2685: How to Raise a Successful Family with Scott Donnell

Summary

Mind Pump Episode 2685 Summary: "How to Raise a Successful Family" with Scott Donnell

Release Date: September 15, 2025
Hosts: Sal Di Stefano, Adam Schafer, Justin Andrews, Doug Egge
Guest: Scott Donnell (Fig & Eagle, @i.m.scottdonnell)

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on the raw truths of raising a successful family in a modern world filled with new challenges—from inherited wealth and entitlement to technology, faith, and redefining parenting as mentorship. Guest Scott Donnell, founder of Fig & Eagle, joins the Mind Pump crew to share lessons gleaned from studying multi-generational, high-functioning families, his personal journey in faith and entrepreneurship, and practical frameworks for building resilience and meaning in today’s kids.

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Key Themes & Insights

1. Heritage versus Inheritance

[07:01 – 10:30]

• The most successful families focus on heritage—what you instill in your children (values, beliefs, mindsets, skills)—not just inheritance (what you leave to them).
  • "Almost all of the top families in the world… set up heritage, not inheritance." — Scott Donnell [07:06]
• Giving money or assets without the right foundation often leads to entitlement, inability to cope, and family conflict.
• Legacy isn’t about wealth transfer; it’s about launching increasingly capable, values-driven generations.

2. Raising Resilient, 'Antifragile' Children

[11:39 – 14:44, 32:21 – 41:28]

• Shielding kids from all adversity leads to fragility and inability to self-regulate or problem solve.
  • "The answer is setting up a system where your kids actually become antifragile. They learn to solve their own problems, they learn to pay for things." — Scott Donnell [13:44]
• Rather than simply tough love or overprotection, Scott advocates a balanced "coaching" approach:
  • Encourage kids to do things themselves (packing, navigating travel, managing chores).
  • Allow mistakes as learning moments (“I know we’re going the wrong way, but they’re gonna learn a great lesson from this.”) [41:32]
  • Install family systems and traditions that teach values through practice.

The Coach vs. Caretaker Framework

[35:45 – 41:44]

• Parenting should transition from caretaker (removing obstacles) to coach (mentoring through challenges).
  • High edification (support) + High expectations (standards) = Antifragile, self-disciplined kids.
  • The worst case is "caretaker" parenting: “raises entitled victims.”
  • Overly strict, high-expectation with no support: "drill sergeant" style produces capable, but disconnected adults.

3. Discipline, Relationship Repair, and Modeling

[23:36 – 32:21]

• Discipline should be about connecting to the heart, not just punishment.
  • “Never lose the connection with their heart.” — Scott Donnell [26:07]
• Emphasize consequences and repair—teaching kids to make amends and rebuild relationships rather than fear punishment or simply please adults.
• Parents should model apologies and vulnerability.
  • “If we don't model it, they're not going to live it out.” — Scott Donnell [28:27]
• Most family discipline problems result from lack of proactive training; focus on teaching before crises.

4. Core Values & Family Identity

[14:44 – 20:27]

• Have a clear core word or phrase distilling family values (e.g., “Faith, Family, Fish” for Fun+Adventure, Integrity, Service, Hard Work).
• Kids should be able to recite values; more importantly, see them practiced by parents daily.
• Outsourcing values to school, sports, or church undermines their depth—the real transformation happens at home (“These things are learned around the dinner table, not the desk.”) [18:07]

5. Technology & Dopamine Distortion

[42:29 – 54:33]

• Kids today are exposed to exponentially more dopamine hits than previous generations—up to 800 times, primarily through screens and smart devices.
  • "The average 12 year old has released about 800 times as much dopamine [as we had at that age]." — Scott Donnell [43:13]
• Content designed specifically for addiction (e.g., Cocomelon jump cuts, bright colors).
• Recommendation: Limit smartphone and screen exposure as long as possible; choose tech with safety features.
  • "The moment you give your child a smartphone, you are saying goodbye to their childhood." — [46:04]
• Find a peer network of likeminded families with similar restrictions, as friends' tech access influences your child's experience.

6. Four Modern 'Family Forces' Undermining Kids

[53:42 – 63:21]

1. Dopamine Distortion – Easy-button, tech-fueled isolation/anxiety.
2. Anti-Family Force – Culture, media, and institutions undermining family structure and identity, replacing parental influence with digital mentors.
3. Instant Gratification – Everything on demand, eroding patience and delayed gratification, which are key to investment, marriage, and parenting.
4. Information Overwhelm – The age of AI means knowledge now doubles every 13 hours (down from 1 year in the early 2000s); leads to paralysis and anxiety over relevance.

7. The Role of Faith in Building Resilient, Anchored Families

[64:46 – 70:10]

• Faith—especially when practiced and modeled by fathers—correlates strongly with better mental health, reduced anxiety, and increased resilience in children.
• Gen Z is leading a faith revival, possibly as a response to the confusion and overwhelm of modern life.
  • “Kids are desperate for truth… The pain gets bad enough, you will do whatever it takes to get out of the pain.” — Scott Donnell [65:00]
• Service, community, and faith practices offer real-world antidotes to the anxious era.

