The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Alex Mont-Ros, Co-Founder of The Step Up Method, Helping Families Excel through High Performance Mindset Coaching and Systems

Episode Date: August 9, 2023

Alex Mont-Ros, Co-Founder of The Step Up Method, Helping Families Excel through High Performance Mindset Coaching and Systems Stepupmethod.com Familymeetingplanner.com Biography Alex Mont-Ros is a highly driven and accomplished individual who has made a significant impact in both his personal and professional life. As a mindset coach and the co-founder of The Step Up Method with his wife, he helps men and women achieve their full potential and become the best versions of themselves. In addition to his professional achievements, Alex is a serial entrepreneur who successfully bootstrapped and sold in 2021 their first 7+ figure business founded by him and his wife. He is also the author of the "Family Meeting Planner," which helps parents lead their families effectively with intention and purpose.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends.

For 14 years, we've been doing this show and over 1,500 episodes we're heading towards. We're about to hit the big anniversary. I got to tell you, we couldn't do the show without you. Not you back there. Not the guy in the green shirt. The guy in the blue shirt. We couldn't do the show without you. Actually, it's all of you standing there.

So we certainly appreciate you all. As always, a giant hug out to everyone listening to the show. When was the last time I offered to hug you people? A big hug. Everyone needs a hug, right? Am I right, Alex? Do people need a hug? Everybody needs a hug.

It's good for the soul. There you go. It's good for the soul, damn it. And I'm going to use that lead-in from Alex, who will be joining us here in a second, to tell us about his amazing stuff. He's going to enlighten you and brighten you. Enlighten you?

Is that a word? Enlighten you and brighten you and bring magic to your life. I just threw a whole lot of work on him. He has to become a magician now, which I don't think is in his wheelhouse. We'll find out. That's going to be the adventure of the show. But in the meantime,

use the show to enlighten brighten other people or from your family friends relatives go to goodreads.com for just Christmas LinkedIn.com for just Christmas YouTube.com for just Christmas and tell them god damn it you're never going to know what the ramble is going to be when Chris Foss starts the show some people just go listen all the rambles when it

comes because I don't know I just make it every time because the plugs are boring at least to you and me but in the meantime go give us five stars on iTunes. I beg of you, please don't make me cry. I'll give you a second hug. We have an amazing gentleman on the show, and he's not me, as always, with our guests are some of the most smartest people in the world. We put them in the Google machine.

We Google them, smartest people in the world, and they come on our show, and they're like, why the hell am I here with this idiot, Chris Voss? This gentleman is an amazing gentleman. His name is Alex Montross. He is on the show with us today, and he's going to be talking about his amazing company, StepUpMethod.com, and he has a hell of a journey. We're going to be talking about families, fatherhood, marriages, all that sort of good stuff. Most of you may be involved in some of that.

I think that's about everybody. Doesn't everybody have kids and maybe is either married or going to be married or all that stuff. So we're talking about how to be better at everything. Health, life, fitness, just everything. Damn it. It's all going gonna be in there alex who's joining us in the show is a highly driven and accomplished individual who's made a significant impact in both his personal and professional life he's a mindset coach and co-founder of the step up method

with his wife and he helps men and women achieve their full potential and become the best versions of themselves boy i'm still working on that i think i'd and become the best versions of themselves. Boy, I'm still working on that. I think I'd probably be the best version of myself at 150 age. In addition to his professional achievements, Alex is a serial entrepreneur who successfully bootstrapped and sold their 2021 business. It was their first seven-plus-figure business founded by him and his wife. He's also the author of the family

meeting planner which helps parents lead their families effectively with intention and purpose outside of his work he's a devoted father husband and philanthropist who helped raise eight children over the past two decades eight children that's a whole podcast right there we'll get into it uh he's an avid combat sports enthusiast he probably has to fight off most of the eight children i'm just kidding you know your children i'm just doing jokes people don't write me and former amateur boxer for unlv and he's currently on a journey to become a black belt in brazilian jiu-jitsu he can fight zuck and elon in that fights coming up uh he's married to his best friend lisa well that's unfortunate most people aren't you know most people are their worst friend is now i'm just kidding i'm doing marriage

and the couple's been together for 12 years so obviously they like each other welcome to the show alex how are you thank you chris that was an amazing intro by the way and uh the eight kids is everybody whenever i go into that journey i'm, it never makes any sense. So I barely go into the story. You might have to explain this real quick. Yeah. You know, look, at the age of 20, I got married. And everybody told me, everybody was telling me like, Alex, look, are you sure you want to do this at 20 years old? And I'm like, I'm in love.

