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I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it.
1:02
I wasn't exactly sure where we were talking about today. Very rarely do I come into an
1:10
interview having less than a really solid idea of where we're going to go. Even if I'm
1:17
reading someone's book or documentary or something like that, I have a pretty good idea
1:20
of where we're going to go. Some of my favorite interviews I've ever done have gone essentially
1:25
how this one went. That's where I kind of map out what I'm going to do and what we're
1:30
going to talk about. Then I can tell right from the beginning, I'm not going to really
1:33
be hitting any of these high points because I just want to follow these threads. The interesting
1:37
thing about that is I just so love this conversation because we just followed threads about money,
1:44
about entrepreneurism, about specifically how Christians view money and entrepreneurism,
1:50
how capital can be used, how it affects the family. That's really one of the biggest points.
1:55
I even changed in the middle of this because I already came up with the title of the episode
1:59
but then I'm like, "No, no, no. We need to change this to the lies that Christians believe
2:02
about money." He and I grew up very similar in that. We kind of grew up with a poverty
2:07
mindset that was put into us, which a lot of that is put there by fear and by just being
2:13
unsure of what future is going to look like and anxiety and all those different things.
2:17
But for him, if you go back to the early 2000s, he's living in a trailer park with his new
2:22
wife and he's delivering pizza and then a couple of years later, they go completely
2:27
bankrupt because he was upside down in the trailer that he had. It's kind of a big crazy
2:31
story. To see where he's at now having built and sold multiple businesses, having gone the
2:36
entrepreneurial journey, staying on that journey, but now he's basically dedicated his life
2:40
to helping other people, specifically Christians, live out an entrepreneurial lifestyle, not
2:47
just in terms of their bank account and their profession, but even in their mindset because
2:51
he knows the downstream consequences, positive consequences that's going to have for the
2:55
capital K kingdom, but also for your little kingdom, which is your house, which as men,
3:00
we are called to be the head of our households. We are called to be the heads of our wives
3:03
and we are called to be the heads of our children and to catechize them and we're going to have
3:07
to give an account someday for how good of a job we did in those areas and specifically
3:11
loving our wife as Christ loved the church. And so this conversation goes in a lot of
3:16
different directions, but we did end up with something called the kid war plan. So this
3:20
is something that I knew about that I had heard that he had done before, but we really,
3:25
really dig into the details towards the end of the interview. What is the kid war plan?
3:29
Why is it this physical, like tangible, you can touch it book like why is it so expensive
3:34
like, you know, for them to make and for people to buy? But what does it do for families?
3:39
Because I know there's a lot of consternation with a lot of guys out there. They want to
3:42
they want to be doing the dad thing and doing the husband thing and they want to be doing
3:45
it on purpose, but they don't really know how. And, you know, people are, you know, they
3:48
have this program or that program, but some of them are really quite your style. They
3:51
don't really have the masculine heart and mind in mind when they're creating these types
3:55
of things. And I feel like kid war plan has really threaded that needle. And so we spend
4:00
quite a bit of time elucidating, okay, what is that? What does it do specifically for
4:04
dad, for mom, for the kiddos? And so I think that'd be a tremendous value for all of you.
4:09
And so yeah, I just really enjoyed my time with them. So I'm going to cut off my interests
4:12
so you guys can get after it. So guys without further ado, let's get into it.
4:17
Josh Latimer, welcome to Undaunted Life of Man's podcast.
4:20
Kyle, you're a legend in the scholar. Thanks for having me.
4:24
Now I've been called a lot of things, Josh, but legend, never been one of them scholar.
4:29
Maybe not that either. So I do appreciate the compliment from the very beginning. But I
4:32
just got to tell you, Josh, one of my favorite things in life, I like a lot of things like
4:36
I love jujitsu. I think baseball is great. Dogs are like the coolest thing in the world.
4:40
But pizza is one of the greatest things to me. Like if I could eat pizza all the time
4:45
and not be like a billion pounds, that would be one of the things I would want to do. And
4:49
you had the distinct honor of not only consuming pizza, but delivering pizza. So let's go all
4:56
the way back to early 2000s. Okay, because everyone knows kind of what you do now, all
5:00
the coaching and business and entrepreneurial success and all that. But early 2000s, you're
5:05
newly married to your lovely bride, Ashley, you're living in a trailer park, which I'm
5:10
wondering, does it sound as cool as it sounds? Or is it as cool as it sounds? And you were
5:14
delivering pizza for a living and sometime right around in that whole period, you also
5:19
filed for bankruptcy. So it seems like you're checking all of the most fun boxes, but you
5:24
did them a long time ago. So let's go back there. What was going on in your world back
5:28
then? Oh, man, I can't be the only person. But I had humble beginnings. Parents that
5:35
loved me, but there's a lot of pressure, a lot of poverty programming in my brain. And
5:40
yeah, I delivered pizzas. I think pizza is proof that God loves us and that he's real,
5:46
you know, personally, I'm just saying. But I would listen to like little business cassette
5:51
tapes for all the old people, you know, in my little Chevy S10 as I deliver pizza. And
5:56
I was fascinated by entrepreneurship and success and stuff. I didn't know anything. And I was
6:02
proud of the trailer that we lived in a buddy of mine used to make fun of us. He called it
6:05
a canned Dominion, like a condiment, like, yeah, you know, I had a mortgage on our trailer,
6:11
and I had a vehicle title. Literally, I had both of those documents. And the reason we
6:16
filed bankruptcy was I paid $52,000 for this trailer. And I bought it without a co-signer
6:22
at 19 years old, got married at 20. And we were trapped in it because it was only worth
6:28
$30,000. But I owed $52,000. And the guy that sold it to me sold it to me for more than
6:33
he was legally allowed to as a whole big mess. And you know, one of my favorite quotes is
6:37
don't despise small beginnings. And we did have a small beginning, but the seed was planted
6:41
back then, that there were other possibilities that I could build something or create something
6:47
or become more. I didn't know how I had a lot of bad character traits. But that was
6:54
the beginning of learning what I didn't know.
6:56
Okay, well, I want to key in on something that you said there, because it's something
7:00
that I've tried to describe other people just to even further elucidate it in my own brain.
7:04
But like a poverty mindset or poverty ideals that are kind of ingrained in somebody potentially
7:11
from a young age, like when you say that, what do you mean?
7:15
False beliefs about money, your relationship with money, Christians, you know, on the business
7:20
side, I work with a lot of small business owners. They're by far the most frustrating
7:25
business owners to even work with. I personally think that poverty is always a spiritual warfare
7:29
problem. And it's because of false beliefs, it's things that we believe are true that
7:34
are not true. Because we believe they're true, it dictates our emotions and our actions and
7:38
all these things. And, you know, the whole wealth is wickedness and poverty is piety
7:43
and I'm holy because I'm a failure. Where did that come from? And people debate that
7:48
I'm not an expert on that. I think it goes back to like the Catholic church and like
7:52
feeling bad. And I don't know, but that stuff is preeminent now in the church with business
7:58
owners. And what you think is true about money controls a large part of your life. You know,
8:04
some people that aren't entrepreneurs, you know, they say things like money's not important,
8:08
money's not everything. And they keep repeating this. No one thinks that money is everything.
8:14
So they just keep saying this. It's like, what do they really mean by that? Because they're
8:17
still trading 50 hours a week of their life to get more of it. Yet they're continuously
8:21
telling themselves how not important it is. And so I think it's fascinating. Zig Zigler
8:26
said that money's not everything, but it's similar to air. Meaning if you don't have enough
8:32
of it, it's the only thing you can think about. And you know, the purpose of life isn't to
8:36
breathe air, but you can't do the purpose of life without the air. So there's some relation
8:41
there and you can go too far with it. And we should talk about all that stuff, but it's
8:46
a fascinating topic. It's a polarizing topic. My heart is to help people that do feel called
8:53
to entrepreneurship to go big because the world's crazy. We need winners. We need finances for
8:59
the kingdom. And you know, you got to learn the game of business and learn how to think
9:02
different to achieve that period.
9:05
Okay, I'm curious to even dig in a little bit further. Where do you think that mindset
9:10
comes from? Because I have some guesses off top of my head. Okay, Jesus was not a wealthy
9:15
person as it pertains to human earthly wealth. So perhaps people are calling back to that.
