love you we finally have the green light oh yeah y'all can let it rip it's great it's hilarious oh island fever island fever is uh people move to hawaii and they stay for two years and then they leave because the island's too small. Right.

So they're like, I got to get out of here. I need to get back to the mainland where there's some space. I think we'll stay there for at least seven years, maybe longer. Yeah. Because like, doesn't everyone end up like kind of running into everyone? It's pretty small town. So we're on the big island. Yeah.

But I mean, we have five kids and we run into my kids' friends everywhere, and we've only been there for five months. We were half a mile down into a cave last Friday, and my daughter runs into five friends from school. Oh, wow. We're like an hour from our house. Yeah. It's so awesome. Yeah. That has a small-town feel like no other. It's pretty cool.

Dude, what's up with surfing? I don't think the three of us would, I think we would have a lot of hard time and I think we'd be really sore from surfing. And you were just saying that sometimes you see people that look really out of shape, but they can handle the waves. No problem. Oh yeah. You'll see either really like older people out there or people who just look like I could just outrun you or outwork you with anything. And then they're just crushing the waves over and over. And I'm, I'm a rookie. I always surfed, but maybe two, three times a year, which isn't really enough to call yourself a surfer, but now we're in the water probably five times a week. Um, me and one

of my kids at least. Um, and we're walking distance to the water, which is super cool. Um, and it is, it is some work, but yeah, uh, we're getting it, the water, which is super cool. And it is some work. But, yeah, we're getting it. But it's going to take probably years. How old are your kids? I know you mentioned before you have five children, right? Yes, because we're planners. What ages are we dealing with here?

So we have a 15-year-old and then a 13-year-old, the one planned child. And then the surprise, I'm i'm pregnant again okay we got twins coming yeah they're 12 so we had four under four and we call that the dark year we don't remember it and no one talks about it and so we had three girls and a boy and my wife and i were like our son should have a brother you know that'd be great be great. Let's have another kid. So we had a fourth girl and she's eight. So we have an eight year old, two 12 year olds and a 15 year old boy. I would go for round two. I'd have to get the old snip, snap, snip, snap back. But, uh, I don't know. I don't know. We see people with little kids now and I'm like, i don't know that we want to do

that toddler age again yeah the whole diaper thing again i don't mind the diapers i it's that two to three year old that you're chasing around who's freaking out in the grocery store or whatever all they say at that age is i can do it i can do it and everything takes them a thousand years to do right you're like i know you can buckle your seatbelt but let me fucking buckle it for you oh sorry sorry i didn't mean to uh don't repeat daddy to get hyped up like that uh it was just a moment i just slipped and kids repeat themselves i mean there's a great story of when i was um i think i was three years old and my parents were young parents and my grandmother was changing my diaper. And so I'm like two or three, whatever, I could talk.

And my grandma's changing my diaper, and I'm throwing a fit, and she's like, Santa's not going to come. Santa's not going to come if you don't let me do this. And I said, fuck Santa. And my mom is in the background going like, okay, oh my gosh, we're going to have to start paying attention to what we say. Right? Because now, but she's over there laughing too, right?

She's laughing about it. And my grandma's face, you know, Catholic, nine children, just mortified that her little grandson just said this. So, yeah, we got to be careful about what we say around our kids. I'm totally screwed. My son's going to say the weirdest shit. I can't wait, though. Christmas ain't too far off. You still feel that way about Santa Claus? No, no. Well, hey, you know what? our kids i'm totally screwed my son's gonna say the weirdest shit i can't wait though christmas ain't too far off you still feel that way about santa claus no no hey you know what uh i am the

man so uh no that guy's great a quick note on that real quick and i i don't have any kids by the way um but my buddy does he has a daughter um and she was two and he was playing mortal combat she's two and a half he's playing mortal combat. She was two and a half. He was playing mortal combat in his room, right? He's like, Hey, it's Seema. Watch this. So once it got to the fatality part, she comes out, she's watching the screen and then she goes, Oh, and she's literally going through the whole fatality scene. She's seen enough times.

She's seen enough times. Then she faints on the ground, goes on her back and goes and i'm just like well these kids are just they're just mimics dude i gotta be careful with that because like uh my so my 13 year old was watching i don't know what movie it was like pretty gory right like she's into like horror flicks right now for some reason well other than you know it being halloween but then my son was kind of like i look over and he's just like whoa and i'm like whoa like he shouldn't be like he doesn't know what's going on, but I don't want this like printed in his brain somewhere. And then that night he like, it was just screaming his face off in the middle of the night.

So I'm like, see, so like, I've been trying to, uh, avoid him watching that stuff, but you brought up Santa. Uh, and so this actually, I'm curious about this with your kids. Cause with my son, I want to be like, I'm actually Santa. Because I didn't have a chance with the other one. And I don't want him to be the first nor the last to know about Santa. So what's your take on when kids should find out? Yeah, that's a great question.

First off, never get roped into doing the elf on the shelf fuck that oh my gosh i wish nobody gave that to us what is it bullshit it's uh you you you get this elf and then you tell your children that this elf is there to watch them during the month of december and so then but it's a naughty elf so every night the elf has to do something in the house so that the kid every morning wakes up looking for like, did he spill the, did the elf spill the cereal or whatever? It's a freaking nightmare. And you put the elf all over the place. Yeah.

Yeah. It sounds frightening. What the fuck? Yeah. It's terrifying. You wake up and the elf's in a new spot staring at you when you wake up. It's so, it's so bad. My teenagers like it now because they did it last year for our seven-year-old.

So my take on Santa is it is tough. So it's tough. I almost wish we hadn't have done it and just had very from the very beginning because our kids were bummed when they found out. Yeah. But, you know, because it's an interesting conversation. So we were a faith-based family. So we do we do have, you know, like it's an interesting conversation. So we were a faith-based family. So we do, we do have, you know, like we're Christians. So then that's the question that comes up, right?

You're, you're, you're, we brought our kids into our bed. So that's kind of like a real safe place in our house. So we're going to have a hard conversation. So the first time was with Brooklyn, probably, you know, nine years old, eight years old, something like that. So we tell her, and then when we decided to tell Violet, Brooklyn was there for that, you know, nine years old, eight years old, something like that. So we tell her. And then when we decided to tell Violet, Brooklyn was there for that, you know, so we kind of let our kids be a part of it. Yeah. And so then when we told our twins, that was our hardest because our son was bumming. And then they ask, they're like, well, what about the tooth fairy? Well, what about this? And you're like, yep, yep, yep. So then the question comes up, well, what about, you know,

is God real? You know, and that's the hard one where you're like, yep. So then the question comes up, well, what about, you know, is God real? You know, and that's the hard one where you're like, yes, and this is why, you know. So for me, if I could do it again, I probably wouldn't do the Santa thing. I would from the very beginning say, it's me and still make it fun. So to end the conversation, you could ask whatever, but we say it is real in the fact that Santa shows up, but it's me. So it's still real. It's just not the way you thought it was because the spirit of Santa is real. And then if you are religious, the Holy Spirit is real as well. Right.

Is that how you can kind of. Yeah, I think that you can use that analogy to help your kid understand. But I think that it's a moment where it starts to create doubt for your kid you know is another hammer gonna drop when i'm 15 or when i'm 18 like what else is coming right because i mean first off the whole baby thing right you got this is all this simulation yeah so yeah it's what are their lies you got to tell me dad dad? Tooth fairy? Santa Claus? Do you even love me? Yeah. I have a quick question for you guys. Andrew, did you guys all have Santa as a kid?

Like, did you guys? Yeah. Yeah, I did. Yeah, my kids. Even, I mean, you as a kid. Yeah, yeah, me. And your kids. Yeah, and my kids, yeah.

Yourself too? Yeah. How about you? I want to say third grade was when I kind of like I already had the assumption because I think the tooth fairy thing when my mom would wake me up for school. Like, get out of here. Like, you're trying to take whatever the tooth fairy left me. And I'm like, she's doing it. Okay. But I didn't put the things together.

But that's when I started like kind of being curious. But again, I'm the youngest of three and my older brother and sister are like seven or eight years older. So it was like like all the I don't know, whatever you want to call it. Like the theatrics of it all was like way over by time. Like I was old enough. They were over it. Yeah. Everyone was over it.

So I was just like, yeah, it's actually it's not real. So my mom and cousins would tell us, hey, guys, so this like we knew Santa wasn't real since we were like, we never believed in Santa because it's Santa. And our parents never entertained that stuff. But they're like, so just so you guys know, American children, they believe that Santa comes. So when you go to school, the month of December, don't ruin it for them. Yeah. Play along. Like we were told

to play along with it yeah that's why this is so um it's entertaining it's it's fun that's kind of cool i think that's a good perspective hey other people are growing up with different things uh don't go and mess with their beliefs let them believe what they want to believe yeah even though santa's bullshit but it's fun i i like it they're like asking you to like write a list out of uh what what santa should bring you and you're like nothing because that motherfucker's not real and and then you know like usually like the the main big gift is from santa right and they're so happy that santa brought that to them and you know mom and dad brought him some bullshit like dude that's yeah i went to the mall one year. I was so scared.

I'm like, I do not want to sit on this man's lap. I know he's not real. Don't put me on his lap. Yeah, if he's not real, who is he? Who is this random man? And why is he excited to have children sitting on his lap? Tell me more about your surfing, because you were mentioning that you do this often with your kids. And so how do the kids, are they receptive?

Because one area that I think is really confusing as a parent is like when to kind of push and encourage and shove and maybe not even only encourage and push, but like really shove, kind of forcefully like, hey, I would love to see you do this or you're doing this today. Like we set out to do this kind of thing. And even when they're crying, like, no, I want you to get up there and swing at the baseball or, you know, because we know that a lot of times once the kids push past a certain, uh, uh, certain degree, they will usually enjoy it and they'll usually have a great time. But I'd imagine surfing's got to be really hard. I mean, getting the salt water in your face and getting used to the waves and everything. So

how does some of that work out? Yeah. So I've always been drawn to surfing and I've always wanted to live right next to the ocean so that we could surf. It's just something I'm drawn to. And, uh, but I've only just done it a few times a year. And so moving now we get to go a lot. Now, when we got there, I was like, like okay who wants to surf and my son and his twin sister were especially like we want to surf i'm like okay well this is what it's going to take right so first we went on boogie boards for i don't know the first 15 times or whatever and the first time out with my son he started crying you know just got really worked up because you know wave hits you you get pulled down there's massive respect you got to have for the ocean, right? Because it's not just,

let me jump on my skateboard and roll down the street or jump on my snowboard and go down the hill. These are waves that I have no control of or some sneaky wave that shows up that is bigger than you had anticipated. So my son, the first time, dad, get me out of here. I got to get out of here. I got to get back to the, to the beach. the beach and i'm like no calm down take a deep breath we got this i'm new at this too but we're in a safe spot and i wouldn't bring you somewhere that's not safe so then fast forward five months later and we're on a beach where there's other a lot of people and there's like six foot waves which are pretty big and he's dropping down a face of a wave with the biggest smile on his face going like, dad, did you see that? You know, wanting to call his uncles after to tell him. And so, you know, it's that daily going out though, you know, like with

anything, it's not like you can do it a couple of times to have good, you know, a good time and respect for it. So that's him. My daughter, his twin sister, that's definitely like, I've got to push her to go out. So now my son follows the swells. He's looking at the ocean every day. He's in love with it. My daughter, I got to push her. I'm like, you said you wanted to surf. If you want to call yourself a surfer, you got to go. So we actually have more arguments, her and I about it. And then we fight a little bit more in the water about it too, but that's because she doesn't like to be told what to do. So then she just gets thrashed a little bit.