I, you know, I know it's the right decision for my life. And at the time, my ex-wife, now a little bit older than me had three kids So I went into a marriage already with three kids by the time I was 23 We had our two kids. So I was raising five kids Working my ass off just trying to provide And did okay, right then the crash of 08 happened lost everything and shortly after that ended up going through a divorce so that was kind of the the journey of the first initial set of kids and obviously now with my my wife lisa we have uh we have some kids now and i thought it was done by

the way i was up but here was the whole goal i was going to my 40s thinking that was good like so i got remarried to my wife lisa i thought hey she has a daughter i have my i had my two kids and i was like i think we're good and she's like you know i'm already planning my life my 40s my 50s when we travel the world we're going to do all these things he's like hey i want to have kids i'm like oh man i gotta reset myself again to do this all so and but it's been a blessing to have uh you know we have our two little ones so so now we are a household of five kids there you go well you gotta you gotta work out and be healthy we'll talk about some of this uh chase those kids around give us your dot com

so people can check that out on the interwebs as we lead in sounds good so at www.stepupmethod.com that's where you kind of find our backstory our journey it's our consulting and coaching company and we also have a familymeetingplanner.com as well if you want to get a copy of our family meeting planner you can go there kind of get a quick breakdown of how it all works and then order your copy there you go so give us a 30,000 overview what you guys coached on you and your wife and how it works all right so uh i'm going to go back to a part of the origin story and then so this will kind of give some context in 2013 we just got married and the joke was um well it wasn't a joke but i actually had

a heart attack at 33 holy crap dude yeah yeah man it It was nuts. So I didn't, thank God that my wife took me to the hospital. We've been married six months. Here's the joke. We're in the hospital as the doctor comes in and says, hey, you're having a heart attack right now and we got to get you in the back like ASAP. And so my wife looks at me and she's like, did I marry broken goods? Oh, did she say that to you or just give you that look? But jokingly, jokingly, I can't believe I married broken goods. Right. So anyway, they sent me to the back and, uh, thankfully got there. Cause I actually had my lower artery descending, um, which is the widow maker, they call it 95% clogged and had it been fully clogged or had I not gotten to the

hospital in time, I would not be here today. So thankfully she got there. And so that, that journey, that part of, that was kind of the start of really asking myself some serious questions about my life at the time. I was 33, kind of working through some things and marriage and new family and all this stuff and work. At the time I was a managing client partner at Verizon and doing my work there. But I had no intention or purpose really in my journey of life. It was just go to work, make some money, come home, be with the family, do that over and over and over again. And it was a very redundant, to be honest, very average, boring life. And with that came this idea of like, well, I'm not really living with any intention, no purpose. There's not really a growth path for me.

It was a day to day and it didn't matter how much money I was making. I dreaded getting up every day to go to work. And that just started to kind of compound itself over the years. And so in 2016, a few years later, my wife and I started our business. We started Moncord Real Estate Professional Services, which was a transaction coordination company for the real estate industry in Washington. And so we started that and it was actually the joke about how that started. That was kind of an accident. We just wanted to do an addition onto our house at the time. And we needed about $100,000. And we're like, all right, you know what?

I think we can kind of start this business up and we can make that. Well, at the time, I was going through an MBA program. And they said, hey, can you do a marketing analysis on a company in Washington, Seattle, general area? And I said, sure. And I asked the professor, I go, can I do one on a startup? And it was my wife's, it was Lisa Montrose transactions. And she had like five clients, I think at the time.

And I was like, can I just do one on a startup, local startup? And he's like, go for it. So that market analysis led me to an understanding that the market for the services we were providing really wasn't, you know, hadn't seen anything at scale. There was a lot of individual players, but nobody really doing yet the scale that I, I believe we could, we could potentially grow to. And that started the journey of creating the company, scaling it. And then in 21, we ended up getting acquired by a larger firm. We had a great exit. And so through that, now that leads us to today, through the journey of having our company and

growing that together as a married couple we learned a lot about ourselves one we learned how to better be better communicators we didn't go through a divorce thank god um because a lot of you know the story is you know you co-found a co-find co-found a company with your with your you know spouse chances are uh you're going to have a lot of um you know long nights probably arguments and disputes that um could potentially you know crush the marriage right so we at the beginning of our journey we kind of made some hard ground rules around our life and what we wanted it to look like and one thing was this is that we were not going to allow them the the business to ever the marriage. So at any given time, we felt that our marriage was going to

be at risk of, you know, just kind of crumbling. We were going to be okay, letting go of the business. And so that initial kind of conversation and really kind of standard we set in place at the very beginning helped us through many, many hard years of building our company and helping, you know, kind of get it to the place where we needed to get to, to eventually exit. You know, you guys have, you guys have accomplished something very few people can do. I think I read years ago and just like decades ago in Harvard business view, I think I read only maybe,

I think it's four or 7% of marriages can survive working together. It's a really small, it really is a small number and, and, and not, not choke each other to death. Yeah. Believe me, there was many, and she probably wanted to choke me more than the other way around, but, uh, it was, I was felt like I was getting in the way many times. But this led us to this understanding that, you know, to have a marriage in a business that can thrive, there has to there's a lot of moving pieces. And communication was really critical to that. And also having a game plan in place that you can actually execute on a daily basis. When we exited the company, we had already done many years of consulting and coaching.

