2685: How to Raise a Successful Family with Scott Donnell

26:38How could I not forgive you? Of course I forgive you. I love you. Now let's go make this right. You're connecting with their heart. Never lose the heart, right? And so we can be very good at helping our kids grow through good discipline. But when you are doing it out of frustration or you're just like breaking them off from the family and sending them away, you're losing that heart. So then you get people who people please. Then you get kids that become really defiant, like hardened hearts against you. A lot of people have a defiant kid. I have one, right? When you lose the heart connection, it's very easy to lose the kid, especially a defiant child.

27:20Especially as they grow up. At some point, they're going to be an adult. Yeah, the forgiveness one's a big one. One thing that my wife did a while ago that really I see the fruit of now is if my kids say sorry, even if it's like a sorry. A lot of times parents are like, say it like you mean it. Immediately, she accepts it. Thanks, honey. The other part of that is, and I've seen this in my house, we say sorry when we mess up to our kids. That's right. How important is that? How important is it for your kids to, for you to show them? It's essential. Why? If we don't model it, they're not going to live it out.

28:00And every parent messes up at some point. They lose it. They forget things. They screw up. And us modeling apology and please forgive me is one of the greatest things we can do for our children. It binds us back to them. Okay. In fact, so many, the number one question I get asked these days when coaching families is this, where were you 20 years ago? Wow. I wish I'd have known what you're talking about 20 years ago, because now we have this problem, this issue, this nightmare, this separation or estrangement or issue in the marriage or issue with all these things. They think it's too late. I'm like, no, it's never too late.

28:43Like what we teach are principles, not prescriptions. It's never too late. Every setback in your life is actually a setup if you can reframe and see it that way. And the first thing that we usually have adult, like if you have adult children, there's tons of issues, is work on repentance and forgiveness. Write them a letter of the things that you know that you messed on and do a deep dive. on the things that you screwed up on. Worked too much, treated them this way, held against them this way, dealing with your own issues, right? That is the first step, usually, with families, with older children that are really struggling.

29:27Scott Donnell:You know, I was just trying to look on my phone to remember what book it was, what parenting book that I was reading this, but it's similar to this conversation around discipline and the framework that they use. What they teach your kids is repair the relationship. So in any situation where a kid does something, you know, misbehaves, doesn't listen to mom or dad, there's damage done to a relationship. And so at the core of the discipline or the problem is that you just dishonored mom or you just did this. You hurt that person at school or like that. And it's like what I care about in the disciplining portion is repairing the relationship.

30:02Scott Donnell:And so versus a punishment of you're grounded for two weeks. It's no, what you're going to do is go take that person to lunch and go talk to them about what you did and repair that relationship. And so you're teaching them a very, very similar to what you're talking about right now, that valuable lesson of repentance and then repair on relationships. Because when someone does something wrong, typically there's another person on the other end of that where damage was done. And that's the more important lesson. That's right. And there's another level to discipline too, that we teach from, that we learn from some of these top families.

30:33almost all discipline in the home stems from a lack of training. Think about that for a minute. I believe that. Almost all discipline stems from a lack of training. Okay? Discipline usually is a reactive answer to a lack of training. So the more we can be proactive and train our children, we actually, it reduces the amount of disciplinary cycles that we have to go through. because the goal is not to just figure out the right way to discipline your children. The goal is to create children who are self-disciplined. And self-disciplined children have been trained. Self-disciplined children know what's expected of them.

31:18They have all of the support and the resources and the habits to be trained on their own. See, that is the core of what we teach in our Courage series. how do you raise a child to be anti-fragile? The word anti-fragile is one of the most, my favorite words in the whole world because that it's self-disciplined kids are, that's a symptom of being anti-fragile. Can you imagine, what if you imagine just your kids start doing things around the home before being told? That's the holy grail of every parent. One of the questions I had for you

31:52Scott Donnell:was how to build resiliency in your child, which would be the same thing is having an anti-fragile kid. Yep. So what are those beginning steps look like? What are those conversations or those practices that I'm doing with my six-year-old to help build that resiliency or help build him into this anti-fragile kid? Yeah, so I'll walk you through what we call one of our frameworks, okay? So we have these, we call it the C4 framework in our family training. We have core values, connection, capability, and courage. Those are the four C's that all of the best principles and strategies from all of the top families we've ever studied could go into those four.

32:31And we just make it a year round program. So people join for a year. They go through the four C's, one a quarter. We implement them in the home together. It's that simple. So during the courage series, the goal that we're talking about is anti-fragile. Okay. So here's the framework on courage. because courage means to me doing hard things, making big decisions and leaving everything better around you. That's how I define courage. Okay. And I love the word courage, by the way, because courage is the only virtue needed to help every other virtue be learned. At the testing point of learning every character trait or every virtue that you could ever try to give your kids, they need courage at the testing point to grow that virtue.

33:23Make sense? That's why courage is one of our first principles C's. It's one of our core tenets. And so courage, let's think about it. How do you build kids to be resilient? How do you build them to be anti-fragile, which is the next level up from resilient, right? Because everyone's like grit, grit, grit, discipline, discipline, discipline, resilience, resilience. Well, okay. You ever heard of the cow and the buffalo story? No. Okay. So when a storm comes. Oh, one goes towards it. The other one goes. The cow runs away. Okay. Scared. The cow is like, I got to get away from the storm. And then the storm overtakes them and they're in the storm way longer.

34:02Because they're running with it. That's right. The buffalo has this freak thing in their brain that triggers that just runs straight at storms. So they see the storms coming on the plains and they take off at the storm. And by running through the storm, they get through it way faster. But there's another animal that's even better. So that's a good story of resilience and grit and discipline. We got to get our kids to be running at the storms. There's a better animal for this analogy. It's the eagle. When a storm comes, the eagle is the only animal with wings that are strong enough to updraft. Soar over it.

34:40to go over the storm. They literally can soar up to like tens of thousands of feet above a storm because their wings are that strong. They're the only animal that uses a storm to get stronger. That is the picture of moving from discipline and resilience to being anti-fragile. So in our families, we want to work on helping our kids use struggle and issues and problems that come their way to get stronger afterwards. not just grit your teeth and bear it and make it through, but get better. Does that make sense? Totally. So here's the framework. We call it the coach versus caretaker framework. Stop reading parenting books.

35:23Start reading coaching books. All these parenting books are getting deep dives into emotional stuff, which is important. Deep dives into gentle parenting, positive parenting, free range parenting, helicopter parenting, for God's sakes. I would much rather we read better coaching books Because our job is to coach our kids up Right? It's proactive It's really good mentorship If you don't learn to coach well and mentor well Then you can't transfer and translate all of these values to your kids Okay? So coach versus caretaker is our framework on how to teach this Most families get stuck in caretaker mode Way too long and they don't move to coach.

36:09Does that make sense? Totally. How many parents, maybe it's the mom, maybe it's the dad, they find identity in solving all the kids' problems, giving them the best life humanly possible, solving all their issues, paying for everything, not helping the kids learn on their own, not coaching them up. They're caretaking them. The word caretaker is used, it's supposed to be used for when old people are in a nursing home dying. And your job as a caretaker is to remove all obstacles from their path, remove pain, remove issues so that they can die peacefully. There's no growth. Does that make sense? Yeah.