And you're trying in some weird way to play this game of allowing them to come to their own conclusions and to maybe just recognize the value and the fun in doing this stuff. And it's very hard at a really young age to recognize like, oh, this is a really wonderful opportunity to have with my dad. Right. I can, I can notice that till you're like 35. Right.

Unfortunately, I don't notice it when you're a little kid. And so how do you kind of get them in anything that they're trying to do? How do you get them to that spot to where you can let it kind of sink in at some point that it's more like in their best interest and it comes from themselves rather than you forcefully saying something or doing something. So I actually had a situation with my son recently where I messed up in this because I think kind of the question is, how do you one let your kid enjoy something, but let them make their own decisions.

And so we moved to Hawaii and our kids had to go to a new school and I had teed it up for my son. I found this school that I thought he would thrive and you hike outside. There's not a lot of rules. And so I took him to visit that school and I said, okay, you can choose this school or you can go to the public school. And I mean, I had it all teed up, but I did say you can choose. And so then he chose the public school, the school that I'm like, why do you want to go here at all? And I have this terrible dad moment. He's sitting on the couch and I'm standing up and I said, I'm really disappointed in

the decision that you made. And my wife is like, dude, you are a dick. You said that he could make this decision and now you're making him feel bad to the point where in the car he was like, told my wife. I think i'm just gonna choose To go to the other school because it's what dad wants And so then i'm like I really messed up because I was manipulative in the way that I teed up, you know He wasn't ready to make that decision. So I shouldn't have ever given him that option But if I want to teach him to be a man and make decisions for himself

So I had to go to him and i'm like, dude, I'm really, really sorry. It's my bad, but I respect your decision. I'm sorry. I made you feel bad. So then what was cool is I actually got another opportunity to do it right. So he wanted to play football. He's been begging for years to play football. And we've always said no, because he's on, he's on the smaller side and we moved to Hawaii and he's like, can I please play football? And I'm like, okay, let's do it. You can, you can play. So he gets out there. We do all this fiasco to get him on the team, like find the birth certificate, all this

stuff, whatever. And he goes to the first practice. And then the next day he comes to me and he's like, yeah, I don't think I want to do that after all these years. And so in this moment, I was not tied to the outcome. I was okay if he played or didn't play. So I was given an opportunity to let him make a decision without me being tied to the outcome. So I'm like, here's how I make decisions. And I gave him three ways to make

a decision. I said, go take a few minutes, go walk down to the beach, think for yourself. And then you come back and let mom and I know. And so he said, I want to play. He came back a half hour later. He said, I want to play. That night, it was so dope. I was watching him at the football field. He returned to kickoff, which he had never done. And he scored a touchdown, just like for practice with his friends.

And all the kids are high-fiving him and stuff. But he made that decision. It wasn't me making it for him. So that level of confidence and I can make decisions and how do they work out for me was all him. So anyways, that's just a couple of stories to share about that for him. Why was it exactly that? Like, did he have his first practice and it was just really hard on him physically?

And he came back and he was just kind of distraught about it. I think that the last five years, he's really just been involved in like skateboarding and scootering and surfing independent stuff where it's like, start when I want, stop when I want. Um, so I think it was realizing, Oh man, I got to start when everybody tells me to, I got to do what everybody tells me to, which is different than your kind of single sport, you know, skateboarding, you can just do what you want. Yeah. And you also, uh, you get thrown into a position, you know, you might like every kid has the idea, like I'm going to be the quarterback or I'm going to be a running back. And then you get there and you find out that that's not really your best talent in accordance to some of the other children that are there.

And so they're like your offensive line or defensive line. You end up kind of being pushed into these other directions. And it probably turns out to just be something that you never expected. You probably thought that it would be, it would go one way because you see it on TV. All the camera follows really is the ball. Right. So you're thinking it's going to be really fun.

You'd be throwing the ball around and catching it and stuff. And it could turn out you're in a position where you don't even touch the ball. Yeah. The other thing he said was these kids have been playing together for like three years. So they were all homies. They knew each other small town very local vibe they were all cool to him but um he was just like i don't know what i'm doing out there so we bought madden and we started playing so he could figure it all out yeah yeah that's awesome this awesome real quick this makes

me wonder too when i don't even know you can ask a when. But with that specific decision that your son made, because you want to teach a kid that when they start something new, they're going to suck. And they kind of have to like if they do want to get good, they'll have to spend time and probably years doing it so that they can improve. So if he did come back and he was like, I don't want to do it, it's too hard. And you, you know, you gave him that decision, right? Would you have thought that that's something that you should maybe try to encourage him to do so he, he can actually give himself the time to get better.

Or would you have been like, all right, cool. You don't have to do it. Yeah. I think that's really important because especially in our world, I feel like kids think things are supposed to come easy and they don't like anything worth doing. Anything really good takes a crap ton of work. I think in this situation, when I had teed up him making the decision, it was like, Hey dude,

if you want to go all in on surfing or something else, then I'm cool with that. So for me in the moment was more redemption for him to make a decision, but it couldn't have been because it was too hard. So, you know, one of the decision-making pieces I said is, okay, think about yourself in five months, looking back, like season is over. How do you feel about it? Don't not do it because it's hard or because you don't know it. Like that's all doable. Like I'll throw the ball to you a hundred times a day. We'll practice. Um, it's just, if you don't want to do it, it's not, then don't do it. But if you don't want to do it it's not then don't do it but if you say yes I'm going to hold your ass to doing it right and

what about so like kind of along the same lines so like with my daughter whether it was like just playing soccer in like at the park or whatever it was what if she ever lost she was like all right I'm done I don't want to do this ever again but if she won she would

like celebrate and run around all over the place and like rub it in everyone's face. So I'd always be like, like, baby, you got to you got to win with class. But it's like, OK, she's like sick. She has no idea what the fuck that means. Right. So I guess how can we teach kids how to win with class and then also not be sore losers? I mean, I think our athletes kind of in some sense set a bad example for our kids as far as winning with class goes. Like all we do is celebrate our wins and we don't really let

people see into our, our failures. If you call them that as much, or if we throw a fit about it, I always hated that coach's kid who was a little bitch about losing or striking out or whatever. And we shouldn't allow that. You know, I think that losing and you guys know, right, you're disciplined people, like you grow in the pressure of things. And so I think it's really important to find ways to teach our kids that losing is a great thing if you reflect on why you lost the game. And if you just put your all in, you know, I asked my daughter, she's a big soccer player and she's 13. And I asked her, Hey, does it suck when you get obliterated by another team? And she's like,

no, as long as we progressed in that game. And so I'm like, okay. So that was just at my son's football game this Saturday. I was talking to her and she said that. And so there must be some kind of tone we're setting in our home where she gets that right that as long as you're making and we're really trying to celebrate effort right now so even right now when our kids are coming home dad i got an a plus on this and i got a c plus on this i'm asking well it you know not to discredit the a plus but was it difficult no the math is so easy in this class i'm like well then that isn't really something to celebrate what about the c it was really hard science whatever dude that's awesome you put the effort in to get that so i think it's important for us to celebrate the effort and help them to

see how to grow in the failures i love that and then just really quick back to what like what mark was talking about almost like how do we teach them gratitude and appreciation? One thing that I definitely absolutely adored was like when my parents or uncles or whatever would be like, oh, you guys have it so easy. Back in our day, we had to do this and that. And it's just like, well, dude, I'm not you anymore. We're not in that time anymore. And then I find myself like, you know, my daughter's like trying to find something on TV. It's like, dude, we had one TV and we had to wait, you know, and'm so i'm like oh fuck here i go i'm being my parents right now do you think there's any room for comparison just to kind of maybe help them appreciate more

what we have right now or is that just like since it made me feel like shit it's just not going to make them feel any better either yeah i think it's interesting right it's hard because we just have the perspective of we're parents and we're old now, whatever. So we're seeing our kids. But just two things that come to mind is one, snacks. Like I never had snacks in my home growing up. Are you kidding me? Costco, you go buy like a thousand Rice Krispie treats or fruit snacks or whatever. That was never in my home growing up. And now my kids have it and they're like, oh, I don't want, I don't want that Rice Krispie treat. We don't have any more of this i'm like you son of a gun like are you kidding me you entitled little punk uh so i do think that there's just like kind of a wealth that we have that we don't we're not

really aware of and so that's interesting to to kind of balance that and then yeah netflix my kids would be happy at night instead of us all watching a family show together if we were to watch a show uh they would much rather each have their own laptop and watch their own thing. And so we are so you can only watch a half hour of TV twice a week from Monday to Thursday. So two nights they can watch a half hour show. But we were like, find something together to create the gratitude piece of like and the sacrifice piece. Right. piece of like, and, and the sacrifice piece. Right. Um, so I do think it's important not to give into their every desire because I mean, I see it in my kids. Sometimes they become entitled little punks and I'm like, okay, how do I balance this? Because we are, we are in a great place and I don't want them to be those kids who suck at life because they had it relatively easy. Don't you think a good way to beat technology is through doing like physical stuff and just presenting the kids with like a lot of options? Like going and surfing, it seems pretty freaking cool.

Or just the fact that you're even going to the beach and you can play in the sand or, you know, any of those kind of options. to the beach and you can play in the sand or, you know, any of those kinds of options. I think a lot of times there's a lot of kids that are on tablets and phones and different things like that. And they, they end up on these devices for kind of hours on end. And I, and, and a parent, a lot of times we'll say, I can't believe how long my kid is on their tablet. But what I usually am thinking about is, well, I just wonder, like, I wonder what it would be like if you gave that kid a bunch of different options. Like, hey, let's go for a walk together. Let's go walk the dog together. Let's go ride the bike together. Or it does put you out because now you have to go and do something. But what are some of your thoughts on

that? Yeah. So one on, depending on our kid kids age, we have different levels of time they can have on their devices. So like our daughter's phones will tick tock won't work anymore. Snapchat won't work anymore after a certain amount of time every day. But I think as a dad, especially, you have a huge opportunity to just say, hey, we're going outside or we're going to go do this or we're going to go do a workout. And they are always going to say, I don't want to, I'd rather do this. And so just saying, okay, that I didn't ask you if you wanted to, but we're going to go do this. And I would say within, you know, 10, 15 minutes of whatever you're doing, the kids psyched they're outside, right? Cause you, we know, like once we get outside, once we see the green, once we're enjoying it, there's just this new level of life that comes in you versus like looking at something. So, uh, I just say as a dad, just set that tone, just go do it. And then you also, although you might be like, ah, there's other things I want to do.

