2857: How to Build Generational Wealth That Actually Lasts (It's Not About Money) w/ Scott Donnell

17:16Mind Pump Hosts:She speaks identity over me all the time. This was literally eight years in. Something flipped. Thank God for the woman who mentored her that. Something flipped where she just started celebrating the good in me, leaving the rest to God, and really speaking the identities in me. And then what she found was that I would run through a brick wall for our family every time she did it. Yeah. Instead of criticizing or complaining or neglecting or like, you know, the passive aggression, none of that worked with me.

17:52Scott Donnell:It's so powerful. You know, Sal shared it on the podcast right after he started doing it. And to your point about bringing in the business, I actually, before I ever heard what he was doing with identity, I was doing something different with Max. So every night when I put him down to bed, I point out one thing that he did in the day that I want the behavior I want to reinforce. Okay. I just want to let you know that I saw the way when mom asked you to do that thing, you got right up and you did it. Like, so I try and so it's less of the identity thing and more of the behaviors that I see him do every single day.

18:23Scott Donnell:Yep. I don't know if that's less or better or more, or I should also do the identity thing, or am I in inverse or kind of doing that by? Yeah.

18:33Mind Pump Hosts:Everybody should do the identity thing. I mean, the simple answer here to everyone is like, if you got kids, I mean, even a spouse, you get a three by five card or on your phone and you are literally writing out, here's the 10 things I see in you and speaking identity over them. Yeah. And you just repetition, repetition, doing it every single day. Do it to a spouse, do it to your kids, watch them just take off. Yeah. Now, what, what you're kind of talking about is the heritage and the family anchors and values. Okay. So what we tell people is, hey, you know what's way better than you trying to come up with some list of character traits?

19:07Mind Pump Hosts:Yeah. We call it the core word method. We found this way to make these things come alive in the home. But it starts with the stories of your life. Don't be fake with it. You want to actually look at the stories, the most transformational stories of your heritage and your parents and grandparents, where they came from, things they overcame, things they showed, things in your life, how you met. your milestone moments. And as you start to realize those stories, you're going to pull out values from them that are your family values. They're so integral to how your families have been both sides forever.

19:44Mind Pump Hosts:And those now become the core word, which is like a family acronym that everybody can say like this. And it's so powerful for them because it's part of your family's heritage. And that's actually the best place that values come from. So I have a really interesting, okay.

19:59Scott Donnell:So I'm trying to do this delicate dance with what you're saying right now. Cause I firmly believe in what you're in. But my wife calls me out on this because I come from, I don't have any of that. Yeah. You got struggles. I got a lot of trauma that I worked through that it's turned into blessings because I did work through a lot of that stuff. And so I don't have the prettiest of stories and I've got to now, and I can't wait for the day that my son's at an age and I already started and my wife kind of called me out like, Hey, don't you think he's a little young too? because now my son's repeating that my father killed himself.

20:31Scott Donnell:So I got all these things where I got lots of lessons and I got a lot of things to teach through the things that I've learned. But I hesitate sometimes because he's only six years old and a lot of that stuff could be heavy for a kid to hear that story. And I don't want to. So I'm like, I'm trying to have this delicate dance. If I 100 % believe what you're saying. So let me explain that.

20:50Mind Pump Hosts:Okay. There's no family in the world who came from everything perfect. Right, of course. Every family has crazy in it. That's the first thing we say in our mentor family program. It's like, hey, every family's got chaos. Even the best in the world, they nail two of our four C's for the C4 framework for families. But you can honor certain parts of where you come from without justifying the rest. Okay. Because guess what? You still have the same last name. That's right. Okay? Yeah. Now, everybody's an example, even if it's a bad one. So you can tell stories of redemption. There's a gift for you in how you're treating your kids and your spouse and your company and your employees because of some of the things you went through.

21:36Mind Pump Hosts:For sure. That's the beauty of redemption. But sometimes we throw the baby out with the bathwater. And this is a difficult thing to do in heritage because you want to train your kids to honor you, even though you're going to make mistakes. and so there's a way that we can honor some of the good in your mom or your aunts and uncles or a grandparent or things that have happened in your past without casting aside or justifying or overlooking the bad stuff. Because guess what? You still have the same last name, and you want to raise kids who are forgiving and loving to you, even though you're going to make some mistakes along the way.

22:19Mind Pump Hosts:So you're being the model now that they follow in two decades. Sure. Instead of, you literally are going to cut off everything before you and you're going to backhand your entire heritage. Yeah. What happens when your kids get out in the real world and you guys have a disagreement? Yeah. You're like, well, he cut off his family forever. I think I'm going to cut him off for a while.

22:43Scott Donnell:Interesting.

22:44Mind Pump Hosts:My family's the problem. They go to some crazy progressive idiot mentor school and they train your kids the exact opposite of all the things you tried to raise them in. And all of a sudden you're the enemy? They're a victim of your oppression? Wow. I need to, for me to be safe, for me to be healthy, I need to cut them off. No, we don't want to train that. Yeah, yeah. See, this is why heritage is so critical. They're the next step in the line and the goal is for them to blow by you. Yeah. And you celebrate them doing it.

23:14Scott Donnell:Yeah.

23:14Mind Pump Hosts:See, my boys are the only men in the world I want to blow by me. See? Yeah, yeah. This is why this is so powerful. Hope that helps.

23:24Scott Donnell:No, it helps a lot. And I'm lucky that I have also an incredible partner to make sure something like that doesn't happen, right? So she's done a great job of maintaining my son's relationship with even my family, even though we don't have a really good relationship because she doesn't want that. And so I have to give her the credit of, is my natural reaction is what you just said. Yeah.

23:45Mind Pump Hosts:Nobody wants to go to the grave with bitterness and resentment either. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I have seen people heal. This is why forgiveness is one of the most powerful things a family can do. Yeah. Learn the art of repentance and forgiveness and reconciliation. Yeah, yeah. That is one of the greatest glues in a family between generations. Yeah. I know we're talking about generational wealth, but if you think that that's just money, you've missed the whole point.

24:07Scott Donnell:No, I think there's - All of this is generational wealth. This is a great point. And that's such a good thing. There's so many things that I know that we're doing really well with my son. And that's an area that I know that I can personally improve because I don't want that. I don't want him to accept. At one point, he'll be challenged in his relationship. And he'll be like, oh, my dad's relationship. He doesn't have much of a relationship with his mom or his dad. And so he cut it off. I'll just cut it off.

24:28Mind Pump Hosts:You know where this gets really bad with money? Later on in life, parents try to pay for their mistakes. So they bribe, coerce, and buy their kids' love by paying for the things as they're like older teenagers and in their 20s and 30s, they're just like, if I give them enough and I pay for all the mistakes, somehow that'll fix it. It never does. No, no. Right? So this is where this generational wealth nightmare goes awry.

24:50Scott Donnell:There was this interesting study where they took a bunch of families and these were all families of faith. And they said, okay, what were the things that the families whose kids were most likely to continue to follow along with faith? What did those families do? Was that they went to the church the most? And what they found was it was the parents who said sorry the most and who forgave the most. It was literally the apology, reconciliation, redemption that they got from their parents that they celebrated. And that's what got their children to stick around and continue to follow in their values and in their faith.

25:26Scott Donnell:That's exactly right. How important is it to name the values? Because you were just now working with our staff. And it was, by the way, so amazing. If you've got a company, you've got to look into what these people do. It's phenomenal. But one thing that was one exercise where we were going through and we were kind of thinking about the values that we got from our family. And I have a very strong culture in my family. A very stable home, not perfect, but great in many ways. And there's definitely values I could list for sure because our culture was so strong. But we never named them, right? So we never said, these are what the Stephanos stand for.

26:07Scott Donnell:And we didn't name them. I just lived them. And so I thought, well, what's the difference? And I brought this up to you. And you said, well, then it kind of evaporates with each generation because you don't name it. So explain that. Why it's so important to put a word to it.

26:21Mind Pump Hosts:Yeah. So this core word method we have, I'll give you an example. My family is faith, family, fish. That's what the Donalds stand for. Faith, family, fish. We love God. We back each other and fish. which is our core word, which stands for fun and adventure, integrity, service, and heavenly work. Okay. The reason why this is powerful is that all my kids, including my two-year-old, they literally rattle this off at dinner or on the way home from school. Like I don't even instigate it now. They know exactly what it means to operate in the world as a Donald. That's why this is so important. See, because if you don't have these things codified, Then the kids find out through discipline.

27:03Mind Pump Hosts:They find out after the facts. Like what you want to do is like give them a proactive way to go into the world to operate with knowing what their last name means. And so, and we got those values, by the way, by going back generations and really pulling out like the key stories of transformation. Our family came across the Oregon Trail. We were like early pilgrims in the North. We go all the way back to the King of Scotland. But then the more we unpack this, we realize that Faith, Family, Fish were like the through line for all the generations. And it's so easy to remember the alliteration of a word, like an acronym is so powerful because then my kids literally 10 seconds after we announced it, they can remember them all.