36:48So we as parents, it's a great way to think about it. We want to move to coach. How do you move to coach? High expectations, right? These are standards for your kids and high edification. this is training and support and encouragement the greatest coaches in the world right they they have high expectations and high edification does that make sense okay so if you have neither you're in the caretaker box and that just raises entitled victims but what if you are in the high edification but not the high expectation helicopter parent well think about it i have all the nurturing. I have all of the love and support, but I'm not setting expectations.

37:39I'm not showing them where they can go and setting the standards and believing in them and pushing them in that direction. I'm a coddler. No motivation. Yeah. Pleaser. It actually raises kids with a failure to launch problem. It raises people pleasers. You see what I'm saying? That's a big issue. you got to work on the expectations and the boundaries and standards that you hold them to. And if you treat a kid two years older than they are, they always rise to the occasion. That's about expectations. Now let's flip it. What if you have super high expectations, but not the edification and love and support and training?

38:20Who are you? Terrible relationship. Dictator. Yeah. Dictator. Drill sergeant. Yeah. That's it. Tough love. Terrible outcomes too. You have a trophy family that will never call you when they leave. They won't come back. You probably won't see your grandkids much ever. See what I'm saying? Very capable. They're going to win at all costs, but you're raising vultures. They will win, but at what expense? See what I'm saying? That's why you need both. and I believe that courage is built when kids are coached right. So they're solving their own problems. We just went to Zambia with the kids. I took my nine and my seven-year-old to Zambia like a month and a half ago.

39:10It was wild. Like we didn't just go for a tourist thing. We went into the bush, like no roads, six hours outside of Sonoma, like on sand, we're cutting down trees in this huge gladiator truck with our friends who also brought their two younger kids. And we went and did like a missions trip, like helping them with clean water and sharing like the love of Jesus with them and praying over them. And like, it was nuts. Well, for starters, the whole trip, my nine and seven-year-old ran the show. We get to the airport. I'm like, actually started packing. They're doing the packing. Then we get to the airport.

39:50I'm like, all right, guys, what's up? What are we doing? How do we get there? We got a long trip, 40 hours. They had to go to the desk, figure out everything. They're literally like, we got to go to Zambia. They yell at the British Airways person. Person's like, nice to meet you. They're laughing. Well, I guess, can I see your ID? My son's like, I don't have an ID. It was awesome. So they get the tickets. They check in the bags. We go through TSA. They're solving their own problems. They're going through customs. like, and I'm just there like watching, asking questions and everyone's like, you're crazy.

40:25This is ridiculous. And yeah, maybe it took us 20 minutes longer the whole time, but my kids just learned 10 skills. My kids know how to travel internationally in second grade. Okay. That's, and it's funny. It's hilarious. It's fun. They're pumped to figure it out. They're finding the gates. They're finding everything. They found out how to get to the person that was meeting us in Zambia where people didn't really speak English. I mean, it was awesome. So that's the kind of thinking of how you can build anti-fragile children. Okay. And meanwhile, you're coaching them through this whole process.

41:00If they need it. If they need it. Oh yeah. They went the wrong way, like four times. And I'm like, I know we're going the wrong way, but they're going to learn a great lesson from this. How often do we as parents actually let that happen? Yeah. And then it becomes bigger things later on if we don't. That's right. If we don't, you have seven and nine-year-olds. You're getting close to the age where the internet and smartphones become a thing and a challenge. And this is something that none of us in this room really grew up with. And it's a totally different challenge. I have four kids, but my two oldest, I was like nonchalant about it.

41:37It was like a new thing. And I'm like, whatever. I watch TV all the time. Not the same thing. My two younger ones are much, I'm going to be much, much more careful with the whole process. How do you feel about smartphones and access to the internet? And what does that look like as your kids get older? Because once they get access to it, then taking it back just becomes a challenge. Yeah, we cover this in our Connection series big time. Big time. In fact, one of my secret lives is running an anti-human trafficking group with Tebow. it's now one of the largest in the whole world and we use tech to fight i donate to that that organization it's awesome yeah we use technology to fight um we've got over 200 people and organizations and hackers and like the best in the world so i secretly am a world-class expert in technology and the problems of it with our kids did you know that the average uh 12 year old has released about 800 times as much dopamine between like if you compare them to us at that age yeah 800 times us more yeah wow dopamine the

42:46Scott Donnell:addictive chemical oh yeah yeah um is that just because they're uh we're more desensitized as we've gotten older and at the early age they're just it's primed and hit hit hit like because they're on their smartphones every every screen not just smart yes smartphones but everything iPads, TVs, Netflix, video games, even educational tech, it is triggered to create addiction. It is built to create addiction. When you swipe up, when you swipe up on anything, it is the same as pulling a slot machine, the same release of chemicals in your brain. You know, what's crazy about this, Scott, is that some, so we, it's so wild.

43:26Even TV has change dramatically. So I have two little ones and I'll put on Mr. Rogers. That's what I grew up watching. Yep. If you watch Mr. Rogers today, it is painfully slow. Yeah. It is painfully slow. In fact, I'll let my kids watch as much as they want because they turn it off. Right. They'll watch it and they're like, I'm done with this. That's right. But you put on Cocoa Melon or one of these other, and it's like quick, quick, quick, switch, switch, switch. And it is engineered to They do exactly what you're saying. It is absolutely wild. Cocoa melon is a great example.

43:57Scott Donnell:Yes. Everyone's doing this, but Cocoa melon, did you guys know the story? I know the research. Oh my God. The research that they have and money they have spent on. Pure evil. Yes. They literally sat three-year-olds down to stare at the screen. And whenever their eyes bounced to the giraffes and National Geographic, change something right there. They would put another jump cut in. They, they realized that. So when we were young, the average cartoon from the eighties, the night, whatever, dark wing duck, like whatever you, it doesn't matter. That's a great one. The average jump cut, early Superman or Spider-Man stuff from the 80s or 70s, was 10 seconds.

44:30Okay? The average jump cut with Coco Melon is 1.5 seconds. Yeah. Clip to clip to clip to clip. Wow. Even if one person's talking, you're going to change it to someone else. Then they realized, because that hooks their brain and it dicks their brain and releases more of the chemical. Then they realized if they use gamma colors. Yep. So high variation of colors. It literally locks in their brain. Like when we were young, we used to see like these evil Magneto people having this like crazy thing come out of the screen of black and white and everyone's like zoned in like a zombie and they hypnotize you.

45:05That's literally happening. But you don't realize it. Everyone says, oh, well, I can't have Snapchat. Okay, well, yeah, it's probably a bad idea, but it's everything. It's happening on video games. It's happening on Netflix. It's happening on any screen. And then you realize, you wonder why your kid goes into fight or fight or fight survival mode the moment that you turn it off. It's because you just ripped away the drug. So they lose their minds. It's withdrawal. It's withdrawal. So there is so much here about the addictive nature of these phones. We have moved in our society away from parents saying, go outside.