And we were asking ourselves in the last couple of years, like, well, what do we want to do now? You know, what is, what is, what's been the purpose of this journey of building a company together and everything else we did prior to that? And what has it led us to today? And really it was being of service, helping other married couples kind of in their journey. We work with, you know, co-founders of companies that are married, if they're scaling

their business, if you're a high performer or you need an edge in business or just mindset, you know, what can we do there to help kind of bring you some tools and some techniques that can help you in that journey. And that's what kind of launched the Step Up Method, which is driven by a framework. We believe that if your actions and your intentions are aligned and that the habits that you create daily become like the connective tissue of aligning your intention to your actions,

you empower yourself first and then you can empower others. And through that process, a lot of people have great intentions, but they lack action. So how do we make sure that the right actions, the right habits are aligned? A lot of people take a lot of action with zero intentions, unlike what they're going to accomplish. So helping them get clarity on the intentions and ultimately how do we create a more empowered individual so that they can also become better leaders, whether it's in their family or their business.

There you go. There's a pyramid structure you have on your website. People should check out under stepupmethod.com. And I really love it. At the top, it's got empower. And then on the two sides of the triangle, there's intentions and actions. And you're right. You just talked about how you need to have both these working together.

You can't just go do something. Like, I'm going to do something to see if it works. You know, throw that was me. That was me in my early 30s. It was a lot of action. I just didn't have any freaking intention on like what what to do with all this action. How can I actually make it make it meaningful? And once we started aligning those two things, this this framework framework started to become real for us as a, as a couple and as individuals. And we started creating some really cool things in our lives that now we want to help others kind of embrace as well.

There you go. And then inside of the triangle is habits. That's a support sort of structure. And, and that makes sense because if, you know, you can, you can have great intentions, you can plan great actions, but unless you make things a habit and you're, you know, you're working on that project every day, you're not going to get there because, you know, I, I think probably a perfect example is new year's day, right? Everyone sets a intentions and they said some actions like, I'm going to go to the gym tomorrow and i'm gonna lose 50 pounds this year and you know and then every year no one loses 50 pounds gyms are usually full for the first month or two yeah and and without those habits of doing that everyday thing and go okay

you know i'm gonna eat the elephant like i like to think of it eat the elephant one bite at a time anytime i take on something big i'm like oh my god this thing's big and like just start taking little bites and then you wake up one day and the elephant's eating and they put it on in front of you and you're like barbecue sauce um so uh i love this power-up method um that you guys take and have on your website or step-up method i'm sorry uh and then on the family planner uh what what's inside of that people get a free copy on the website or a free, uh, I think, uh, well, you tell us what it is. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Sure. So kind of the journey of the family meeting planner, um, this actually came out of my corporate experience. It's funny. So when I would ever, whenever I talk to men and, and really I've worked with a lot of fathers and men on, and they're on their journey, I always ask them, I said, hey, do you have core values? And a lot of men actually don't have any core values from themselves,

let alone their families, right? But they can recite their company's core values, which is very interesting. They know it like, you know, they're like, oh, yeah, you say, hey, what's your company core value? You know, Amazon, you know, they'd be most or mission statement or, you know, whatever core values, mission statement, vision. They can name it because they've been indoctrinated through that process of onboarding and being part of this bigger bit movement that you are, you know, in your work life. Right. So when I so there was a gap there and I realized I said, OK, well, we don't have this in our family.

Why is that? So I start asking those questions. And then eventually I was like, all right. So I got together with my wife and said, okay, well, we don't have this in our family. Why is that? So I started asking those questions. And then eventually I was like, all right. So I got together with my wife and said, hey, we need values. Why is it that every Monday we have a sales meeting, but when I go home, I have like a structured way to connect with my family to really kind of bring in the, you know, to hear the hearts of my kids and hear the hearts of my wife in a very intentional way, right? Where everything's in passing, you know, you come home, you're tired, you have a conversation. Everybody's doing that. They're all going through those rhythms, but there's a lack of intention behind that. So I was like, okay, well, that's us too. And the journey of creating this family meeting planner came from the heart attack, obviously,

was like a big turning point to be like, okay, I got to get more intentional. I want my time to matter here. And also, I want my kids and my family to know that they matter to me. Let me give them that time. So we created the family meeting as a tool for us in our journey to really connect with our kids and our family throughout the years. And then so in 20, I think it was like 2020, I said, gosh, I've been having this idea of this planner in my head for the last three years, four years. I was like, I got to get it out of my head

and just design a planner. And so I went to that journey and just said, okay, it's not going to be perfect. It's going to be good enough. Got it out. We released it. It was a hit. Everybody was like, hey, I want to do family meetings. This is an area that I'm lacking in my family. And I'm not connecting with my wife, my kids. And started hearing all these challenges that all these fathers and men were going through as I'm working with them. And so that became an eye opener of like, okay, this is a bigger desire. I would say there's a desire there, but implementation and then actually executing going back to what you said, the intention still needs to align with the action and it starts with the habit. of making very small commitments to ourselves every day and we break them. And through that process of breaking these small commitments every day, we start losing confidence in ourselves as men and as fathers to then execute on the bigger things that we

need to execute on. So holding these men accountable through our systems, through our process of the family meeting planner, we're helping them understand like, hey, you can just make a commitment to having a conversation, just sit down with your family for 30 minutes every Sunday or Monday, and there's a reason behind that, to just sit down and have a conversation. If you can just stick to that once a week, you'll start. And then you can kind of pile on what I like to say, stacking some wins. You can stack that win on top of the next win. Before you know it, you've created new habits and new rhythms for your family and for yourself as a

leader in your home. There you go. We used to have family meetings when I was a kid growing up in the seventies. It was mostly, uh, uh, it was mostly cause we unionized as kids. And so we had to negotiate our, our, uh, our, uh, what's that shit called? Did he give you kids? No, no, no, no. Uh, no, uh, salary.