9:21
People that don't understand scripture will say things like money is a root of all evil.
9:25
And that's not what the scripture saying. It's, you know, the love of money is a root of all
9:28
evil. You have individuals that see the excesses of maybe like a Benny Hinn or one of these,
9:35
you know, Joel Osteen or these types of guys. And then they're like, well, obviously that's
9:39
wrong. And that's immoral. And so if I do the opposite of that, and I swing as far as
9:44
I can to the opposite way, then then maybe I'll be moral, maybe God will love me. And
9:49
also I think it, you know, when people say, Hey, we're going to stop what we're doing,
9:53
and we're just going to pray about it. It's like, I'm not anti prayer by any stretch of
9:57
the imagination, but you can't pay your mortgage. You can't pay your bills with hopes and dreams
10:03
and prayers. Not saying that prayers can't assist you in those areas, but like you have
10:07
to pay them with money, you have to exchange money currency for a product or a service.
10:13
And so I guess if you had to try to boil it down, Josh, like where do you think that whole
10:17
ideology stems from where does it come from, aside from just the pits of hell?
10:22
It's so deep, man. A buddy of mine who's kind of internet famous now, his name is Myron
10:28
Golden. And everyone should go watch all of his videos because he's amazing. And I met
10:32
Myron like seven years ago. I've known him for a while. He's an incredible human being.
10:36
And before he was rich and famous, he was the same person that he is right now. But he has
10:42
this teaching where he talks about how really the fall of man in the Garden of Eden had
10:48
to do with Eve fixating on lack. And so I think the root of this money thing is that
10:57
it's we fix it on lack. It's like an orphan mindset type of thing. And what I mean is
11:02
is you think about the Garden of Eden. Every single thing you could ever want to have in
11:06
a super awesome place to live was there. There was only one thing that they weren't supposed
11:11
to do. They had everything else. But what does the human brain do? It wants to notice
11:16
the thing it doesn't have instead of all the things that it does have, right? So we gravitate
11:20
towards that. And so a lot of people, I think, have fear around their own inadequacies. They
11:28
don't want to try and fail. So because they don't want to look stupid and try and fail,
11:32
it's easier to develop a heuristic around not trying makes me wholly righteous or good somehow.
11:39
And but it's not the actual truth of what they feel. And so there's a lot of complicated
11:43
mental gymnastics that happen with people. But the bottom line is this. God put gold in
11:48
the Garden of Eden. Why? Gold is the universal marker for money, wealth, currency, whatever.
11:55
It was there and he called it good. You know, then there's a story of Abraham and it said
12:00
that Abraham was rich. Actually, it said that he was very rich and it was good. And so this
12:05
is weird thing. There's also an Australian businessman named Peter J. Daniels, who was
12:09
illiterate until 25 years old. He had four step dads. He had a poverty life and he got
12:15
radically saved. And he read the Bible with this level of almost beautiful ignorance where
12:22
he said, wait a second, God's a king and I'm the child of a king. And he took that literally.
12:26
He said, I'm the child of a king. A child of a king can't be poor. And so he built this
12:29
business empire in Australia is a very famous Australian businessman who's in his 90s now.
12:34
He actually hired a bunch of people historians to figure out what was the value of the gifts
12:40
that the wise men gave to Jesus, right? We hear the story of the three wise men and,
12:45
you know, if you dig into that story, it took like a couple years for these people from Persia
12:51
to kind of go and make it to where Jesus was. And Jesus wasn't a baby when they got there.
12:55
He was maybe a couple years old and they had an army with them when they showed up.
13:00
And did you think they dropped a birthday card off to him? And so there's just a lot of religious
13:06
things. And then there's there's like true things. So the Bible has these seemingly
13:11
contradictory things where it's like opulence and abundance and wealth should be the natural
13:15
state of the king's children. Jesus came as the second atom to put things back like they were to
13:21
restore mankind back to God's original intent. And God's original intent was to have more than
13:27
enough. There's more than enough for everyone to have more than enough. There's not a fixation
13:31
on lack. But then, of course, you know, we can, you know, go the other way with it. So when I think
13:36
about all these things, I think the root is a focus on lack, not being honest with ourselves.
13:41
And I also think it's rooted in selfishness. I think not wanting to make more money is a great
13:48
act of selfishness in many cases. Because they're basically playing small to protect
13:54
themselves, instead of going all out. And the last thing I'll say is every single thing that God
14:00
made, he made to grow and expand all of it, whether it's a solar system, or it's like a particle,
14:07
or it's an ant colony, or it's a business. And so the natural state of God's creation is to grow
14:14
and expand it behaves like a garden. But yet with our wallets and our finances and our mindsets and
14:21
our skill sets and our own ability to produce value, we don't want to do that. We think that's
14:25
naughty or something. Okay, so I like when you're, you're breaking in, because recently, I was even
14:31
going back over Genesis three, and you do see what he was tempted with, it's what, you know,
14:34
it's called back to in first john two, where it's less of the flesh, less of the eyes and pride
14:40
of life, right? And so all that is kind of kind of circling the drain, if you will, in that story.
14:46
But then if we bring it out to a modern context, you know, you talk about playing big versus playing
14:51
small, different things like that. I know there are people like you and I have a common friend in
14:55
Riley meek, who he's like, no, everyone's an entrepreneur, and he gets into the ethnology of
14:59
where the word comes from, and you know, how it's elucidated throughout scripture and different
15:02
things like that. And not everyone buys that some people do some people don't. I'm a little bit
15:07
skeptical of that mindset, because I think some people were built to do well in a cubicle to have
15:13
their small little sphere of influence. And that that's the life that they were, were meant to lead
15:19
for the sake of the gospel and for the sake of the kingdom. And then there are people that are
15:23
more entrepreneurship based. But I wonder, Josh, if it's because when we think entrepreneur,
15:28
we think of some of those big guys, we we think of, you know, an Elon Musk or someone like that,
15:32
that's built just this incredible huge empire. When that's not, you know, how many people have
15:37
that level of success, you can count them on your two hands. And so is it that when we hear the word
15:42
entrepreneurship, we just give it too much grandeur or that we don't fully understand it or something
15:46
like that? Oh, man, that's so good. People like worship entrepreneurs now, it's like all it's,
15:54
it's diabolical good. To me, entrepreneurship isn't a job title. It's a mindset. So for example,
16:03
if you work inside of a company, the goal is to think like an entrepreneur. Here's what I mean.
16:08
What I mean is, how can you produce more value? How can you instead of looking for more resources,
16:14
become more resourceful? That's what entrepreneurship is. How do we make one plus one equal three?
16:19
I don't care if you're an employee or you're delivering pizzas. How can you be the biggest value
16:23
producer in the role that you're in? That's what I mean by growing expand, you know,
16:27
how many parables did Jesus talk about, you know, the multiplication of the talents, right? So
16:34
everybody listening to this has something in their hand, your job, your role, your calling,
16:39
your destiny is to multiply what's in your hand. And as you do that, doors open, doors close,
16:44
things happen, there's level up, there's opportunity, maybe your role and your purpose is small,
16:51
whatever you think that means. But it's really not, you're just fulfilling your purpose. But
16:55
entrepreneurship is a way of thinking. It's value creation. I mean, the root of it is some people
17:01
think that they need more resources. And that's why they're not more successful. Other people think,
17:05
how can I become more resourceful? You know, an entrepreneur sees, or let's do this. Have you ever
17:12
heard the truism? You know, money doesn't grow on trees. It's the thing people say. It's not true.
17:18
Money absolutely grows on trees. But people don't think that it grows on trees, right? Or people
17:22
say things like time is money. False. That's just cataclysmically false. It's totally wrong. It's
17:28
incorrect. It's a ruse. It's not true. Time is infinitely more valuable than money. Money is an
17:32
infinite spiritual resource and time is a finite fixed resource. But back to the tree thing,
17:39
you see an entrepreneur mindset looks at a tree and it's like, okay, there's lumber here. There's
17:43
apples that we can grow here. I forget who said the quote, you can count the number of apples
17:48
on the tree, but you can't count the number of apples in a seed. You know, everything's about
17:52
reaping and sewing and seeds and gardens. And there's this beautiful theme from the Old Testament to
17:57
the New Testament to the talents to the multiplication. God wants us to take what's in our hand and
18:02
multiply it. And that comes from having a value creator. Step outside your comfort zone. Use your
18:09
imagination and your intuition and your hard work collectively to go for it and to do stuff, right?