8. Surrender vs. Performance – Scott's Personal Journey

[70:10 – 100:23]

• Scott shares how he surrendered a highly successful $50-million company—leaving all equity and social media following behind—out of a sense of conviction.
  • “You don’t put losses on the altar, you put gifts on the altar.” — Scott Donnell [89:53]
• The transition was confirmed through faith, his wife, mentors, and scripture, ultimately leading to unexpected blessings, provision, and peace:
  • “Within like a week, we were whole… Why would I ever worry?” — [94:40]
• Surrender means letting go of control, trusting God, and avoiding a life driven purely by comparison and competition ("mammon").
• “Many are gifted, but few are anointed because of the cost of the oil.” — Scott Donnell [90:14]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Family Wealth:
  “They sat down the family and they're like, look, if we give you this, it will ruin you and it will terrorize your children… we want to be giving this away to where it's needed with you." — Scott Donnell [04:35]
• On Coaching vs. Caretaking:
  “Stop reading parenting books, start reading coaching books.” — [35:45]
• On Smartphones:
  "The moment you give your child a smartphone, you are saying goodbye to their childhood." — [46:04]
• On Surrendering Success:
  “Mammon is the insatiable hunger for more. … Mammon can give you the world… but it will never give you peace because Mammon demands performance." — [71:36]
• On Heart-Centered Parenting versus Rule Enforcement:
  “Never lose the connection with their heart… Discipline is an act of love.” — [26:07]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:00] – Scott’s family legacy & faith-driven approach to wealth
• [07:01] – Defining heritage over inheritance; “best families” studied
• [11:39] – How adversity builds vital skills and the “teeter totter” risk of overcompensation
• [14:44] – Creating actionable, memorable family values
• [23:36] – Discipline vs. punishment and keeping the heart connection
• [32:21] – C4 Framework: Core values, connection, capability, courage
• [35:45] – Coach versus caretaker; raising antifragile kids
• [42:29] – Tech addiction, dopamine, and parental strategies
• [53:42] – Four destructive “family forces” in modern society
• [64:46] – The protection of faith, Gen Z revival, mental health trends
• [70:10] – Surrender vs. performance; redefining success and trust
• [84:19] – Scott’s story of walking away from his company and miracles after surrendering
• [100:23] – Scott’s new adventure: Mentor Family at Fig & Eagle

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Actionable Takeaways

• Focus on building “heritage” — actively train and mentor your kids on values, skills, and grit, rather than just aiming to provide.
• Organize regular family rituals around stated values: create a “core word” and make values part of daily conversation and action.
• Limit kids’ access to screens and tech for as long as possible—prioritize community and aligned family networks.
• Model apology, repentance, and relationship repair as a parent.
• Reframe your parenting from “caretaker” to “coach,” setting high expectations while offering high support.
• Ground your family’s mental health and resilience in faith, service, exercise, and tangible community involvement.
• Examine your own relationship to “mammon” — are you parenting, working, or chasing goals for the right reasons?
• Consider: mentoring other families and building circles of trusted influence for your kids and yourself.

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Closing Thought

Scott Donnell’s candor, humility, and spiritual conviction left a strong impression throughout. For listeners, the episode offers both a philosophical and highly practical roadmap for raising children fit for a challenging, anxious era — and a moving reminder that the real metrics of family success are courage, capability, character, and love.

Learn more:

• Scott Donnell: @i.m.scottdonnell
• Fig & Eagle: figandeagle.com

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Transcript

[Scott Donnell]

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[Sal Destefano]

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[Scott Donnell]

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[Adam Schaefer]

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[Scott Donnell]

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[Sal Destefano]

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[Scott Donnell]

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[Adam Schaefer]

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[Scott Donnell]

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[Sal Destefano]

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[Scott Donnell]

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[Adam Schaefer]

Mind Pump. Mind Pump.

[Scott Donnell]

With your hosts, Sal Destefano, Adam Schaefer and Justin Andrews, you just found the.

[Adam Schaefer]

Most downloaded fitness, health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we had Scott Donnell on the show talking about how to raise a successful family. Now, he studied some of the most successful families in the world and he broke it down. We actually found him on Instagram a while ago. His advice was so good, we loved it that we invited him on the show. And this episode was. It was actually one of my favorites. It was so good. Talked about raising kids, family. It got into faith. You're gonna love this guy. Go check him out on Instagram. You can find him at I.M. scottdonnell. That's S C O T T D O N N E L L. His company is called figandeagle.com. check him out. Check out his company. We know you're gonna love this episode. By the way, this episode is brought to you by Vuori. You know who Vuori is. They're the best athleisure wear company in the world. But if you go through our link, you'll get 20% off. Go to vuoriclothing.com mindpump Also, ladies, go to musclemommymovement.com quiz Take our quiz. It's free. Find out if you are a comeback queen, an efficient powerhouse, a strength novice, or a lifestyle integrator. And they get some personalized advice. One more time, it's musclemommymovement.com quiz. All right, here comes the show. Scott, welcome to the show, man.

[Scott Donnell]

Good to be here.

[Adam Schaefer]

Appreciate you coming. We found your content. Adam was the first one. We found your content on parenting and just great advice and really resonated with us as fathers. But I want to know how you got there. Like, I want to know your story of how you got to doing what you're doing now. And off air, I was like, I want to hear your story. Like, it's wild. It's crazy. I don't know if you want to hear it. And I'm like, even more. I want to hear about that. Now I'm interested. Yeah, take us back a little bit.

[Scott Donnell]

Wild story, man. Yeah. So I think for me, I, I was, I have a great family. Just been super blessed. Not, it's not like a bot started from the bottom, now we're here kind of thing. But I'm really thankful for the life that I was raised in. So I come from four generations of entrepreneurial folks. Strong faith, great families. And like my grandpa, just a rock star. He just passed. I got to do his eulogy. His name is Barney Beaksma. Just a total stud. And I've seen countless things happen in his life, but he was the real life George Bailey. Like he. The movie was basically his life story. He started Whidbey Island Savings and Loan.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, wow.