45:45Now it's go online. and it's happening in mass. One of my friends in our community said the other day, she said, because she has three teenage boys that are now late teens, she said, man, if I could go back, the stuff they saw that we didn't know about, the moment you give your child a smartphone, you are saying goodbye to their childhood. And that just, that struck me when a mother says that. about older teenagers. And it really, really, it impressed me deeply because she's right. People don't realize the access you give your children. Like, let's just talk about explicit for a second, explicit content.

46:32It's not actually when you give your kids a smartphone that they see these things for the first time. The stats are not there. The stats show that maybe 80 to 90 % is what we think. 80 to 90 % of the time that young boys, especially will see explicit content for the first time is at a play date at a friend's house or a sleepover or on the playground. If a school still has the ability, a kid sneaks a phone from an older sibling of one of their friends. That is most of where the first interaction comes. Those pieces of death for, for me growing up. We can all just think back and we can realize. It was always an older brother.

47:12It was always an older sibling. It just wasn't as accessible. That's right. That's why we don't do sleepovers, period. I study the stats on grooming and sexual assault of young people. And nope, we just don't do it. It's not a rule in our home at all. Like we'll do playdates with trusted families, very trusted, but we just don't do it. It's not worth the risk. So there's so much here. We work on safety on phones. We work on protecting kids. One of our groups is building the first pornographic incompatible phone. it's like a firmware update that goes onto a smartphone where you literally can't ever see anything like the filters can't be turned off you can't send a picture on Snapchat an explicit image or you can't receive one you can't have grooming information one of the companies is called GameSafe they will scan the phone for everything that's said texts or messages or anything to your children or teenagers or even adult kids on your plan anything that looks like grooming that looks like maybe it's like a 16-year-old boy talking to your daughter or something, it will flag everything that matches any algorithm of grooming and it will block them and it will send a notice to mom and dad.

48:22It's brilliant. That's how we protect them. But I mean, honestly, the first default is later the better. Start with a flip phone or an Apple Watch if you just need to get ahold of them or know where they are and go as long as you can before giving them a smartphone. And when you give them smartphones, make sure that there's protection. But just know that kids are smarter than you at technology. They know how to get around anything. 85 % of young people know how to access an old piece of tech in the home without you even knowing.

48:55Scott Donnell:I mean, I think you said it really well. It's just a great way to look at it is just say goodbye to their childhood as soon as you do that. So when you look at your kid, whatever age you decide, is that an age that you're ready to say goodbye to their childhood? And I think that's enough right there to probably stop a lot of parents in their tracks and go like, you know what? I could wait another year or two before I do that. The big challenge with that is, and this has always been a challenge, but especially now, right? Is you're trying to do this with your kids and they're like, but mom, dad.

49:25Everybody else. Oh, my friend. I'm left out. This is how my friends communicate. This is how we talk. Now I don't have this and I can't hang out with anybody. I can't talk with anybody. and this is for me at one point this was like a big like what am I going to do with these with my younger ones because and what I did is I found families that believe in the same thing that's kids then they're around other kids otherwise it's a it's a uphill battle and but when they're a certain age adolescence like their friends are more influential on them than you are that's right so it's like it's like you got to pick you got to pick good families who that is kid doesn't have a phone and their friends will have a phone.

50:03It's all good. That's it. The, your inner circle means more than almost anything else you'll do outside your home that picking the right families that have the same values, right? So what we do is we do this inner circle exercise where you write down the top 10 qualities of the families you want to surround yourself with. And then you find them. That is, it's as simple as that because you are who the five people you spend the most time around and their friends have a correlation to you. And then the friends of their friends have a correlation to you as well. Your network is everything. It's not just your net worth.

50:37It's your legacy. Okay. And this even gets deeper. I mean, I was talking to some friends who were like, we literally moved. We straight up moved. Our 12-year-olds started getting in the bad rooms, bad groups. We literally moved. Best decision we ever made. And I was like, more power to you. Like we have to be as protective as humanly possible on this. Yeah, we move schools. It's just something you got to consider, like what's best for them in their experience because it does influence them so much. There's a study that we did. We did a survey on our teenagers. Who's your mentor? Who's your closest mentor in your life?

51:15The majority of them said something that was not even someone they know.

51:21Scott Donnell:Somebody, someone online. Oh God, my son not to say dad would crush me. Well, just think about what they're looking at all the time. YouTubers, influencers, Twitch streamers that have their 24-7, their life online. It's like, I don't want my kid to be that person. I don't want them following those people's values. Like this is wild. Their top mentor is a digital name that they've never met, but they've consumed a hundred hours of their content. It's a wild thought. So that's why, like you said, friends and your inner circle are critical. What's helped me a lot with this understanding later is I understood this in the field that I have expertise in, which is health and fitness.

52:07One thing that I've understood for a long time with health and fitness that for some reason I never expanded out to other things, I just understood it for health and fitness, is if you want to be fit and healthy, you're going to be different. You're not going to live like most people. You're not going to eat like most people. You're not going to sit around like most people. if you do what most people do you are not going to have good health you're not going to be fit just that's just the nature or that's just the world that's true for everything yeah so the hard the thing that i think people need to accept it's really helped me a lot is under because that's the part that's hard is like we're different oh my god we don't fit in my friends my kids friends are over here and those parents over there do that and it's like well yeah you got to be very you're going to be different because if you're like everybody else talk about the stats this is this is wild.

52:52This is the first time we've seen, I saw this data not that long ago. This is the first time we've seen the younger generation have more anxiety and depression than the older generations. We've never seen that before. It's always been like, you know, middle ages where you get the kind of peak of that. Now we're seeing this peak with teenagers. Talk about that a little bit and what's maybe causing that. Yeah. So we have this thing, we did a ton of research on our family stuff and we have, we have this thing called the four family forces. These are the four destructive forces that are attacking our culture.

53:24Okay. I will brief, I'll just go briefly through the four. All right. Cause we don't have time. We do this like in a two hour unpack for people. The first of the four is the dopamine distortion I talked about. Okay. The access of advertisers, like never before we are the product when you don't know, when you don't know what someone's selling, you're what they're selling. Okay. Um, what's going, what's going on with screens and technology and the easy button for families, they text become the easy button, right? Like you're saying it's, I got to do laundry. I got to cook something. I need a break.

53:55Like they just throw the phone and the lower the income level, the higher the percentage of time on screens. Oh, interesting.

54:02Scott Donnell:I know that stat. Cause they just, they don't have it. They don't have much, maybe as much time. They don't have the margin. Yeah. They don't have the other stuff that can be done. They can just tough. It's hard. And we have a ton of empathy for them. And so that's why we help train on like other ways to help the kids learn and grow and help you Right. Yeah, like hey do more with the kids than for them Like don't turn on a screen so you can cook dinner cook with them. Yeah. Yep Okay, don't turn on a screen so you can do laundry and clean up. Just have a minute Do it with them. Yep And the more that you're getting self-discipline trained kids now they're helping take the load off of you And you could do that at such an early age I was doing that with max when he was just Walking barely walking around that's right Right.

54:42It's awesome.