18:15
If you're going to be in your cubicle, how can you be the most efficient, most profitable person
18:20
that's ever worked for that company? That's to me what an entrepreneur means. It's not so
18:25
much if you own a business or not. It's a way of thinking. I like that it's more of a mindset shift
18:30
because, you know, everyone likes to play with the words micro and macro. And they see themselves
18:35
if they if they are working for a small company or they have a small team, maybe they have a
18:40
micro purpose. It's like, no, you have a macro purpose. You just might be in a micro setting or
18:44
something that seems like a micro setting, because you're not just, you know, a C suite executive
18:49
for a Fortune 100 company. Those aren't the only people playing in the big leagues, right? And so
18:53
if you think about it in those terms, it does actually help you a little bit. But I'm going to go back
18:57
to where you were talking about value creation. You and I have discussed this before. I've talked
19:02
to you before about, okay, some people can create value that can lead to currency. And some people
19:07
can just create value that leads to, you know, okay, currency currency versus like relational
19:13
currency or emotional currency. There are things that you can do to kind of create space. Like,
19:18
if you go and, you know, babysit the kids for a single mom, like, yes, you're helping her save
19:23
currency from having to pay someone to do that. But also you're giving her the emotional and
19:27
I may be even spiritual currency of just breath and space and different things like that. But just
19:32
flow a little bit more on value creation, because I think that's the delineating point. And that's
19:37
where we can get into a big blown out discussion about free markets. Because what a free market
19:42
does is it says, here's the thing that I say is valuable that I'm offering to the marketplace.
19:46
And the marketplace tells you whether or not that thing is valuable, or whether or not you value
19:51
that or price that valuable thing properly. Right. So let's talk a little bit more about value.
19:56
Yeah, it's a tough conversation because value is a really weird, ethereal, floaty word that
20:01
means different things to different people. But what is value value is the solution to a problem.
20:07
And it's very subjective. In fact, I heard a study that determined that 90 over 90% of GDP globally
20:16
is things that people don't need, meaning almost everything all of us buy and sell,
20:23
no one needs them. I mean, technically speaking, we need like water, food, shelter. There's like a
20:28
handful of things that are needs. And then then there's like the basic version of those things,
20:33
right? So bicycles aren't a need. They're just an awesome thing. They solve a problem. They help
20:38
someone go faster, you know, then a car helps you go faster than a bicycle and a plane helps you
20:42
go faster than a car. And so someone's innovation created leverage for someone else. It made someone's
20:47
life better. Value is is how can you solve a problem for someone in terms of how to price it?
20:53
Yeah, free market kind of decides how to price it. But even that is way more elastic than people
20:58
think it is in business. One of the big problems small business owners have is they price their
21:03
price just barely enough to survive because they feel bad being a premium service provider or
21:09
something. The reality is, is there's people that would never pay someone else to mow their lawn.
21:15
But that same person would spend $5,000 on one golf club. And you can think that's irrational
21:23
or rational. But the reality is, is all of us have irrational relationships with certain things
21:27
that we deem valuable. And that's what creates markets, right? And so it's this really artsy thing.
21:32
I mean, success in business is part science, like behavioral psychology and humans and like math,
21:39
you know, every business is in the arithmetic business. So there's that. But then this other
21:42
side is art. And it's like beautiful and it's creative. And if we're made in the image of God,
21:48
and the first thing we learn about God is that he's a creator in the beginning, God created,
21:53
right? If we're made in his image, like Myron says, another Myronism is God created us to create
21:58
stuff and made us to make stuff. And everything that's created is created twice. Kyle, this is
22:04
so profound to me. You have to first imagine it, then you can do it. Everything, whether it's an
22:10
architect designing a house, but like there's like the thought process of envisioning the thing.
22:15
And then there's like the physical of doing the thing in a lot of Christians, whether they're
22:20
entrepreneur or not, we spend almost no time at all dreaming, thinking bigger, solving problems.
22:28
We're good at pointing out problems, but we're not fantasizing and day dreaming about how to
22:33
solve problems about new solutions, right? We're not doing that with our jobs. We go through the
22:38
motions and to me, that's not you multiplying your talents. And what's awesome is if you do start
22:44
thinking like this, you will make more money automatically. And I think that that's good. I think
22:50
people that love the Lord, they have more money will be exactly what they already are,
22:54
except they'll have more resources. They'll be more generous than they were before. They will
22:58
do things other. The best thing Satan could ever do is to keep Christians poor and to feel like
23:03
they're self righteous because of it. Hey guys, real quick, a consistent question that I am asked
23:08
is Kyle, what is your diet? People want to know if I'm tracking macros or if I'm doing keto or
23:13
something like that, but I track one thing. I try to get one gram of high quality protein for every
23:18
pound of body weight. And so for me, I read meat every single day pretty much for lunch. I eat a
23:25
pound of red meat every single day to get over 100 grams of high quality protein. And guys, I want
23:30
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Okay, one thing that's also a three-point of what you're talking about, it seems like,
24:54
is the difference between ideas and execution. So I have some pillars that I help teach some guys
25:01
and some things that I just follow in my own life. There's so many people out there, Josh,
25:05
that have a great idea. So let's take it out of the business world for a second. Let's just go
25:09
to the physical. Man, it's a really good, it sounds like a good idea to wake up early and the lift
25:14
weights and go run. Man, that's a great idea. But then the alarm goes off at 5 a.m. the next morning
25:19
and you haven't pre-decided that you're actually going to follow through on the workout. And so
25:22
there you are in your warm bed thinking about the cold outdoors and pavement and you're like,
25:27
I think I'll stay here. And so it's idea versus execution. I could give a crap what your idea is,
25:33
right? Everyone's got different forms of the same quote, but it's like you could have 100
25:37
ideas and execute on zero of them or have two ideas and execute on both of them and I'll take
25:40
the executor over the person. That's just the idea guy. Everyone's like, oh, this is an idea
25:44
person. I was like, oh, so they don't know how to get crap done. They just sit around thinking all
25:48
day long, like that's cute. And you need thinkers, you need people that are high in trade openness
25:53
and people that are high in conscientiousness. Those are the people actually get things done.
25:57
But that's what it seems like is the difference in the world of entrepreneurism. If you could
26:01
just boil it down to its baser parts, it's an idea that is taken to execution as opposed to
26:07
an idea that is existing just for the sake of existence. What say you?
26:12
I mean, what you said is irrefutably true. Ideas by themselves aren't worth a whole lot. I personally
26:20
think it has to do with identity. Actually, I know it has to do with identity. So money issues,
26:26
success, even fitness, everything is identity. And people might not like that. But the reality is,
26:34
is that people essentially live up to the level that they think that they are and then they stop.
26:39
So if you were raised by a really good mom and dad who made $100,000 a year and they worked hard
26:45
and they did the right thing, and then you're that person, maybe you think that that's what you
26:50
are, right? The trick is understanding who God says that we are. And it's different for everybody.
26:55
I don't think being more successful gets you like brownie points in the sense that you're better
26:59
than some other believer. In fact, I think the opposite is true because Jesus made it clear with
27:03
the story of the widow giving the widows might and the offering. And she said, truly, I tell you,
27:07
she gave more than all of you, right? It's almost like inverted the first will be last to last to be
27:11
first. If you are listening to this and you have a big company, you should like be almost have this
27:17
heavy humility and borderline like heaviness around like, Oh my gosh, I have this whole huge
27:23
thing. I better not screw it up. Right. And the little school teacher that that pours into three
27:28
kids on the side might be doing more on a relative scale than the other guy, you know what I mean?