[Scott Donnell]

Back in like the late 50s. And he ended up like saving the town multiple times. It was in military, as a navy town. And funds were going to be pulled and he got a team together, they saved it. He stayed. He built this thing up into a multi billion dollar bank. Wow. After over 50 years, just an incredible story. Like, just loyal, amazing man. He was married to my grandpa for. Or my grandma for 67 years. Like, their wisdom was just insane. Raised an awesome family. They were bedrocks in the community. I mean, I remember being 6, 7 years old shredding papers, like just watching that happen. But the legacy they left when they sold the business in 2001, they, they exited to Wells Fargo for like $1.2 billion or something like that. Put almost all of it into a charitable trust for widows and orphans and ministries all over the world. And they sat down the family and they're like, look, if we give you this, it will ruin you and it will terrorize your children. We've trained you up, we've set up the faith and values. Right. And we know you guys are set and you're good, and we're stewards of God's stuff, and we want to be giving this away to where it's needed with you. And, man, I couldn't be more thankful for that.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay, but did you and the family feel that way when that first happened? Because I agree with that sentiment, but did you guys already. Did you believe that? Because a lot of times we'll create resentment with the kids.

[Scott Donnell]

I mean, I'm, like, in high school at this point, so I didn't really know any better. But, man, looking back, I'm unbelievably thankful. I. I've seen their life and the impact of that generosity. That's their heart, and they raised the family with capabilities and skills, with the ability to add value anywhere, which. Great relationship.

[Sal Destefano]

That's rad that the family figured this out already. That, like. Yeah, I don't. I don't think that's common that that happens in a family, and there's not resentment and animosity. And you screwed me and how dare you not down on your.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah, I'll tell you where that does happen, is in families that do have millions or billions. Now, adults are fighting over it. Now. Siblings sue each other. Later in life, they're waiting for grandma and grandpa to die. Now, that's a miserable golden year. See, I call it adult entitlement. Like, you're just literally waiting for someone to go, well, we'll get the house, we'll get the assets, we'll get whatever they have when they go. And then guess what? So then you don't risk, you don't grow, you don't take opportunities, you don't go for it. And then they live 20 years longer.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Scott Donnell]

And you're sitting around waiting. That happens all the time. And then you fight over stuff. Who gets what? How are we doing this? And then it's. That's the focus. Who wants to die? Like, knowing that their kids and grandkids are just waiting for them to go to get all their stuff and fight over it. Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

So they let you know ahead of.

[Adam Schaefer]

Time that this was the plan that they were going to do. So you guys didn't have that expectation.

[Scott Donnell]

Almost all of the top families in the world that I've been studying for 15 years do that. They set up heritage, not inheritance. It's more about what you leave in your kids than to them. That's the point of everything I've studied. And I. I come from an awesome family, but we've only my family probably did 30% of all of the incredible strategies and recipes that we've been studying from the best in the world. But one of the biggest similarities from the best families. And by the way, can I explain what a best family means?

[Adam Schaefer]

Sure, yeah, please.

[Scott Donnell]

Everyone thinks it's the billionaires. Everyone thinks it's the richest families like the Vanderbilts and Roosevelts and things like Rockefeller Rockefellers. That is not actually who we study. I'm on Zoom every week with a billionaire who would give it all up tomorrow, right now, actually, to fix a problem in the family. An estrangement issue, an addiction issue, a mental health problem with a kid, a problem with their spouse and family and relatives, the nightmares. What we would rather do is help families not have a thousand sleepless nights later in life. And there's no amount of money that can fix that. You have to focus on heritage. And so what we study were families that the kids blew by the adults every generation in the ways that matter. So for like three, four, five generations in a row, the kids are growing past the parents in like the values of the family and beliefs, the mindsets and skill sets for success, relational depth. Like they have stronger, deeper family relations in their own family. Each generation impact in the world. Yes, financial competency is part of this adding value. That's obviously a part of the skill sets. But you have to think about those things being transferred from generation to generation. If you don't focus on those pieces and you just focus on what's my net worth when I'm dead so I can have a legacy, you're missing all the things that matter and you're going to ruin the legacy because that creates trust fund kids. That creates imposter syndrome. That creates like a Willy Wonka golden ticket kid who doesn't know how to manage it or earn it or create value with it. Right. Like, it's actually terrifying when somebody who's uncapable and unqualified gets a large sum of money.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Scott Donnell]

That wreaks havoc. A friend of mine, Jordan Peterson, do you know what he said? The only thing that keeps addicts out of the gutter is being broke. Being dead in the gutter is being broke. That's a big deal. So that's why we call it heritage. It's like a last name that means something. You've got to give your kids values, deep relationship, emotional strength, resiliency, capabilities for the world. That's what matters at the end. So I say take inheritance and invest it in heritage. Then it doesn't matter what. You leave them because it's not their identity. It's not going to ruin them. It's not even going to be that much better. You want to make it irrelevant because you've nailed the heritage piece, and on your deathbed, you're like, I'm so proud. Like, they've blown by me in every way I could ever imagine.

[Sal Destefano]

I absolutely love this conversation and had no idea this was where this was going to go. Because when I'm asked what is my greatest fear or what do I think the most about as a father right now is that my son is growing up in such a different environment than I did. And what I mean by that is I am fully aware of all the adversity that I had to go through as a child, built me into the animal that I am today and the person that I love and all the things that I've accomplished. And there's no way, I think I become that if I didn't have to go through all those things that built those characteristics. And so I think about every day, okay, my son's not having to deal with those things, so how am I giving him the same skill sets that I developed? But I'm not going to obviously put him through the shit that I had to go through, because that would be horrible parenting, too. But. And I absolutely don't want to just leave him what I've built because then he misses out on all that thing. And so how does somebody in my position do that? Well, like, how do I build a better version of me without all the trauma that I had to go through to become that? I think about that every single day.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah, so that's a great question. Have you ever heard of the teeter totter? Parents often teeter totter to the polar opposite of how they were raised.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, of course.

[Scott Donnell]

And instead of being balanced like a scale, they teeter totter. So if you were raised with nothing and you went through hard knock, paycheck to paycheck, strife, abuse, trauma, well, what are you gonna. Your natural tendency is to say, I'm gonna do anything possible to make sure my kids don't have to go through that. I'm gonna give them all the things I never had. I am going to solve every problem so they can have every opportunity and all the fun things that I never got. You bubble wrap them for sure. You entitle them. You spoil the heck out of them because you love them and you just. You desperately want to repel what you were raised in. You fall to the other side the teeter totter flips the scale. Right. And it needs to be balanced. It needs to be a balanced approach. And so, you know, I call it money trauma. Nobody, nobody talks about money trauma because there's a lot of other traumas. But I think money trauma is one of the worst because. Go ahead.