27:42Mind Pump Hosts:And now when they're in class, we're on the team, they're losing the sports game. You know, they're interacting with their friends. They know, they have a roadmap of how we act and how we respond. And so now all my wife and I get to do is celebrate whenever we see it, right? It's like a rubric. Like we literally get to just celebrate the heck out of our kids every time they're doing something with integrity. They're doing the right thing, even though they didn't know if anyone was watching. They're taking initiative, right? They're serving other people. They're doing the right kind of work, right?

28:12Mind Pump Hosts:They're finishing what they start. Please and thank yous. All that is part of our family values. and so i i would just say like you can't hit a target that's not there well you can't help it

28:24Scott Donnell:getting watered down without doing that so we had one person who said 10 yeah so will and i knew right away it was him because he's you could just i would have guessed i would have guessed too because you could tell why tell me why because he has he has these attributes of a kid who has been raised with high integrity, morals, values, code, honor, like you could tell. And what I was saying to him was that, you know, you inherited that, but if you as a kid or as a young man don't start thinking about how do you instill that in your generation, it'll naturally get watered down. Because even though you may think you know all that because your parents, you have no idea of really how much work and effort they put in to make sure that you had that.

29:08Scott Donnell:That's right. You You only spent a small, small percentage than you think of your dad. Your dad was working, doing all those things. And so you adopted like, okay, I see. But you actually don't even realize how much was done for you to actually see that and receive that. So if you don't put in the same amount of effort as they did or more or have some sort of a system in place. It's all systems. To carry it on, then it's going to get watered down each generation. I always thought like modeling was the most important thing of everything. but to actually define it, vocalize it, you know, in terms of like even talking about their identity and their characteristics or just like how you perceive them.

29:48Scott Donnell:Otherwise, they're going to be out in the world looking for that. I was just going to say it's a myth. This is a huge lie from the world. I would love to hear your input on this. How often do we hear or believe that you go out in the world and you figure out who you are? That's what you do as a kid. Oh, my gosh. That's the journey. You learn who you are. You got to try things out. You figure out your identity. If you don't speak this into your kids, somebody else will. Somebody else will do it. And for sure, they don't love your kid as much as you do. So let's talk about that lie.

30:17Mind Pump Hosts:So here's how I'll start that comment. Don't be surprised when you send your kids out into the world to get an identity from Caesar and they come back as Romans.

30:29Scott Donnell:Yeah. Hmm. Hmm.

30:33Mind Pump Hosts:I actually don't know what to add to that. That's it. Because that's it. Like, either you give them an anchor or the world's going to give them an identity. And I do not want culture giving my kids an identity. Are you kidding me? Instant gratification, like addiction, like crazy, shopaholism, like pornography, all these other things. They're cycling them because the world wants to sell them things. So all they have to do to sell them a bunch of things is tell them they're not enough, tell them they're not worthy. of love, tell them that they're lacking, that the world is coming to an end in any other schema and childhood wound that they can prod in them to get them to be hooked onto something else, whether it's a screen or a pill or a drug or a program.

31:16Mind Pump Hosts:That's what the world's going to try to give our kids. And don't tell me that the world has good values right now because culture is ripping our kids away from wanting a family. How many Gen Z's are you talking to right now? You guys hire a ton of them. They're amazingly gifted in a lot of ways, but they're like, family what yeah yeah i don't want to get married half of those and in divorce who's going to jump out of a plane if half the parachutes don't open kids are a drain they're a net drain on society they're an expense not an investment overpopulation i could with all of my trauma i couldn't put a kid into the world like this what a victim mentality also a lie it's also a lie come on my grandparents

31:54Scott Donnell:grew up in super poor in sicily during the great depression my grandfather didn't have shoes Kids are the greatest blessing, not a curse.

32:02Mind Pump Hosts:Yeah.

32:02Scott Donnell:Are you kidding me? Yeah, that's crazy. You know, it's blowing my mind so much right now as we're talking. And it hit me out there when you were coaching our team. But now it's really just blowing my mind. This has to happen to a lot of people. It can't just be me. Where I know how to train a team that works for me. I want my team chanting mind pump. I want them to know our purpose and our values and what we aim for. I want them to dress the same. I want them to move in the same direction. Then they go home and it's different. Yeah. Like it's different. I feel that. I'm like, wait a minute. By the way, if you play in a team, you're on a winning team, you got a chant.

32:40Scott Donnell:You know what direction you're going. You know your mascot. Oh my God. You know what your mascot is? You fight for your mascot. It's a stupid stuffed animal or whatever. Meanwhile, when you go home, this has to happen to a lot of parents, a lot of entrepreneurs where they're killers with developing their teams at work. They know how to lead a team, how to move it in a direction. Then they go home and it's kind of like, yeah.

33:01Mind Pump Hosts:It's the biggest, it's the biggest loss opportunity for high impact people, highly skilled, well trained, well developed, like crushing at work to go home and leave and give your last and your least to your family, which is your most important investment. Your family is your, the most important business in your life is not the one you go to every morning. It's the one you come home to. So people literally like give it all at work and give nothing at home. I'm like, this is your legacy. These kids, this spouse, like this family is it. And you're giving them the last ounce and you're just like hoping they go to bed.

33:42Mind Pump Hosts:So you can like just finally relax on the couch and scroll like crazy. And we, for some reason, we like, we go into the world. We learn all these amazing things that create success and good, like profitable systems and great training, great personal development. We go to these expensive events and we, we all we talk about is business and money and business money. And then when we go home to the most important investment in our lives, it's like communist China. We pay for everything. We give them whatever they want. We solve all their problems for them. We're just trying to get everybody fed and in bed.

34:16Mind Pump Hosts:And they see, they just don't nail the right strategies. And I see this all the time. It's like, do you know how many billionaires I'm on Zoom with every month that are like, I'd give it all. I would literally give all the crap I've made to solve this nightmare I've got going on. Like, I don't know the number anymore. And it's always the same thing. Let's talk careerism and workaholism for a second.

34:41Scott Donnell:I was going to say, I was going to say it's probably a much higher percentage in your, you know, centimillionaires and billionaires because you're an outlier. It's like a, it's like a professional athlete. the amount of sacrifice, discipline, and focus on that one thing to be great at it. You tend to ignore everything else. And that's what made you hyper good at that thing. So if you're in the elite class of a billionaire, a centimillionaire, that percentage, or a professional athlete, you probably kind of suck at the other thing because you sacrificed it.

35:11Mind Pump Hosts:Now, is it possible? Yes. This is why I'm not here saying you have to give up everything to have a good family. Nope. We know the success stabilizes in a family. That it doesn't matter like how well you're doing in your net worth and your financial world. You know how to make sure the kids aren't ruined by it. You know how to make sure that they can multiply and steward and they can create their own and they have healthier relationships and values than you did. Okay. So it is possible. I've met superstars. Okay. And we study them. Like they're like unicorns. We're like, okay, give me everything.

35:41Mind Pump Hosts:Okay. I live, I live with these, I literally go live with these people for three days and I deep dive their lives. and I am a very good detective because I've been at this game with 10 million families now. I want to know everything, okay? Because it's like a unicorn. But what happens most of the time is we get laser focused and myopic on one thing, right? Like, oh no, it's my spouse's job to take care of the kids. They do the home, they do the kids. My job is to go hunt and kill and make the money, okay? And so the workaholism, the careerism, like that focus, they don't realize the destruction it creates on the family when they're not balanced.

36:20Mind Pump Hosts:Do you think there's a point at which you have to catch them?

36:24Scott Donnell:In other words, I'll share my story with you or my journey on this. Because my wife was really concerned before we had a kid. Am I going to be that guy who just keeps moving the goalpost? Yep. Because I was buried into building. And I promised her a long time ago. I said, no. And I'm a firm believer in money is a tool. I want to get to a place that it creates freedom so I could be such a present father. And I promise you that I won't just keep moving the goalpost. And so I had that vision in place that once we reached to kind of a financial place, like, yeah, I still have goals in the business.

36:58Scott Donnell:And yes, I want to scale still, but not at the sacrifice of the thing that why I did it for. And so I was an older dad. Okay. So that's probably why I waited until I was older because I wanted to be able to do that. Do you feel like you have to catch somebody at a certain place in their journey who wants both, right? Who says, yeah, I want to be uber successful financially and be able to have all this freedom and time for my kids. But then also I want to make all this money and be a present father. Do you find that you have to catch them at a certain point to teach this?

37:33Mind Pump Hosts:I mean, the best time for me to catch a family is before they have kids. Okay. But it's never too late. I work with a lot of families with adult children, even grandchildren that, yeah, now we're digging out of some holes and we're unpacking some stuff, but it's never too late to heal, to reconcile, to get on the right track. It's never too late. Yeah. Okay. I got to say that to anyone listening because the number one question I get asked is, where were you 20 years ago? Yeah. This happens all the time. It is never too late, but the earlier, the better for this stuff. Yeah. Because like, let's, remember what we talked about today about wealth?

38:02Mind Pump Hosts:Yeah. Wealthy people don't chase money. Yeah. They build profitable, scalable systems. This is what investing is, right? The job of those dollars is to go make more dollars. Okay. That's what passive income, like you're making money in your sleep. You build systems inside of companies that scale. It's not just about creating like a self-managing company. It's about creating a self-multiplying company that's scaling and you get to have, you know, own it and grow it. Okay. And that does allow you to be more present for the people in your family. Right. Okay. There are seasons where you're going more, but here's what I see a lot.