You were getting a salary no we're getting one of those uh what is the stipends where they give you like uh hey you get five dollars allowances yeah there you go there you go we we had a union that uh we formed to fight the alliance i think but no we our family used to have the little meetings mostly it was to tell us what horrible children we were and we were horrible children so uh i can attest to that i was part of that crew and it was some of it was intentional uh no but i i love this program that you put forth you know maybe people do people maybe need to start thinking of their business or their family as kind of a business i mean not really you don't want to you know go selling the children or anything i mean you could but you don't want to, you know, go sell the children or anything. I mean, you could, but you don't, I think it's against the law. I think what's come out of the journey that we've seen

and talking to a lot of couples and women and men throughout the last couple of years of doing this is that the challenge that there has to be a paradigm shift of how you look at like a meeting. And to your point too, the reason why i remember being a kid and i had a neighbor that did family meetings we never did in our home and and they would invite me sometimes to their meeting i remember the mom cooking like desserts and like and then so everybody'd sit down and they'd give their little updates and stuff and i was like as a kid i always was like this is cool i want my family to do this they never did it um and then my wife had a very similar experience too and so it was like why how did we get away from that you know so the but the the word meeting because it's when we launched this i played around with like family as a family

huddle then people were like confused like well i don't know what a huddle is and i was like let me just go back to meeting and then let me try to help the audience have a paradigm shift of the word meeting the goal of the meeting you know when you come home from god the last thing you want is another meeting especially if you're on zoom calls all day or you're in you know meetings all day you're like gosh i gotta have another meeting with my family we heard this as as feedback we're like that's why my husband doesn't want to do it and there's all these excuses by the way that's because that's really all it is just a bunch of lame excuses for why people just don't want to do something and there's all these excuses by the way that's because that's really all it is just a bunch of lame excuses for why people just don't want to do something that could be a benefit but i also think the word can carry a a negative connotation because

you're associating it back to work and if you are if you hate all of your meetings so you sit in 20 of them the last thing you want to hear is that you got to have another meeting so we through our process of helping coaches you know couples and men and women up, it's like, Hey, this is a meeting of the minds to help your family come to, uh, understand what really matters to you. Understand you help understand what matters to them and build a regular cadence to where you can, you have a safe, I don't want to say a safe place. Cause that's not really what it is. It's a place of confidence that anybody at that time and moment throughout the week can share their hearts on a challenge that they're having in their lives. We have many times in our family where, especially

during COVID, where our teenagers were really struggling. They went through a lot in their journey with school. You have all the social pressures or lack thereof because of being removed from their social environments and our kids were struggling with that and i remember we'd have these family meetings and everything you know they give an update there's a whole you know kind of process that we follow in an agenda and one day my my son finally like we go around the horn and we say hey you know what's your update you know how everything's going and he's just silent and out of nowhere he just breaks down and it was our moment as a family to come and rally around him and be like together and what was beautiful about that moment was that it wasn't dad my myself and him in a car ride having this moment where just him and i or him and his

mom in a very kind of individual isolated, uh, you know, kind of experience. It was the whole family rallying around this one person to really support him in that, in that challenge he was having. And I looked back and I said, this is why we do family meetings, like for these moments that you never know are going to come. And when they come, you're prepared for it now because we've been building up towards this you know for the last x amount of years months whatever it is you know so um it really is a place to kind of help your family connect build better communicators our you know our eight-year-old will lead a family meeting now oh really she knows how to she yeah

she knows how to scribe teachers leadership role leadership. Yeah, so we're building leaders. We're building communicators. And so it's bigger than just, you know, kind of getting your family together just to have a conversation. There's a lot of other value that's brought to the table when you have these family meetings. There you go. And the planner comes with a 52-week structured format. It even gives you agendas, suggestions, so you can keep people on track. I like the whole format of having a formal meeting and making everyone come together. I wrote in my book, Beacon's Leadership, about how everyone can be a leader and parents can be a leader.

And a lot of parents say to me, what? We're leaders? Yeah, you don't have to have a CEO title to be a leader. And a parent is a leader of a child. Whether you realize it or not, you're leading them. Or, you know, in some cases like that, what was that, Nanny Show, where she would teach parents how to be parents? You know, they might be leading you.

So if somebody's leading somebody over there, maybe the kids read my book. But it's important to recognize that you are a leader. You're influential to them. And I like this thing of setting the values down, saying who we are. It's so easy. And, you know, we get caught up in life and, you know, your father going, Hey, I'm doing the right thing and being provider and bringing home the paycheck. But when I come home, I got to, I got to tune down. I got to gel out. Maybe,. Maybe, you know, just get some peace for a second. And, you know, everyone's kind of lost in the functions they do.