[Sal Destefano]

I was just. I do, because. And one of the things I talk about being a 40 year old, I started having my son. I was 40. So if I would have had my kid at 25, I was still going through my insecurities around money. So my money trauma, because I didn't have any. And then by the time I made 20s, I had quite a bit already. It was successful at a young age. Had I had a kid at 26, I would have allowed all those insecurities to bleed into my kid. In fact, I for sure would have had the kid in Gucci shoes and the Mongoose bike and done all. I would have poured all that. And the way I would have justified it is I didn't have it. I worked so hard so he could have it and I would have wrapped it in that. Luckily, I worked through a lot of that trauma and those insecurities. And I recognize that as a 40 year old.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

But I wouldn't have if I would've had kids in my 20s.

[Scott Donnell]

It's wild what we do out of love for our kids. We bubble wrap em. And the answer's not tough love. The answer's not withholding from them and being a drill sergeant. That's not the answer. The answer is setting up a system where your kids actually become antifragile. They learn to solve their own problems, they learn to pay for things. You don't just jump in and fix everything for them. Right. You set up systems in the home where they're learning skills and they're learning to create value. They're learning to cope, they're learning to do the dishes and do the laundry and handle emotional situations. You know, when you jump in and solve all the problems, then they don't know how to solve them in the future. Right. And then you have to be their savior for the next five decades.

[Adam Schaefer]

You grew up in a really, really good family. And you talk about passing heritage down and values. What were the values and heritage that your family passed down to you that now you try to extend out to your children? And how did they do that?

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah, strong faith was huge for us. Trusting God, that's one of the biggest ones in our family. Discipline was big. Respect is huge. Service of other people. Is huge. We actually have these values in our family. So one of the things we do in Fig and Eagle, our training program, is we help families create what we call the core word. And everybody thinks they have a list of values. Right. But could your kids rattle them off? Very few people have that. Most businesses don't have values that anybody remembers. How does a family do that? So what we do is we create this core word that literally activates the values in the home. And so, like, the core word, like, makes it seamless. You don't have to put energy into it. Like, the kids talk about it, your teenagers talk about it. They live it out. You correct to it. So for our family, it's a reflection of how I was raised, but our values in our family, we call it faith, family, and fish. So fish stands for. That's our core word. Fish stands for fun and adventure, integrity, service, and hard work, which we now call heavenly work. Because it's not just about hustling and driving and killing yourself. It's about doing things for a purpose, for glorifying the Lord. Right. So faith, family, and fish, our kids literally say at a dinner every night, it's a way for us to pass on those values. And they say them. They're talking about the stories of the day that match the values of the family, not us. We're not making them do anything. You see how that turns it alive? So those were the values that we were raised in, like my parents adopted. When we came up with faith, family fish, they just said, yeah, we love that. That's going to be the Donald thing.

[Adam Schaefer]

Most importantly is how your kids see you act and behave more so than what you say. How does that look in action? Because I know a lot of times as parents, we try to teach our kids a particular way, but then they see our behavior. It's like the parent that smokes, that tells her kid, don't smoke. It's bad for you.

[Scott Donnell]

Right. Do as I say.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, yeah. So what does it look like behavior wise? And then the first thing that comes to mind for me is when you're raising your kids in a particular way, and you start to identify things in yourself that need to be worked on. Like, if you don't work on you, it ain't gonna happen with them.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah, there's so much here.

[Adam Schaefer]

Well, let's start with them.

[Scott Donnell]

You said it was faith, family, Faith, family, and fish. These are our values. And everybody comes up with their own values and core word.

[Adam Schaefer]

But so how do they see faith in action with your family?

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah. So, you know, for us. Let me just share your story. So I just talked to a family recently. Dad's in tears, man of faith. They worked really hard to put their two kids through school, college. One's 23, one's 25. The 23 year old, massively in debt, feels they're just giving up their credit card debt. They just like totally checked out. Like something hit them where like they're being taken down by a bunch of stuff and they just are giving up and it's crushing him. The 25 year old completely walked away from the family faith. Walked away from the values, walked away from the political views, walked away from. Everything is going the other direction and dad is literally crushed. And he's like, what did I do wrong? We worked our butts off. We got him into the best schools, private school, in fact. We were in the good zip code, we were in the extracurriculars, we were in all the camps, we were in all the sports. We made them go to church on Sunday. We're sitting in the pews, where did I go wrong? And I just kind of out of nowhere, I was like, let me just ask you a random question. Did you ever like open the Bible at the dinner table and just read a verse and just be like, here's what this means to me and here's what I'm going through right now. What do you guys think about this? See, that's faith in action. That is actually discipleship. That's passing on these things to your kids. So many parents outsource parenting without realizing it because they're looking around and comparing with everybody else. And they have to have their kids in the best everything. And so they hope that the schools can teach the all the things that they need to learn, that the sports can teach them the discipline, that the extracurriculars of the tutoring or the camps can get them all the skills they need for life, that church teaches them God, they outsource the parenting. And I think it's one of the most destructive things we can do. Those things aren't bad in of themselves, but these things are learned around the dinner table, not the desk, right? And so, so many parents are just trying to outsource and get by and give their kids every leg up possible. But the greatest transformations of a kid happen in the home with mom and dad. So faith, that's a good example, is like just telling your kids where you're at, praying over them, like asking them like, how are they feeling and then praying for that. Kids keep faith when they see it modeled in the home. When they see parents wrestling with things, talking about how they're feeling, talking about what God's doing in their life, Kids keep faith when they see prayers answered. Okay? That's because it's modeled. And the same is true with every other value. If you're not modeling it in the home, they're not going to take it for the rest of their life.