27:35
But execution is important. But execution is easy, Kyle, when you are fully persuaded in who and
27:41
what you are, what you think you deserve. You know, the theology I grew up with was like angry dad
27:47
theology. So who I thought God was was a really mad dad because I was a naughty boy. And I looked
27:54
at a boob on the internet. And so I'm dirty and bad and naughty. And he wants to hit me with a
27:58
stick that that's what it felt like. And then I viewed Jesus as the guy that stepped between angry
28:03
dad and me. And he's like, it's okay, dad, he's with me. Right. I was confused. I like, yeah,
28:09
on this thing. And so, so because I think that's true, I take actions in my life based on me
28:15
thinking that's true. The problem is, is it's absolutely not true at all. God is a loving father.
28:21
Jesus embodies every attribute of God. The God of the Old Testament, and Jesus is the New Testament
28:26
is the same thing. So if it looks like there's a description discrepancy, it's because we're
28:31
confused on the nature of God. So knowing who is God, but then secondarily, knowing who am I,
28:37
who am I? Right. So in business, I say that there's orphans, there's sons and daughters,
28:42
and then there's kings and queens. And these are the three phases of business because orphans,
28:46
basically all the decisions they make are optimizing for survival. And so financially,
28:51
for the person listening to this, are you optimizing for survival? Because if you are,
28:57
meaning you have just enough to barely make it kind of all the time, and it seems impossible,
29:02
and you can never get ahead. But if you get below your little panic number, you'll still figure out
29:06
a way to solve the problem and still survive. You keep succeeding at surviving. That's an orphan
29:11
mindset. So who you think you are, what you think you're capable of, what you think you deserve,
29:15
is, is driving that result for you. And then if you move into son daughter mindset,
29:23
you're better off, but you start optimizing for security. And a lot of Christians live here.
29:29
It's like they have the golden handcuffs at job at their job. They know they're called to be an
29:34
author. They know they're called to be a speaker. They know they're called to start a ministry.
29:37
They're thinking about these things, but they're not executing. And the reason why
29:41
is because they think that they need to be safe all the time. And what I encourage people to do
29:47
is to dip your toe in the water, start thinking about what is the king, queen mindset look like
29:52
for you and it's different for everybody, meaning what did God give you dominion over? Because you're
29:59
supposed to subdue stuff and conquer stuff. And by the way, not dominion, like in the worldly
30:04
sense of a king subjugating people know, and a servant king washed the feet of your subjects king.
30:09
Because a lot of people know deep down that they were meant for something, but because they're
30:17
optimized for security, they're never going to do that. Therefore, they're not multiplying
30:20
the thing that's in their hand. I don't know if any of that made sense.
30:23
No, it does. It goes back to I grew up in a family where the jobs were stable, but there wasn't
30:30
a lot of excess, but I was never hungry or cold. I guess you could say it that way,
30:35
but we weren't going on lavish vacations. But then you you fast forward that mindset is,
30:40
you know, dad works at one place for his entire career retires mom works in one place, her entire
30:45
career retires. And their idea is, Hey, neither one of us went to school. You need to go to school,
30:50
get an education. And then when you get out, get that job at that one place that you'll work at
30:54
for the next, you know, 45 years and then retire, you know, you get your goal watch and get the hell
30:58
out. And some people you're like drawn to the entrepreneurial side, but you also drawn to safety
31:04
and comfort. And so I mean, I guess let's go all the way back to you, because you experienced,
31:09
you know, poverty and bankruptcy. And there's a lot of emotions that are tied into that. And
31:13
here you are as a provider for a wife, but also for children. And you know, they're watching and
31:18
picking up on everything. And when mom and dad are stressed about money and they think they're
31:22
keeping that from your kids, that's cute, because they can feel it too, guys, they can absolutely
31:26
feel it. But but at some point, you kind of like, I don't know, I guess washed off all the bad
31:31
juju of kind of that bad start. And you did get into the world of entrepreneurism and business and
31:38
value creation and selling businesses and all that. So let's just go back to early entrepreneurial
31:43
journeys and some of those, I guess inherent lessons that you learned along the way.
31:47
Well, the first like really spiritual encounter I had with Jesus was when I was 12.
31:53
And I was mowing my neighbor's lawn because I would get paid 20 bucks to mow a couple acres
31:59
for a really old guy named Gordon. Gordon was a legend. He would watch the Detroit Tigers baseball
32:06
game on TV, but he turned the volume up so loud, because he was blind as a bat and he just wanted
32:10
to listen to it. And then when he would pay me $20 to mow his lawn, he'd open up his wallet and
32:15
point it out to me. And he would trust me to take out a 20 because he had hundreds and 50s.
32:20
And that always meant a lot to me. And I remember I was mowing his lawn. I'm trying to talk to God
32:24
and pray. And God told me to give all of the money away that I had saved up. And this here's
32:32
the thing. I'm not one of the people that God's like talking to me all day saying stuff, but this
32:37
made me like stop the lawn more as a 12 year. This is a core memory for me because God told me
32:41
something clearly and it shook me. And I was excited. And I realized pretty early on for me that
32:48
me, this isn't for anybody else is I'm talking about me. My calling is radical generosity.
32:55
And I was excited. So I run home, I tell my parents, Hey, I have $200 saved up from all the
33:01
whatever I had done that summer. I want to give it to our tiny little church. And they're like,
33:06
no, honey, you know, it's just give $5. That's so sweet. You want to do it. I'm like, no,
33:10
God told me to do it. I didn't even think that thought it wasn't even a thought in my brain.
33:15
And they're like, okay. And so I did it. Well, in the back of my mind, I'm always known.
33:20
I want to be a kingdom financier. Now, you can't finance much of a kingdom without having resources,
33:28
right? The hardest part for me, I've built and sold four companies at this point and our kids
33:34
are entrepreneurs and all these things. But we were really in a bad spot with poverty mindset. Now,
33:39
how can I think that I'm supposed to be poor and that being successful is bad while simultaneously
33:46
knowing I'm called to give away a lot of money? These are contradictory ideas. It caused a lot
33:50
of cognitive dissonance. It caused all kinds of stuff. And so there was no straight line to
33:55
anything. It was a mess and through God's grace and through impossible divine appointments in
34:02
meetings and tons of things that happened. I learned this so that then I could do that and
34:06
then I learned this so I could do that. And then you stretch that out over 20 years and we're here
34:10
where we are right now. It's a journey. But I think I had the benefit of knowing who I was
34:19
supposed to become from 12. I don't think a lot of people know.
34:25
Okay. So 12 years old, God tells you, give it all the way. Parents try to, you know,
34:33
try to stop you. They try to get in the way of God. And you're like, no, parents,
34:36
get out of here. I'm a smart one. I'm going to take care of business. And you do that. But
34:39
you bring up a few things in there, Josh. So ministry costing money, good work of the kingdom
34:47
needing funds in order to allow that to go. That's one thing, you know, when we had Riley on earlier
34:53
this year, there were some people that were not really happy with that conversation because almost
34:56
the entire conversation was about money. But I'm like, guys, did you hear the actual point?
35:01
The point was is being a kingdom minded entrepreneur that is funding the things of the kingdom.
35:07
Because when you have a family that's living overseas, doing missionary work or church plan or
35:12
something like that, how do you think those family pay their pay their bills? Maybe there's a big
35:16
church and they take a percentage of the tithe and they take care of the Jones family. And that's,
35:20
that's how it's all done. But in a lot of cases, it's individuals that have done well in areas of
35:25
business, you know, in some way, shape or form or they've bought and sold things or they've, you know,
35:30
sold a business that they've built after time or something like that. And those are the people
35:34
that are paying for, for the hands and the feet and for the readiness of the gospel to be taken to
35:39
the edges of the earth. But I don't feel like a lot of people think in those terms as like, man,
35:44
if I make more, I'll be able to give more. I, it's, I'm reminded of Dave Ramsey. And you know,
35:48
I'm not a huge fan of all of his financial ideals, but some of them are super solid.
35:52
But his big thing is like, live like no one else so that someday you can give like no one else.
35:56
It's like, it's so awesome. If you can like, just pull money out of your wallet and pay for a single
36:03
mom, I keep using that example to get her car fixed or to replace the refrigerator or those types
36:08
of things. But if you're living paycheck to paycheck and you have the small mindset,
36:11
you're not going to be able to really overwhelm people with, with blessing. So before I get off
36:16
onto a sermon or my own separate podcast, come in, save me, give me some thoughts.