I think real quick, you're enjoying yourself as well because you're making a connection with your kid. It's less about what you're doing, but you're making connection outside. So it's super critical to, yeah, and get outside, just go on a walk, whatever. It's a weird way to think about it because we're talking about humans, talking about kids.

But when somebody gets like a horse horse they talk about a time period where there's like a there's a breaking in of the horse you know and you kind of need to break your kids in and like have them uh understand certain disciplines and certain things or are not going to be uh compromised you know some some form of exercise should be performed every single day doesn't have to look like any sort of workout, but there should be some activity for your child to do that's physical. There should be some sort of activity that your child does every day that is geared towards learning. There should be something that your child does every day that's geared towards just their entertainment, just for them to kind of relax and have a good time. I mean, these are just like really simple things.

It's as simple as brushing your teeth, in my opinion. Yep. So we have morning routine for the kids that they all got to get up. They can choose what they want to do, but they have to kind of hit these marks to make sure that they hit those things. The kids have to read a book a month for me or with me. They would say it's just for dad, but they get $50 into like a savings account for whether they want to start a business or college or a car. So there are things that we're doing in our home to make sure that we're active, that we're learning, and it's not just up to the school to decide what my kid needs to know.

I think a cool thing, though, is that it seems that a lot of these things you're doing, you're not just telling them to do, you're doing with them because, again, no kids here. But the technology thing seems really tough like when you mentioned netflix right i realized that when i was a kid i didn't have the ability to binge watch anything like that wasn't even possible because it was tv there wasn't tv where i could record shows yet either so it was just like wait a week to watch the second episode right or a season right exactly you had to wait till the next week for the tv show you wanted to watch now if there's anything on netflix you could watch the whole season and a lot of adults do that i've done that before i try not to anymore but i'm like right so you literally can't like do you ever binge watch anything do i yeah currently uh i binge watch Ted Lasso. Okay. But did you kids see that?

No. I try to balance it. So I want them to also be able to just like do whatever because we go pretty hard, right? So I do want to have some rest. And so I do think it's important to teach my kids rest. Not that watching, you know, three hours of television is necessarily the best rest. But watching, you know, three hours of television is necessarily the best rest. But I try to balance it because I could just go hard all day from 4 a.m. until I pass out.

And I think it's an important balance. My wife helps me with this. Yeah. To make sure that we're also just spending time together doing something silly. It doesn't always have to be hyper intentional. Gotcha. You mentioned seeing things through the vantage point of your child, and I think that's really great advice for any parent. But I also think it's good advice in life in general with just any relationship they have just to kind of envision like, oh, I wonder what it took for Andrew to get here today. You know, I wonder, you know, maybe maybe so and so is upset because it was

raining out or something and maybe their day is just rough and maybe that's why they barked at me this morning when I first saw him or whatever. How do you get yourself to do that? Because sometimes it's very difficult, especially like if your kids are like beating the shit out of each other or something like that. Sometimes there's these moments where, you know, you're you're getting kind of moved emotionally by, you know by just the noise of the house and what's going on around you. So how do you kind of engage in seeing stuff through their lens? Yeah, I think we're just naturally pretty selfish people. So usually we show up to something and it's like, how does this affect me?

How does it impact me? Or this is just an inconvenience to me. How does this affect me? How does it impact me? Or this is just an inconvenience to me. So I try to show up and we're judgmental of others, whether it be our kids, our wife, our spouse, or other people. But it's because we're not paying attention to what their story might be, what their life might be going through, or what does the world look like through their eyes?

So something that I've been trying to do lately is ask myself better questions when I show up to something like, how am I showing up to this? How are my kids going to view me? So at the end of the night, when I'm falling asleep and I'm thinking about how awesome I was today and what mattered to me today, what are my kids thinking about? What is my wife thinking about? wish she would do differently or something like that, but she could probably do the same for me, but she doesn't. So how do I look at the day through her eyes or through my kid's eyes? And so I'm trying to show up into situations more and go, what might be going on with this person? Who is this person? And thinking about how I can show up as a friend or as a partner to them versus what can they do for me, right? So it's just like giving a gift giving a gift feels really good getting a gift sometimes feels awkward right so how can i show up for people and it not be about me and i think a question to ask myself to help me do that is what does this moment look like

through their eyes gotcha when you had your first kid um i don't kid, I know we're like seeing like the sum of like all or the I forgot what the word is, but you have five kids now. You got some experience. Yeah. You have a lot of confidence right now as a father. What was that like your first one? Because that's where I'm at right now. And it's like, dude, am I going to be what he needs to be? Like, how did you build up the confidence to know that you were going to have his back and everything was going to be fine? Uh, yeah, I had my first kid at 22, 23. So I was a baby and had a kid. Um, and so, yeah, I would say that Ned, 22 year old Ned talking up here would be a lot different than 38 year old Ned um it's tough but I think that the thing I would have liked to have known is that I have what it takes already inside of me and that's really what Rebell and Create is about for me is it's very obvious that the mom has what it takes right I mean she grows a human being she grows a human being. She delivers a human being, which is so gnarly and then feeds it with her body. And then you're like, what the heck am I supposed to be doing here? And so I think a lot of dads stumble into fatherhood because they don in terms of their role. I think they feel like maybe like disempowered because of that reason.

Yeah. And I think that they, I mean, moms are killer. Moms are awesome. I mean, you can't touch that, but you also have a very significant role in this kid's life. So I think at any age, whether you're having your first kid at 22 or 32, you're still going to kind of stumble into like, whoa, whoa, who am I? So I do think that a father has an enormous role in the child's life. And it goes to show, I mean, look at our world. If you look at a lot of the problems that we have, you could point it to if this situation had a great dad involved, chances are it would be less. I mean, human trafficking, suicide, our prison rates, our behavior, you know, kids with behavior disorders. There's a lot of issues because a dad's not

present, but I think it's because nobody's inviting the dad in to know who he is. Well, and our court systems favor the women as well. And there's some really weird issues with that. Like if somebody gets divorced and then another man comes into the person's life um i mean there's all kinds of weird things that can happen the other person can end up being their legal guardian and like all kinds of weird shit happens and more recently uh we've seen the laws change a little bit uh to be more balanced i guess but what your opinion, what are some of the reasons why we see so much, I guess, so we see so many kids growing up, growing up without any dads. I think there's some 30 million estimated around 30 million people in the United States that grow up without a father. So what, what do you think some of the reasons are for that? What do you think some of the reasons are for that? Yeah, I think that we don't celebrate family as a culture.

I don't think we celebrate marriage as a culture and we don't celebrate dads. And yeah, dads have been jackasses. Men have done stupid things and not shown up, but it's it's as perpetual like their dad didn't do it. Their dad didn't do it, their dad didn't do it. And so there's this habit that I think us men who have found ourselves on the adventure of fatherhood today have an opportunity to stop and look in the mirror and go like, who am I? Why do I not show up well? And then what do I do to change that? Because all of us at the end of the day want to be respected, valued, needed, loved, leave a mark on this earth. A lot of us are looking for that in our hobbies or our careers. But I think our very first primary place to find those things

is in our home. It's an amazing opportunity to show up and go to battle every day. Like I want to jump on the grenade for all my homies, right? And be that guy. Why don't we do that for our wife and kids? You know, because in the moment, if I'm with you guys in battle, it's a very obvious, this happened right now. I jumped on the grenade and all my brothers are like, whoa, this guy, but to do that for your wife and kids, you're talking like 50 years worth of jumping on tiny grenades and nobody's watching and nobody cares and nobody notices. But at the end of your life, you're getting what you really want, which is this old lady by your side I mean, how awesome is that when you see an old couple? They're like we've been married 70 years like whoa

That's heavy shit And then you're at your deathbed and your kids and your grandkids and your grandkids are around but that only comes from That daily showing up as this man you were designed to be But we don't celebrate that we don't invite people into that And so that's why I think we don't, we have a lot of those problems. When you do it right, you have a wonderful opportunity to bring the garbage out to the road the next day. You know, you have a wonderful opportunity to look forward to somebody buying you socks for Christmas. It's just like, there's, there's not a lot there. You're right. There's

not a lot of celebration, but I think if you have your eyes open and if you're paying attention, there's some really wonderful and beautiful things going on, especially with your kids, seeing the way they act in certain situations. Sometimes you're like, oh, like that kind of sucks. They acted that way. But maybe they saw some of that for me, like where they cussed or something like that or acted inappropriately. Or maybe you just don't even get them out as much as you should. And they don't know how to act at a restaurant. And there's, you know, things like that. But there are other things if you're keeping your eyes open where you're like,

that's actually pretty badass that they're doing. I remember my son when he was playing baseball, if he would, no matter what he did, whether he struck out or they made contact with the ball, whatever happened when he was up at bat, he would always sprint. no matter what he did, whether he struck out, whether he made contact with the ball, whatever happened when he was up at bat, he would always sprint. So he would sprint. If he struck out, he would sprint to the dugout. If he got a hit, he would sprint towards first base.

If he popped the ball up in the air, he would sprint. And I remember other parents were like, is that your kid? And I was like, yeah, that's my son. And they were like, that's awesome. He doesn't pout. He doesn't, he's got, you know, he doesn't make a face or nothing. He just sprints right back to the dugout. I was like, yeah, I don't, I don't know. I didn't, I didn't teach him how he picked it up from something. I don't know where he got it from, but it's cool. But I think if you keep those eyes open, there are actually a lot of really cool things going on around you. Yeah. There's a ton of wins, but you do have to have

your eyes open to see him. Cause you really, I mean, in anything, it's easy to focus on the negative. You know, I'm curious because, okay, so I was raised by a single mother. Um, I was also lucky enough that she put me around a lot of men in my youth. Uh, she didn't have a disdain for masculinity in any sense of the word. Oddly enough, I would say that she was, she had a lot of masculine traits. For example, I never saw her throughout my whole childhood. I was trying to think as we were talking, did I ever see her have any emotional outbursts? Never once. Um, which is why like to this day, it's very, I've never had an emotional outburst, but I've had to figure out tools to be able to handle my emotions. And I've had to be very, I'd had to, I had to have intent upon building a group of guys that we can actually talk about things in the way we feel, because I've found that in relationships as a man, sometimes you can't always let your kind of things in a healthy manner, it's good.