54:43Scott Donnell:Yes. And it's so freeing for parents. Yeah. So dopamine distortion is the first force. What does dopamine distortion create? It creates kids who are isolated and it creates kids who are fearful because that's what happens with all the technology. That's the two things that happens. Those are two building blocks of all the anxiety issues. Second force is the anti-family force. There's so much going on in culture against family. Parents' rights are trying to be ripped away like crazy It's wild Okay, school has replaced the home For a lot of families I'll just give you an example When we were growing up Home improvement was the top show Two parents Boys in the home Real conversation A neighbor, Wilson, across the fence That you couldn't see his mouth But they were friends And he's given advice And they actually knew their neighbor Traditional home Then fast forward a decade.

55:39What's the top show in the world? Friends. Go inner city. No mention of parents. No mention of real siblings unless it's a joke line, a punch line. Don't get married. Don't have kids. That's a waste. Live your own life. That happened from the 80s to the 90s. Then we get into Seinfeld. Same thing. These are the top shows for decades in our culture. The family force, the family focus has been ripped apart. Okay. And what does that cause with kids? By the way, you can have an infinite amount of identities and genders. You can have all these, you just rip truth out of the ground. Okay. There is no truth.

56:18In fact, truth. You are your truth. You are your truth, which is so ironic. Destructive. It's so contradictory to what truth actually is. For truth to be truth, something has to be an exclusive statement or else it's not true anymore. There's no such thing as one plus one equals two and one plus one equals three. Those are not both true. Those are mutually exclusive statements. Now you both might be wrong, but they're mutually exclusive statements. So the anti-family force is getting stronger by the day. And especially with big companies who have access to our children, because they know that if they can rip them away from the family, then they are now the product and they can make more money off of them.

57:02Okay. So that causes rudderlessness and confusion. You see where I'm going? Yeah. I mean, I determine my own path. I determine my own destiny. I determine everything about myself, my happiness. That is confusing. By the way, you'll never get the answer. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And then when you get older, don't get married because half of them fail and it's a bad idea. And don't have children because children are a waste of resources. They're a burden. They're overpopulated and they're a burden. Yeah. You can't have fun anymore. That's right. See this, just, I can go on and on, but I don't have time. So confusion and readiness is, that's what that causes.

57:40Leads right into anxiety. The third one, instant gratification. We are living in an instant culture. You have DoorDash, Uber Eats, Amazon Prime, one click to your door every day. You have Netflix, you have swipes on social. You, everything is instant. You don't have to wait for anything. there's no more waiting till next Tuesday for the next episode to come on let's all watch it today let's all watch it binge today binge watching is literally what I'm talking about yeah we are breeding a generation that is instantly gratified in every area let me ask you what makes for a great investor yeah patience delayed gratification yeah big time what makes for a great husband or wife ugh delayed gratification ugh you need to learn to sacrifice in marriage Lots of grace.

58:31What makes for a great parent? Sacrifice. Delaying it. In fact, parenting makes you great in all the hard ways, but it's all the ways you've wanted to become all along. And you have to do it through sacrifice. Okay? Because there's no other choice. Our job is to do a thankless thing for decades because we love them and we're going to sacrifice and delay the gratification. How on earth are we training our children up in any of those ways with an instant world? You see the force? Absolutely. That's where the fragile comes from. That's why courage, we teach the courage series to solve that force.

59:07See, fragile is a big deal. And then the last one that I think is fascinating, it's the information revolution, the AI revolution. You ready for this? A hundred, okay. So let's talk about information doubling. You guys hear about this? Information doubling speed. It used to be 100 years. All right? So before the Gutenberg printing press, information doubled every 100 years. All the knowledge in the world, all the data, all the written things, all the things people were learning. This is Moore's Law, yeah? Yep. Then it went to when the internet came. Okay, so then, yeah, no, I'm sorry. It was 25 years when the Gutenberg printing press came out.

59:49It got collapsed by four. Okay? Then the internet comes out. 80s, 90s, 2000s, it really ripped. Google comes out. that dropped to a year. Every year, all the information and knowledge and data points in the world doubles. Okay. So let's just talk about that for a second. Now, if information's doubling every year, we have had problems now for decades where medical residents graduate in their 30s with half a million dollars of debt, and then immediately half the things they learned over their education are irrelevant. Yeah. There are new double-blinded, placebo-controlled studies that literally contradict what they learned.

1:00:31So how the heck does a degree work now? Before AI comes out, this was the problem even three or four years ago. 82 % of college graduates do not use their degree in their work.

1:00:45Scott Donnell:82, huh? Wow. I knew that was high. 56 % of college students go to college, start getting debt, and they don't graduate. Okay? I'm not making a slap against college. I'm saying they better catch up quick or they're going to be left in the dust. Right? These are big problems. But now AI comes out. In the last two years alone, information went down from doubling every year to 13 hours. 13 hours? And it's going down. Good Lord. Every 13 hours, all the data, all the information and knowledge and clips and everything around the world. The explosion of the internet is expanding at a rate that doubles every 13 hours.

1:01:27What does that now? That's crazy in its own right. All right. But what does that do to a kid? What does that do to a teenager who's trying to think about their career? Immediate overwhelm. An immediate feeling of obsolete. they feel obsolete they're like what what do i do because it's i don't even my job is not even going to be it hasn't even been created yet let me back you up scott i'll go on to find something to watch with my wife sometimes at night and there's so many options we don't choose anything exactly there's a term for that what's that there's a term like choice fatigue or something like that there's a term paralysis by analysis yeah i mean so that's literally happens same here I said that because I know people listening have done that.

1:02:12You go on. When I was a kid, we had channels and we watched something every night.

1:02:17Scott Donnell:I remember when I could afford my first video cassette as a young 17-year-old moved out on his own and I had 11 video cassettes and I watched those 11 movies. Every night you knew we were going to watch. Yes, it was such an easy one. Now I go on, I'm going through. My wife's like, it's been 30 minutes. We haven't picked anything. It's almost time for bed. You watch a bunch of trailers of shows. Then you turn it off. I've been there too. It's happened so many times. It's a wild thought though. And I'm an adult. Yeah. I'm not a teenager. Oh, these forces are for all of us. They just have a different impact on children whose prefrontal cortexes are not developed.

1:02:50In fact, what'll happen is their brain is, because it's so plastic, is going to develop around these inputs. Yep. It's a brain developing with 800 times the dopamine hits. It's a brain developing with fear and anxiety and, oh, but I also decide my own whatever. and you actually have a brain that models itself around this, which is far worse. That's right. So when you add up all those emotions and feelings and things I just said, fragile, confused, overwhelmed, isolated, addictive, like issues, that's what we call the anxious era. We're in the anxious era. Scott, I'm going to, I'm going to, I have to take it back to faith because I saw a study that showed, there was a huge study.

1:03:33Well, there's two things that are happening that I'd love to ask you about. One of them is there was a study on what was the most protective thing for kids when it came to this anxiety and depression that we're seeing this explosion of. And what they found was the kids that have the strongest faith, the ones that go to church, read the Bible, whose parents have these morals with them or this practice with them, they had the best protection. Of all the factors, it was that. The second part of this question is, it's undoubtedly we're now seeing a revival. But this is a different revival than we've seen in modern history because for the first time ever, the younger generation is going to church more and reading the Bible more than the older generation.