36:21
I think what I think's interesting is even if it wasn't an entrepreneur that paid for the missionaries,
36:27
whoever did pay for the missionaries did so because of an entrepreneur. You know, you ever heard the
36:35
quote that you can't love jobs, but hate job creators. And this is tricky because like,
36:43
I don't even think we have pure capitalism in America. It's more of a corporatism, crony,
36:47
very corrupt, giant, billion dollar thing. There's all that, right? But what capitalism is is a person
36:53
solving a problem, building system structure and rallying people around that problem. And it creates
36:59
opportunity, right? And you know, you building your dream house helps build wealth for like 50
37:06
other parties that are involved in the process you build in the dream house. And every job that
37:10
anybody even has, if they're not an entrepreneur, they have an entrepreneur to think because someone
37:15
somewhere at some time took a risk, invested capital, invented something, probably had tremendous
37:20
pain and suffering. And now you have a job. And we don't really appreciate that if it's a really
37:25
large company, because it's just this big corporate board, right? But it comes back to like a person
37:31
with an idea that manifested that through lots of hard things, right? So, so, so all the money
37:37
in all of our pockets are the result of somebody selling something to someone else at a profit.
37:43
And that's a wild thing to think about too, because then people are like, well, no,
37:47
the government can give money. Well, how does the government get money? I mean,
37:51
you can't tax someone that didn't sell someone to some sell something to someone at a profit and
37:55
then pay the tax and the thing to like sales and commerce and service and entrepreneurship and
38:01
inventions and and trinkets and food and every it's people loving people. And God made us
38:08
interdependent like that. So the goal is to like get rich and flex and buy a hot tub in a jet ski.
38:13
The goal is to multiply whatever is in your hand. And if the reason that you get triggered
38:19
when people talk about entrepreneurs, well, I'll just I'll just ask a question. Are you sure that
38:25
the reason you're getting triggered when people talk about money in entrepreneurs isn't because of
38:28
your own guilt and shame around not multiplying what's been in your hand for a long time,
38:33
your own fear of putting yourself out there and looking stupid. You know, maybe you're
38:38
supposed to start a podcast like Kyle, but you don't do it because you don't want it to be bad,
38:41
right? That is an ego thing. Money is a great ego thing too. You know, they don't want to try,
38:46
they don't want to have an idea. Maybe it will fail. We need to grow and expand. We need to
38:51
let live in fear. And I believe that, you know, abundance is God's natural state for people. That's
38:56
the way it should be. So the only thing I didn't really hear the last two minutes of your answer,
39:02
because you triggered me because you brought up a jet ski. And I think I've talked about it on this
39:07
show. Don't worry, we'll get back to the subject matter. But my entire life, my bucket list is I
39:13
got some cool stuff on there and I got some pretty lame stuff on there that should have checked off
39:16
a long time ago. One of those things is to ride around on a jet ski. It's never happened. I'm
39:22
almost 40 years old and I've never once I live in a state with lakes every 14 feet. And I've never
39:28
been on a jet ski. Well, actually, I take that back, Josh. One time when I was a teenager, I was
39:33
fine. It was finally going to happen. I'm going to ride around on the jet ski. My entire life has
39:37
come to this point in this moment. Yes, exactly like, you know, God stops time. Everything focused
39:43
right down on me. I hop on that jet ski and I go to Revit and it dies. It dies. All my friends had
39:50
already taken off on their jet skis and on the boat. And here I am in the middle lake waving my arms.
39:55
And eventually I got someone's attention. They got me and they had to, you know, basically tote
39:59
it back to shore. And by that time, it was time to go home. And I've still never ridden around on
40:03
a jet ski. So I don't know why I was supposed to tell you that. But maybe somebody out there,
40:07
maybe you can help me check that box. But let's get back to the real reason why we're talking about
40:13
this. So I feel like, Josh, I feel like you seem like a nice guy, right? You seem, you know, smart,
40:19
you can philosophize, but you can also get down in the weeds and take care of business. You're high
40:23
in openness and conscientiousness. But I feel like if you were more like me and you just said the
40:27
thing in the most aggressive way that you can think to say it in that exact moment, you would just
40:31
flat out say that Christians for the most part don't understand money. And so like, I'll say it.
40:36
I'll say Christians don't understand money. And you say it's softer and more smart like. So ready,
40:42
set go. People believe lots of lies about money. I'll just say that. Some of them are that time is
40:51
money. Another one that is that money is scarce. Another lie people believe about money is that
40:58
there's an economic pie. There is no such thing. It does not exist. It's not how the economy works.
41:04
And the reason that one's a particularly diabolical belief is that if you think that you winning means
41:10
someone else is losing, you're going to be extremely limited in your ability to create wealth or become
41:17
more financially successful. People think that if you start a company and make money that someone
41:22
somewhere made less money, but the exact opposite is true. I mean, the economy behaves like a garden,
41:27
which is why when you consume an apple, you actually create more apples, right? Because the seeds go
41:32
in the ground and create five more trees, which create 10,000 more apples. And so consumption
41:38
creates production. And so people just don't know that part of its school, right? School,
41:45
Myron calls them government indoctrination centers. That's a big part of the problem because
41:50
traditional schooling is basically compliance training. And they're trying to create employees.
41:57
And some of the most successful evil entrepreneurs have had their fingers involved in the education
42:02
system for the last 100 years, more than 100 years. And what it does is it teaches you to
42:07
do the problem, get correct answer, memorize what I told you to memorize,
42:12
regurgitate it, get a gold star, do not get a bad grade, get a good grade, comply, comply,
42:17
do it the way that we set out. I remember as a kid one time, I got a math problem, correct.
42:21
But I had to show my work. And the way that I got to the answer was different than what they
42:27
wanted me to do. And so I got the answer wrong, even though the answer was correct, because the
42:32
work was wrong. And so we're huge. We have five kids, we homeschool them. We're not obsessed with
42:37
money at all. In fact, a lot of times poor people are way more obsessed with money. We're obsessed
42:43
with success, because everything God made, he made to succeed. He doesn't create things to fail.
42:50
Things do fail. Let's be really clear. That's not God's intent when he makes things. He makes
42:55
things to grow and expand and to exceed expectation and to be a winner, right? So anyway, when we're
43:01
homeschooling our kids, we teach them things like this, because even the word money, we don't use
43:06
that word when I'm talking to business owners. I use the word capital, because money has all this
43:11
emotional baggage associated to it. Capital is a different higher level word. It feels more like
43:15
an asset or a thing to use instead of a thing to consume. We want our kids to be producers,
43:20
not just consumers. We don't want them to watch YouTube videos. We want them to create YouTube
43:25
channels. And it's not because I care if they do that or not. It's as we figure out who they are,
43:30
we're teaching them to be world changers and value creators, right? And movement makers,
43:34
because that is just obvious to us that that makes sense to do that.
43:39
And so I think schooling is a big part of it. Religious programming is the other big part of it,
43:45
because if a pastor buys a nice car, a pastor of our church, one time he bought a blue
43:50
Ford Mustang. And as a nice church, had like a thousand people go to it. He bought a blue Ford
43:55
Mustang. They wanted to crucify this guy, okay? So he traded it in and got a Jeep. And the irony
44:02
is that Jeeps cost more than blue Ford. But everybody was cool with the Jeep and they didn't want the
44:07
Mustang. It's like a $25,000 car, you know, back then or whatever. And so there's all this weird
44:13
thing and part of it is envy. A huge part of it is envy wrapped in religious veneer. A lot of it is
44:19
is shame around their own lack of multiplying their things. So they try to pull people down.
44:24
And there's a lot of darkness around the topic of money. Who is actually genuinely excited when you
44:31
have a financial win? Because that'll tell you a whole bunch about who your real friends are.
44:35
One of my favorite quotes is be very cautious of people that don't clap in cheer when you win.
44:40
And let me tell you how to make your friends weird. Go make a lot more money than them.