And I found that in my 20s. I actually found a group of people that I could do that. Nice. So my question now is like for men. First off, for you talking to your son, how do you teach him how to handle his emotions? Because one thing you hear from a lot of women is men never share their emotions or they're cold or they're like they don't know how to deal with them and then the men that you find that aren't able to deal with their emotions in adulthood well they can end up being somewhat dangerous because they don't know how to handle those things they don't know how to feel them

parse them out that's the reason why i journal a lot. Like they don't know how to deal with them. So they end up having outlets. Um, and that's also why when it comes to suicide, they're more lethal with it because they'll get it done. So for you and your son, how do you, how do you teach him about that? How, how do you teach him how to handle that? So that as he becomes an adult and a man, he knows how to handle it in a healthy fashion, healthy fashion. becomes an adult and a man he knows how to handle it in a healthy fashion healthy fashion yeah yeah well i'm a pretty emotional dude so i'm easy to show my emotions so my and that's good and bad at times right because if i'm really pissed my kids say that i make this face uh that is like oh that's dad's pissed off face um so with my son i think one of the things i have to remember is that he's half of me

right so he is a little version of half of me so some of the things that i have to work through some of the things that i have to feel one i got to know that he's probably going to feel the same way but then i need to at least have the tools for myself to know how to handle them so that i could teach him and hopefully teach him younger than I learned them myself. I mean, there's been lots of times where I have been a little too harsh with him and I'm laying in bed going, damn it, I can't let him fall asleep like this, nor can I, and go in and sit next to him and be like, dude, I shouldn't talk to you like that. I'm really sorry. So what I've learned with him is when I get into it with my wife, I just need a minute to walk away. Otherwise I know I'm just going to kind of just blow through the roof and be

really pissed. So if you could just give me like two minutes to just go gather my thoughts, I'm not going to be an idiot. So what I've realized with my son is instead of cockfighting with him, when we're going at it about something, I can see in his face that he just needs a minute. So I need to be the dad and be like, bro, just go think about this for a minute and I'll go think about it needs a minute. So I need to be the dad and be like, bro, just go think about this

for a minute. And I'll go think about it for a minute. And then we can come back because he just needs a minute to process because that's what I need. So I think once you understand your own emotional and tell it, you're intelligent about your own emotions, then you're able to come alongside your kids since they are a part of you. And then if you can understand your spouse as well and realize these kids are half of her, then it's good. Like I know how to handle my wife's emotions, know how to push her buttons or how to show up as a good dude. I could do the same with my kids. And as a dad, I got to show up to help them with their emotions. So I think in our own household, we don't think about

stuff that way. Sometimes I think also things seem to be like immediate, like they seem to, uh, they, they seem to like, it feels like you have to address them immediately. But, uh, I've learned in my own household that giving stuff a couple of minutes, uh, really helps. And even sometimes a day, um, there's been situations where my kids were fighting. Um, and you know, I might say, Hey, say hey you know split apart go to your room and i'll have them at least get apart for a while and then maybe like two hours later i'll say we're you know i'll actually tell them at that time i'll say we're gonna talk about this but i don't talk to them then because they're irrational or one of them's you know crying so

much they're doing that weird cry crying trying to breathe trying to like not cry thing that kids sometimes do and it's it's not a great time for a conversation it's not a great time to say hey well why did you do that to your brother and they're just it's just not you're not going to get much of a resolution so i think waiting uh a beat can really be helpful yeah for sure real quick we need to mention something here um we have a we work this company called piedmontese right and they have some amazing meat i think since this is an episode about fatherhood we need to talk to people about meat barbecuing barbecuing yeah that's the ultimate dad thing right that is the ultimate dad thing any good at that actually uh not so good but i'm i'm getting better because uh now where we live

our kitchen's so small that i'm have to go outside and barbecue so i'm getting better i could do a tri-tip pretty good but uh anything else i wouldn't really say my that's a good that's a good start really good start i was actually where i started too yeah you'd be lazy like me and just stick it in the air fryer. That's what I do. The air fryer is awesome. I think it is important to talk about food in general with how you structure stuff in the family. But have you ever heard of Piedmontese beef before? I have not.

Yeah, it's a beef that has a lot leaner than most other beef. So if you compare a ribeye to a ribeye or a filet to a filet, it usually has about half the amount of fat. So we really like it, really enjoy it. And it's been huge for us. Yeah, my son, he turned nine months yesterday, and he had his first little go at Piedmontese ground beef last night. Yeah, it was pretty cool.

It was hard for me because I was like, how do I even make it for him and you know i normally dump salt on everything and stephanie was like no salt i'm like not even a little she's like no leave it alone so i was like oh all right but anyway yeah pete montes is incredible and if you guys want to take advantage of this awesome offer head over to pete montes.com that's p-i-e-d m-O-N-T-E-S-E without the cough dot com at checkout enter promo code PowerProject for 25% off your order. And if your order is $150 more, you get free two day shipping. How do you figure out the food thing? You know, we'll talk more in general in a minute too about just kind of holding everything together because I know a lot of households in the morning when you have kids

just looks chaotic. One kid's, you know, down in some cereal and other kids spilling milk all over the place and stuff like that. But what are some of your like pillars when it comes to having some sort of structure with food? Because I think that food is kind of at the center of a lot of a lot of behavior, behavioral stuff from children. You know, kids get fed all kinds of weird stuff at school. Kids don't get an opportunity to get outside enough at school. And then they're like, hey, you know, Billy over here, he's having a real hard time concentrating. And it's like, well, he just ate like 50 grams of sugar, right? Like 20 seconds ago, right? I'll give the guy a minute, you know? So what are some of the things that you guys try to do to just have some sort of reasonable nutrition in the household? Yeah, it can get tough with five

kiddos, right? But it's interesting. And I don't know if this is just kind of a culture thing now, but my kids pretty much look at the labels on everything. So they're starting to go, this has this many grams of sugar, this has this. Did they maybe see you and your wife do that? this many grams of sugar this has this did they maybe see you and your wife do that they've seen me do that call her out no my wife is awesome she what she does a lot for the kids and she makes breakfast sandwiches breakfast burritos and has a bunch of them in the fridge so that the kids can get their protein and stuff in the morning before they go out. So our kids are more aware of what am I putting into my body? It's still a fight. It's still a struggle, but it is something that they're aware of. Um, and then they have to manage. I got sick and tired

of like, how much sugar have you had? How many of this did you have? So now it's just manage your own. You can have 40 grams of sugar a day, But that's not including like an apple or, you know, it's like if you're going to have candy or some kind of drink, check the sugar. And that might be the only thing you have all day long if it's so they manage that themselves because I got sick of asking about it and they got sick of hearing me ask, is that your second? This is that your third that how many of those have you had? It was just not working out.

And then dinner time is important. We pretty much have, you know, fish, meat, vegetables, almost every night. Did you like when you start to think of ideas like this? Is this like you get everybody together at one time type of thing? Or do you email everybody? How do you propose these things? Yeah. So what we did this year is we had a family meeting, like a two day family retreat together. And I did it like I would do if it was a company, but I tried to make it fun and less structured. I just picture Ned having these like really highly intellectual conversations. And like, if you could picture like a video, he's like going through all this stuff saying really cool philosophical principles and all this stuff. And then it pans over and it's like a three-year-old kid. Pretty much, pretty much. My kids, if they were here right now, they'd all be rolling their eyes. However, my daughter, 15-year-old daughter, though, she was like really adamant about going to harry styles concert so what she did is

she made a powerpoint presentation to then show me and my wife and she gets to like the second slide and it was something about kids who hear music do better in school or whatever and i'm like i hope you have a she's like i cited it you know what i mean she had the web address so regardless of if my kids are rolling around on the floor or rolling their eyes or telling me this sucks why are we doing this um it's it's rubbing off on them to to like grow the areas they want to grow you know tell me more about the retreat okay so we moved to hawaii and i'm like the last nine or the last 90 days have been gnarly because we had decided we thought we're moving to Utah. We decided let's move to Hawaii. We sold everything, bought a house, did everything in 90 days. And so when we got to Hawaii, I was like, we need a reset. What are some areas that we want to reset? What are some of the things we do during the week that we like? What are some of the things we do during the week that we don't like? What are some of the things we do during the week that we like?

What are some of the things we do during the week that we don't like? And so we went to a hotel for two nights and I had kind of like these four things that we were going to do. And we had a ton of fun and ate a lot of food and had a great time. But then we also had these family meetings where we connected and we talked about the things that mattered to us. And it was a pretty powerful time. It was cool. So I'll share

one of the things. So to start it off, what we did, we've always played this game where we'll put sticky notes, like post-it notes on the wall and it'll say, Ned one through 10, Sarah one through 10. And we'll see who knows each other best in the family. So I'll go around like, what's your favorite ice cream, favorite movie, favorite TV show, best friend, favorite song, whatever. So we play this game for like two hours, which is a reminder of like, Hey, we know each other. We're close. We're a family. It was really fun. But then after that, we, we went around and said, what are two things that you really appreciate about somebody in our family? And what's something that somebody does that really bothers you? And so they were able to go like, I really love how you do this and this,

but when you say this or do this to me, I don't like that. Then you're like, I say that you're like fuck yeah right but it was an opportunity for the kids to have some restoration and to learn and to be vulnerable with each other um so that was just like one of the things that we did and then we kind of just set a new rhythm we have a family meeting on sunday nights when we can it's not super rigid um what do our mornings look like and what do we want our family life to look like so that what do we want our family life to look like? So that's kind of what the weekend was about, setting a new tone, new rhythm. What about kids needing to go to like a bunch of different stuff, you know, like soccer practice?

And you kind of hear parents, you know, very often they're like, man, I'm just so stressed. I guess, first of all, what do you do for work? Health insurance. So I own my own business and we do employee benefits for small to medium sized companies. Been doing that for like 14 years. That's like my primary bread and butter. And then I have another little side business and then I do the fatherhood stuff. So a marketing business, right? Yeah, it's specific for benefits brokers.

So just something that I could use my story and go more national. So that's relatively new. That's great. So you're I mean, you are juggling a lot of different things. So how do you kind of juggle, you know, this kid's going to soccer on this day, this kid's going to basketball, this kid's going to football. And you're like, oh yeah, well, I got to freaking work too. Like, how do you kind of figure out a way to balance the chaos?

Yeah. I don't know that balance exists. It's just like you kind of show up. I, my, my goal is to just have two hours of focus time a day because otherwise everything will get destroyed. So it's get up early, do the things that I need to do and to show up as a killer human being or the best I can, and then make sure I get two hours of focus time. And then I want to be flexible. It's been a benefit moving to Hawaii because now I get up at four. We're three hours difference from California. My business is

California. So then I'm pretty much done by three, which then gives me a lot of time to help my wife who's a freaking rock star at all the sports things because right now we got soccer football volleyball gymnastics right so that's something pretty much every day um so but now I'm flexible to help out in the afternoons and evenings so I think it's really critical to have your focus time and then also just to respect your work hours like have a hard cut cutoff. Like there's, you're never going to get all the work done. Never. You know, I, um, I want to know this because a lot of, a lot of parents will do things and they're like, well, that's what my parent did to me, or that's how I was raised. And they'll raise their kids that way. And with a lot of things that we do, you know, in school,

you read books to try to learn how to do whatever subject you're trying to learn about. But I don't, there's a lot of books on parenting out there, but I don't see a lot of parents that I know that like take advantage of those things. So with there being so many pieces of information on how to be a great parent, a great dad, mom, whatever. What are the things that you pay attention to or that you suggest to people? If you do suggest people in terms of like books or, or, or people to pay attention to on that subject, because I think about myself when I do get to that point, um, I know I'm going to read hella fucking books. That's just how I am with shit.