[Adam Schaefer]

With some of these things, are fathers more impactful than mothers and vice versa, depending on what we're talking about. Like, do fathers have a bigger. I've seen data on faith, for example, and when the father practices faith, the influence on the children is so much higher. And then when it comes to empathy, mom's influence tends to be much stronger. Like, do you see that in some of these things? And how do you work together with your wife to implement these things? It's not the same for both of you, right?

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah, yeah. No, it's definitely a team. It's got to be a team. Fathers have so many advantages being in the home. I mean, look at every major stat from mental health to teenage pregnancy levels, going way down to addiction issues to like with, if, if a child is raised without daddy issues, then they will not be walking around for the rest of their life with a hundred pounds in a backpack. That's clear. But a mom has an essential role as well. The nurture and the care and the love. Like, you know, people say God's a he from the Bible, that they just use the masculine first. But God is, there's. He's not man or woman. He has both aspects of a loving mother and a loving father. A protective father. Right. A providing father. So all these things are true with the Lord. And both parents are a symbol of that love from God to a kid. So you need both. Right? That's why it's like man, if people are separated or they're in a single parent home or someone passed away from cancer or something like that, my advice is get other men or women that you trust around your kids as much as you can. Every kid needs that. They need both sides. And the more you do that, we call it the teenage hack, right? In their teen, in a kid's teenage years, they need both sides somewhere. Whether it's a coach or a mentor or an advisor or somebody who's like a trusted friend that they can kind of feel like is like another dad or an uncle. That stuff is critical because every parent needs those people in their teenage kids lives so that those people can reinforce what they care about most. You guys ever told your kids something for, like, many years, and then somebody else that they like and admire says it.

[Adam Schaefer]

Brilliant.

[Scott Donnell]

And they come back and tell you. And you're like, I've been telling you this for a decade, but you don't say that. You're like, tell me more. Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, yeah.

[Scott Donnell]

All the time.

[Adam Schaefer]

Did you. Did you ever go through a period of rebellion with your family? And did they. How did they respond to it? There's a lot of debate with people who talk about parenting in regards to discipline or punishment or. That's the part where you'll see people who really care.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

This is where you tend to sometimes see people get divided. They all love their kids. They want to do you know what's right. They all really care. But then when you talk about discipline and punishment, how you deal with, like, teenage rebellion versus toddlers.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's where you start to see some separation. Like, what does that look like? What have you studied?

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

What have you seen?

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah. And again, my family did great. No one's perfect. Everyone has issues growing up. Like, everyone thinks that the top families we've been studying forever are perfect. Are you kidding me? Every single family I've ever worked with has crazy somewhere. That's not the. Every family. That's literally part of being family. But the key is how you bounce back from things. The key is how you reconnect after things happen. The key is how you move through them with the right principles. And that's what we've been trying to accumulate is, like, the best strategies and principles to help you navigate the pain or the trials that come. Right. Because, man, we're just trying to save people a thousand sleepless nights. That's the whole thing. So this idea of discipline, I'll say two things on this. The first one is there's a big difference between discipline and punishment.

[Adam Schaefer]

Right. That was a question I was gonna ask you.

[Scott Donnell]

We don't punish our children. It's not punitive. It's discipline. Discipline is an act of love. Discipline, like a choice and a consequence. Right. If kids make certain choices, they know there's certain consequences. Our job is because we love them, we're going to enforce the consequences so that they learn the repercussions of their actions. We do that out of love. Right. And so discipline is an act of love for our children. Now, I'm not going to get into spanking or not, because there's so many people that disagree on this one.

[Adam Schaefer]

Sure.

[Scott Donnell]

Spare the rod, lose the child.

[Adam Schaefer]

Right.

[Scott Donnell]

Well, here's What I will say, no matter what you do in discipline, you need to discipline your children. Okay. Don't let your kids do things that make you dislike them. Okay. We need to discipline our children. It's good to have boundaries. It's good to have structures. It's good to have high expectations. But we meet that with high edification and high support and love and training. You have to have both the best coaches in the world, high edification and high expectation.

[Adam Schaefer]

How do you prevent raising a kid that just does things the right way? Because they're scared of the punishment.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Or because they just want to people please. Yes. I've seen that before. Right. The kid that just wants to people please. And so they become. They lie a lot, they hide things a lot. They become that adult that seems to have everything in perfect, you know, in line. But behind the scenes, there's a lot of things that aren't so good because they learn that skill as a kid or the person that just does things right when everyone's looking.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Because they're afraid of the punishment.

[Scott Donnell]

Well, the number one thing I say about discipline is your job in discipline is to connect with their heart. Never lose the connection with their heart. See, like if a parent's. Like, if they immediately, when they see kids doing something wrong, like spank them and send them off to their room, you're breaking the connection with their heart, the relationship, okay? What needs to be done is love in the middle of discipline. You never discipline out of anger. Right. You never use it as manipulation to them or coercion, because then they'll use that back at you. That's how people. People please. Right. And so if the goal is to keep the heart, then the discipline happens at the end of every cycle of discipline. You go in, perform like, hey, do you know why this is happening? Okay. Then. Then there's. Whatever the consequence is going to be with them. And then there's an element of forgiveness, apology and forgiveness and reconnection of the heart. Like, every time my kid says, I'm sorry, daddy, I'm like, God forgives us. How could I not forgive you? Of course I forgive you. I love you. Now let's go make this right. You're connecting with their heart. Never lose the heart. Right. And so we can be very good at helping our kids grow through good discipline. But when you are doing it out of frustration or you're just like, breaking them off from the family and sending them away, you're losing that heart. So then you get people who people please. Then you get Kids that become really defiant, like hardened hearts against you. A lot of people have a defiant kid. I have one. Right. When you lose the heart connection, it's very easy to lose the kid. Especially a defiant child.