44:44
And then what you're going to do is you're going to bring it back. You're going to shrink
44:48
back. You're going to hide it. And all of this is spiritual warfare. 100% of it is spiritual. I
44:53
don't care if someone's broke or poor. What I care is that they're living in their purpose,
44:57
multiplying what's in their hand, knowing who they are, understanding that they're walking
45:02
imperfectly down the path of their mission, mandate, purpose, and destiny. That gets me
45:06
revved up, whether it's someone in a jungle feeding orphans all day and they have no money,
45:10
but they're just crushing it because they're fully in on their thing. Or it's the person buying the
45:15
plane tickets and buying the formula to put in the bottle. Well, I think a lot of its perception as
45:20
well, whenever you were talking about the Mustang versus the Jeep, I remember when the city I live
45:24
in, it's the highest cost of living in the state of Oklahoma, lowest crime. And it's a very desirable
45:30
city to live in Edmond, Oklahoma. But the police force here went from the motorcycle cops driving
45:36
Harley's to driving BMWs. And I remember this person in the community just like going nuts,
45:43
talking about the excesses of this town and all the things and misuse of tax dollars.
45:49
What he didn't know is that my cousin was actually at the time he has since passed. He
45:52
actually passed away on duty. He was killed while on duty, unfortunately. But he was the motorcycle
45:58
cop that found out that if they switched from Harley's to BMWs, that based on the cost of the
46:06
motorcycle, plus the maintenance, they could actually save the Edmund taxpayer more money by
46:11
switching from Harley's to BMWs. But the perception was to a lot of people in the community that,
46:16
Oh my gosh, these guys are just driving around town and they're not even stopping murderers or
46:21
the cartel. And here they are driving around on BMWs. So it comes down to a lot of perception and
46:27
ignorance overall. And so that seems to be like something that what you've done with your career,
46:31
Joshua, if you've kind of disabused people of their ignorance is around money and capital.
46:36
Because not only did you succeed in the entrepreneurial space are still succeeding there,
46:41
but at a certain point, you transition, I guess you could say into doing more coaching and consulting.
46:48
And so helping other people do the things that you would kind of done and kind of to walk down
46:53
the path that you had already trodden. And so talk a little bit about that transition to where
46:58
coaching and consulting was kind of like more in your bailiwick.
47:01
The main thing that I do in my company now is help people become coach consultants. And the reason
47:08
why actually has a lot to do with internet guru culture, I mean, you have these big figures like
47:14
Grant Cardone or Alex Hermosi, there's these people that just like speak to business owners
47:18
from on high, right? And you got a 10x this and you got to ice bath your way to that. And
47:24
the point is, is like the best way for someone to level up and grow is to be doing life with
47:30
someone just like them, but there are two chapters ahead. Like that is the model that
47:36
works. It's really the difference between like a mega chair, which shouldn't discipleship.
47:39
So I do private consulting for larger companies, but I only spend maybe 20 or 30% of my time doing
47:45
that. My actual company is a software company, and we help people launch a coaching business because
47:51
business is ministry. It's so spiritual. You know, people sign up for stuff and buy
47:57
softwares and hire a coach because they want to make more money. And within minutes, Kyle,
48:01
we're talking about their childhood, the false beliefs they have, you know, something that happened
48:05
to them. And because that is the root that affects the fruit, right? Little roots, little fruits,
48:10
big roots, big fruits. And that's really what consulting is. And what we found is like a lot of
48:15
people have had at least some measure of success. They have a heart to teach and serve. They don't
48:20
know where to start. So we have a software platform that helps with that. In terms of coaching, I mean,
48:24
I think all of us already are a coach. It depends on what your definition of that word is. Because
48:29
that's also a gross word that's loaded, right? It's kind of intended, right? So I'm a coach to my
48:35
children. I'm a coach to myself. One of the isms I say is that everything is marketing and
48:39
marketing is everything. And what that means is that the way we talk to ourselves is a form of
48:46
marketing to ourselves. The hardest cell we're ever going to make is to ourselves. And like,
48:50
who we think we are, what we think we're worthy of. And then, of course, as a parent, I have five
48:54
kids, I'm constantly marketing to my kids speaking life into them. And like, this is who you are. This
48:59
is what you were meant for. You're destined for great things, right? And that's coaching, right?
49:04
And so if you're a helpful person, especially if you're a Christian in the marketplace,
49:09
whether you have a job or not, and you're not like useful and helpful to the people around you,
49:14
that's kind of weird, right? We're all supposed to be in some form of community pouring out of
49:19
our cup. We need to have our cup poured into. We got to pour it out. And so, I don't know,
49:25
do what you want with that. But we believe that small groups of people being led by someone
49:30
slightly ahead of them produces the biggest transformation on average for business.
49:36
So it's almost like a derivative of, was it C1, learn one, teach one kind of a thing? And so,
49:44
I think we see a lot of that in Jiu Jitsu, kind of a funny meme in the Jiu Jitsu world is,
49:49
because the belt system is white belt, that's the beginners, then you go blue,
49:51
purple, brown, black, right? And so by the time you get to black, you should be an expert. And then
49:55
there are gradations of different versions of black belts. But blue belts technically suck.
50:00
So sorry to all you blue belts out there listening to this, you are better than white belts,
50:03
but you still suck. Don't worry, I feel I still feel that way sometimes. But even as a blue belt,
50:08
you know more than a white belt, you're not a black belt, but there's a thing or two that you
50:12
can show a white belt, you might show them incorrectly, but you're a little bit farther along than they
50:18
are. And so they to a degree, they should shut their trap and just listen, even if you're not
50:23
getting all the details and intricacies right. But for you, you know, again, ideas versus execution.
50:29
So those small groups, establishing, you know, coaching patterns and rhythms, helping people to
50:35
be able to pour into the lives in the world you use was being helpful in pouring to those other
50:40
people's lives. So I know you've created some resources that are around that idea. And so like,
50:46
let's talk a little bit about the things that you've created, because again, some of this
50:51
crescendos in a book, a lot of the people that we have on this podcast are authors, right? And so
50:55
all of their entire life is now in this book, or they had one idea and they somehow turned that
51:00
into 200 pages, right? And hopefully it's it's worth it to actually get through it. But for you,
51:05
this isn't like there isn't like a book to where it's like, all right, you know, I say all these
51:09
things that you'll go by the book so that you'll, you know, maybe put one or two things into practice.
51:14
So how are you kind of living out the, you know, actually helping other people do the thing?
51:19
Well, my day to day isn't necessarily applicable to the wide majority of your audience. I mean,
51:24
one thing that's interesting that we have done is, is we did a family project called the Kid War Plan.
51:31
And years ago, I wanted to teach my kids what value creation is. And so we made up a family
51:39
project. And so we decided to make a journal, like a 90 day journal. And the kids, and it took
51:44
two years to make this. It was kind of a giant nightmare, actually. And we created this journal
51:49
that like teaches mindset and entrepreneur stuff to kids and like a kid friendly way. And we hired
51:54
like a kid artist to illustrate it. It was this really cool process. And then, you know, I had
51:58
my kids build a website for it. I had my kids record an ad for it. My son Maverick made 90
52:05
training videos to go along with all 90 days of the video when he was 13 years old. It took him
52:10
six months full time every single day. And I did not help him. And then, you know, there was days
52:15
when he got upset and he's like, and he's trying to. So imagine a 13 year old teaching a younger
52:21
kid, you know, what's the difference between money and currency? You know, what does self talk mean?
52:25
What's leadership? What is sales and marketing? What's a net profit versus gross profit? And all
52:29
these weird things. So he had to level up and learn these things to then make a fun three minute video
52:35
to go along with the journal. And it was this huge effort as a family project that changed my whole
52:39
kids mentality. Because when we did finally put it on the internet, it kind of blew up. And these
52:45
books are handmade. So they're really hard to source or super expensive to have produced. And we sold
52:51
out of them like instantly. We sold them in like 19 countries, all 50 states, my kids, which they
52:57
ship them out, they put a sticker in the thing and they ship it out. And we had thousands of these
53:01
things. And so I think that could be interesting, you know, like if someone has kids or grandkids,
53:07
or even for themselves, just to start thinking different, that's a resource that can help them.