I'm going to, I'm going to try to find all the resources I can because I know that like there's gaps in my knowledge on how I would be a good dad. Yeah. So I think that reading is a fantastic tool, but I think mentors is huge. And we kind of, we kind of, we, we like that because we listen to podcasts and we see, Oh, this person came up with a new book. But as far as finding just regular people in your life that you go, that person's killer at finances, that person's killer at their marriage, that person's like really showing up as a great dad. I think it's important one to find those people

and watch them and talk to them because everybody likes to share like, hey, you're a great dad. Tell me about it. Oh, wow. Thanks. Yeah, let me tell you. And then also not discredit people

if they're a great dad, but they're kind of a sucky employee or whatever. So that'd be the one thing is find mentors. And then I think ultimately, if you are on the path of becoming the best version of yourself, that makes, will make you a great dad. So it's more about not just learning tools that are kind of fake, right? But if you are becoming a better human, then that's going to rub off on your kids. Okay. In kind of researching fatherhood and being in this space, what's been the most challenging thing for you to try to address?

Ooh, the most challenging thing as me as a father? Or people asking me about fatherhood? Yeah, people asking you about fatherhood. I mean, men, we fall into, we're susceptible to a lot of things, um, violence, uh, suicide. Um, I mean, prison, uh, yeah, there's, I mean, there's a whole list of things that we're maybe a little more prone to or susceptible to, or just a little bit more dangerous. We die younger, you know, we,

we take more risks maybe in some sense. So what are your, some of your thoughts on, I guess, trying to teach parents how to not have their own son kind of fall into some of those pitfalls of drugs and alcohol and addiction and prison. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think it's tough because, you know, shoot, just because I'm talking about fatherhood and I'm working to be a great dad, I don't have all the answers. I don't always know what I'm doing. I'm learning every time I'm talking to somebody. And my kids may and probably will go through certain things that I won't want to hide from the world. You know, like a pastor who's like cheating on his wife and he looks like this awesome dude. And then you find out he's not living to what he's saying. So I think it's one is I don't know everything and I won't.

And I think that the thing that dads have the most problem with is just knowing who they are and then connecting with their kids. So I think ultimately, regardless of the decisions my kids make one day, I can't control all of those things. I wish I could, but I can't. And what do I do when those things do happen? And the hope is that I have brothers around me, people who I can lean on, like you talked about to, to have these conversations and to know that as a dad, you don't have control over all that, but you do have control over yourself and how you show up for them in those moments. And, and I think that, you know, I'm, I'm reminded of the first time my oldest daughter made a really stupid decision at like 13 years old and she thought I was going to lose my

shit. So she was really nervous and I didn't. And I said, this happened. What are we going to do about it? And I want you to know, this is the first time I've ever parented a 13 year old. So let's just, your first time being a teenager, my first time doing this. So let's both acknowledge,

we don't know what we're doing, right? And I want you to pay attention to this moment and how I showed up so that then when the bigger thing happens down the road, you know that you can trust coming to me and that I'm going to not like it, but understand you're a kid and a teenager and you're trying to figure out life. And I really want to be that person that you come to and ask. So I think that's important. And then just connections. I think dads just need to make connections with their kids. And I think dads struggle with that.

How do you connect? It's time. I think that we get too focused on what is the cool dad with the boat down the street doing versus how can I just go spend time with my kid? It's less about what you're doing and it's just about being with them. That's all they care about. You know, like if I went on a hike with my dad or went skiing with my dad, even today, I don't really care which one it is. It would just be great to spend some time with him, have a beer, have a lunch.

You know what I mean? So I think it's same for our kids, right? So think about what would you want to do with your dad and then just go do that with your kid. There's things I just tell my kids that I'm doing and they don't take me up on it that often. But like I'll just say, I'm going over here and I'm going going on a walk every once in a while. They'll come with me. Sometimes they won't. But they know very easily how they can connect with me. And then there's other stuff that I'll say, you know, if I just kind of recognizing you probably this is probably really interesting for you to manage because you have five kids. this is probably really interesting for you to manage because you have five kids but I might sometimes say like oh I haven't really had individual time with my daughter

I haven't had individual time with my son so I might say hey you know the weekend's coming up I want to go see a movie together like is there something you'd like to do can I even just drive you over my son drives now but can even just I'll say to my daughter can even just drive you over to your friend's house or like you know pick you and your friend up and take you somewhere or just any sort of way to connect that way. And, um, they're usually like down for like at least one of those things. So I get some sort of time with them, even if it's 20 minute drive, just me driving them to their friend's house. It's like, that's some time that we got together.

And I think that is actually the time that knowing that you're there is creates a stability for your kid. And I think that it's the in-between stuff that actually creates the greatest connection, like driving them and then not being on your phone or not, you know, doing something different, but engaging with them, asking a question, sharing song. Hey, what's your favorite song right now? Oh, throw it on the radio. Let's, or whatever it is now, right? Your phone, Bluetooth. Let's listen to it. And so I think those moments are critical. Like I'm running to Home Depot or I'm going to the grocery store. You want to come along? And it's just those little things in between waking up. How do you wake up your kid in the morning? How do you say goodnight to your kid at night? Like those are

things, it doesn't matter where you are economically or anything you can do and show up in those moments, which comes back to how does my kid see us in the morning like how am i waking them up lights are on everybody's freaking out time to get out of the house oh my gosh it's crazy like what if you just woke up 15 minutes earlier and made it a little bit more peaceful what if at night it wasn't i gotta get these kids down right now so that i can get to my netflix or i can get to my workout or i can get to whatever what if i I just took five extra minutes? Because I heard a kid say this recently, my, my son's friend, we were driving in the car and he talked about his dad waking him up in the morning. I don't even know how this came about, but he's like, yeah, sometimes my dad will come and just like rub my back and wake me up. And he was saying that in a moment,

like that really, that's, that matters to me deeply. And this kid's like 13 years old or something like that. And it's like, that's so simple. It's like 30 seconds of you not just being quick. Right. Yeah. Not coming, not banging on the door. Time to wake up. Yeah. You know.

Yeah. You know. Okay. So I want to know about this because recently we had Andrew who met on the podcast and we talked about because this is like the first generation that kids and everybody has access to high speed Internet porn. Right. Yeah. I started talking about that a little bit and I got a bunch of DMS. And on that video, there's a bunch of comments from men because I got on it when I was 11 because my mom was super busy.

So she couldn't really, she didn't even know what that was. It was new. Right. But that's, that's affected me for 13 years. It took me 13 years to actually kick the habit. And a lot of men, like guys that are 28, 30 are messaging me. They're like, yeah, I've been watching it since I was 12 and I haven't been able to quit yet. Right. And kids have access to this these days. Yeah. It's terrible. So my question is like, people people are realizing and there's a lot of research showing how it does affect the male brain because men are visually stimulated by that. And do you have you ever had a talk about that with your son? Because there's going to be some point where he will be able to freely get his hands on it if he hasn't already and do you like yeah how do you navigate that with him if you do yeah so it's a great topic right now because he has a twin sister and we've always told our kids so like let's use phone as an example yeah right so my 15 year old daughter

has a phone my 13 year old daughter has a phone but my twins do not and we're getting close to the time where it's like they're at football they they're at this. And it's like, OK, we need phones soon. He does not understand why I won't give him a phone with Internet. It's a big push. Why can my sisters and I'm explaining that it's like me letting you have a shotgun in your bedroom. I trust you that you would probably be fine with a shotgun, but I'm not going to put a shot. This is a literal conversation we just had, but I'm not going to let you have a shotgun in your room. So your daughters have phones with Internet and his phone doesn't have internet. He doesn't even have a phone yet

But when he gets a phone his his twin sister won't get internet either and she doesn't care about it Which makes it way easier for me but Yeah, it's just too dangerous like you're setting up one a terrible habit terrible expectations of what sex is supposed to be about your view of women in general is going to be impacted immensely it's so dark and it's so bad for our kids and for us human beings so yeah it's it's a hard topic the other thing is on all my kids any device we have um we have bark so it's like anything it's there's other programs like it but i get emails every day like

This is what your daughter was listening to on Spotify So I can go skim the song in like five seconds and see and I'll text Brooklyn. Hey, what's up? You know, I give you access to explicit music and trust that you know kind of where we would fall but this guy Nope, so if you want to keep maintaining the privilege, then let's keep it on the level that we're okay with. Yeah. Because there has to be some balance, right? Like she's 15. I know she's going to be, I don't want her to hide it from me, but she also has to know that I am there to be a guide and put up guide rails. So it's not like, Hey, you can only listen to this radio station. Right. Cause that's unrealistic. They'll just hide it from you. So anyways, I could go on.

Yeah. But, but you know, that is interesting. Cause I feel like some people would listen to that and they're like, you're getting on your daughter for the music she listens to on Spotify. But it, it, a lot of that stuff is important because the internet is access to the world, right? Some people don't think it's that important that they need to watch everything but it's access to the world when i had access to the world at 11 i downloaded limewire and a hell of porn and it you know it took a long while for me to like quit and it did have its effects and i did have to learn what what the fuck it was doing right right so it's like you don't want outside sources raising your kids. And that's ultimately what happens with the internet.

Yeah, it's tough though. And it's good to have a partner. Like if it was up to me, our kids wouldn't have phones at all. And my wife's like, we have to prepare them for the world. Yeah. Right.

So she's like, they're at an age where they need phones and they need some guy to rails. I agree with that. Probably more than not having the phone just because it's like, you are going to have these like weapons in your hand at some point right right and let's make you durable and strong

enough to be able to deal with them but also at an appropriate age yeah it's it's a balance and you know like it's like am i big brothering my daughter you do have to be careful about it but i think that ultimately our kids want to know that we care. So it's finding that balance of like, you're not listening to this. I can't believe that you did that versus, hey, I pay attention and listen to what he said right here. Man, this is about some things that we really don't vibe with as a family. Yeah. And now I have another question. I know we're probably belaboring this topic a little bit, but when you do have that specific conversation with him about because there's going to come a point where he's not going to have blockers on his Internet, on his phone, and he'll be able to access anything he wants to.

And he's a young man. Right. Currently, within the sphere, there are a lot of men who are like, porn's not that big of a deal. And then there's a lot of people who have been addicted and who have seen the research on how it affects here. And they're like, actually, it kind of is societally though it's still kind of leading to it's not a big deal how do you talk to them are you going to have a conversation talking about that and what it can do or are you going to kind of just say hey don't do it that's just no i was told as a kid growing up just don't do things without a very good explanation as to

why and i do not think that's a good way to teach your kids. Yeah. You got it. You, you got to tell them why, you know, they want to know. Otherwise they're going to go try to experience it themselves.

Um, so I'm going to have a deeper conversation with him soon. So I'll just give you a little, you know, we talked about our kids, uh, about sex, like what is sex?

How does it work? All this stuff. And let them ask us anything again we ironically enough we had the conversation in our bed um that's kind of they're probably gonna have to go to therapy over that um wait here what thanks a lot dad and my son so so the progression here that was a couple of years ago. And then we did invite Brooklyn and Violet, you know, like the ones who we already had the conversation with. They could be there to say, hey, they could also answer questions and be like, hey, we sat here with mom and dad and had this conversation two years ago. To then my son and I, so let's just talk about him, have this conversation about sex.