You know, mom's maybe making dinner and, you know, kids are doing homework. And then one of the other problems we have in this world that I think your planner really helps is everyone's walking around with this, with the cell phone or the iPad. You know, the kids are in the ipad now so you know i remember when i first saw cell phones you know really take off with the iphone and i would go into restaurants and i would see like a family of four two parents two kids and they're all looking at their iphone no one's talking they're just eating and i'm like this is horrible this is like the worst intimacy you know just everyone's doing their own thing. And so I think it's great because this family meeting concept gives you a dipstick into what's going on.

What's going on in our kid's life? Gives you some time to be present, which is really important. I actually had to start scheduling every day 15 minutes to spend with my dogs because I wasn't spending time with them. And I'm like, okay, I'll do it in an hour. I'll go play with them, throw a ball in the yard in an hour. And then, okay, the sun's down. Okay, we'll fuck that day. And so trying to be present, and then a month goes by.

And so I had to schedule the time in the morning to go out and play. We do it over coffee and sit in the sun. But you got to do it. And I know I don't have kids, but for me and my dogs that are my kids, it goes by so fast. And I imagine it's the same for parents. And not being able to check in, have that monitor, be present and everything. That's something that people can do with your guide is check in. Yeah. Yeah, that's really the aim.

And I'm calling, my call is to a lot of, I of i would say you know a lot of the fathers out there is really to kind of own it and and the reason why is again this is just from experience and talking a lot of men and even the women in the journey of starting to launch family meetings it's something else that that could easily be placed on if they're married onto their wife like okay you set up the meeting and then i just show up and then that's it's like so then how do our kids start to view us as leaders if we aren't taking control of a situation commanding that leadership in a way that they see uh mom and dad as partners in this journey there you go and not you know because mom is my wife is a machine i mean she just like she runs everything She runs a show.

I try to catch up. She's on 100 miles an hour all day. It's crazy. I'll put something down. That's how insane it is. I'll put a glass of water down. I walk away. The water cup is gone, and it's already being washed.

I'm like, I just poured that for myself. She's like, it's nuts, man. I'm like, you got a problem. You got to slow down. So she's everywhere. Yeah. I mean, hey, I mean, look, there could be worse things, right? Yeah, that's true.

But she, and the kids see that. They see that she's, you know, picking up the kids. And so there's this opportunity for us fathers to really kind of, you know, take a breath, sit down, let the kids know that we got this as a family. We're in control. Mom and dad are aligned. We have a mission. We have a vision for our family. And now we want to share with you. We want to be part of this. And we also want to have a conversation. We want to hear about your day. We want to hear about, you know, things that you might need help with that we've seen from a coaching perspective, right. In a very productive environment. So that's, it's been awesome, man. So I love, you know, uh, when families find launch, I get messages and like, I just launched my first family meeting, man. It was great. You know, and all these,

I'm like, it's, it's pretty cool stuff to, to see these families being transformed by just this one simple tactic. There you go. And they get access to a monthly masterclass, behind-the-scenes access, member hot seats. There's a whole package you guys have. A whole bunch of stuff there. A 14-day trial and stuff like that. What do you normally help? What do you find most people are coming to you asking for help in your coaching program?

What's a popular item that you find people really struggling with? They're struggling right now with a lot of our coaching clients. We get two. We get entrepreneurs in their businesses. So we've gone through the journey. So we do some business consulting. So we have that part of our business. But then on the individual side when it comes to performance, it's really staying is how can they build a habit of consistency?

That's usually by far the main concern that everybody kind of comes to us with. How can I get more consistent? How can I build better habits? And it all starts with then reviewing kind of what their day to day looks like, what are their challenges, you know, when it comes to why, why can't, why aren't they being consistent? I go back to the, the daily non-negotiables, like what are the things that they have that are, that they're negotiating every day? And then how do we create non-negotiables in their daily habits so that, and then hold them accountable, right?

Then they also lack accountability. We're in a day and age where, you know, we're all in our homes, we're on our Zoom calls, we're, you know, we're, many of us don't even go into the office anymore. So there used to be that, you know, that, you know, kind of community that you would have in your office with your, you know, your peers. And that's missing because we're all in these virtual environments. And so your community and being held accountable, you know, I think there's a gap there, right? And people are seeking that in one form or another. We help people when it comes to mindset and fitness, you know, maybe they need to lose a few, you know, a few pounds. And they also understand that if they don't, they don't have the most optimal energy to lead their families, to lead their careers better, right?

There's challenges around their business or career development. It all goes back to daily habits, non-negotiables, and then hold them accountable to then establishing new habits in their day-to-day rhythms. There you go. One thing I liked is, let's talk about how you instill an entrepreneurial mindset in children and encourage their ambitions and aspirations. I, you know, my employees used to joke with me. They're like, if Chris Voss has kids, he's going to be, they're going to, they're going to go to bed in double breasted suits and wear them around the house. And he's going to read them like, I don't know, Barron's or the Wall Street Journal to put them to sleep at night. And they're all going to have stock accounts. Probably not a lot of money.