53:13
It's by no means my core business. But it is a real business for our family. And that's that's
53:20
what that is. What do you think about that? Well, so let's talk a little bit more about the kid
53:24
war plan, because you know, you're kind of going against conventional wisdom here, because the physical
53:30
expensive to produce expensive to ship book, but you're not supposed to do that. Everything's supposed
53:35
to be digital, supposed to be PDF, you download it, it's never bigger than whatever the size of the
53:39
screen that you're looking at at the moment. But then you have those people that are very tactile
53:43
people, right? These are people that buy records for whatever reasons, they literally sit down with
53:46
the record player and their expensive headphones and like that's their thing, because they want to
53:49
feel the grooves of the music while they're sensing the grooves of the music. And to all
53:54
you audio files out there, you know exactly what I'm talking about. So I guess you go the tactile
53:59
approach. But what are you seeing fruit wise from families that actually do the kid war plan,
54:05
the kid war plan challenge, and any of the other things that kind of offshoot from that? What is
54:09
it about this book that gets these families together and thinking differently? There's a ton actually,
54:16
I mean, we could print the journal and like a regular thing, and it would just be a cheap thing.
54:20
And we talked about that, but my kids said, no, we wanted to feel like it came out of Lord of the
54:25
rings. That's what they said at the time. And from a marketing angle, like there's a ton of value
54:31
and actually making it expensive. Number one is that kids now, like the attention spans of kids
54:40
is there's been war being waged against the minds of kids. I think we all know that the average age
54:46
they get introduced to pornography is like eight or 10 years old. There's it's just a nightmare out
54:50
there. Depression is higher, like suicidal tendencies are higher, like everything's terrible, even
54:55
for kids in the church. And so having something that feels special and different and pattern
55:01
interrupts them is like a big deal. It's a game changer. We don't need to put something on their
55:06
tablet. We need to get them off the tablet. And we don't need to just throw some book at them. We
55:10
need to throw an epic leather handmade, even the paper in this book is all handmade. It's hung out
55:16
in large sheets and then they tear it. When we print the material for each day of the journal,
55:21
it's done on metal plates because the handmade paper can't run through a printer. So it has to
55:26
be metal plates on it. And then it's hand bound together with little leather stitching. It's,
55:30
when I say it's a big deal, it's a whole thing. And we did that on purpose because,
55:34
you know, Warren Buffett said one time there's no competitive advantage of being the second most
55:40
expensive. And so these books are like a hundred bucks a piece. And that freaks people out. But
55:47
because it's so polarizing is why it works so well. So some people think it's stupid. Other
55:52
people think it's amazing. The whole point of it though is that when you get it, it is premium.
55:57
It's like an heirloom. And people feel bad even writing in the journal, right? But when you present
56:02
it to your kid, it's a pattern interrupt. And the bottom line is kids need to build more confidence.
56:07
They need better impulse control. They need more structured daily routines that are good that make
56:11
them feel good. And that's kind of how the journal set up. And they feel proud of themselves for
56:16
doing this epic, hard thing. We put a do hard things sticker and everyone that we send out
56:21
because that's one of our family slogans because kids need to feel proud of themselves for like
56:25
accomplishing something other than, you know, leveling up their avatar in a video game.
56:30
Well, so it's interesting that you use the word heirloom because I was literally thinking
56:36
about stories that I've heard of, you know, grandpa dies. They're going through grandpa's things to
56:41
try to clear the house. And as a lot of people have pointed out before, all those things that
56:45
you work so hard to get throughout your life, they're either going to end up at a garage sale
56:49
being sold for one 1000th of what you paid for it, or they're going to end up in a landfill. So
56:53
congratulations on getting all those Nicki Knack things. But isn't it so interesting when they find
56:57
grandpa's old Bible, and it's got his notes in there, his highlights, and you also find his prayer
57:05
journal, and all that, you want to talk about something like I literally just kind of gave myself
57:11
chills thinking about what if my grandfather before he had died had something like that,
57:15
and that was handed down to my dad and then maybe to me and then now I have two sons and it's like,
57:19
look, you are part of a legacy of godliness and seeking after the Lord through his word and
57:27
things like that. Like think about how big of a deal that is as opposed to, you know, you just
57:30
said leveling up your avatar, like, Oh, I just prestige to get in call of duty. You can't package
57:36
that and send it on to the next generation. That's something that only lasts as long as you have
57:40
electricity, or you have that little box where all your little records are stored on, right?
57:45
And so it does kind of, I guess, put families in a little bit of a different mindset. So,
57:48
I mean, Josh, you're talking to a ton of dads here, right? So there's, you know, this is a largely
57:52
90, 95% male audience, I would assume that the overwhelming majority of those guys are dads.
57:57
And a lot of these dads kind of get stuck, right? They know they're supposed to be doing things
58:01
for their kids. And, you know, they've heard about rights of passage, but the only one they've,
58:05
they even know of is where, you know, some tribe in Brazil puts a bunch of bullet ants and a glove
58:09
and puts it on the kids hand. And they can't do that because they'll go to prison here in America.
58:13
And so they don't know what to do. They don't, they can kind of see personality quirks and
58:18
characteristics in their kids and they want to call out the beautiful things and help them kind of like,
58:22
you know, take, take the bad parts and push those off a little bit. But dads work, they're working
58:27
50 hours, they're trying to love their wives, they're trying to, you know, read the Bible,
58:31
they're trying to go to church, they're trying not to be a loser. But then they get stuck.
58:34
And then they just end up on that freaking hamster wheel. And then, you know, they don't get to do
58:39
the things with their kid while the kids are living in their household. So, you know,
58:43
how can you help dads like that that are kind of feeling that pressure?
58:47
I love that the conversation just ended up going here because yeah, which by the way, if I can,
58:52
you should see my notes for this conversation. It is hilarious because I normally highlight
58:57
as I go up, talked about that, talked about that. I have no highlights on my thing right now. So,
59:01
this has gone completely off the rails, but I think it's going well. Well, it's all kind of
59:05
interconnected in a way, like we talked about business and money, but our actual heart is family,
59:09
like, especially specifically entrepreneur families. Our mission statement of my company is to equip
59:14
entrepreneur families to build wealth, become radically generous and engineer a family culture
59:19
that changes the world. Like my wife and I are all in on family stuff because me getting into
59:26
business almost destroyed my marriage. And we were like, that close to divorce. I mean,
59:31
I was drinking back then. I had a lot of bad habits in my 20s. You know, out of the trailer
59:35
park, I started my first business, started to work. And everything was burning to the ground,
59:39
but my business was actually succeeding. And what I realized back then, it's part of, you know,
59:45
our mission, the way I'm going to give away $100 million before I'm dead is by helping
59:49
entrepreneur families build more wealth and become generous. And so it's all interconnected. So,
59:53
what I realized was that the reason a company is ever successful is because of, you know,
1:00:00
the right people and the right systems. And then my family is like falling apart. So,
1:00:05
here's the epiphany. My company had a mission statement. Why didn't my family? My company
1:00:11
had a logo. Why didn't my family? I had like communication cadences. I would measure things.
1:00:16
I would track things. We had manifestos. We had business plans. We had all these systems that
1:00:22
made a business work. And with my family, there wasn't any. So I actually started like
1:00:26
systemizing my family in my 20s. And it sounds really robotic and bad, but it's not at all.
1:00:32
It's actually life changing. What I did was I first thing I did, I started doing Maverick Monday.
1:00:37
Our oldest son is named Maverick. I didn't spend enough time with him. So I just drew a line in the
1:00:40
sand. I said, you get a special day every week because you're worth it. And we didn't do anything
1:00:45
magical. I'd play Legos where we go for a walk or we throw rocks in the river. And every week he
1:00:50
looked forward to it. And what I noticed was the behavior of him noticeably and immediately changed
1:00:56
for days because of that one system. Now we have five kids. So I have like a lot of these days,
1:01:01
we have Sawyer Sunday, Maverick Monday, Tucker Tuesday, Judah, May Thursday, Finley Friday.
1:01:05
But that idea, that's one system. The Ken war plan journal is a system to have like a daily routine.
1:01:12
There's a morning part, a night part. There's a reward part after every 10 days. It's a system
1:01:17
to open up conversations with your parent about things they're never going to learn in school,
1:01:21
literally ever. The whole thing is full of that stuff. And you know, we have date night with my
1:01:26
wife and we have a rite of passage trip when my son's turned 13. We're not like magical parents,
1:01:31
from our own pain. We started doing this years ago. And it just changed everything. If you come to
1:01:38
our house, if you ever get a chance to come up here, we have this castle on 25 acres in Michigan.