38:40Mind Pump Hosts:People keep chasing. So like they're, they're just professional arsonists. You know, I kill myself in this season and solve all these problems to give myself more time to go create more fires to go solve. So when they say the goalpost moves, what they're really saying is I'm signing up again to go to war right afterwards. And, and you're chasing the wrong goals. What I would say to families is like, stop chasing money. Money is a tool. Like you said, money is a store of value that's created. The more value you can create sustainably and scalably, the more financial power you get. And that gives you more freedom.

39:18Mind Pump Hosts:So that has actually allows you to be more present, to focus on the values, to focus on the relationships, to be more mentally available and physically present. See, being with your family is not just being there physically some of the day. It's being mentally available. How many times have we been at home at the end of the day and we're thinking about work? Of course, everyone's guilty of that. Your phone is buzzing, that it's not away. Your wife's thinking about all the crazy schedule and chores. Neither of you are mentally there. And your kids feel it. They sense it. Of course. So it's really about like, I know people that they work hard in their work.

39:57Mind Pump Hosts:Like they, they have great companies. They have great things, but you know what? They're not saving their last and their least for the home. Yeah. They give themselves 15 minutes before they walk in that door and they're like, I'm about to recharge my gas tank. Cause I got to be at least two thirds that tonight. That's how you got to do it. You walk in with over half that gas tank to like light it up.

40:17Scott Donnell:The most, one of the most profound things I ever heard Jordan Peterson say, Jordan Peterson said it on Joe Rogan's podcast when he talked about how much time and effort that someone puts into a one-week vacation that they do once in their lifetime, right? This big trip to Rome or wherever, the amount of hours that they put into that for that one week of their life compared to the first 15 minutes that you see your wife or your kids when you walk in through the door, which will be 10 ,000 times more time. So how much time do you put into thought? Like, how do I show up for those first 15 minutes?

40:52Scott Donnell:And just the stopping, I've put this into practice and it's done wonders for my relationship with both my wife and my kid is that you can't control what happens here and how crazy it is. But I can't control how when I walk through that door how I am. And so like parking in the driveway for 10 minutes and like, okay, I'm switching to dad. And I go in the house. I kiss my wife real quick and my son. And I go straight upstairs and I put a different outfit on. and so I've created this routine of like I'm transitioning from CEO guy to now CEO of my family dad and even changing the clothes and that whole process and it's life-changing and if you don't and if I don't do it there's been times I'm guilty of not doing that it's real easy to allow all those things to happen and to carry it into the house one thing you we were talking about money earlier another thing you coached me on and I would love for you to get into this because again, this is another thing where I say, all right, let's see how this turns out, is you encouraged me to come up with gigs for my kids, especially my teenage kids.

41:55Scott Donnell:And it was, instead of giving them money for things, would be to give them jobs and then to pay them for those jobs. So it's like, hey, why don't you go pull the weeds or make us dinner tonight? My daughter will do that sometimes or do this thing. And then at the end, we decide we're going to pay or this much or whatever. My fear initially was, well, if I do that, are they going to do their normal chores? Are they going to want to do things for free? What I found was they're way more likely to do the free stuff because of the gigs. I thought they would just want to get paid for everything, but it's not the case.

42:30Scott Donnell:Explain how that works because it's so opposite of what I thought it would do.

42:34Mind Pump Hosts:Yeah, so this comes back to the generational wealth. You got to train them to be prepared for it, to create their own. and you can't spell learn without earn. And so it is so critical in the home. If you're the family that never talks about money, then you're paying for everything for your kids and you're just setting them up for big, big issues later. You've got to be dealing with incentives in the home and ways for the kids to earn. We talked about this today. The poverty mindset tells kids we can't afford that or how dare you even want that. Do you have any idea how much that costs? Do you know how hard I worked to get you guys this thing and you guys just took it for granted?

43:15Mind Pump Hosts:Money doesn't grow on trees. See, we've all grown up with hearing these things. Those are all poverty mindsets, okay? Instead of saying we can't afford, or no way we can't afford that is, hey, what can you do to earn that? Like, I don't want to kill my kid's drive. I don't want to, if they want something and it's not going to hurt them, I want them to find a way to learn how to get the things they want. And that's where these gigs come in. So we call it the home economy, right? So we have roles, responsibilities, and rewards. Nail those three R's in the home, and your kids are going to start to learn all these superpowers for the rest of their life, okay?

43:50Mind Pump Hosts:And so the roles in the home is like, there's no money attached. This is just your role in the family, okay? You should never pay your kids to make their bed, clean their room, dishes and trash, get their homework done on time. Like, that's an expectation. That's a role in the family. Okay. It's part of having our last name. But then you have other responsibilities and rewards attached. So this is all the other stuff that they can do to earn the things that they want to get. I want my kids to like, I want them to want the scooter. I want them to like want the game. I want them to like be excited about certain privileges and freedoms in the home and then find ways to earn them.

44:29Mind Pump Hosts:So this is what most parents miss is they like, they literally make their kids do three or four chores where what if your kids could do a hundred things around the house, earn for it, learn financial competency, learn to get the things they want and the freedoms and the privileges for taking on responsibility. And then they're going to learn about a hundred more skills than you ever imagined. And they're going to go out into the world and it's like shooting fish in a barrel. That's what the home economy is for. So like, have you ever thought about having your kids plan a family trip, doing all the laundry at a young age, all the stuff with pets, backyard, front yard, like all this stuff kids can do.

45:07Mind Pump Hosts:And they want to do it because they want more freedoms. They want to earn more to get the things they want and they want more responsibility. And here's a side effect of it all. They're coming to me and asking me if they could do

45:17Scott Donnell:certain things. My daughter comes to me and says, Hey, can I make dinner tomorrow night? Like, uh, sure boom yeah can i make some money can i make some dinner hey can i go wash the car hey can i i'm like okay cool and they're finding all these different things to do in fact my daughter wanted this these really expensive pair of sweats and so normally what she would do in the past is she would just text me a picture of it hey can i have these please or whatever instead she sent it oh my god they cost this much what can i do to earn this and so my wife is like all right for the next 60 days, you're going to read to your little brother for 15 minutes every night.

45:56Scott Donnell:And I have a set of books and we homeschool them. So that's what she does every night. She goes and reads to him and she's knocking off her list. She's got the next 60 days to do because of these pair of expensive sweats that she bought and was totally on her initiative, which is remarkable. And again, I thought it would do the opposite. I thought it would be like, they would only do things to get paid for, but it's not. It's actually strengthening this whole idea of responsibility initiative.

46:20Mind Pump Hosts:Entitlement. Entitlement happens when kids get all the rewards of life without any responsibilities. That's the problem. Yeah. You also taught me to attach anything that they want, right?

46:32Scott Donnell:You could turn anything into something like that. Like, hey, can I have a treat? How about if you go clean the playroom for that? Yeah. So this is the simple principle.

46:42Mind Pump Hosts:If you give all the rewards without any responsibility, they become entitled. Now, if you drill sergeant, tough love, give them all the responsibilities with no rewards, now they're resentful. But if you want rocket fuel, you got to marry the two. And so most families, they just give their kids all the rewards. They like all the freedoms, all the privileges, the tech time, the toys they want. They're buying everything. They're letting them do whatever they want. Or they're like, they're getting them into the sports they want or they're buying the things or they're, oh yeah, add it to your wish list.

47:10Mind Pump Hosts:And then all of a sudden, grandma and grandpa give them 20 things all at once for a birthday or Christmas And they're like, dang it, you have to tie rewards to earning, to responsibility. This is how they learn to create value, right? Like the other day, I'll give you an example. The other day, my daughter, she wanted to get the hover scooter, okay? She's nine years old. Her brother got one. She's like, I really want one of those. And she had 40 bucks. She needed$41 more to get it. So she comes to me and she's like, what can I do to earn the other 41 bucks? First question I asked her was, is it 41?

47:45Mind Pump Hosts:She's like, oh yeah, sorry, 55. Because she knows she's got a share and she's saving and investing the other 20 % and then 70 % of it. Oh, interesting. Yeah, so she already knows. So I'm like, okay, cool. You're going to trim back the hedges by the car. That's a big one. You got to help put your three brothers to bed three times this week. Okay, handle it all, the whole evening routine, which saved Amy and I like four hours. Okay, she helped Amy with dinner twice. She sorted the laundry twice. And I said, and we call them brain gigs, which is teaching kids to create value with their brain. So she did two Tuttle Twins and a PragerU.

48:21Mind Pump Hosts:So they tell us what they learned from those because I want my kids to use their brain to create value, not just hands and feet. Okay. So she knocked out all those. And I said, and one icing on the cake, you got to create one, create a gig that we didn't see or something you see that needs to be done, which happened the next day. We had some friends over. And so she entertained all the young kids, the little, the younger kids for two hours. so the parents really just hung out. It was awesome. Okay. She nailed, and I said, and by the way, it's an all or nothing. Like you either do all of this or it's a no-go.