And then we make him stick around for the like, your period is going to start soon. like god dad do i gotta say for this part you know it's so funny i'm like yeah dude you got to understand your sisters and have respect for them so then him and i uh hiked half dome i don't know a year ago yeah that was an epic story and on that on that hike down i had the whole wet dream conversation with him so that he's like what like it just is dude So we have this conversation and I try to make it not silly but not like hey I gotta talk to you about something buddy You know, I try to keep it in the middle where it's like this it is what it is, bro Ask me whatever

but now that the phone thing is about to happen for them the porn conversation has to come up deeper and It's really a heavy topic for me because i believe a lot of human trafficking happens with pornography the statistics are just there so to say it's not a big deal and to not and to say it's not going to affect your relationship with your wife where you can't have sex with your wife without seeing porn too or thinking about something else like that's straight zero discipline so to say it's not a big deal is saying that it's not a big deal to eat shit all the time or to not work out like this is your mind your brain so it's a it's a big deal and there's a lot of areas that you could talk about why it's a big

deal yeah and even you know someone might you know what is porn you know like you you try to like figure out how to define it because like when i was a kid and you would see some certain things on Cinemax or some of these things, it was considered, quote unquote, soft porn, right? And is that what we're seeing on Instagram? Is that what we're seeing on TikTok? Is that a version of pornography? and the impact of Instagram, at least with some of the research on all these young women that are taking their lives from Instagram. It's like, that's nothing to play around with either. So in one sense, we have people getting addicted to stuff and who knows what the consequences of that is getting addicted to pornography. There's could be many. But, just being on some of these social media platforms, uh, way too much can

really negatively impact, uh, just the way you feel about yourself and the way that you view the world. Yeah. Um, you can kind of think that everything's always a threat and everything always has to be all stressful. And I think one of the things that you're pointing out here, um, cause we've kind of walking through your story is the fact that you did mention that you get emotional here and there, but you also mentioned your wife. And I imagine the two of you balance things out

enough to the point where the household is calm in a reasonable way. I'm sure there's like things get heightened and things go off balance here and there and they teeter totter. But, uh, throughout your day to day, most of the time, things are probably running pretty smooth. And it sounds like most of the time, everyone's concentration is on stuff that I would view as being pretty positive. Uh, you know, going out and surfing, uh, you mentioned your kids play a bunch of other sports. You mentioned reading a book. You mentioned at least, you know, some healthy disciplines in terms of food. And there's like a lot of activity. This is something I explained to my kids a long time ago. They just went through a period of time where they would fight a little bit. They have the greatest

relationship. They get along great. But they just went through a period of time where they would fight a little bit. They have the greatest relationship. They get along great. But they just went through a period of time where they were fighting and just seemed like there was yelling and crying and shit going on like all the time, you know, and slam doors and stuff. And I just sat them down one day and I just said, that's not like what all this is about.

That's not what this household is for. Like we have a pool. We have a trampoline. Like we have all this cool fun stuff and there's a lot of things you guys can do and so i just want this day to kind of be the end of it like i if you if you do have conflict with each other you know figure it out you know not to put your hands on each other we've talked about this a million times you know and just kind of went over just hey like let's have this place be more for fun.

And if someone's losing their mind or losing their temper, go outside, go for a walk, go play basketball, go do something else. Yep. And literally from that moment on, the times that I had to have more conversations with them started to dwindle down more and more and more. So I think on that day, they they got the message of like yeah i think you know i think he's right like because i explained to them like everything that we do in this house is pretty positive so there's not a lot of negative like you don't see me and your mom yelling at each other right yeah you know we're not yelling from across the house and i'm not a big fan of like you know yelling to the kids that like dinner's ready type of thing like i will

my wife will kind of do more of that stuff here and there, but I will go to them and just, I'll go into their room and I'll talk to them and say, Hey, dinner's ready. Uh, be great. If you can come out in just a couple of minutes, love to see you, you know, just try to keep everything just a little bit calmer. Yeah. Our house is a little messy sometimes. I think that they, you know, we joke about it. We're not always, it's not always happy in the sense that kids are fighting and life is a little messy sometimes. I think that we joke about it. It's not always happy in the sense that kids are fighting and life is a little messy, but we talk about joy. Life is messy, but we live together. We're a family.

I don't talk to your mom like that, so don't talk to your sister like that or your brother like that. So we're trying to constantly help kids navigate. Life isn't always what we would consider perfect. But how do you show up when things aren't always going your way? And so we talk about joy a lot because joy to us is like choosing to be in community with people and not letting whatever's happening dictate how you're going to treat those around you. Are any of your kids kind of quiet? Yes. And see, I think that this kind of stuff is really important. Like when I just mentioned like that drive,

20 minute drive somewhere with your kid. Nothing has to happen. I think that's a misconception from parents is that you think that you need to go and like do something and it has to be really cool. And I think you also think that you like better engaged some conversation um my son is pretty similar to me so like he and i have done stuff together where we might be together it's not so much anymore he's more mature now

and we have more conversation but um maybe like two years ago he and i could hang out for like an hour or two and no no one really says much of anything. And I'm very similar that way with my, with my own dad as well. And it's, I still feel more of a connection. And then over the years, as we've done that more, now he opens up more. Now he talks more and so on. I was just going to say that when Adam from Mind, uh, Adam from a mind pump was here, we were having a conversation off air and it was weird. We were talking about like the importance

of like roughhousing and like wrestling with your kids and like how it's almost like a, it's kind of a weird analogy, but like when you put a puppy with another puppy and they start biting each other, like, they're like, Oh shit, that actually hurts. Like what the hell? Have you heard anything about that? Or like, have you researched anything like that to where it's like no you should kind of like wrestle and kind of play fight with your kids so that way they kind of understand like hey we're just joking but also like you are capable of kind of doing some damage yeah so i think that's kind of funny i've never really been asked that or thought about it but i think that naturally as a dad and you guys can tell me if i'm right or wrong

did you get on the floor and wrestle with your kids did that yeah i think that i will yeah so i think that that's like a natural thing so it's almost like i don't really need to go read that in a book if i feel like i want to do this right now as a dad it's probably something instinctually that you should just do and i think about wrestling on the floor with my son that's teaching him so much like it, you know, whatever age was appropriate. We're pushing around playing. Now here's what was really interesting is I remember a day I had my twins, Brody boy, Presley girl, and they're both standing on the couch and they're probably, I mean,

babies do like one years old. And I push my son over and he's laughing. And I push my daughter over and she starts crying. And she's tough as she's tough, man. She's super tough. But there was a difference in my touch and my touch with them, my connection with them, that to him, he needed to be balled up, chewed on, fought with. That's always been a thing. With her, there was this tenderness she needed with me.

Now today, we actually, her and I, she's 12. We just had a gnarly wrestling match the other day and I had to tap out. And then the next day she's like, beat you last night, beat you last night. Right. But I also know. Yeah. But I also know in her, there's a tenderness that I got to be aware of that she needs from me yeah she she won the championship belt that day that day yeah yeah with so many kids and so like i said i have so my daughter's 13 my son's nine months old right now he needs a lot of attention you know and she's 13 years old like such an important age right now

i don't want to steal any of that attention away from her. But sometimes it's like, fuck, dude, we have like this is happening. We need to give him attention right now. How have you been able to balance that with multiple kids at multiple ages? Like, how are you making sure that no one's feeling left out? Yeah, so I'm a little obsessive about this with all that I'm trying to do. I time track everything so I could tell you how much time i spent with each of my kids the last you know year so i'll pay and that's with my wife too so i'm like hey i'm a great husband

wait a second i haven't gone on a date with my wife in two months you're not you're a dick so and then i look at it weekly and then i try to tune up this next week because if i say i'm a great dad or great husband whatever not for you guys I don't care but for my family right so anyways um like I noticed with my 13 year old I hadn't spent much time with her because she's the quiet one and so I will I was like hey Violet I'd love to go on a hike with you let's go do this tomorrow and dude she just opened up and we had a great time so So with your 13 year old, I think it's really important to just carve out like you would a date with your wife, right? Cause I could easily say this isn't important right now because we have X, but if you could just say, Hey, we're

going to go grab a coffee. Hey, we're going to just try to have some intentional time where they feel number one in the moment. I think that's super important. So paying attention to that. I love that guys. It's time to level up the way you look. It's time to level up the way you dress. When I was in elementary school, kids used to call me Dusty. And Seema, you're dusty because my clothes didn't look good. Well, we've partnered with a brand called Viore. Now, the great thing about Viore is that the clothes are worn in the gym. I almost feel guilty wearing these clothes in the gym because they feel so comfortable and they look so good.

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a good thing but a bad thing happens to my son like he had like a uh like a rash the other day and i'm like cancel everything i can't do anything and mark's just laughing he's just like dude it happens yeah yeah um and something that's been going on in the chat room when you said that your son's playing football and they're like wow why would he let his son play football like there's so many dangers in football and stuff yeah ct blah blah etc and then surfing as well so how how do you i don't know how do you let go of that like fear of like oh shit my son's gonna get plowed by somebody from the side or he's gonna get stuck under a wave like what like man how do you know they're gonna be okay yeah so first off my first kid i would be laying in bed at night going she's dead in her crib i know it and she'd be like six months and i'd walk

in i'd walk into her room and i put my head down you know to her chest she's alive okay and i go back to bed so first kid you're like tripping and then the next kids you kind of drop them they fall they roll whatever you're like they're fine they're so fine it's all good um so there's that you cannot protect your kids from everything you know your kids better than anybody else i didn't let my kid play football until this year he's 12 um i'm not taking my kid out in a 10 foot wave until he's mastered a one foot wave but i gotta get him out in the water if it's what he wants to do. Like you got to you got to put your kids in situations where they're tested.

I think that's a huge opportunity for dads is to gauge your kid and go, what's this kid ready for? What's going to push them a little bit? And then you got to put him in that situation and let him choose and let him decide. Otherwise, they're going to be that kid who goes to college and freaks out. Right. Who doesn't know what they're made of. And as dads, that's our role. Help your kid know what they're going to be that kid who goes to college and freaks out right who doesn't know what they're made of and as dads that's our role help your kid know what they're made of help them know what they're capable of help them through stumbling and then help them sharpen their skills and if you're not doing that yourself you got to start with yourself before you can have them do it

but yeah you got you can't protect them from everything i want to know about this physicality protection right um when i was 13 there's this motherfucking name marquise my uh ninth grade protect them from everything. I want to know about this physicality protection, right? Um, when I was 13, there's this motherfucking name, Marquise, my, uh, ninth grade,

right? Um, I walk into, I was going towards the gym in the school. Marquise is like, Hey, and SEMA. Cause I was wearing some headphones.

My iPod is like, can I get those headphones? I'm like, I'm wearing them, dude. He's like, let me get them headphones. I'm like,

all right. Cause he was big, big fucker, junior, big fucker. Also he's a crip. Um, so I gave him my headphones. I come back to Marquis the next day. I'm like, Hey Marquis, can I, can I, can I get my headphones? He's like, what headphones? I was like, bro, come on now. Also he's beat my ass like twice in high school and I avoided him. I never did any martial arts or anything. And I wasn't a very confrontational person, but it makes me wonder because I do martial arts now and I'm not. I never did any martial arts or anything and I wasn't a very confrontational person. But it makes me wonder because I do martial arts now

and I'm not someone who's going to go looking for a fight. Yeah, of course. Right? But in a public school situation, sometimes there are some asshole bullies and a lot of people are like, you know, if something happens,

just go tell the teacher, go turn the other way, blah, blah, blah. You don't want your kids to get in a fight. But I feel like if a kid is fucking with your kid, you want them to be able to defend themselves if they need to. Right. So with that being said, do you put any importance in that for your daughters or your sons? Do you think it's something because like me doing jujitsu now, I don't want to raise some savages that are going to beat ass, but I want them to be able to be like, hey, you don't want to.