1:04:12So Gen Z is doing it more than millennials and Gen X. Yep. And for the first time in modern history, it's led by young men. Typically, it's the women that were leading it. So is that all connected? Is it because kids themselves are like, I need some structure? They're desperate for truth. Kids are desperate because of this anxious error that's been caused over the last decade. Kids are hungry for connection. They're hungry for meaning. They're hungry for truth. They're hungry for something real intangible that can get them out of the nightmare. You guys know this. When the pain gets bad enough, you will do whatever it takes to get out of the pain.

1:04:54That's right. And that is what anxiety and mental health is causing in the young generation. Okay. This is the first generation ever where parents are more worried that their teenagers will kill themselves than die in a car wreck. That's wild. Is that true? Is that true? That's wild. That's interesting. That is the fear now. It's wild, this anxious era. And this is all we focus on every day because our four C's were created to directly fight those four forces. And yes, faith is such a big deal. Like, just think about it for a minute. If you can trust that God has your back, if you can trust that God has a plan, your fears go away.

1:05:33Oh. Okay. If you're serving somebody, you can't worry. Mental health issues just start to dissipate when you're in service of somebody else. Because now you're showing you're valuable to them. This is a secular data fact, by the way. Anybody listening right now, look at the data on this. I know this. I'm very familiar. I'm giving you just general principles here. Right. But I think this is why there's such a revival going on in faith. People are hungry for this. They don't want readiness. They want meaning. They can't just look around and be like, this is all for, is this all that it is? Is this all I'm supposed to feel?

1:06:12Is this all? Like, this is terrible. There's got to be something more. And then they start looking and then they find them. They find the Lord. I just talked about this study recently on the podcast. It was a huge study, 114 ,000 people. And what it found was, and I love this study because it's so simple, that exercise was one and a half times more effective for depression and anxiety than therapy and medication. Exercise. Yeah. Aimless exercise. I'm not trying to like fix my, I'm just working out. Anything. Errands, by the way. Get out of your house and be active. that actually releases the counteracting chemicals that can actually get you doing something that relieves the anxiety and the stress.

1:06:54Do you think we've gotten too deep? Because we're also the most therapized society in all of history. Oh man, don't get me started. And one of the hallmarks of depression is that self-ruminating, thinking about myself, why am I this? And what's my triggers? And why am I? And just twist, twist, twist. Whereas exercise is not that. It also improves your physical health, which your brain is a part of. Um, yeah. What do you think about that, man?

1:07:21Here's what I think. Anxiety is a sin to repent of, not an emotion to medicate out of.

1:07:33Scott Donnell:It's going to piss some people off. Well, there goes your comments. Yeah. But it's the truth. We have medicated ourselves and bandaid ourselves without going to the core. It's the greatest, I think it's the most common command in the Bible, if I'm not mistaken, do not fear. Do not worry. Do not fear. I think it's repeated more than almost anything else in there. Worry and hurry are the enemy of faith. They're the enemy of all trust. It is literally the opposite. The evil one, if he can get us worried and scared and anxious as much as humanly possible, he knows he can rip us away from God. and Jesus literally said, refuse to worry.

1:08:19Don't just know about it and try not to. Refuse to do it. And that is different. We, like, you mentioned this earlier, ruminating, right? This is my problem with a lot of therapy, okay? I think therapy's good. I think it's important to unpack things, but without a solution to it, without working on solutions and problem solving and getting past it and not making it your identity? Without that, it becomes your identity. You ruminate on something. And when you ruminate on a problem, guess what? It grows. When you worry more about something, it gets bigger. Not in the real world, but in your brain, in your mind.

1:09:01It takes over, right? This is why Jesus said, refuse to worry. Do not be hurried. Do not be worried. Those things rip you away from me. trust, have peace. I got it. I have a plan for you. It's a good one. Who of you by worrying can add a second to your life? You can't. In fact, one of the greatest lessons that I've learned recently in my crazy life, giving up businesses and all the nuts things that God's shown me, the biggest lesson I've learned is surrender versus performance. Can I unpack this for a second?

1:09:40Scott Donnell:Not only that, maybe the way you set the table, because at one point I want to get to this about the business. And if that's where you're going, maybe you set the table with your business journey. Because I don't know a lot about that. I imagine my audience doesn't know about the success that you've had in business and then what you've decided to do recently. Now, you guys want to get even wilder? How wild do you want to get right now? Let's hear it. We'll go as hard as you want, my friend. Let's go all in. All right, let's go all in. Now, we'll still talk about family and parenting and legacy.

1:10:07I love that. but there's deeper kingdom principles here at work. And if you get these, it'll help your family. Do you know what mammon is? So in the Bible, Jesus says something. You can't serve two masters. This is in Matthew 6 and Luke 16. He says, you can't serve both God and mammon is the word he uses. We think it's money. It was translated to money. But if you look at the Greek, he actually used a pronoun he didn't say money he says you can't serve two masters you'll love one you'll hate the other you'll be loyal to one you'll despise the other you can't serve both God and mammon it is a capital letter pronoun so now you gotta ask what the heck is mammon I didn't know what it was until I did a deep research on this mammon is what Pharaoh called himself the god of wealth and power and influence mammon is one of the worst chief princes of hell you could ever imagine on the face of this planet mammon is the insatiable hunger for more mammon is greed and avarice and never having enough you always have to have more it's never good enough.

1:11:32I got to have more. I got to have more. Every entrepreneur struggles with this one, by the way. Mammon has you running on a rat wheel because you'll never be content. Mammon is what causes extraction mindset, workaholism, rat wheel life, slavery, actually. It's never enough. Let me give you an example. Something goes bad in the business. Something goes bad in the gym, something goes bad financially. If your first thought is how much money's in the account, how many months can we live off of, how long do we got, how much security do we have, what's our backup there financially, you're serving mammon.

1:12:15Instead of surrendering and literally handing it, putting it in God's hands and saying, I'm just a steward. You're in charge. See, mammon can give you the world. Mammon can give you wealth. Mammon can give you money and power and influence and achievement and all these things, but it will never give you peace because mammon demands performance. You are going to continue to perform and it's never going to be enough. And this is where we sacrifice our children. They used to sacrifice babies to mammon in the Babylonian times and the Syrophoenician times, and then thank God that stopped, sort of. but today it didn't no think about it we just do it a different way how many people are serving the idol of work and career and money and success and workaholism and achievement and sacrificing their kids their marriages their families in the process child sacrifice is alive and well and it will never give you peace it will only give you toil that's what mammon does that's why Jesus said You can't serve both God and mammon.

1:13:27Pick your master. But when you surrender, that's the answer. When you surrender to God, you immediately, instead of having to be in control, which mammon makes you feel like you have to be in control, you have to solve it, you have to get there. You're now complete. And you immediately have peace. You have contentment. You're surrendered. You have trust. That's the basis of faith. and then here's the most beautiful part. God can now run on your behalf. When you're fully surrendered, now God can work on your behalf. He can send his angels out concerning you. He's your rear guard, it says in scripture.