48:51Mind Pump Hosts:That was it. It was like 30 seconds. She nailed them all. She got the scooter and she saved us a ton of work. She learned all these other skills. Like she's learning to create value, which that's what financial competency is. Like the greatest thing you can do for generational wealth, specifically financially, teach your kids not to go for money, teach them to create value. Money is a store of value. So the better they are at hunting for ways to create value, solve problems, think critically, find the wants and needs of other people, see what needs to be done and find a way to leave things better.

49:28And then take initiative to do it before people ask.

49:31Mind Pump Hosts:That is the greatest superpower for the rest of their life. Then I don't care if you leave them five bucks or five million bucks, they're gonna crush.

49:38Scott Donnell:what are some of the ways uh because there's there is a lot of uh generational trauma around money uh around either maybe you couldn't afford things or maybe um it was always about it was it was just it wasn't just the money wasn't just worth the value but it was the value so it's how much money you can make and buy like how do you deal with that yourself so you don't pass that on to your kids like what are things to look out for with that yeah well i started talking about this

50:07Mind Pump Hosts:a while back, got me in some hot water. We were talking about this earlier. It's probably gonna do it again right now. So money traumas, I think, are some of the worst traumas in the world because they're the only trauma you wake up and work for for the rest of your life. What do you mean by that? What do you mean by work for? Well, everyone's raised with certain money mindsets and certain poverty mindsets and certain issues, right? Parents fighting over bills. If a family, the number one issue of divorce inside of a home is a money issue. So kids see that as a nightmare. They're terrified of it.

50:43Mind Pump Hosts:There's tons of guilt and shame around money. Maybe their parents used money to bribe and coerce and buy their love. Maybe they had co-parenting and they literally went back and forth and mom and dad literally tried to have to bribe them with a better experience using money at their house. See, these are all money traumas. okay parents arguing over bills telling them they can't afford anything like how dare you want that money doesn't grow all these things are money mindsets the kids are raised around or the parents literally never said anything so the kids get off into the real world have zero training and they get hit with a mac truck and then they're resentful of how they were raised these are all money mindset issues okay and so the greatest way to to heal from those is to first call them out.

51:27Scott Donnell:Yeah.

51:27Mind Pump Hosts:Right? Well, I think one of the biggest takeaways from the training with your team today was when we said a problem well-defined is half solved. So good. Because most people don't realize that they're walking around with this baggage. Yeah. They don't realize it's affecting their job, their income, their earning potential, their own children, their own relationship. Like I see this all the time with newlyweds. One of them came from a home that was like, frugal. One of them came from a home of like gifts, giving you things and stuff is like how I love you. And so one's a hoarder, one's a spender, and then you put them together and two become one.

52:06Mind Pump Hosts:And all of a sudden you have this nightmare, right? And then you try to figure out why a couple of years in, you're always arguing over stuff. Well, this is the money traumas. So this is a big deal to heal from, or else you're just going to pass them down to your kids. Every one of these comes out without realizing it. Or you overcorrect the other side, right?

52:27Scott Donnell:Like that's, I tell the story all the time that if I would have had a kid at 25, I would have passed my money trauma down in a different way, thinking that I solved the money trauma, right? So I thought, oh, I saw all these things with money. Therefore, I went the opposite extreme other way. And one of those things was I was serving it, right? So I was at a place where I worked so hard to make a bunch of it that I know that that was still an insecurity of mine. and so I would have been the 25 year old dad who put his kid in Louis Vuitton shoes and done like thinking that oh I'm giving him the life that I didn't have because I still hadn't worked through that so like it's first you got to call it out become self aware of it and then there's work to do to reframe it and change it otherwise you either pass it down because you're unaware of it or you pass down the other extreme end of it

53:17Mind Pump Hosts:you teeter totter you come from nothing you give them everything. Yeah. Right. So I see this a lot of times, first generation success families. They, they're like, I'm going to, I am, I'm going to make sure my kids never have to go through what I went through. Oh, when I have kids, I'm going to give them those. I never had those things. I'm going to make sure they get those things. Yeah. I'm going to give them every opportunity I never had. And then all of a sudden, 15 years later, you have entitled, spoiled, anxious kids.

53:45Scott Donnell:Forgetting that all the, all that stuff they didn't get is what created the success that they have. What made you you? Exactly.

53:51Mind Pump Hosts:I mean, it's like we teeter-totter all the time. I also see this when people feel the guilt and shame of like kind of like a spoiled childhood where they got everything. Yeah. Well, then they teeter-totter to tough love.

54:02Scott Donnell:Yeah.

54:03Mind Pump Hosts:Because they hit a Mack truck at 18 to 30. They went through hell. Got to prepare my kid for life. Yep. So now they're like freaking David Goggins, Navy SEAL parents, tough love, told you so's, drill sergeant, like I'm going to train you up. Like, no, that causes just as much of a problem. So we don't want to teeter-totter. Like, it's about systems. It's about running the playbooks in the home that build long-term generational success.

54:32Scott Donnell:You said it's the only trauma that you work for. What do you mean by that? Yeah, money, you wake up and work for it. There's no way of getting from it every day. Every other trauma? Every other trauma you can run from, you can hide from.

54:43Mind Pump Hosts:Think of all the other types of traumas that happen in people's lives. These other core wounds, the abandonment. And there's terrible traumas out there.

54:49Scott Donnell:You can avoid a lot.

54:50Mind Pump Hosts:Everybody avoids. They try to forget it. They try to put out their brain or they try to move through in love. They try to get over it. With money, you just wake up and you got to work for it. You got to pay your bills. You got to think about it a lot. So the trauma is literally, and then if you don't heal from it, it's your master. Yeah. Because you either work for money or it works for you. Yep. And wealthy families learn how to have money work for them and it doesn't ruin their identity.

55:18Scott Donnell:Would you say because society has gotten so much more prosperous, just in comparison generally to previous generations, that a lot of the issues now around money revolve around like confusing wants with needs? Like, I want this. I want that. I'm going to get this. And so they end up – we see consumerism has been an issue for a while. But now it seems – I'll tell you where I'm going. I had this debate with my cousins a while ago. And I remember they were so dead set on their position, but by the end they could see my point. And it was this conversation. It started like this. My grandparents passed away recently and we recently sold their house.

55:59Scott Donnell:Okay. And it was a house in San Jose. It's very expensive. San Jose, one of the most expensive cities in the world. But when my grandfather came here, it was farmland. So it wasn't Silicon Valley. And he bought the house before it was built. And I think he bought it for like 20 something thousand dollars. It sold later for 1.8 million. This is a little tiny track home. Okay. 1.8 million and my cousins were like oh gosh you know when nonno was you know working you know he was a janitor and he was able to support a family of you know with four kids in a home and nonno didn't have to work and nowadays you can't do any of that and i'm like hold on a second i said let's let's have you live exactly the way they did so did they have internet no how many cars they have one did they go on vacations never did they eat out never what about clothes oh my grandmother made their clothes half the time.

56:50Scott Donnell:And so I went down the list.

56:50Mind Pump Hosts:I bet they barely got hot water.

56:52Scott Donnell:I'm going down the list and I'm like, actually, you guys are way better off. You just have this idea of like, this is all the stuff I needed or not. I need all these services. I need two cars. I need a TV in every room. So maybe speak to that a little bit because it seems like the money trauma now is in the other direction where it's like, I just need all the stuff. When in reality, it's like, what?

57:16Mind Pump Hosts:Yeah, entitlement. Yeah. Entitlement is all the rewards of life without the responsibilities. And so we live in a society that's more prosperous, overall healthier, more people out of dollar a day poverty, more opportunity than ever before. Yet we're the most anxious, we're the most drugged, we're the most riddled in anxiety and depression and suicidality. The most therapized. The most therapized. And most therapy is rumination. where the biggest problem in the therapy world is where people just unpack problems and that's the whole thing they do. The more you dwell on a problem, the bigger it gets, unless you have a solve for it or a strategy to work through it, to transform from it.

57:59Mind Pump Hosts:So we're in this society where people have had it better than ever before that they feel like more of a victim than ever before. And that's the curse that's on society right now. Remember, I was thinking about this the other day. Remember when planes got Wi-Fi? So no one had ever had it before. You're in a tin can in the sky. And then all of a sudden, everybody has access to the internet on their phones or laptops. And it's like the coolest thing ever. And then 30 minutes into the flight, all of a sudden, the Wi-Fi cuts out. And pissed. Everyone's pissed. It's like a modern miracle just happened.

58:37Mind Pump Hosts:And you're pissed 30 minutes later. that's like a microcosm of what's going on in our society. And so for me, I think we have to do the best we can in our families and with our employees, by the way, but in all these areas to help people learn, like you have to get rid of entitlement. You have to get rid of victimhood. You have to get rid of like this anxious self-doubt. All these things create this nightmare that we're seeing in our societies.