Oh, you want boom. I want to be able to get him back because I don't want my kids, you know? So what do you think about that? Yeah. So I would love to have my kids in some sort of martial arts right now. It hasn't happened just because of life. Right.

But I think it will, it will happen soon. But it's funny because there was this day where my kids were all under like seven years old and we are in the living room and we're wrestling around. And then I'm like, oh, you know what? If something happens at school here. So we go through these scenarios. OK, we go through these scenarios.

And then like two weeks later, my twins, they were five. And we told them, if you have to protect each other at school, you will never be in trouble. And so my twins were five years old kindergarten. And this girl walks up to my son and she's just like, I'm going to pinch you or I'm going to hurt you or whatever. And so then his twin sister just walks up to the girl and boom, just pinches her so hard. Right. Cause she's like, okay, I got to protect my brother right now. So that was like the first instance where we have it. And we took her out for ice cream. So she knew like you're celebrate. Well, the situation wasn't really we have it. And we took her out for ice cream. So she knew like you're celebrate.

Well, the situation wasn't really calling for it, but we needed to celebrate her protecting the family. Okay. Fast forward to public school, fifth grade. My daughter is getting called a bitch by some kid at school. And he's the troubled kid,

the kid that you feel bad because the principal tells you you know his home life is this that and the other and it's like okay but right and so i told my son if the situation arises where he is bullying and you need to do something then you just take action and this is how you take action in a way that is appropriate and whatnot. So he did, he did. And it stopped after that. But what the school told him to do was if you're in this situation where he's trying to put you in a headlock and he's bullying you and your sister, lay down and yell for help. And I'm like,

this is no way, shape or form. You should teach a man. I mean, why do we have a bunch of passive babies? Because we're telling them not to, not to stand up for themselves. Now I'm not advocating for him just showing up to a fight.

If you can avoid it at all costs, avoid it. But when you're in a headlock and your sister's getting bullied, you need to do something to let this kid know not to do this anymore. So I'm all for teaching your kids to protect themselves, but also how to avoid situations. So we also talk about how do you avoid and then also how do you so we just had this conversation the other day my daughter is talking about this kid who's kind of just a turd at school and so so then we're just sitting there talking we're we're uh out we just had dinner and so then i was like she's talking to me and i get right in her face you don't do that you stop right now and she was like whoa oh my

gosh and and i was like hey you see how I just asserted authority And I was confident about what I was saying and how you reacted if you're in that situation with that kid again Do that and see how it responds Right and so trying to put them in Here's how you felt by me responding to you Like she was way caught off guard and a bully's going to be caught off guard too If you assert yourself as like knowing what you're doing. So anyways,

we try to play scenarios and talk about stuff, but I do think that teaching your kids how to protect themselves is important. Yeah. My, my grandfather, he raised nine children and his advice was anyone comes at you and anyone wants to be confrontation, confrontational with you.

He's like, don't give it a second thought. Make a fist as hard as you possibly can and punch him right in the nose as hard as you, as hard, whatever you can give him, you know? And he said, if you don't do that, then I don't want to hear it. That was his way of dealing with it. He's like, I don't want you coming to me saying that some kid beat your ass at school. He's like, if somebody's coming at you, going to bother you.

He's like, if you just whack them one you gonna bother you he's like if you just whack them one time and you know that works when you're really young you know if you're like seven or eight years old you hit somebody and they their eyes water up and it's over with well that happened to me in seventh grade i was i went to a new school and i was bullied um and we you know my mom called the principal my mom did all the stuff you know and then finally my mom said when you get a chance because it happened for a while mom said, when you get a chance, cause it happened for a while. She's like, when you get a chance, just punch the kid in the nose as hard as you possibly can. And it happened. It happened in the locker room. I had to jump up on the bench. So I was as tall as the kid. He was in eighth grade. I was in seventh and I just went to town and, uh,

he was like always nice to me after that. Of course. You know? Yeah. What about, um, so, oops, sorry, wrong camera. Um, another thing that came up in the, uh, the, the, uh, chat room was, um, that just the term, it, it sounds like such a bitch ass term, but toxic masculinity, masculinity, I can't even say it. Masculinity. You know what I'm trying to say? So you're teaching your son and your kids like, Hey, like, just don't let them fuck with you, but also like, don't be a dick and go looking for it.

So how do you tiptoe that line? Or do you even have to, like, I'm just just curious like what your thoughts on you know making your son uh a good man yeah so i mean just an example the other night when i'm talking to my daughter on the street and she's telling me about this kid who's a turd at school the first thing isn't man what an idiot it's hey that kid most likely like let's think about his story. You know, let's not make a bunch of assumptions, but there's probably something going on with him. There's probably some things. And it's like, yeah, if you can avoid it, if you could be kind to him, if you could show him kindness or be a bigger person, do that. Because we always want to treat people with respect.

And we don't want to just take somebody from face value. People make weird decisions and act weird ways, but it's usually because something's going on in their life. So first, choose to understand or walk away, and then protect yourself. Toxic masculinity, I don't know. I don't even pay attention to it. It's kind of like whatever. If I just can show up as a great dad, husband, and I'm working on myself, and I can show up as a great man, my hope is that that would rub off on other people. And then my kids would choose to be that too. Try to not get too caught up in that, that noise. Because like, as soon as you put some kind of label on something, there's all these other assumptions that people make about it. It's like, when you say that, what do you mean? What are you talking about? And I'm

really sorry if some dude was a dick to you, I'm going to do my best not to be to you. But it can't mean that I show up as passive and not be a man because i am a man and that comes with differences than if i was a woman so oddly enough i think that you can protect yourself as a young kid uh by participating in sports uh sports won't necessarily uh turn you into like a better fighter, especially in comparison to someone who does like jujitsu or something like that. But it does get you kind of involved in a culture. And if you're the smallest player on the team, you're still on the team. And who's got your back? You know, when shit goes down, you know, your 230 pound linebacker buddy who's 15, he's there for you. You know, if you're 5'3 and you're barely 100 pounds or something like that. So you have like backup and you have kind of a communal thing.

Yes, it'd be great if you learn how to defend yourself. But you don't always have to. That doesn't have to be the thing that everyone leans towards because maybe people aren't, maybe they're not interested in learning that. Yeah, and I think, you know, there's probably not that many situations you're really going to run into. Sometimes we hyper focus on things and it's like, I think it's just good to be well-rounded and not just go all in on one thing and think like there's somebody always out there who

wants to hurt you. I mean, I get there's bad people out there, but and you need to be aware. But I think going over the top is going over the top. What about like social media and stuff? Do any of your children have any of that kind of stuff? And if they do, you know, what are some of the precautions or things you try to teach them about it? Yeah. So two of my kids do.

One of them cares about it. One of them doesn't and so we just monitor it watch it they know we we take their phones every night at nine o'clock or 9 30 and we can read through all your stuff and i'm not an idiot i can tell when you deleted a set of texts or i can tell if you try to delete your history or whatever so i just try to pay attention to that stuff um and then there are times where like hey you shouldn't post that picture i need you to take it down and then the biggest one is do not for our girls. You can have your friends follow you, but at certain ages, boys can, um, and don't talk

to anybody you don't know. And if somebody's trying to talk to you, let us know. So we just let them know about the dangers that are out there. What's your stance on, uh, for yourself making a post on social media um uh i see a lot of people i see a lot of people like virtue signaling their parenthood you know they're like hey like i'm the fucking dad of the year or i see i see a lot of dads do that and i see a lot of women taking provocative pictures like hey here's my baby And all you see is like giant bombs. And you're like, all I see is titties.

I don't know what the fuck's going on. Like they're in like the most provocative bikini you've ever seen in your life. You're like, I don't know if that picture is about your kid. But what are some of your thoughts on like, especially because some of your kids are a little older. Like my kids are off the radar. They're not. I don't really post really much of anything on them these days when they were young.

Yeah, of course. Like a cute picture of them smiling or something like that. I was posting a lot of stuff like that when they were babies, but now that they're older, they have their own identity. They do it doing their own thing. So what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, it's interesting. I'm not on, like, if you look at my, my Instagram right now, I think I posted about the TEDx yesterday, and then I posted a picture of me surfing with my wife, like, maybe

six weeks ago. So I'm not on there a lot. I refuse to take a picture with my kids and be like, oh, no, we got to do it this way. Let's take 10 pictures so I can have a cool picture for my Instagram. I will never do that. And then now, because the fatherhood thing is really critical to me, I hope people love my content, like my podcast and the things that I'm talking about. But I don't know that my Instagram is necessarily going to motivate somebody to be a great dad. Dads are getting on there to like veg out for five minutes, not go to become a great dad. So if I'm out doing something kick ass with my kids, I'm less likely to post a picture about it because I don't ever want my kids to feel like if this fatherhood thing does turn out where I'm really speaking into fatherhood on a, on a, on a, on a scale that's influencing people. I don't ever want them to feel like anything I did with them was for the sake of a photograph to try to boost what I'm doing because all that's just fake. to boost what I'm doing because all that's just fake.

And I want to be a great dad first and foremost. So I regularly have to fight against falling into the trap of it being about, Hey, I really need a good post tomorrow. You guys down for a hike? Like that's dumb. Do you still take a picture just to have it? Yeah, I take a lot of pictures. I have a ton of pictures on my phone. Like we just, it was so epic.

We went to the volcano because the volcano is going off in hawaii right now and we drove out there on monday night so just this monday we drove out and got to see lava flowing out of a volcano so we got a bunch of pictures that sounds amazing and like we're having a great time so sometimes in my head so on our walk back it's just the moon and so so I'm celebrating it now. And maybe this is ego. I don't know, but I'm playing like nineties hip hop and me and my daughters, cause it was cold.

We're all just like dancing down the road through the dark. And like more hikers are coming out, looking at us. And we're just like, Oh, we're a Bay area crew. And so we're just having a ton of fun. And part of me is like,

man, what if my wife gets a little video of this or a little picture? Like, this is cool. But then I don't want to do that. And I don't always want to be thinking about that. I just want to be in the moment. So really, I try not to put too much up. I don't know.