And they're all going to expect to have their own companies going by eight. So how do we instill an entrepreneurial mindset in kids? Maybe not to that extreme. I think, look, I mean, our kids are watching us. You know, it's funny. You know, the hypocrisy I think sometimes as parents is that we will tell our kids, you can achieve anything. You can have anything you want in this world. Then they look at their parent and they see them dreading complaining they come home complaining about the job complaining about

their life and and it's such this disconnected incongruent messaging that's happening in the home so if we're going to really build that entrepreneurial kind of spirit in our kids they got to see us willing to take a shot on ourselves, whatever that is. And I think in today's day and age, there's no better time to do it. If you're in a corporate environment, there's no reason why you can't have something on the side building and saying, Hey, and then your kids are watching like, wow, my parents are taking a shot on themselves. They're actually going to try something on their own that maybe is a passion of theirs that they've been holding for so long and they're gonna go shoot it out to the world and so with our within our kids and our family they see you know their mom and dad all day long you know testing trying you know they see it and i think

that that's the best way to do it is that you have to be the example or somebody in their life has to be the example to show them what what that entrepreneurial spirit could actually turn into from, you know, being a reality in their lives. There you go. Uh, you know, if parents don't realize that I've dated for, I I'm 55, I dated all my life. I've been single all my life. I couldn't afford all the divorces. So I never got married. Uh, I tried twice. I tried twice. I was engaged twice, but, uh, um, you know know I could tell that I was a broken individual and no one loved me long term which is my audience right now 14 years

he's a broken yeah no one should marry this guy in fact I think there's a warning label that someone put on me because of it it's a tattoo don't try this at home but that being said and five segues in or three segues in or whatever, however many that was, I lost what the hell I was going to say.

Oh, what I was going to say was I don't, what I've seen in my life of dating is the end result of failed parenthood, not, not 100% of the time, but the end result of failed parents in the home. And usually it's either single parents in the home raising kids without a strong masculine and feminine frame in them. And I'm talking masculine and feminine. So if you're LGBTQ, there's always the feminine and masculine in there. But I've seen what happens when kids are raised in single parent homes. I've seen the fallout from them without a father, without a mother. There's mother abandonment issues. There's father abandonment issues. I've seen what that looks like at the end of the road

when I date people that might be in my age group or down 10 years. I see what that looks like. I see what the kids look like. I see what the family looks like. And it's so important that parents realize what you and I have been talking about for the past 40 minutes. The examples you set, whether you set them intentionally or whether you're just setting them subconsciously because you're sloppily not operating intention as you talk about, they're going to pick it up. And if the family doesn't feel safe, if they don't feel secure in the family, if there's problems between the parents, butting heads and toxicity and things like that, I can tell you what it looks like when those kids reach 40 is fucking nasty and ugly. It's not pretty at all. And the the damage the multiple divorces and the toxicity that they that they uh mirrored is hard and i think with your system it kind of occurred to me that with your system it creates it creates some safety it creates some balance and and that

connection is so important like even my dogs i have to connect with them we have to go outside we got to look each other in the eyes and i have go, I'm here and you're there and we're together. And this is our moment right now. And that's so important. Yeah. Yeah, it is. And, uh, and you, you, you bring a good point. I mean, I think, you know, to your point, I mean, we're all broken, right?

We all have, you know, our own journey of redemption. I would say that we all are going through in life. Uh, it's, you know, I think for anybody out there that's, you know, wants the best for their kids, they got to ask themselves, like, well, what am I doing for myself to invest in myself so that I can actually become that person, that man or woman that I know is in me, actually desired, I see it, I aspire to be that person, but there's something in the way that's not allowing me to actually ever realize it. Get the help, invest in yourself with, you know, coaching, mentoring. There's a lot of ways that, you know, you can, you can kind of overcome

some of these things that are in the way and then start to have your kids be, you know, they're going to now start becoming a part of the journey of transformation because ultimately we are all being transformed one way or the other. And if we're not intentional or if we just think it's a bunch of hoo-ha, whatever it is, you know, I, you know, that's for that person, not for me, then you're doing your kids a disservice because they're the only person they're looking at or people they're looking at in their lives for that inspiration is you. That's it and so if you look down upon those things that around coaching mentoring because by the way i talked to a lot of i have a lot of uh uh men in my in my journey that you know it's like it's hey good for

you not for me and these people are they're broke they're um you know they're obviously not well ahead which is funny to me i'm like it's it's always good for somebody else that's doing okay in life, but not good for the person that's not doing okay. It's just mind-boggling. And I know that that's a limiting belief that they have in their mind. And it's scary to transform because guess what that means? You actually have to work. Yeah, you got to do the work. But with habits, it makes it easier, right?