59:02Scott Donnell:Another thing you suggested to me, I have yet to do this just because I have to plan it out and I'm waiting while my daughter's out of school. and it's like a one thing, but I think there's things you could do every day that are impactful and there's big things that are impactful. One thing you suggested was to take my daughter on a mission trip, to go to some other country to help people who need help, to go sleep in an uncomfortable place or whatever. How, in the research you've done with successful families, is this common? Is it a common thing for families to go and serve and go in these areas that are,

59:37Mind Pump Hosts:to see people who are far less fortunate. A hundred percent. So there's several things. This is our whole program is we studied the most successful families financially and other, like just your kids blow by you for four generations. So we have all of the strategies that they do and we codified it. A service mindset is one of the top principles that we saw. The greatest way to, the anecdote, or sorry, not the anecdote, but the way to cast out all of the victimhood and entitlement is to give them a grateful mindset and a clear view of how like the rest of the world operates so they can have a heart of service.

1:00:18Mind Pump Hosts:Does that make sense? So this is, yeah, missions is huge. And doing it with your kids, not sending them off. Like one of the biggest things these families did is they didn't outsource the parenting, right? They didn't outsource it and just send them off to all these other people. They did it with them. And so going on a mission trip with your kids, going to feed the homeless, going to another country and building a home or working in an orphanage or seeing how the rest of the world is living, it immediately gives the kids this worldview of like, oh, wow, I have it. I have it right now so much better than so many people and I want to help them.

1:00:52Mind Pump Hosts:I want to have a life that helps other people, okay? Because the greatest thing you can do with your kids is not give them handouts, give them legs up, give them a leg up in life. and so you want them to think that way about like how can we like create value for the people around us to serve and help them that is the dream life that is how a kid that's how you eradicate entitlement out of a kid's life okay but if you insulate them and you pay for everything and you solve all their problems and you bubble wrap them you're going to get an entitled kid it's just going to happen they're spoiled they're anxious and then they then they hit the real world and become a victim because they're not ready for it.

1:01:31Mind Pump Hosts:They're selfish. And when you're selfish, it's all about you, not God or others. It's all about you. And so then you have to have control, right? And that's where all the anger and anxiety and frustration comes from. Instead of a selfless service mindset with strong capability and skill sets, that's how you create a world changer. A kid with strong skills and capability to create value, solve problems, right? Who has a selfless service mindset with compassion and generosity to help. That is a world changer kid. And if you don't do that, it's coddling, it's drill sergeant, it's like a caretaker kid where you get all the entitlement and the victimhood.

1:02:15Scott Donnell:In your experience, is there, I imagine you're going to say at any age, good. But have you seen like that there's a prime age for this lesson? so when we first started with you my son was just five years old turning six and so we're we're barely now getting to this place where i think i can start to teach the gigs things for that but one of the things that's been so powerful is he's young enough and he's at age enough where he asked to do a lot of things and we've practiced the instead of saying no it's like first go help mom with laundry help this so we're already i think setting the foundation for assuming the the money and understanding what money kind of is we're entering that so when i think of something like a mission.

1:02:52Scott Donnell:I feel like he's almost too young to really get that message. Do you find there's a prime age for like two years old?

1:02:59Mind Pump Hosts:So it starts with the quarter system. Okay. So here's the basis of money training in the home. Okay. We talked about the home economy, teach them to earn, teach them to create value. It starts at two years old, two to five, you do the quarter system, get a roll of quarters and one of go on, go on Amazon or whatever and buy the three jar. So it's save, spend, share. You go buy that jar and it's one of the fastest ways to help correct them. And you skip a lot of discipline cycles and you're teaching them, you're reinforcing the right behavior and helping weed out the wrong behavior. And so what you do is every time a two-year-old is helpful, like they can't add, they can't count to a hundred, but every time they're helpful or they practice the first time follower rule, they do the thing the first time, or they show a good character trait, their help, their kind, their loving, whatever it would be, they get a quarter.

1:03:48Scott Donnell:Okay.

1:03:49Mind Pump Hosts:And they get to go put the quarter in one of the jars. Okay. And every time they put it in save, you double it. So you teach them saving and investing right there. And then they can put it in share or spend. And it doesn't matter where they put those quarters, but every time they get to 10 quarters, they get a special treat or a reward.

1:04:05Scott Donnell:Okay.

1:04:06Mind Pump Hosts:It's beautiful. It teaches them the basics of financial competency. Any of the quarters in share, when next time you're at church or you can help, they get to give those quarters away. They love it. Okay. But when they're misbehaving, instead of going through a whole discipline cycle, it's like, oh buddy, you gotta go get a quarter. You gotta go give me a quarter. Out of your spend jar. Not the other ones. So you teach them that like the spend is the stuff that they can get with it. And the little dollar toys and things. It's so good. It works so well. I mean, that totally connects with me because I can see him being able to connect to that.

1:04:41Mind Pump Hosts:So you start there with a share jar. Yeah. Like we talked about what's the number one and most important money skill in the home. You got earn, save, spend, share, invest. The number one by far in a legacy wealth family is share. Because giving together, teaching children to be generous gives them an abundance mindset, okay? Not a scarcity mindset. It's not a lack mindset. It's abundance mindset. The pie can get bigger. I can create value. Tomorrow's going to be better than today. There's more than enough to go around. I can share. See, we love the word share because kids first think about sharing a toy before they think about like giving money to a kid in another country or something.

1:05:22Mind Pump Hosts:So you talk about share and kids can't give what they don't earn. So yes, we need to teach them earning. But sharing is like one of the most powerful skills because it helps you become a better investor, helps become a better like spender. helps you take care of the people around you. More opportunities come to people who are more generous, period. It's an abundant mindset. Okay. So here's a great tip. Like when they're young, sub 10, 12, the mission trip stuff, I just took my seven and nine-year-old to Zambia right last summer. So young, like let's go. Oh, you've been at seven, huh? Okay. And it was wild and it was unbelievable and their lives are never going to be the same.

1:06:02Mind Pump Hosts:But here's a great idea. How about next Christmas? Give your kids a hundred bucks. or 200 bucks and they have to give away a hundred of it within a week. Teach them what it's like to give away and have them get creative on how they want to give it away. Like I have this joke, you heard it today. Anybody who says that money doesn't buy happiness just hasn't given enough of it away. So share like this idea of service and generosity is the most critical. Last thing I'll say on generational wealth. The family who gives together stays together. So everyone's worried about ruining their kids, ruining their grandkids, ruin them with wealth.

1:06:43Mind Pump Hosts:If you want to have glue between generations, give together. Give money together. Set up a DAF, set up a trust, set up a foundation, give together to missions and ministries and things that you all care about, if you do that, you are binding your children together because they're giving together. They're on mission together. So regardless of what you're going to pass down financially, set up a system where they're giving together. That locks families in for generations. It's unbelievable how you do that.

1:07:19Scott Donnell:I don't know if this is really the right way to do it, but I have noticed some positives. And so what we do is we have these condensed, this is just how we do it. So we have these condensed versions of the gospel. There's just really these free little mini Bibles and we put money in them and we have them. And every time we see a homeless person, or if we do, we tend to give them, well, our kids, our little ones see this. And so now we give it to them to hand to them. And so now what's happened, if we're out and we don't have anything, my son will see someone and go, Papa, can we help him? Can we go help him?

1:07:50Scott Donnell:Oh, turn around. There was someone over there. and so they're finding joy in doing this and pointing people out. We go over, we help them and then they talk about it afterwards. So just a little bit of, just to back up a little what you're saying, I've noticed that the kids, it seems to foster something in them, which is really interesting.

1:08:08Mind Pump Hosts:It really comes down to, are they going to be me-centered or are they going to be others and God-centered? That's really the greatest skill and gift you can give them as they're growing up. The more they're centered on others, the more that they're going to be successful in life. You can have anything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want. The market grows, the more people serve the needs and wants of others. The families are stronger, marriages are stronger, the more people are selfless. The more that they're taking care of the needs of others around them, the more they're like, they have a lens to look at the world to help the people around them.

1:08:45Mind Pump Hosts:Okay, that's love at the end of the day. That's compassion, right? Like I want my kids, I don't want my kids to have pity on people or sympathy for people. I want them to have compassion, which is, it's having sympathy enough to act on it. See, like faith, this is where people mistake what faith is. They just think, oh, if I believe in God, I have faith. No, no, no. Faith is believing in God enough to act on it. Right. That's why faith and actions are together. Like I, faith is actually sitting in a chair knowing it's going to hold me. Right. Right. It's being sure of what you hope for, certain of what you don't see, enough to act on it.

1:09:21Mind Pump Hosts:So that's what compassion is. So compassion is not just sympathy and pity for the bad things. Oh, I feel bad for them and then you're gone. Do something about it. Like this is why, you know, I was talking to you guys about Tebow and I, we work on anti-trafficking all the time. I can't talk too much about the secret stuff about it, but I'll tell you when I talk to families, I'm like, hey, I just want you guys to think about this for a second. Pity is feeling bad for something. Compassion is acting on it. do you want to raise kids who just have pity or do you want to raise kids who take action when they see a problem, when they see an issue?