[Adam Schaefer]

Especially as they grow up. At some point, they're going to be an adult or. Yeah, the forgiveness one's a big one. One thing that my wife did a while ago that really I see the fruit of now is if my kids say sorry, even if it's like a sorry, you know, a lot of times parents are like, say it like you mean it.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Immediately she accepts it. Thanks, honey.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

The other part of that is, and I've seen this in my house, we say sorry when we mess up to our kids.

[Scott Donnell]

That's right.

[Adam Schaefer]

How important is that? How important is it for your kids, for you to show them it's essential. Why?

[Scott Donnell]

If we don't model it, they're not going to live it out. And every parent messes up at some point, they lose it. They forget things, they screw up. And us modeling apology and please forgive me is one of the greatest things we can do for our children. It binds us back to them. Okay. In fact, so many. The number one question I get asked these days when coaching families is this, where were you 20 years ago? I wish I'd have known what you're talking about 20 years ago. Because now we have this problem, this issue, this nightmare, this separation or estrangement or issue in the marriage or issue with all these things. They think it's too late. I'm like, no, it's never too late. Like, what we teach are principles, not prescriptions. It's never too late. Every setback in your life is actually a setup. If you can reframe and see it that way. And the first thing that we usually have adult, like, if you have adult children, there's tons of issues, is work on repentance and forgiveness. Write them a letter of the things that you know that you messed on and do a deep dive on the things that you screwed up on. Work too much, treat them this way, held against them this way, Dealing with your own issues. Right. That is the first step. Usually with families with older children that are really struggling.

[Sal Destefano]

You know, I was just trying to look on my phone to remember what book it was, what parenting book that I was reading. This. But it's similar to this conversation around discipline. And the framework that they use is, like, what they teach your kids is. Is repair the relationship. So in any situation where a kid does something, you know, misbehaves doesn't listen to mom or dad. There's damage done to a relationship. And so at the core of the discipline or the problem is that you just dishonored mom or you just did this, you hurt that person at school or what that. And it's like what I care about in the disciplining portion is repairing the relationship. And so versus a punishment of you're grounded for two weeks. It's no, what you're going to do is go take that person to lunch and go talk to them about what you did and repair that relationship. And so you're teaching them a very, very similar to what you're talking about right now, that valuable lesson of repentance and then repair on relationships. Because when someone does something wrong, typically there's another person on the other end of that where damage was done. And that's the more important lesson.

[Scott Donnell]

That's right. And, and there's another level to discipline too that we teach from, that we learn from some of these top. Almost all discipline in the home stems from a lack of training. Think about that for a minute. I believe that almost all discipline stems from a lack of training. Okay. Discipline usually is a reactive answer to a lack of training. So the more we can be proactive and train our children, we actually it reduces the amount of disciplinary cycles that we have to go through. Because the goal is, is not to just figure out the right way to discipline your children. The goal is to create children who are self disciplined. And self disciplined children have been trained. Self disciplined children know what's expected of them. They have all of the support and the resources and the habits to be trained on their own. See, that is the core of what we teach in our courage series. How do you raise a child to be antifragile? The word antifragile is one of the most my favorite words in the whole world because that self disciplined kids are, that's a symptom of being antifragile. Can you imagine what if you imagine just your kids start doing things around the home before being told the holy grail of every parent.

[Sal Destefano]

One of the questions I had for you was how to build resiliency in your child which would be the same thing as having an anti fragile child kid Y so what are those, what are those beginning steps look like? What are those conversations or those practices that you know, I'm doing with my 6 year old to help build that resiliency or help build him into this anti fragile kid?

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah. So I, I'll, I'll walk you through what we call one of our frameworks. Okay? So we have these, we call it the C4 framework. In our family training, we have core values, connection, capability, and courage. Those are the four Cs that all of the best principles and strategies from all of the top families you've ever studied could go into those four. And we just make it a year round program. So people join for a year, they go through the four Cs, one a quarter, we implement them in the home together. It's that simple. So during the Courage series, the, the goal that we're talking about is antifragile. Okay, so here's the framework on courage. Because courage means to me, doing hard things, making big decisions, and leaving everything better around you. That's how I define courage. Okay. And I love the word courage, by the way, because courage is the only virtue needed to help every other virtue be learned. At the testing point of learning every character trait or every virtue that you could ever try to give your kids, they need courage at the testing point to grow that virtue makes sense. That's why courage is one of our first principles. Cs. It's one of our core tenets. And so courage, let's think about it. How do you build kids to be resilient? How do you build them to be antifragile? Which is the next level up from resilient? Right. Because everyone's like, grit, grit, grit, Discipline. Discipline. Discipline. Resilience. Resilience. Well, okay, you ever heard of the cow and the buffalo story? No. Okay, so when a storm comes.

[Sal Destefano]

Oh, one goes towards it, the other one goes.

[Scott Donnell]

The cow runs away. Okay. Scared. The cow is like, I gotta get away from this storm. And then the storm overtakes them. And they're in the storm way longer.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah, because they're running with it.

[Scott Donnell]

That's right. The buffalo has this freak thing in their brain that triggers. That just runs straight at storms. So you see the storms coming on the planes and they take off at the storm. And by running through the storm, they get through it way faster. But there's another animal that's even better. So that's, that's a good story of resilience and grit and discipline. We got to get our kids to be running at the storms. There's a better animal for this analogy. It's the eagle. When a storm comes, the eagle is the only animal with wings that are strong enough to updraft, soar over it, to go over the storm. They literally can soar up to like tens of thousands of feet above a storm. Because their wings are that strong. They're the only animal that uses a storm to get stronger. That is the picture of moving from discipline and resilience to being antifragile. So in our families, we want to work on helping our kids use struggle and issues and problems that come their way to get stronger afterwards. Not just grit your teeth and bear it and make it through, but get better. Does that make sense?