1:14:13He paves the path ahead of you while you're surrendered and at peace. Doesn't mean you sit around lazy like a sloth and do nothing. No, no, no. You're just surrendered to his will. and what he wants you to do next. Do you see the difference in living that this gives you? Totally. You immediately let go of your fists around everything. Peace. And the most beautiful thing about that, don't you guys think that God could do a thousand times more on our behalf than we could ever do on our own? Of course. Okay. The most beautiful thing about this way of thinking is that now all these things just start to get laid out before you.

1:14:51Things you never imagined would happen. And guess who gets the glory? God he can't work on your behalf if you're serving mammon if you're performing and having all the control he doesn't get the glory that way he's in the break room waiting for you to surrender so that's the difference so you told me to go deep you reminded me of I hope I'm talking about the right guy I think it was Gideon if I'm not mistaken where he was told to raise up an army and God said no he had 30 ,000 men he said too big chop it down Chop it down. He brought it down to 10 ,000. No, no, no, no. It's too big. He brought it down to 300.

1:15:29And he's like, why are you sending me out to fight this impossible battle with 300 people? The ones who lapped up the water with their mouths. And he said, so that when you win, everyone knows it was me. That's right. And not you. So sometimes he takes things from you so that when you come out the other end, you're like, oh, that wasn't me. And that's what happened to me. It's exactly what happened to me. I mean, I have been Mr. Pursuit for 20 years. 10 companies exits ipos failures like guys i've been up and down the chain many times what do you think and i and when i finally surrendered everything changed because you had such a good

1:16:06Scott Donnell:upbringing and such a great example and this family heritage uh i'm sure and you're a self-aware guy what was it that was driving you to keep reaching that you think it was like because you wanted to live up to grandpa or surpass? Like what, what caused you to, to chase that? Drive. Just, I don't, I never really had any of those. You competitive win? Oh yeah. Okay. I had, I like winning. Yeah. I, I, I didn't realize before how much I was looking sideways instead of looking up. I actually believe that there's no such thing as competition. competition is only comparison see i'm not talking about sports or working out that's play but competition is drives us to try to beat and compare to everybody else either they're better than me and i gotta beat them i gotta they gotta lose i gotta win i gotta get better i'm jealous i'm envious i'm fearful if they're too good see this is just comparing so we're gonna kill ourselves in our company and beat the competition and trounce everybody else.

1:17:17Okay. Or they're not as good as you and you can look down on them with pride and ego. Say, thank God I'm not like those people. You're still competing. Okay. This is not real. All competition is, is just comparison. Do you know what I think the kingdom principle is supposed to be? I think in the kingdom, compassion drives you. Compassion is the fuel. Compassion is the love for your customer, not trying to kill another company doing the same thing. Compassion is loving a friend or another mom or another family near you instead of trying to look better, have more money, have better cars, have better stuff.

1:17:59My kids are better than yours. See, comparison is what? The thief of all joy. Unfortunately, we have raised children to compete, but all they're really doing is comparing. Sports is not that. Sports is having fun, like playing. You can learn discipline that way. Winning and losing, it's a great thing. But what happens the moment you tie your identity to winning? Yeah, that can happen in sports too. It is. Now I'm going to cheat to win. Now I'm going to trounce everybody else. Now I'm just going to compare. And then what do I do when I'm old?

1:18:32Scott Donnell:I've always framed it though as competing with myself, right? Even the way I look at the way we operate. Yeah, that's not what I'm talking about. That's a good thing. Because like even the way I look at, because I think you can fall into that trap of comparing to others and other, like when I look at our business every year and we're 10 years running and I talk about it all the time, like I'm competing with last year. I'm competing with myself, with us, with what we, like not looking outward of, oh, that business is doing this. But why? Huh? But why? To make me a better version of myself. It forces me to grow and learn.

1:19:05Scott Donnell:For what purpose? Well, yeah. So that should be for him, for his glory. For your family? Yeah. For your clients? For the listeners? That's really, I mean, I know where your heart is. I mean, no, that's not true. But you're driven by that. No, that's not true. I actually had this conversation with Kyle yesterday, one of our really good employees. I said, the thing that motivates me, and he was asking me why I no longer cared about building a$100 million company. That used to be my goal in my 20s. I said, I don't care about that because I realized that I have all the things that I ever needed for myself and my life and my family.

1:19:36Scott Donnell:My family is secure. Now what drives me is seeing me help you or anybody else that's in our company that has goals like that. That serves way more of a purpose for me to help this thing. If it stays the same forever for me, I'm fine. You just defined compassion. You literally just defined it. You got to the heart of it. Yeah. So many entrepreneurs, so many people in the workplace are so busy. I got to hit this because someone somewhere told me that I got to want to be a billionaire. I had the same goals, man. Billions, hundreds of millions. I'm going to hit this. I'm going to hit this award. Inc.

1:20:15500, like all this stuff. And all I was really doing was trying to get rankings and competition, looking good to my friends and like all that kind of thing. Yeah. What you just said, that's a heart of compassion. Yeah. I think compassion-driven companies always win over competition-driven companies. Because the compassion-driven companies don't waste time and energy on what other people are doing. They're focused solely on their teams and their customers and their audience. And they're driving into what they need, how we can love them and serve them and meet their needs. That's where all their energy is going.

1:20:51They're not worried about what other people are doing. They end up lasting longer and having more results. the competition-driven companies have cutthroat. They have dog-eat-dog cultures. They see people as cogs in a machine. You are an expense to me, not an investment. We're going to do everything we can to kill and murder the competition. What are you talking about? If there's another company in the world trying to serve the same people you're trying to serve and solve their problems, Lord bless them. Thank God we need more people trying to solve this problem because you guys have devoted your lives to care about a problem, to help people.

1:21:31Thank God there's other people helping people get healthy. See, that's a compassionate heart. But when you're competition driven, what does that lead to? In business, fraud, cutthroat practices, Ponzi schemes, shortcuts, scandals, affairs. Like the list just goes on and on and on. See, this is why we have, is competition, can it be healthy? If you're playing and you're having fun, if you're wanting to get better, 1 % better every day, that's not what I'm talking about. That's play. That's a good thing. That's learning discipline. But I think instead of just competing all the time, we should think about compassion.

1:22:16It keeps you from all those problems I just described. It keeps you from making winning the identity. And it's a kingdom principle, right? That's my, that's. You brought up sports. I think the best example of that in sports is when you have two teams doing their best. At the end, one of them wins, but you see respect in both of them. They both look at each other and they go, oh man, great battle. Yeah. Like that's, and everybody loves that. Everybody loves to see that. You guys know what I'm talking about. You're doing a wad against someone else. You're working out your plan. You don't hate the person.

1:22:50You don't want them to get hurt or detrounced or be like. No. No, you're just playing. You're having fun. Win or lose, it doesn't have any bearing on your identity. Good game.

1:23:00Scott Donnell:Well, I think the most valuable thing that sports give is actually all the great lessons within the game of getting better or winning, right? It's all the overcoming adversity. It's actually the losses. It's the losses where you win the most. Yeah. You know, when you really think about in sports, and so, and if you're going to be really good and really grow, you have to accept the losing part and not identify with I'm a loser. It's like, no, it's a great opportunity for me to improve and get better. And to me, that's the best lesson from sports that we could get is that. Tell me about your surrender.