It makes it easier. And then it becomes, before you know it, just the way that you – before know it that's just who you are that's how you live and that's just part of the lifestyle so yeah it's and that that dawned on me with my kids i mean uh i was like if i'm gonna be the best version myself it's it's it's really about them than it is more about me because i want them to see their dad you know at the end of the day you know the day i go they can at least say you know what hey at least the dude like showed up and did his best you know for us um you know so yeah yeah definitely you know the other thing i talked about my book and and stuff too is parents try to fake it and you know they tell you know it's like you mentioned that earlier you know parents will try and be like you know don't you know it's like you mentioned that earlier you know parents will

try and be like you know don't do this do that like parents will say hey kids don't swear swearing's bad you know don't do it and the kids catch you saying you know this that and the other and then they pick it up where'd you learn that from you know uh dad in the shop you know he banged his finger with a hammer and uh and so it's funny like even my mom to this day i'll be like yeah don't swear around me and she's religious and you know every now and then i guess who i catch uh uh yeah you know damn and i'm like hey hey and so what parents have to realize you can't bullshit your kids i mean they they they mirror everything about you your personality the interaction you have with your spouse or or a significant other or however your arrangement

set up um they mirror you and like i i grew up looking at a lot of what my father did and he was a good man he tried his best but there were some things that he was flawed in and we're all flawed and but you know there's some things i really thought made it tough for him to be a father and have an interaction with a father son or in our family and and so i said i don't want to be like that i'm gonna do the opposite of what he does so i often will tell people i learned things from my father by antithesis so uh what he taught me i just he taught me you know i'm gonna do opposite. What I found was when I grew up, when I got in a parental role with me, with, uh, either people I was dating or their kids or, uh, my, my dogs, I started replicating. It all started

coming out. My dad, I was like, son of a gun. I didn't want to be like him. And I think a lot of parents probably go through that. Like I'm talking like my parents now. Um, and, and so, you know, people don't realize is what you're talking about is making yourself a genuine good person and, and, and, and becoming whole on the inside and, and making sure that you're setting a genuine example to your kids. Cause if you lied in them, if you bullshit them, whatever your, whatever, who you truly are are if you're a horrible human being on the inside like i am your kids are going to pick up to it in fact that's why i didn't have kids because i didn't want to spread the disease uh so i do about that yeah they they do i think the biggest the biggest um advantage we can give our kids in those in the moment of under of realizing like okay i there's

moments in time where i'm a hypocrite right is how do we how do we take full accountability to also show them what accountability looks like every time that i mess up i'm pretty good at it i probably fail at this more than i should um is i come to the table with an open heart and say, Hey, forgive me guys for, you know, I know dad shouldn't have, you know, raised his voice or, you know, I know I said this or did this, I own it. So then that I'm now I'm showing them what reconciliation and accountability looks like again, because I have to show them what that is in that, in this journey. So when they get older, they can now understand, okay, I messed up, I got to own it. And this is now the process for how you reconcile a relationship with somebody that you may have, uh, you know,

erred, you know, with, right. So that's one, the other thing you mentioned too, about like our parents my dad's now 82 uh very flawed you know and and just as any of us but i i as the older i'm getting i'm realizing too that you know my dad you know i have more empathy for my father and the tools that he had to be a man and also to be a father because he left communist cuba at the age of 1920 back revolution against casper and he has a crazy backstory and so you know he came to the u.s you know had his you know he already had a he already had one of my brothers um early on and then so his whole journey is is one of you know getting ahead and just trying to like figure out and in his heart he's like straight up like uh you know good fella he's from like somebody he could be in the movie good fellas okay so he's that's who he is in his heart

but in in everything he's tried to do in his life it's been to become a better man although he never had the tools to like understand like how we have in everyday day and age gosh you open up your instagram you're gonna get hit with some advice about how to be a better father i mean there's there's all this constant information and education that he didn't have yeah you know on how to actually you know become better and so he did the best he could and i've had to also forgive him and also have empathy to be like, dad, I get it. Like you don't have this tool set to work with. I've been given, like he had a screwdriver and now maybe I have a hammer and a nail. And my goal is to give my kids like a,

like a machine saw or whatever, you know what I mean? Like a saw and a whole toolkit and everything more so that they can do more with the with and have more tools to succeed in life. So that's been a realization with my parents. I mean, I lost my mother young, but so my dad raised us, you know, my brother and I for, you know, since I was seven and he did his best. And that, that healed me a lot. And I think for a lot of, you know, people that are out there that are still bitter with their parents, you know, why I'm just it's like man take a step back ask yourself the tool what kind of tool set that they have in in their journey and then put yourself in their shoes and be like oh man i guess it would have been a lot harder yeah it probably would have been to be them it might have been a whole

lot harder than you ever imagined you know so that's that's helped me in my journey and i'm hoping by the way i'm hoping my kids can look at me like i've had that epiphany i hope to god they can one day be like you know dad you know i get it now yeah yeah while you're insane yeah yeah most people are trying to do the right thing it's just sometimes they don't apply very well and sometimes it can look evil or be evil. And you're right. They're working with certain tools and how they grew up. Do you guys ever work with couples because you have yourself and your wife? Do you guys ever work with couples and you work with the father and the mother or anything like that?

Yeah. So my wife, you know, obviously we kind of separate. Those are challenges that, you know challenges that you know individually so yeah if there's ever um a couple that's you know uh is trying to implement family meetings or uh they're on a journey of you know developing uh you know i would say a mindset you know they're overcoming mindset challenges and then they bring in their husband or their wife kind of team so we'll kind of figure out what their challenges are together so then ultimately they can run their family more effectively because the goal is that they can be happy at the end of the day. They can walk away from their journey of raising their kids and saying, you know, I did okay.