[Adam Schaefer]

Totally.

[Scott Donnell]

So here's the framework. We call it the coach versus caretaker framework. Stop reading parenting books, start reading coaching books. All these parenting books are getting deep dives into emotional stuff, which is important. Deep dives into gentle parenting, positive parenting, free range parenting, helicopter parenting, for God's sakes. I would much rather we read better coaching books because our job is to coach our kids up. Right? It's proactive. It's really good mentorship. If you don't learn to coach well and mentor well, then you can't transfer and translate all of these values to your kids. Okay, so coach versus caretaker is our framework on how to teach this. Most families get stuck in caretaker mode way too long and they don't move to coach. Does that make sense?

[Sal Destefano]

Totally. Yeah.

[Scott Donnell]

How many parents? Maybe it's the mom, maybe it's the dad. They find identity in solving all the kids problems, giving them the best life humanly possible, solving all their issues, paying for everything. Not helping the kids learn on their own, not coaching them up, they're caretaking them. The word caretaker is used, it's supposed to be used for when old people are in a nursing home dying. And your job as a caretaker is to remove all obstacles from their path, remove pain, remove issues so that they can die peacefully. There's no growth. Does that make sense? Yep. So we as parents, it's a great way to think about it. We want to move to coach. How do you move to coach? High expectations, right? These are standards for your kids and high edification. This is training and support and encouragement. The greatest coaches in the world, right? They, they have high expectations and high edification. Does that make sense? Okay, so if you have neither, you're in the caretaker box and that just raises entitled victims. But what if you are in the high edification but not the high expectation helicopter parent? Well, think about it. I have all the nurturing, I have all of the love and support, but I'm not setting expectations. I'm not showing them where they can go and setting the standards and believing in them and pushing them in that direction. I'm a coddler.

[Adam Schaefer]

No motivation.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah, yeah. A pleaser it actually raises kids with a failure to launch problem. It raises people pleasers. You see, I'm saying that's a. That's a big issue. You got to work on the expectations and the boundaries and standards that you. That you hold them to. And if you treat a kid two years older than they are, they always rise to the occasion. That's about expectations. Now let's flip it. What if you have super high expectations, but not the edification and love and support and training? Who are you?

[Adam Schaefer]

Terrible relationship dictator.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah. Dictator. Yeah. Drill sergeant. Yeah, that's it. Tough love.

[Adam Schaefer]

Terrible outcomes, too.

[Scott Donnell]

You have a trophy. You have a trophy family that will never call you when they leave. They won't come back. You probably won't see your grandkids much. Ever. See what I'm saying? Very capable. They're going to win at all costs. But you're raising vultures. They will win, but at what? But at what expense? See what I'm saying? That's why you need both. And I believe that courage is built when kids are coached, right? So they're solving their own problems. We go to the. We went to. We just went to Zambia with the kids. Took them. I took my nine and my seven year old to Zambia a couple like a month and a half ago. It was wild. Like, we didn't just go for a tourist thing. We went into the bush. Like, no roads. Six hours outside of Sonoma, like, on sand. We're cutting down trees in this huge gladiator truck with our friends, who also brought their two younger kids. And we went and did, like a missions trip, like, helping them with clean water and sharing, like, the love of Jesus with them and praying over them. And like, it was nuts. Well, for starters, the whole trip, my 9 and 7 year old ran the show. We get to the airport, I'm like, actually started packing. They're doing the packing. Then we get to the airport. I'm like, all right, guys, what's up? What are we doing? How do we get there? We got a long trip, 40 hours. They had to go to the desk, figure out everything. They're literally like, we gotta go to Zambia. They yell at the British Airways person. Person's like, nice to meet you. They're laughing. Well, I guess. Can I see your id? My son's like, I don't have an id. It was awesome. So they get the tickets, they check in the bags. We go through tsa. They're solving their own problems. They're going through customs, and I'm just there watching, asking questions. And everyone's like, you're crazy. This is ridiculous. Yeah. Maybe it took us 20 minutes longer the whole time, but my kids just learned 10 skills. My kids know how to travel internationally in second grade. Okay, that's. And it's funny. It's hilarious. It's fun. They're pumped to figure it out. They're finding the gates. They're finding everything. They found out how to get to the person that was meeting us in Zambia where people didn't really speak English. I mean, it was awesome. So that's the kind of thinking of how you can build antifragile children. Okay.

[Adam Schaefer]

And meanwhile, you're coaching them through this whole process. They need it. If they need it.

[Scott Donnell]

Oh, yeah. They went the wrong way like four times. And I'm like, I know we're going the wrong way, but they're gonna learn a great lesson from this. How often do we as parents actually let that happen? Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. And then it becomes bigger things later on if we don't.

[Scott Donnell]

That's right.

[Adam Schaefer]

If we don't, they. You have seven and nine year olds. You're getting close to the age where the Internet and smartphones become a thing and a challenge. And this is something that none of us in this room really grew up with. And it's a. It's a totally. It's a totally different challenge. I have four kids, but my two oldest, I was like nonchalant about it. It was like a new thing. And I'm like, whatever. I watch TV all the time. Not the same thing. My two younger ones are much, I mean, much, much more careful with the whole process. How do you feel about smartphones and access the Internet and what does that look like as your kids get older? Because once they get access to it, then taking it back just becomes a challenge.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah. We cover this in our connection series. Big time. Big time. In fact, one of my secret lives is running an anti human trafficking group with Tebow. It's now one of the largest in the whole world. And we use tech to fight.

[Adam Schaefer]

I donate to that organization.

[Scott Donnell]

That's awesome.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, that's great.

[Scott Donnell]

We use technology to fight. We've got over 200 people in organizations and hackers and like the best in the world. So I secretly am a world class expert in technology and the problems of it with our kids. Did you know that the average 12 year old has released about 800 times as much dopamine between, like, if you compare them to us at that age.