1:23:30You had said that earlier, that you had been chasing. You were stuck on that performance, and then you learned to surrender. You said it took you something like 20 years. What happened?

1:23:48Something died.

1:23:57last November, um, we, we felt the Lord call. My wife and I felt the Lord call us to just hand over our business, just lay it up on the altar. Um, there was some things I felt like he wanted me to talk about some of the stuff we're talking about today that I wasn't able to do. it was an incredible company $50 million company loved it built it up from the ground up and there was some restrictions and issues and attacks and the Lord just said how much do you trust me put it on the altar you don't put losses on the altar you put gifts on the altar and then watch what I do how much do you trust me and so ultimately I said I do trust you and we gave it all up we handed over the equity it was eight figures just walked away from it yeah retired it I mean it's a great company 40 ,000 families like growing successful it's not like a failing company it's a good company yeah I love it I love it still to this day

1:25:15Scott Donnell:it's a great company is uh without giving up details that you can't talk about was it you did you guys getting to 50 million i imagine you might have did you eventually take on money and give a board okay so you raise a lot of money this is what happens a lot of times so you had a board and so you had people to answer to yeah and uh i just felt really led to be talking about some of these deep issues of family and legacy and faith and all these things and um yeah ultimately said how much you trust me. Can you surrender? Can you take your firm, tight grip on this behemoth and let it go? How did you hear that voice?

1:25:53What did it sound like? It was through prayer and it was a nudging of the Holy Spirit. And it was confirmed through my wife and I. So she's like, I feel the same thing. Yeah. And then we had a couple mentors pray with us and they felt the same, trepidly, to be honest, and then sought the Lord in scripture. So I believe that that's the living, active word of God, sharper than a two-edged sword. I've had a thousand circumstances in my life where the Lord speaks straight through a verse that I open to. I've done this. I've played Bible roulette and that happened. And it went straight to God and mammon.

1:26:32And not worrying, follow the Lord. On your deathbed, you'll be glad. so we gave it up we gave up the millions we put into it we gave up the social media went to i went to zero last year like i we gave up all the social i had no followers last i just went into the cave gave up the our best-selling book gave up the domains the ip we just hand it all over said go with god we love this mission serve people we're called to this is that why i saw your

1:26:57Scott Donnell:following go from like you had a huge following then now you're back down to like 60 something thousand or whatever was that was that what happened you switched oh wow i wonder what happened. We handed it over. Cause I'd been following you longer than that. We changed the usernames and that's fine. Like we gave it up. We wanted them, I want them to be successful. Yes. It's a great company. They're focused on helping families create value and financial literacy and teaching all these gigs. I love it. So, okay. So walk me through this. So I understand. Were they like, yeah, cool. Thanks for giving it to us.

1:27:22Or were they like, you're crazy.

1:27:23Scott Donnell:What are you doing? I was going to say, I'm sure they wanted you still. You built it. So I'm okay. Walk me through this. And I'm in the agreement was, you know, I'm going to go off and work on faith and family and legacy stuff and help people. And then they're going to focus on what they're focusing on and everything's good. Publicly, that's what we say. And everything is good. I have no issues with them. But yes, it sounds crazy. I'm not going to lie. So, okay. Step me through this. Because I totally know exactly what probably happened or how this could happen. I mean, we're in a place like that, right?

1:27:55Scott Donnell:We could have the opportunity to take on, I get emails every day of people trying to give us money to scale this thing even bigger and faster. and uh we one of the reasons why we don't is we don't ever want to give control or ever be censored on what we say we've talked about this since day one that we always want to be able to speak our minds and have the conversations that are on our heart that we feel like and we never want to give that up even for x amount more money but let's say i did or we did and then you know it takes it to 50 million or 100 million and then i realize we're being censored and then we're going to walk away But I feel like if I were to do that, I would still cash out and then just give it up.

1:28:33Scott Donnell:I wouldn't just hand it completely over. So you got to step me through that thought process because I feel like you could still serve him and still give up. And by the way, walking away from a$50 million machine is no matter whether you cash out or not cash out, incredibly difficult to do no matter what. So yeah, why the no cash out? Why the let's... Because we didn't want to... It's one thing to be like, well, I'm going to get my due from this or I'll just stay, keep it all and you guys grow and I'll get the benefit later. Yeah. We felt the Lord telling us full stop. Wow, that's powerful. Make sure that the investors and everybody gets full benefit and retire your shares.

1:29:17You said something interesting that you don't put losses on the altar. You put gifts. You put gifts. so this is can and abel this is you know like abraham and isaac even more yeah it was your child yeah it was terrifying i'm not gonna lie i didn't do it happily what happened after yeah uh you said a bunch of miracles happened yeah so i'll just give you a few of them so we did it not expecting anything so you don't this is the thing you don't give to get it's not a gift no you're not a gift with anything expecting in return yeah my mentor said this to me that really helped me after this happened.

1:29:50He said, look, few are, many are gifted. Many are gifted, but few are anointed because of the cost of the oil. Wow. Many are gifted, but few are anointed because of the cost of the oil. It's a powerful line. It is. It changed my whole framing of my life. And since that moment, what's happened in my life has proved that true in countless ways. That fast already? Oh my goodness, yes. I'll just give you a few crazy things that happened. So the day after we gave it up, we owed$86 ,000. And I'm like, uh-oh. Yeah. I hope, Lord, you're in charge because I surrendered it all. And I'm like, maybe we have to get a HELOC where we're going to try to sell some stock stuff, margin more.

1:30:46We were already millions margined on our stock to even do other stuff before. So it's not like I gave it up and was like, now we're good. I gave it up and we had issues. Buddy calls me, my friend, John. He goes, Hey, remember that investment in the veterinary clinics from years and years ago? We didn't know if they were working or not. Well, they're working. Here's the first distribution, 86 grand.

1:31:08Scott Donnell:Shut up. Shut your face. To the dollar. Shut your face. $10. I've heard a few stories exactly like this. 86 grand to the dollar. Oh yeah. It gives me chills. That's rad. Next day, my CPA calls me because you're not going to believe it. Remember that, um, the double tax that the Arizona department of revenue took from us a couple of years ago that we've been fighting to get back. And they just went dark and they did. They admitted they took 150 grand or whatever it was. They never paid us back. He goes, check your account. So like two years before, uh, Wells Fargo drained our checking to nothing.

1:31:45We're like, is this even legal? How is this happening? And they fought forever. And then they went dark and everyone just kind of gave up for a while until maybe the next tax season we'd try again. Hit our account second day. Wow. Which covered another debt that we owed. Wow. Third day, get a call from a guy, gave his life to the Lord the night before from our conversation. Big tech company. I had made one introduction and it turned into like this crazy license deal for them. Huge win. He goes, my wife and I gave our lives to Christ from your conversation. And we prayed this morning for the first time and we felt the Lord tell us to give you 150 ,000 shares of our company.

1:32:25No way. At Penny Warrant's. Now, let me be clear. God is not a slot machine. Wow. You don't put quarters in hoping to get dollars out. Nobody gives to get. When we put things on altars, we are putting them in for the Lord, even if none of this happened. Yeah, because you don't know what his will is. No, I don't know what his will is. His will is not for everyone to be millionaires and billionaires. And that's, no, that's not what I'm saying. I'm just telling you the miracles that happened in my life. The next day I get a call from a very prominent, I won't say who, very prominent organization in the world with great faith-based leaders.