1:09:54Mind Pump Hosts:I want to, I want my, I want a legacy where my kids learn to take action when they see an issue. You know,

1:10:00Scott Donnell:it's sympathy and pity look like sometimes is a false action posting, you know, false anger or trying to get someone else to do something, but not actually doing virtue yourself or virtues. Everybody look how mad I am. sat meanwhile uh people aren't getting help um and you mentioned faith it's like uh it would be like talking to someone and they're like oh yeah i really value fitness like oh cool like when you

1:10:23Mind Pump Hosts:work out well i actually don't work out okay well you obviously don't value fitness dude they're 50 pounds overweight yeah and their cholesterol is through the roof they're like oh i'm all about fitness yeah yeah no no you're not yeah the fruit yeah the fruit smells bad is this your favorite

1:10:39Scott Donnell:thing to speak to because i know you also train entrepreneurs you work with businesses is this What's your favorite thing to speak to?

1:10:44Mind Pump Hosts:By far. I think that every business is just a group of families getting together on a common mission. So, you know, the irony of what we've been doing is I said goodbye to all the dozens of huge business stuff and all the other things. I just said, forget it. The most important thing in the world right now to me is to take back the family. So family goes, so society goes. So we just went all in to learn, like, what does it take? How do we build the strongest families in the world? How do we create a system for it? Because I'm a systems thinker. It's how I've done business forever. You create systems that scale sustainably.

1:11:22Mind Pump Hosts:That's wealth. That's how you build it. That's how you have impact. And so what we've just found is the family is kind of like the central business of society. Fact. But we have sacrificed a lot of families and we have deprioritized the family for career and success and achievement and power and influence and all the things that we want when family is the greatest blessing you could ever have. A well-organized, beautiful legacy is the greatest blessing in life. And so I want to focus all my efforts there. And then what we found was that, oh, by focusing on explaining this to teenagers and kids and families, we just came up with some of the most incredible business training in the world.

1:12:06Mind Pump Hosts:Because we're focusing on the foundational business unit, the family, right? So we got all these people who do all these things in business and then have train wreck homes because they're going the opposite direction. The people I admire most in business have the most well-oiled functioning homes with the deepest relationships and the most connection. Now you have the integrity and respect to do this in work. This is what entrepreneurs need to realize is like, hey, you nail this stuff at home, you're going to nail it at work. And then everybody else is going to see the truth. They're going to see the fruit on the business front and on the home front.

1:12:43Mind Pump Hosts:I want to be very careful who I listen to because I want them to be holistically in line. Does that make sense?

1:12:51Scott Donnell:You mean all the business influencers? All that crap.

1:12:55Mind Pump Hosts:We call them 1C experts, right? They're myopically gifted. They crush in one area and fail in every other area. And I'm not saying you can't learn some good stuff from them. But I'm saying if I want to model my life after someone, I want someone who has their priorities in order and they're nailing all these different areas. Because I don't want success in just one area. I want success in all the areas. That's why this is such a big deal to us.

1:13:21Scott Donnell:Well, our team put together like 15 hot seat questions here for you. They went through a lot of your content and stuff. It's like rapid fire. Give us a few words or what you think about each one of these. and I definitely think we should, we're talking about the family and talking about generational wealth. I think kicking it off with one of the first ones right here is paying your kids for chores. So where do you stand on that? Because I think that's, I think a common thing that people do is, oh, you take out the trash, you make your bed, you do these things and you get this allowance every single week.

1:13:55Scott Donnell:You get a weekly allowance. And so what are your thoughts on paying for chores and allowances?

1:14:01Mind Pump Hosts:Allowance is socialism. you're literally getting money for existing. Okay. Chores is a cuss word. That's why we, that's why we changed this whole thing to gigs and earning. Okay. So here's the problem. If you just give your kids an allowance, okay, it's basically just giving them money to exist. And you're like, well, at least they're learning about money. Well, hold on a second. Like they need to learn to earn the money first or else they'll never learn a money skill with it. Okay. Well, then other people go, well, we give our kids chores and then they can earn an allowance. Okay. So you're giving them a list of things to do.

1:14:36Mind Pump Hosts:And then they get one lump sum every week. 80 % of the time, they're still getting the lump sum every week. They're not tying it individually to anything. Right. And then you're still arguing over the chores. You're still reminding them 10 times to do everything.

1:14:50Scott Donnell:Yeah.

1:14:51Mind Pump Hosts:Okay. Or they say the last biggest problem is when they're like, oh, no, no, my kids don't get an allowance. Don't worry. I make them do all the chores. Like they're told.

1:14:58Scott Donnell:So slavery.

1:14:59Mind Pump Hosts:I'm like, oh yeah, congratulations, drill sergeant. You have compliant children. And be careful. Everybody's like, I don't want defiant children. I want compliant children. No, you're thinking about it wrong. Did you know that a defiant child is actually going to become the most loyal, most powerful kid that will never be taken advantage of later in their life? They'll know what they stand for. They'll carry on your values more than any other kid. Defiance is a superpower. You just have to know how to manage it well. That's right. Okay. But I will say when they say I don't pay them anything, I make them do the chores.

1:15:33Mind Pump Hosts:I go, well then, okay, good. You're paying for everything for them for their entire childhood and teenage years. And now they're learning nothing about money. So that's why the home economy system works so well.

1:15:44Scott Donnell:Because you are paying them. You're buying them stuff. You're paying for the roof over their head. They just don't realize the value. That's right. What do you think? This is a tough one. But what do you think about like taking away something that you think is valuable for behavior issues? For example, your kid loves football or loves baseball. They have a behavior issue. You take it away. Be like, God, they need that. They need the sport. It's a good thing. Or they have piano lessons and they love it. Or they do this thing and it's really good for them. And you take it away for behavior issue

1:16:14Mind Pump Hosts:or do you focus on something else? Like, how do you juggle that? The two biggest problems I see in the home are when parents don't enforce consequences. it's a it's false it's it's a false threat okay it's too hard to do it so they just keep warning them and repeating themselves all the time which is a nightmare okay or they just give them a bunch of rewards regardless the average family gives their kids over a dozen different rewards freedoms upgrades experiences privileges money stuff they're just giving them all these different rewards that could be tied to responsibilities and earning it you're missing gold here okay Okay, so I think that there has to be a consequence.

1:16:55Mind Pump Hosts:You know, the best form of discipline to me is just choice consequence. Set up the strategy and the system in the home where they know the consequences of decisions and choices that they make, right? It's not about you being against them or anything. It's just, it's the environment of this home. You make these choices, here's the consequences. And if the consequences aren't a big deal, they're not a consequence. So if the incentive structures are not aligned and it's something that maybe you want them to do But they really really want it and it's not really a consequence that they care about like a kid who like goes to their room But loves being in their room.

1:17:29Mind Pump Hosts:That was my sister. Yeah, that's not a consequence My daughter loves to read She has more ar points than any fourth grader at the school that has ever been there. She's a reading freak She earns money to buy more books I am like amazed by this. Okay we have to use reading time and books as the consequence. She doesn't get to do those things.

1:17:51Scott Donnell:They have to feel some pain.

1:17:52Mind Pump Hosts:They have to feel it. I remember being young. I missed the first youth group in sixth grade, like the first youth group when I was like, all my friends are there, everyone's going. This is like church, like learning about God. I missed it because I acted out. And I, to this day, remember like 30 years later, that moment, because it was like, I desperately wanted that thing. and I lost that opportunity because of the decision I made. So you got to force a consequence that's really going to mean something to your kids.

1:18:19Scott Donnell:What's your hot take on spanking?

1:18:24Mind Pump Hosts:I thought I already got canceled earlier in this podcast. Spanking.

1:18:32Mind Pump Hosts:Spanking is not abuse. There's your first answer. Spanking is not the only answer, okay? We have these fights all the time. Arguments with families. How could you? How dare you? Oh, spare the rod, lose the child. What's wrong with you? You're going to raise a nightmare. There's two sides of this coin. And I don't land on either, okay? But here's what I need to tell you about discipline. It's a heart issue. All discipline is a heart issue. No matter how you're going to discipline them, it has to be a consequence that they don't want, okay? And I think people do spanking because it's an immediate consequence instead of, oh, you're losing your privilege for this for the next two months.

1:19:13Mind Pump Hosts:And now the parents are like, I got to freaking, I got to keep track of this for two months because of one outburst. Like that's the hard part. That's just like, get it over with. But you need immediate consequences somehow that mean something. So figure that out. Whatever you do, find immediate consequences that mean something to your kid. There you go. But you never lose the heart. See, it's a heart issue. The worst thing I see is if parents will spank their kid and send them away. So if the kid acts out, They spank them right there in the moment out of frustration and they send them out of their presence.

1:19:45Mind Pump Hosts:Now that's losing the heart. Yeah. Right? You never discipline in anger. It's about choices and consequences. And at the end of whatever you do with the consequence, you recapture the relationship because you're going after their heart, not their compliance. So it's like, hey, they say they're sorry. They really mean it. Say, hey, God forgives us. I forgive you. I love you. Big hug. hey, let's go make this right. High five. And you go make it right with a sibling, with mom, with dad, whatever it is. That is what you're after in a discipline cycle. You're trying to keep their heart. I'll say that.

1:20:23Mind Pump Hosts:The other thing I'll say is discipline, most discipline in the home comes from a lack of training. Discipline is usually a reactive answer to just a lack of training. Like you get frustrated because you've told your kids a bunch of times, you've reminded them a million times, you didn't train them with the systems with enough choice consequence to like get the systems in the home. Most parents are exhausted because they haven't trained. They're just reacting through discipline and they just get frustrated and exhausted all the time. So double down on training and then you really cut the discipline in half.