1:01:42
And the whole house has our family logo on it, the Latimer wood shed down by our road. We have pillows
1:01:47
and blankets that say do hard things on it. That's a system. You know, we call that proprietary
1:01:53
language. What's a slogan or a saying or an ism that can embody a value of the Thompson family,
1:01:58
right? There's probably things you say, put it on a t-shirt, put it on a pair of socks,
1:02:02
like let your kids rep. Don't have your kids wear under armor. Wear the Thompson brand. What does
1:02:07
it mean to even be a Thompson? Because 200 years ago, it mattered. Like the family name mattered,
1:02:13
and we've kind of gotten away from all that. And so, you know, my day to day business is what I do,
1:02:18
but like our heart under the hood is this, you know, husbands and wives, a lot of them feel like
1:02:24
they're roommates. They have no connection. They have no intimacy. You know, there's no fire in
1:02:29
the bedroom. There's no, everything is just going through the motion, Groundhog's Day,
1:02:33
mad at people more successful than you, living in lack, living in envy, parenting your kids,
1:02:38
but doing the bare minimum, a lot of people feel very stuck. And, you know, we have a heart,
1:02:45
we have things that help with that. Okay, so I think that this is actually really helpful,
1:02:51
because I've heard of things kind of similar to this that kind of help families put, you know,
1:02:58
maybe put some details around some of these ideas. But as you were talking, I forget who said it.
1:03:03
I would love to be able to give them credit. So I'm, they're slipping my mind at the moment.
1:03:07
But they asked me, they were like, Hey, do you pray over your kids? He used all those words very
1:03:13
specifically, but I didn't hear him correctly. I heard, do you pray with your kids? And I said,
1:03:18
yes. And he, I think he sensed that I didn't hear him correctly. He's like, no, no, no. He said,
1:03:23
do you pray over your kids? And I was like, I'm sorry, what do you mean? Like, he's like, describe
1:03:28
how you how how prayer goes with your kiddos. I'm like, well, you know, they're about to go to bed.
1:03:32
And we, you know, we'll close our eyes and we'll let each one of the kids pray, whatever they feel
1:03:36
like they can pray. And then I'll pray. And then they go to bed. And, you know, if we see
1:03:41
a car accident or something in public, we'll immediately, like, as we're driving, we'll pray for those
1:03:45
families. And you know what that we just, you know, pray, you know, that kind of thing. He's like,
1:03:48
no, no, no, he's like, I'm assuming you want your sons. I really wish I could give this person credit.
1:03:53
I'm so sorry if you're listening to this and it's you. But I, he's like, I'm assuming you want your
1:03:57
boys to end up a certain kind of way, you want them to be a certain kind of man. And he's like,
1:04:02
you know, what kind of things would you want? I was like, well, you know, I want them to be,
1:04:05
I want them to be tough. I want them to be resilient. I want them to be courageous, but also meek,
1:04:11
and sensitive in the right moments. I want them to be the perfect parts of tough and tender. I want
1:04:15
them to be line of Judah and Lamb of God. And he's like, then pray that over your boys. And it was
1:04:22
like, boom, it changed everything. And when I say everything, I'm not being hyperbolic,
1:04:27
it changed everything about how I see those boys. And now I see the connection as, because I've
1:04:34
been given the role of headship over my household, I'm gonna have to give an account to God someday
1:04:38
for how I have shepherded those boys and catechized them and how I have led and loved my wife as Christ
1:04:44
loved his bride, which is the church. And all it took was someone being like, no, no, no, don't
1:04:48
pray with your kids. Pray over them. So now when I pray with my boys, Josh, I say, I pray that James
1:04:54
and Eli with them there, and they're hearing the words from dad and they pick up everything, right?
1:04:59
They're hearing, you know, my dad wants me to be courageous. Some one day wants me to be a disciple
1:05:04
of Jesus and wants me to be brave and also wants me to be sensitive. And they don't even understand
1:05:09
the totality of what these words mean. We don't understand them as adults, but they're hearing
1:05:13
that and they're marinating it. And so like, if the Latimer family, here's like, I don't know,
1:05:17
here's the five top things that the Latimer family's about are here's this family crest.
1:05:23
This is the Thompson family crest, because ours was lost back in, you know, some Celtic days in
1:05:28
bygone eras. But it's something I guess to rally around. I'm like, I'm trying not to be too romantic
1:05:33
about it, Josh, but I've seen things like this have a similar impact on me personally, I guess.
1:05:38
I mean, to me, it's just logical because there's life and death in the power of the tongue and
1:05:43
words have the power to create and destroy. And you, like you said, as the head are like,
1:05:47
you're speaking what's going to happen. And you can see it within like two seconds. If you have a
1:05:53
young kid and you just speak life into them, it's unbelievable what happens. My youngest daughter
1:05:57
is struggles of being impatient sometimes. And she's a pistol. Okay. And what I started doing with
1:06:04
her is I just look at her and I say, you know, one of the things I like best about you is how patient
1:06:08
you are. And she's like, really? And I'm like, yeah, that's pretty cool. A lot of people aren't as good
1:06:13
at that as you are. And then I walk away, right? And like day by day by day, you have to tell
1:06:17
your kids who they are. One of the quotes my wife loves is if you don't tell your children who they
1:06:21
are, the world will do it for you. Amen. So family systems, all these things, like these books by
1:06:29
the book, don't buy the book, but there's there's you need to step up and do this anyway, because
1:06:33
it creates like a force field around your family. I don't know how else to say it. But
1:06:40
when you're speaking your kids, you're safe, you're protected, you're unafraid, you're always in the
1:06:43
right place at the right time because your footsteps are ordered by the Lord, right? You're the head
1:06:47
not the tail. You're designed to succeed. You were made on purpose for a purpose. You have a mission
1:06:51
to mandate in a destiny. You can't fail. Even if you tried, right before the foundations of the
1:06:55
world, God prepared good works for you to do, which means he made the stuff he wants you to do before
1:06:59
he even made you hope you have a great day. I mean, if you're talking even partially like that to a
1:07:05
child, they get programmed correctly. And then maybe they'll grow up and not have the same,
1:07:10
you know, anxiety around money and success and serving and all these things, because
1:07:16
they won't have to unlearn bad programming. That's right. That's right. Well, Josh, you're
1:07:22
right. You keyed in on it. This didn't go anyway, like I thought it would, but I think it went way
1:07:26
better. That's when I love interviews is when they go completely off the notes. And I'm deeply
1:07:29
satisfied by the end of the conversation because of the ground that we covered. So we have covered
1:07:33
a ton of ground, but that's all for me. Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
1:07:37
No, no, I just thank you for having me. I think you're absolutely phenomenal at what you do.
1:07:42
And that's not patronizing. You're really good at this. It's really awesome to watch you in your
1:07:47
element. And I think you're having a huge impact. So thank you.
1:07:50
My appreciate, Josh. We'll talk again soon. There you go, guys. I hope you enjoyed my time with
1:07:56
Josh Latimer before I let you go. We are going to do a quick resilience boost and undaunted life
1:08:00
remission is equipping men to push back darkness with content that forges spiritual, mental and
1:08:04
physical resilience. Only thing I got for you today is a link to kid war plan. And so if you
1:08:08
really want to get after it, you know, I talked to him off, off air about, you know, the link and
1:08:12
all those things, we want to make sure you guys, the undaunted life audience is getting after the
1:08:16
kid war plan that you're checking it out that you're kind of seeing what that can do for you and your
1:08:19
family. So guys, that is the only link and it is right there in the show notes. Thank you for
1:08:23
listening to this podcast. Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate and leave us a
1:08:27
positive five star review. If you want me to come speak live at your event or on your podcast,
1:08:31
just shoot me an email to info@undonton.life. That's i-n-f-o@undonton.life. Follow us on Instagram,
1:08:37
and like us on Facebook and check out our website for everything else, including how to donate to
1:08:41
keep more content like this coming your way. Just go to www.undonton.life. And as always, we want to
1:08:46
thank the band Holy Name for allowing us to use their music for our content. The music on this
1:08:50
podcast is our song Perpetua, which is off their self-titled debut album on Face Down Records.
1:08:55
The links are in the description. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness,
1:09:01
keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical resilience. Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
1:09:31
you