1:33:01You can probably guess a few of them. They're very, very well-known. They asked me to run the whole thing. They're like, you're one of the greatest leaders we've ever met. we want you to run our entire massive organization. And it was the honor of a lifetime. And I went, well, I'm doing this new thing where I surrender fully. And I have a gold medal in running headlong after things that God did not tell me to do. So I'm going to pray. I'm honored. I thank you. I needed to hear this. I think maybe the reason was I needed to hear this from you. thank you so much. Cause I've been in the dumps. I think I'm the worst, you know, this has been so hard.

1:33:41Uh, so ultimately I didn't take that, but I, I needed to know the Lord was sharing it next day. Uh, somebody huge at the department of ed reaches out. They're like, we saw your content, the old content. They didn't even know I gave it all up. They're like, we saw your content. We were interested in potentially if you want to help us run the department of education and what the future of this looks like, we're going to dismantle from the feds and like the list just goes on of this, this kind of stuff. That's wild. Um, I said the same thing to them. Billionaire organizations asking me to do the same, like crazy stuff.

1:34:14Um, few days later, massive earn out of an old exit of a business that covered our margin on our stock, cover the margin, like almost the dollar covered it. millions, covered it. So within like a week, we were whole. And I'm just like spinning, like, how good are you, Lord? You take care of everything. You take care of the lilies of the field, the birds of the air. Why would I ever worry? And I've had more peace, more joy, more rest, and more of God's paving the way that I could never imagine since that happened than any time in my life combined. And I have gone many, many years in businesses, rat race, like hustle, drive, 100-hour weeks, sleepless nights, pain, like very difficult stuff.

1:35:08And I think that I'm going to stay in the surrender model because it's a beautiful life. Right after this happened, a few months after this happened, my wife, Amy, she's an angel. You know, we haven't had it easy. We've had struggles, four little kids, lots of businesses. You can imagine it's crazy. For the first time in our marriage, she gave us a 10 out of 10. Usually it's like, yeah, we're going to go like seven, eight. And I'm like, yeah, I'll take it. She goes like, we're at a 10. This is awesome. Miracle. With little kids. I mean, it's just never had more time with my kids. Never had more being in tune with the Holy Spirit.

1:35:49never had such a wild amount of trust never been so bold to talk about Jesus actually never in my life and not in a way that's like you have to do this you have to do this it's like hey I think this can help you can I pray for you that's great and seeing breakthroughs in other people's lives where they get to meet the real Jesus not the religion do this do that stuff that everybody's traumatized about the real Jesus that loves us unconditionally that gave his life for us for us to receive it as a free gift. It cost him his life. That's the power of God. And when we receive him, the Holy Spirit enters our hearts.

1:36:29He enters it. He's the helper, the healer. He can help us. This is such a blessing. I don't know why everyone doesn't do it. It's an unbelievable blessing in someone's life if they just open themselves up to it. But we are so quick to close ourselves off and serve our own way, perform ourselves out of it.

1:36:46Scott Donnell:do you think the two calls from the big companies were a test yes they were both a test and an encouragement right right and it wasn't just two there was there's been eight massive things and each time i go into prayer on it oh it happened you guys it's his non-stop surrender it's such a fun way to do it so a few months ago we had a property manager steal a bunch of money from us up in Washington. And I was about to do detective, like get a personal investigator and see what they're doing. It's probably like they're robbing multiple people. You know, I knew that was probably what was going on.

1:37:27And we go to church. I sent a text. I'm like, hey, I just found this out. Next steps, we'll figure out. I'll figure out tonight what I'm going to do next with this. But I just want to let you know, I know. I go to church, pray about it, but I'm in surrender mode. And I felt, read in scripture, it was about loving your enemies. It was about giving to those who want from you. Give them like your tunic as well. I was like, huh, okay, Lord, what do you want me to do here? Start praying. And I'm quiet for a minute. Holy Spirit's like, if he comes clean tonight by like 9.30, forgive the whole debt. I'm like okay nine o 'clock that night he sends me a long text I did it 100 % responsible and I'm sorry and I was taking care my mom died taking care of two homes with my ex all these crazy things I will get half the money for you tomorrow and I'll try to figure out the other half and blah blah respond text hey so God told me this morning at church that if you came clean I'm just going to forgive you your whole debt so you're totally forgiven You never owe me a dime.

1:38:34You're good, man. Thanks for telling me the truth. Go with God. Take care of your family. Make sure you don't do this again. Go and sin no more. Guy totally comes clean, gives his life over to Jesus. So just, dude, that stuff's happened like crazy. I needed a, we were 20 grand shy on our bills like a couple months ago. And because we're supporting the anti-trafficking, we're doing, I'm not just, I'm still giving. And I'm just waiting for the Lord. It's like, you either do it or I go broke, whatever you want. And we're 20 grand shy on the donations. And then like the team, because we're building some of our new family content, we're just getting going with it again.

1:39:13Get a text. I was like, all right, Lord, totally surrender. You're up to you. Next morning, I get a DM on Instagram. Random group wants me to speak and headline the conference for 20 grand. They offered me 30. and I I was like actually no just 20 is good how wild is that because I was praying while I was talking to him and you guys I'm just saying there's a whole other levels to this like faith thing but if you if you get clear on the kingdom of heaven if you get clear like all that matters is God's rule and reign and his love for us like flooding this world well I'm it'll change your life I am I am so happy that you're feel free to speak that way and communicate the things that you are good at talking about with kids and families, but not feel censored to talk about the most important things.

1:40:07And I think that's a complete gift. I think that's a total gift. It's so freeing. Yeah. That's awesome. This has been an unexpected, but amazing podcast. Yeah. A lot of topics. I appreciate it. It's been great, man. And it's cool to see. I can't wait to see where you're going to go with all this. it's in God's hands. Yeah. Yeah. So we're, uh, we just launched a couple weeks ago, our fig and eagle program. So we just, we, we're calling it mentor family actually. So mentor family is basically, um, the coach versus caretaker kind of idea, but I think families, there's two reasons why you need to learn the mentor family approach, which is all the best strategies we've learned from the top.

1:40:47Um, number one, you got to learn to mentor your kids. Because if you don't mentor these things and transfer them and translate them well, instead of just teaching and telling, then it dies with you. All of this stuff, the important stuff, right? So mentorship is critical for future generations. But mentorship is also critical for the families around you. Does that make sense? I think it's the call of every good family in the world to be mentoring other families along the way. So that's why we call it mentor family. so Fig and Eagle mentor family our goal is 10 ,000 families I think we'll make a huge impact with that across the world I love it I love the idea so great so great Scott it's been awesome yep thanks so much for coming on the show my friend

1:41:30Scott Donnell:hopefully it won't be the last time yeah we'll have you back if you're okay with that next time I'm here alright let's go thank you thank you for listening to Mind Pump if your goal is to build and shape your body dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, and MAPS Aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs.

1:42:09With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, The RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam, and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is Mind Pump.