1:20:57Scott Donnell:This one is so interesting to me because we've talked about this on our podcast and I'm the one who's like pro spanking yet I've never spanked. So I find that really, it's that so and it's because i never felt like i've had to i've never had to i i can make the case for where i could see like for example if my son was a type of kid who might pick up a toy and hit another kid over the head uh and i want to disrupt that in the moment in the time that i see it i could see the the the uh importance or the value of hey whacking him on the butt and then teaching him that's not okay behavior but he's never been i've always been able to communicate to him and talk to him what's right, what's wrong and stop him without doing that.

1:21:37Scott Donnell:So I've never had to do it. Although I, I feel like I would if I needed to, but I've made it this far and not had to.

1:21:43Mind Pump Hosts:Two of my kids never need it. One of them, he needed it and he woke up real quick. And now he's like the most loyal, most first time follower where we actually have the closest relationship, ironically. Okay. Okay. So like, this is why we got to give each other a break here. There's plenty of other stuff we can argue about in families and homes and life in the world. Like, how about we try to figure out ways to help our kids become the healthiest, strongest kids possible and give each other a break.

1:22:10Scott Donnell:I definitely think there's a difference too between, of course, how you spank, but there's also, is it out of anger and rage?

1:22:16Mind Pump Hosts:Right.

1:22:17Scott Donnell:Because you can also not spank your kid and you can yell at them out of anger and rage, which is traumatizing to children. And we know this.

1:22:25Mind Pump Hosts:Or worse, you just let them live that way. Yeah. What's Jordan Peterson's quote? I love it. He said, don't let your kids do anything that makes you dislike them. Because then they're going to be a nightmare to everybody around you.

1:22:36Scott Donnell:As a parent, you're going to make mistakes. How do you feel about apologizing to your kids?

1:22:42Mind Pump Hosts:All the time. Every time you mess up, learn to apologize, ask for forgiveness. You have to model these things. A hundred percent. I actually think probably the worst issue, like, yes, there's blatant abuse. There's terrible things that happen in people's childhoods. But close behind that is when people never share anything with their kids. Everything's behind closed doors. Their kids never see any issues or struggles or conflict. They literally just act like everything's perfect in the home and nothing was ever wrong when a ton of stuff actually was. So then fast forward and then the parents split and then the kids immediately blame themselves.

1:23:22Mind Pump Hosts:Okay, and then they're carrying that baggage for the rest of their life. They're wired.

1:23:27Scott Donnell:Careful. Their children are wired to place the blame on themselves and they think something is wrong. That's right. So if you're, I've apologized to my kids just for being distant or in a bad mood because it's not like they don't know. And so afterwards, like, hey, you know, earlier I was just totally in a bad mood and I'm really sorry. And I got a lot of stuff on my mind. You don't need to necessarily tell them all your struggles, especially if they're little. They're not going to understand. But just let them know like, hey, here's something's going on. The thing you felt, it's real. Yep. I actually was in a bad mood.

1:23:57Scott Donnell:I think it's one of the most powerful things that we can do. 100%. Yeah. I mean, obviously, we cover a lot of things, and we covered a lot of things with you. Personally, I think, because it's inevitable as a parent. You're going to make a mistake, or you're not going to handle a situation perfect.

1:24:10Mind Pump Hosts:Yep.

1:24:11Scott Donnell:So that's inevitable. But if you own it, and then you apologize to your kid, I think the connection that you get from it is unbelievable. I've watched it happen.

1:24:20Mind Pump Hosts:Yeah. I mean, if there's a break and a repair, it usually gets stronger. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Right? Think of bones. like muscles, like tendons. How do you grow muscle? You break down the muscle so it grows back stronger. This is how family works. That's why we say like repentance and forgiveness and saying, I'm sorry, is the glue between generations. Okay. When none of that is modeled, it just between your kids and then your grandkids, like then there's just so much harbored resentment. There's so much bitterness. There's so much like victim mindset of these things. Like I see families and they're like, yeah, I haven't talked to my mom in five years because of this one random issue.

1:24:56Mind Pump Hosts:I'm like, it's not the one random issue. It was 25 years of you guys never modeling this. And then the one thing happens and you're an adult and you think it's all over. Are you kidding me? We need to model this early and often as much as we can in the home. Should you take your kids' devices at night? You shouldn't give your kids' devices anyway. Let's talk about age here. But I mean, I've been in several groups with like Jonathan Haidt and Dr. Amen and all these, Deloney and all these guys. We've kind of all come to the conclusion that's like, that phone has actually more destructive potential than the car.

1:25:32Scott Donnell:Yeah.

1:25:33Mind Pump Hosts:So my kids are not going to get a full-on smartphone until after they're driving.

1:25:38Scott Donnell:I love that.

1:25:39Mind Pump Hosts:I'm giving them an Apple Watch or a Fitbit that can geotarget them, and they can text and call if they need something. And other than that, they don't need it. Go as long as you can. Go as long as you can. I had a friend one time recently. She said she had three sons. She was right in the middle of this anxious generation kind of stuff. Her son's got phones earlier, all this. She said, Scott, the moment they got that smartphone, I can pinpoint to the day for all three of them. We said goodbye to their childhood. See, that's the pain of this. You don't know that it's so much destruction that's on there.

1:26:17Mind Pump Hosts:And it's not just explicit images and seeing something terrible. It's the dopamine distortion and the addiction, the pre addiction training that it gives you. Yeah. And the lack of attention and connection you're ever going to have with them ever again.

1:26:27Scott Donnell:You know, it's crazy. Talk to any parent of teenagers who's taking their kids, by the way, requires a lot from a parent to do this because you deal with a, you know, you know what storm, but you just deal with it and they get over it. If you, parents of teenagers have ever taken their kid's phone away for like a week, they will all tell you the same thing. Oh my God. Two days into it, man. They were great. Thank you, dad. They changed. They were awesome. They were wonderful. They were receptive. They were present. Like they throw a fit for a day or two. And then afterwards, they're better kids.

1:26:59Scott Donnell:And it's like, oh, what's this phone doing to my kid? Yeah, it's like they wake up. They're alive again. So I'm going to take it a step further because this is what I plan to do. Obviously, mine's really young. And I will delay it as long as possible. I imagine when he gets to be a teenager, that's when the hardest conversation will. At that point, you'll be in high school. And at that point, you'll understand what a book report looks like. And there's three books that I've read that he'll have to read and give me a report on because then he'll understand why I regulate it the way I do. And that's Irresistible, Unplugged, and iGen.

1:27:28Scott Donnell:And all three of those books talk about how those things were engineered and what they do and the dangers of all them, all the statistics, all the stuff on it. And I feel like if he's mature enough to drive a car, mature enough to have those things and he's mature enough to read those books and write his dad a report. And then when I sit down with him and I hand him this thing and I say, hey, this is when you can use it. This is how you use it. This is why you have, like, he'll understand because he did those things.

1:27:54Mind Pump Hosts:I look at technology. I mean, the quick answer that you were saying earlier is like, I don't want tech, any tech in their rooms at all. Yeah. For especially younger, like pre-puberty or anything. Don't, no iPads in the rooms, none of that stuff. Like, we just keep it all out of it. Even me, like, I have to be restrictive on my phone is going away at dinner. Yeah. And it's away. Yeah. I have to make myself, it's away for the rest of the night. as much as possible because I want to connect with my wife too. Right. But I look at it like a weapon. It's training. You have to train them to be prepared for a weapon.

1:28:23Mind Pump Hosts:The phone is just like a weapon. So yeah, we have in our, we just finished the connection series, a ton of kids coaching videos on technology and devices. And like, they've never even heard of like, Hey, what you say online is there forever. Like you don't even know who's on the other end of the phone on the other account. Like, do you guys even know what catfishing is in grooming? Like they need to learn these things in their young teenagers before they ever get it. The worst case scenario is when they get it and you wait till the nightmare happens and then you teach them about it. No, we need to be like ahead of the game on this.

1:28:56Mind Pump Hosts:And so, yeah, we've got to be educating. I think that there should be standards before kids are allowed to have these smartphones. There needs to be like a training rubric.

1:29:06Scott Donnell:I watched my cousin do a really good job of this. She's got five kids and she's got teenagers now who grew up in this and they were smart enough to be ahead of it. And it was such a cool conversation to have with a 16-year-old, 16 going on 17-year-old, who has lots of restrictions around her phone and how she uses it, what she can have on it, what she can't have on it. And I remember asking her, like, do you wish you had all these other things? She goes, yeah, yeah, of course, no. All my friends have this and that. And then I asked her, well, when you become a mother one day and you have kids, will you do the same thing?

1:29:37Scott Donnell:She says, absolutely. so it's it's so cool to see that if you if you train that early that even the they understand the desires the wants and you know this and that but then also understands why they did it then and it's how would you do it with your kids oh i'm going to do the same thing did you see the

1:29:52Mind Pump Hosts:massive study that just came out like last month which one uh the age of giving kids a smartphone versus mental health oh no amen just talked about this we saw the report the day it came out so huge study 100 000 kids teenagers they found that when the kids got a smartphone between the ages of, um, I think it's seven and 10, which is a young, we're like, Whoa, that's young. Well, think of lower, lower and lower economic statuses. They're giving the kids smartphones earlier and earlier because it's the easy button because they can cook or go to their job or something like so many of these kids are getting it.