I think they're going to be good. Like, I don't think, you know, they're not going to end up in prison or, you know, anything crazy. I think I did okay. And there I can launch them into the world knowing that i did my part um i think all parents should be asking like are my kids launch ready like are my kids launch ready i love that all right are they launch ready you know you know i grew up gen x and of course we're we're on we're on spot we're the greatest generation ever um and uh you know we were we were very independent very early on. We didn't really have much of a choice.

It was just, that was just the way we were raised. And so we ran with it. But we know how to bury a body and clean up blood. So there's that. And we know how to, you know, we were never home. But these participation trophy generation really struggles, it seems, with self-accountability. And so I think teaching that to kids is really important in getting them to self-launch and also getting them the hell out of your house

when they turn 18. You ain't kidding, man. You ain't kidding about that one. Yeah. And just overcoming their problems and giving them tools that they need. Like I see so many kids nowadays that, you know, we see these incels now that really bug me where they meet a girl and she says, you know, no, I'm not interested.

I mean, most of your first girlfriends or girls you're interested in, you're a kid, you don't know what you're doing. Hey, I love you. And she's like, I'm not into you. And, you know, you got to learn things. But the first no or the first defeat, they get turned down for a job. They get turned down for whatever they just give up they're just like i'm just gonna stay at mom's house forever and

and all that good stuff and really you know they don't have that sort of skill set to build up calluses take no's take hits have failures in life and if you don't teach your kids that it's really hard like there's nothing worse than when i meet somebody who's like 40 years old and still screaming about how it's not fair and it's like your father did not teach you evidently or maybe he wasn't in the house that life isn't fair and if you haven't learned that when you're like 10 have fun with this life yeah yeah that is that is my biggest fear by the way my biggest fear is that my kids would leave my house because i have my oldest is 21 she'll be 22 this year and then i have a 19 year old so my two oldest and so my fear with them is that they're

not you know and again i think i'm good it's still, there's yet to be, there's still some things yet to be seen as they launch, right. Truly launch. And they're on their journey, but I'm like, gosh, did I do okay? Because the challenge is, you know, I came from pretty much a pretty dirt, not dirt poor, but it was pretty poor environment. We struggled a lot in our childhood and to your point we were i was alaskan kids so independence like i learned that i just learned how to survive very young and you know the one thing you want for your kids if you came from that environment is to not have them go through that that same suffering right but the suffering is really what

creates the person you know if you can persevere you you you know i mean that that's like you're going through a crucible of life and then you're coming out fortified right and so my my concern my wife and i talk about this all the time man our kids got it really good right now it's kind of scary how good they got it so it's like how this balance of like okay how do we how do we impose uh you know things that are challenging in their lives so that they can have character development while at the same time blessing them because of the journey we've been on as a family.

So yeah, it's the whole participation trophy era and stuff. I've never been a fan of it. I think it's actually damaging our kids more than, it's probably been one of the biggest detriments to, to our society, that whole kind of concept. And you see it everywhere. Uh,

when our kids walk, I mean, I remember, uh, just was two years ago, one of my kids was in a competition and it was like, he finished like seven or eight and they gave him a, like a ribbon.

And I'm like, Oh Lord, man, are you kidding me like everybody had to get a ribbon and uh everyone gets so there there is an opportunity though for that conversation to be like it if you're intentional right back to the theme if you're intentional you can catch that moment and it can be it can actually be a moment to um to impart some wisdom into your child at that moment but you got

to be on the lookout because they're everywhere they're always happening but if you're just nonchalantly going about and oh you got a seventh grade and you're not taking the moment be like hey let's talk about like why do you think you got a ribbon and that you deserve a seventh place rhythm you know well i don't know i thought like you didn't win though so why would you have gotten a ribbon if you didn't win you know and then so you have gotten a ribbon if you didn't win, you know? And then, so you can have a conversation. I think that's,

I think that to combat the challenges in that, in this kind of generation is be on the lookout for those opportunities and use them as a time to really kind of impart some wisdom into your kids, you know, that can help them. There you go. And of course the family meeting is, is an important place to kick those

stuff around and talk about different things. Well, Alex, it's been really insightful to have you on as well. And I love the concepts you guys are building over there in coaching. Give me your.com so people can find you on the interwebs. Sounds good. Stepupmethod.com. It's our coaching consulting kind of, you know, all of that information is there.

And then for the family meeting planner, it's literally familymeetingplanner.com. There you go. Alex, thank you very much for coming on. We really appreciate it, man. Very insightful. Thank you. I appreciate you having me on. There you go. Order up the book, folks. You can go to the website and check it out. There'll be a link on the Chris Voss show as well. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrissvoss, youtube.com, 4chesschrissvoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrissvoss. See the big 130,000 group over there.

And the LinkedIn newsletter, that thing grows like a weed. Subscribe to that as well. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe and be intentional. This is the theme of the show, and we'll see you next time. And that should have us out, man.