Makes a lot of sense to me. You don't want to try to like over glorify it. That's the whole position of being a dad is that it's not glorified. Yes, it's not glorified yes it's not and but it's hard balance because you want dads to know like that moment right there was awesome like you were a great dad but no one's gonna celebrate it but then you also don't want to be the the guy at the um the metallica concert filming on the phone looking through the screen right like you're not really there just be in the fucking moment yeah yeah absolutely for sure but our world is so about like oh man how many people are going to see this and and it's less about okay our dad's going to then go hike with their kids and dance probably not they're just going to see you do that and probably feel like man i wish i did something

cool with my kids that shit that gets me fired up though like just hearing about it like i'm glad you shared that because and it's a different environment right it's like we're having a connection right now where i could share a story and it's like oh cool we want to be great dads together uh what was your dad like what was my dad like my dad got us outside a lot um i just recently learned this we didn't have tv growing up and my mom had just shared with me recently that my dad walked into my brother and i watching the simpsons and saw the way they were portraying dads and he's like done gone so we I mean I still think the Simpsons is funny but we had no tv my dad was a high school teacher he was polar opposite of my mother my mother is very faith-based and my

dad is very not my mother's very conservative my dad is very not very opposite. So what he taught me was how he said marriage. Marriage is less about like who you're married to. It's more about a belief like you believe in this idea. And so they've been married 38 years. And so he's shown me that through differences, how to love somebody, how to have community and then how to find common ground. He took us outside. We hiked a lot. He was a teacher, so we had the summers off.

A lot of great camping, a lot of great outdoors. So we had a good relationship, but I would say that I think that because I was more faith-based and he wasn't, there were some areas we didn't connect on that I wish we would have. And so now we have more conversations and things now about life. There was something you said during the TED talk where he confronted you because I think you flipped your mother off. Yes, yes. I was 15 years old and I'm standing in the bathroom and my mom's at the table, the kitchen table, you know, and she's telling me, no, I couldn't do whatever. And so just out of a moment of like, I am rebellious.

I just gave her the middle finger. And right in that moment, my dad walks past the door and he looks at me and he just and he wasn't he wasn't. My dad was never violent. My dad never. I mean, he was stern, but he turned and he wasn't he wasn't my dad was never violent my dad never i mean he was stern but he turned and he had me up against the wall like in the bathroom and i remember it just happened so quick you know and uh and he was big into martial arts like all through his life so he i mean he had me up against the wall quick and he just he was like you will not treat my wife that

way and you will not treat your mother that way and it was like damn and i mean it's like those moments you remember forever right um so he definitely paid attention but he also didn't micromanage everything he gave my brother and i a lot of room to have freedom and that's why he moved us to a really small town where we could ride our bikes all day and go swimming all day so he he gave us a lot without necessarily being in every moment which i'm trying to actually back off a little bit on some of my kids to just give them space to be because i think that was really powerful that he did for us there's two things that are really hard to do one is to not be there for your kids, but it's critical, I think, to sometimes not be there for your kids. And then the second thing is go ahead and try to practice this, parents.

Go home today and try to practice this. Watch your kid do something and do your best to not fucking say anything. Oh, my God. Watching your kids shoot baskets or something or watch them throw a football. Oh, my God. Watching your kids shoot baskets or something or watch them throw a football. See if you can just throw the football back and forth with them or see if you can just watch them throw it and watch them try to hit free throws without saying anything. That's tough. Gotta have good form, though. I can't let them build bad habits. Well, you can let them ask you, you know? Yeah, I think that's huge because I tend to have something to say a lot, even in this moment.

And I think earning the right to say something is important. So if you say something at every moment, then your words mean nothing. And if you wait even to be asked, or if you don't say anything every time, then your words mean something. So I think that's a heavy practice. Yeah, it's really difficult because you see them struggling. It's almost like, uh, when you watch somebody play a video game and their guy keeps dying, you're like, I can't, how come you can't fucking jump over that thing right there? I don't get it. Just hit the button one time. It's super simple. So again,

um, you know, like I said, new, i said new dad uh son's nine months you've gone through it um you have any advice for the first two years because you just said that they're really difficult when they start running around and stuff um he's he's not even crawling yet but he is getting curious and he'll like uh do the thing where he hangs on the uh the edge of like the playpen thing and he just kind of stands there looks like he's dancing and stuff and again i freak out i think he's gonna like pin his head on the side and we're like he's gonna so everything still worries me but as far as the other stuff like um anything in your experience that like i should really be paying attention to or just i don't know some advice i'm looking for here. Yeah. So, um, I think just

spend time with your kid. So whether your kid is, you know, nine months old or 12, just create a habit now spending time with them. And it's not about what you do. So I think a lot of dads are like, when my kid can walk, when my kid can throw a baseball, when my kid can ride a dirt bike, when my kid can this. And then by the time your kid's 13 years old, you have no relationship with them because you're kept waiting for your moment. And I think that if you can just hold your kid, if you can just go on a walk with your kid, like just be present a whole bunch, which is going to create a connection between the two of you and then give your spouse a break. Right. And it's not just the mom, like, dude, I'll change diapers all day.

I'll swaddle that kid all day. You know what I mean? Like, this is just as much you and you might have to fight for that. I mean, I've heard some moms like, oh, be careful to the dad. It's like, nope, I'm the dad. You know? So I would say, don't accept that. Show that you have a right to be there. Show that you can be there and then just spend a ton of time with the kid, even if they're just sleeping in your arms, create that connection with them. Yeah.

Last night was dope. So we went to the doctor and we had a really long day. But at night, he ended up sleeping in our bed and he like he rolled over and like he was like filling for me. And then he rolled his other arm over. And so I had like both his arms on my forearm. It was like the greatest feeling ever. Oh, my God. This is amazing. That's what it's about.

Right. I mean, it's like the crying and the pooping and everything all day long. It's like the greatest feeling ever. I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. That's what it's about, right? I mean, it's like the crying and the pooping and everything all day long. It's like the messiness of it. And then that moment of just the hands on you is like, oh my gosh, this is all amazing. Yeah. And that's going to be the same thing at every age if you're creating that bond with them. Love it. Yeah.

For some parents that want to be better, I think you just touched upon some of it right there, but what are maybe two or three take homes that you think people can work on that you've worked on over the last couple of years that have helped you? Asking better questions. So depending on the kid's age, asking better questions. And I heard this guy tell this great story about our analogy. You know, when your kids are little and like maybe let's say under eight nine ten they ask a thousand questions a thousand why why why why and if we teach them to not ask those questions then when they're 15 and you're like god i wish they would just talk to me well you spent 10 years telling them why are you asking me that that's stupid don't ask me stop asking me and that's hard to do

when you are just tapped out, you know, but to cultivate that you can have conversation with your kid. Um, and, and just pausing. Cause what does it take you? Like, let's just pause, answer the freaking question. I'm not the best at it. Something I'm working on so that you always can have conversation. So I'd say work on that listening, asking questions, spending time with them. I think it's less complicated than we make it. I'm still working on it though. So I'm not saying this from a, I have a killer relationship with each of my children. There's relationships I'm working on, you know, like my 13 year old who's quiet. I'm working on

that relationship. I got to reach her in a different way than I reached the others. Um, and then paying attention, like, are you spending time with them? And it can't just be that we did Disneyland weekend. It's gotta be, we went to Home Depot together. We went on a walk together. We had dinner together. I mean, if you can, if you're not having dinner as a family, at least a couple of times a week, I mean, you had mentioned you guys have family dinner almost every night and that you have, you know, the grandparents come over or the uncle, the aunt, whoever, like that is huge foundation. And we try to do that as much as we can in our home. So if you don't have dinner or the TV's on all the time, one night a week, do dinner and then try to make it to, you know, these are little things that I think we could pay attention to because it's like what works in your schedule.

You know, maybe you have to shift some things around, but don't think like we're just too busy. We can't do any of this. You can pay attention to how you talk to your kids, how you wake them up, how you put them in bed, how you eat together. Those are all things you have to do. So how are you doing them? Awesome, man. Thank you for your time today. Really appreciate it. Where can people find out more about you? And I think you have two separate podcasts, right? So I have the Rebel and Create podcast, which is for fatherhood. I do one on Mondays where I interview a dad and I'm actually about to release my 200th, which I'm excited about. And then on Fridays, I just do like 10 minutes talking about an idea or somebody shoots me a question and talk about that. Um, and then, you know, most exciting is the TEDx just came out. So I'd love for people to check that out. Cause that's really, you know, all my

ideas about fatherhood and what really matters to me in like a 16 minute window. Oh yeah. Um, I thought that was cool. The way that the presentation, the way you were dressed and stuff, what was the idea behind that? How'd you kind of come up with that concept? I just, I wanted to take my clothes off on stage.

So I remember you, if you were dressed up, maybe kind of nerdy in the beginning or something like that. And then you switched into something else. I can't remember. So like on a level of nobody knows. So my name's Ned and my nickname for a long time was Flanders. So Ned Flanders from the Simpsons. So you got Ned Flanders, who's a total nerdy Christian guy. And then you've got Homer, who's this just whatever. And so the idea coming out

is I really think that we don't celebrate fatherhood and we have very low expectations for dads. And, you know, you have this, once I'm a dad, my life is over. I'm not cool anymore. You know, we don't have sex. We don't have fun. I'm just a dad now. And I think that is so far from the reality of how you can be a dad. So I thought I'm going to come on stage. I'm like wearing nerdy glasses and everything, which you could be a nerd and a dad. That's fine. But the point was the way that we view fatherhood isn't probably the way that

we should have you fatherhood. So I came out dressed like a nerd, like hi, diddly ho, my name's Ned. And for me, that's like, that's Ned Flanders.

You know what I mean? And then I took my clothes off because I thought it would be funny to do. And then went into like, this is what fatherhood is all about. And it was like board shorts and tank top type thing. Oh, yeah. So I wasn't naked. I guess that's good to say. But I had clothes underneath.

I had clothes underneath. I'm going to show everyone who's their daddy. It's something like that. What about your social media? Yeah, so social media, if they want to see, you know, the few pictures I put up of what I'm doing with my family, it's at Ned Shout. And then my website is rebelandcreate.com, which I have my book, my journal, the podcast, and a couple other things I'm working on will be out soon. How'd you come up with the name Rebel and Create? What's that about?

Yeah, so for the longest time, I thought that I was going to run this epic youth center and it was going to be like the pinnacle of my life. And that's how I defined myself. And in 2015, it didn't work out. And so this kind of mantra came to me, rebel and create. And it's really can be applied to many things, but I needed to rebel against the status quo of like, my identity is built on what I build outside of my home and all the things I want, I want to create in my home. And as a man, we get caught up in what is out there. Like, are you doing a job that you love? And are you happy in this, that, and the other, which I think is a great, but we need UPS drivers. We need, you know, we need all these jobs that maybe aren't the sexiest jobs. I sell insurance. It is not sexy at all. Um, so rebel against finding all your identity in this and create a home where your identity can really thrive.

Awesome. Want to take a sign out of here, Andrew? I will. Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode. Shout out to everybody on the live chat. You guys were awesome today. Please make sure you hit that like button on your way out. And thank you to Pete Montes for sponsoring today's episode.

Again, promo code PowerProject for 25% off your entire order. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Please follow the podcast at MarkValsPowerProject on Instagram, at MBPowerProject on TikTok and Twitter. My Instagram and Twitter is at IamAndrewZ, at TheAndrewZ on TikTok. And Sima, where you at? I am Sima Indy on Instagram and YouTube. I am Sima Yin Yang on TikTok and Twitter. Mark.

I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later.