1:30:23Mind Pump Hosts:Um, if you get a phone under 10, a smartphone under 10, the mental health rate is 50 % as a teenager, mental health stress, like anxiety, depression, suicidality with boys, it's anger lashing out 50%. And if you give a smartphone between 11 and 13, it's down to 25%, which is still staggering. That's a hundred fold what it was a couple decades, like a decade and a half ago, a hundred fold. So the smartphone is the most addicting substance for young people in the world. It's just something we give them as a gift at some point, instead of drugs and other things. Well, like you said, instead of training them like it's a gun, like a weapon.

1:31:07Mind Pump Hosts:You got to train them like it's a weapon. It is so hard when a kid sees these things the first time, like the hit it gives them. Like this is why pornography is so destructive. Like it is insanely destructive on young people's minds. You know, like when we were young, like, let's just be honest. You didn't have it readily available at your fingertips all day, every day. Thank God. You had the pervert weird friend that you're like, oh, they're a creepy friend that had some like magazine from Maxim. And everyone felt really risky and weird, like going over. But everyone saw it at like a younger age.

1:31:41Mind Pump Hosts:You're like, whoa, that was crazy. I got to run from that. I remember being like 10 years old the first time we saw, like the first page of a pic that our friend Travis showed us.

1:31:50Scott Donnell:Call him out. Yeah. Travis, if you listen to this, well, here's what happened.

1:31:53Mind Pump Hosts:Because he was in like a double wide across the street. The next day he goes to juvie. because he was, we didn't know, I didn't know until much later why, but he was selling drugs or selling pot. And so he goes away to jail and me and my buddy, Matt, thought that it was because of the magazine. So for the rest of our teenage years, we were scared to death. I was like, I am never going to just look at this as long as I live.

1:32:16Scott Donnell:I was 12 years old on a construction site. And then, I mean, that's where you find, construction site, it was, they put, they had them in the porta potty. Yeah. Just stuck up on the thing, you know?

1:32:26Mind Pump Hosts:But it's different now. Like if you, and this is why kids will never, that's crazy. Most of our kids that are doing this or addicted to this parents have no clue. It's deadly. It is deadly for them. And so, yeah.

1:32:39Scott Donnell:Talking about when we were kids, here's I'm going to say a saying that we all probably heard growing up and I want to hear your thoughts on this because I said so. Hmm. Why do I got to do that? Cause I said so. Yeah.

1:32:53Mind Pump Hosts:part of the values back to that is building an identity in our kids and a value system of trust where the kids go, Oh yeah, my parents have my best interests at heart. Okay. A parent doesn't necessarily have to just explain themselves and give all the reasoning. My job is not to convince my kids. Yeah. Okay. They just need to know that I have their best interest at heart. Yeah. There's a submission there that has to happen. And I'm out for their good. and I want my kids to be respectful. Like God gives the command, like respect your mother and father. And that means like, I'm going to honor them and I'm going to follow and obey the things they tell me because look, good parents are out for the good of their kids.

1:33:35Mind Pump Hosts:And so for my kids, I actually, you know, we practice the first time follower rule. We don't repeat ourselves in the home. Like that actually you help. It's very helpful to build that into their, I don't tell my kids because I said so anymore because they don't talk back.

1:33:48Scott Donnell:Yeah.

1:33:49Mind Pump Hosts:they know that like the first time follower rule is a valuable thing in our home.

1:33:53Scott Donnell:Yeah.

1:33:54Mind Pump Hosts:Because first time follower rule is the rule of which like, hey, in our home, we really celebrate you following the first time. Because when you're going to run into traffic, if you like as a young kid, a little kid. Yeah. You only get one, you only get one shot at that. Yeah. Stop. Yeah. Like you need to have your kids follow the first time. Yeah. And when it comes to repeating ourselves, sometimes men can, they can get bigger and louder really quickly. and it like forces compliance with the child. Oh, I got to listen because dad's scarier at times. Well, your wife can't do that. She can't do that.

1:34:26Mind Pump Hosts:So you're robbing her ability to have authority in the home. That's the problem. And so when we train families, we say, hey, you got to not repeat yourself. Just let the consequence be the teacher. And it's harder to do because it's way easier to just be like, I told you this, do it. I missed one more time, the last warning. How many times do I have to tell you? don't repeat yourself because the more you repeat yourself the less weight your words have the more they disrespect the first five times you say it they know oh they're not gonna get super pissed until the sixth time so i'm good i can ignore them i like how you frame that because

1:35:00Scott Donnell:i i take it as a challenge when my son's asking me questions asking me why to teach him because he's at an age right now where everything is why you know why are we going to the store why are we doing that so he's at that age and so educating him i could see on explaining the why behind everything but i feel like if it's a question you've already asked me and daddy's already told you that we you know we don't do this before bed or we don't do that then it's like i you know i don't have to i shouldn't have to re-repeat why you already know why like type of deal they're

1:35:28Mind Pump Hosts:not looking for reasoning right but he's at that eight that five to six age where they're just they

1:35:32Scott Donnell:are just so curious and interested and i want him to i also don't want to just dismiss him right and be like oh i because i told you so i'm your dad it's like no let me explain why why that happens this way. And then, but it's like, after I've done that.

1:35:44Mind Pump Hosts:Well, let me give you another really good tip that stops a lot of that. We, the strongest families I've ever met, they take, they take every opportunity with their children to be a learning experience. Okay. See, this is, it's what I call the Socratic families versus like the dictator families. The strongest families, literally they're every single opportunity in the home is like another thing I'm going to ask you a question about or try to teach you or train into you something or, Hey, what do you think about this. Hey, how would you do this? Everything is a learning experience. And so many families, they miss that.

1:36:17Mind Pump Hosts:They're literally just like, I'm telling, cause I told you so do this, do that. And they're not ever using as a training teacher.

1:36:24Scott Donnell:Mom and dad's really good at this. If you have any friends who are, my mom was a teacher, my best friends, a teacher. If you ever watched them with kids, they're so good at this. Everything is a lesson. That's right. Every play, every dinner, everything like they find ways to educate and teach so good you naturally invite your kids into it with you yeah if you've never been around that a hack is to put yourself get a friend get someone close watch how a teacher is with a kid a young kid that's in that adolescent age and

1:36:53Mind Pump Hosts:watch what they do but you got to be a little bit careful because sometimes just teachers are teaching they're like telling you how to do everything instead of asking you how you would do it. Sure, sure. See, you have to be a Socratic teacher. This is the difference. So in our home, I want my kids to learn critical thinking.

1:37:09Scott Donnell:Yeah.

1:37:10Mind Pump Hosts:I can't just tell them everything and expect them to be good critical thinkers. I have to ask the question back. Right. Kind of like what we talked about of helping the team solve their own problems. Right, right. So with the kids, I'm like, hey, how would you do this? Yeah. Hey, these have to be, we have to get this done in the yard and how would you handle this situation? Right, right. Hey, how would you do the dishes here? How would you handle this problem? So I'm actually inviting them in as a learning experience. Right. That's why teachers are good. Most teachers are good at that, but some teachers are like, I'm telling you just everything.

1:37:38Scott Donnell:Yeah. Yeah. No, it's like, I mean, my kid's so young, right? What shapes are these? And if we eat three of these grapes and leave two of these grapes, how many are left over? You could take all kinds of simple things like that and turn them into teaching experiences.

1:37:51Mind Pump Hosts:And here's the real simple strategy. It's like, do more with your kids than for them at a young age and then you'll free yourself up because they'll learn how to do it on their own. That's teaching. That's good training. That's good mentorship and coaching to your kids. Like one of my favorite rules is like, treat your kids two years older than they are at all times. And at all times they will rise to the occasion. Like a seven-year-old can do laundry. A six-year-old can help you cook. Like they can help put younger siblings to bed at a younger age. Like it's not to bed, but get them all ready for bed.

1:38:24Mind Pump Hosts:Yeah. There's so many things that kids can help out in the home with. If you just give them the responsibility. They love to too. Like a 12 year old should start driving something like a, like a dirt bike off road or like get ready for 16 when they're on the road driving with a license. Yeah. Start them early. Like you have, you know how cool it is for like a 12 year old boy to be like, Hey, you want to go ride the tractor? Yeah. Hey, we're going dirt biking. Hey, we're like treat them older than they are and they'll rise to the occasion. Or I've heard it said, put a crown two inches above your kids' heads.

1:38:55Mind Pump Hosts:at all times and they'll grow into royalty.

1:38:58Scott Donnell:That's great.

1:38:59Mind Pump Hosts:I like that. That's great.

1:39:01Scott Donnell:Yeah. Scott, this is awesome. Yeah. Thanks guys. Great having you come talk to the team. Yep. Great having you on the show. Really appreciate what you do, my friend. Yep. You guys too. Thanks for helping the world.

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