[Sal Destefano]

800 times US more.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

Wow.

[Scott Donnell]

Dopamine, the addictive chemical oh, yeah, yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

Is that just because they're. We're more desensitized as we've gotten older and at the early age they're just, it's primed and hit, hit, hit, hit.

[Scott Donnell]

Like because they're on their smartphones, every screen. Not just smart. Yes. Smartphones, but everything. IPads, TVs, Netflix, video games, even educational tech. It is triggered to create addiction. It is built to create addiction. When you swipe up, when you swipe up on anything, it is the same as pulling a slot machine. The same release of chemicals in your brain.

[Adam Schaefer]

You know what's crazy about this, Scott? Is that so we. It's so wild. Even TV has changed dramatically. So I have two little ones and I'll put on Mr. Rogers. That's what I grew up watching.

[Scott Donnell]

Yep.

[Adam Schaefer]

If you watch Mr. Rogers today, it is painfully slow. Yeah, it is painfully slow. In fact, I'll let my kids watch as much as they want. Because they turn it off.

[Scott Donnell]

Right.

[Adam Schaefer]

They'll watch it and be like, I'm done with this.

[Scott Donnell]

That's right.

[Adam Schaefer]

But you put on Cocomelon or one of these other. And it's like, quick, quick, quick. Switch, switch, switch. And it is engineered to do exactly what you're saying. It is absolutely wild.

[Scott Donnell]

Cocomelon is a great example.

[Sal Destefano]

Yes.

[Scott Donnell]

Everyone's doing this but Coco Melon. Did you guys know the story?

[Sal Destefano]

I know the research that's done.

[Scott Donnell]

Oh my gosh.

[Sal Destefano]

The research that they have and money they have spent on pure evil. Yes.

[Scott Donnell]

They literally sat 3 year olds down to stare at the screen. And whenever their eyes bounced to the giraffes and National Geographic change something right there, they would put another jump cut in. They realized that. So when we were young, the average cartoon from the 80s, the night, whatever, dark wing duck, like whatever you, it doesn't matter. The average jump cut early Superman or Spider man stuff from the 80s or 70s was 10 seconds. Okay. The average jump cut with Cocomelon is 1.5 seconds.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Scott Donnell]

Clip to clip to clip to clip. Even if one person's talking, you're going to change it to someone else. Then they realized because that hooks their brain and addicts their brain and releases more of the chemical. Then they realize if they use gamma colors, so high variation of colors, it literally locks in their brain. Like when we were young, we used to see like these evil magneto people having this like crazy thing come out of the screen of black and white and everyone's like zoned in like a zombie and they, they hypnotize you. That's literally happening, but you don't realize it. Everyone says, oh, well, I can't have Snapchat. Okay, well, yeah, it's probably a bad idea, but it's everything. It's happening on video games, it's happening on Netflix. It's happening on any screen. And then you realize, you wonder why your kid goes into fight or fight or fight orf flight survival mode. The moment that you turn it off, it's because you just ripped away the drug. So they lose their minds.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's withdrawal.

[Scott Donnell]

It's withdrawal. So there is so much here about the addictive nature of these phones. We have moved in our society away from parents saying, go outside. Now it's go online and it's happening in mass. One of my friends in our community said the other day, she said because she has three teenage boys that are now late teens, she said, man, if I could go back. The stuff they saw that we didn't know about. The moment you give your child a smartphone, you are saying goodbye to their childhood. And that just. That struck me when a mother says that about older teenagers. And it really, really, it impressed me deeply because she's right. People don't realize the access you give your children. Like, let's just talk about explicit for a second. Explicit content. It's not actually when you give your kids a smartphone that they see these things for the first time. The stats are not there. The stats show that maybe 80 to 90% is what we think. 80 to 90% of the time. That young boys especially will see explicit content for the first time is at a playdate at a friend's house or a sleepover or on the playground. If a school still has the ability. A kid sneaks a phone from an older sibling of one of their friends. That is most of where the first interaction comes. Those faces of death.

[Adam Schaefer]

For.

[Sal Destefano]

For me growing up, we can all.

[Scott Donnell]

Just think back and we.

[Adam Schaefer]

It was always an older brother.

[Scott Donnell]

It was always an older sibling.

[Adam Schaefer]

It just wasn't as accessible.

[Scott Donnell]

That's right. That's why we don't do sleepovers, period. I study the stats on grooming and sexual assault of young people, and nope, we just don't do it. It's not a rule in our home at all. Like, we'll do play dates with trusted families, very trusted. But we just don't do it. It's not worth the risk. So there's so much here. We work on safety on phones. We work on protecting kids. We're building. One of our groups is building the first pornographic, incompatible phone oh, wow. It's like a firmware update that goes onto a smartphone where you literally can't ever see anything. Like the filters can't be turned off, you can't send a picture on Snapchat, an explicit image, or you can't receive one. You can't have grooming information. One of the companies is called Game Safe. They will scan the phone for everything that's said, texts or messages or anything to your children or teenagers or even adult kids on your plan. Anything that looks like grooming, that looks like maybe it's like a 16 year old boy talking to your daughter or something, it will flag everything that matches any algorithm of grooming and it will block them and will send a notice to mom and dad. It's brilliant. That's how we protect them. But I mean, honestly, the first default is later the better. Start with a flip phone or an Apple Watch if you just need to get a hold of them or know where they are and go as long as you can before giving them a smartphone. And when you give them smartphones, make sure that there's protection. But just know that kids are smarter than you at technology. They know how to get around anything. 85% of young people know how to access an old piece of tech in the home without you even knowing.

[Sal Destefano]

I mean, I think you said it really well. Just a great way to look at it is just say goodbye to their childhood as soon as you do that. So you, when you look at your kid, whatever age you decide, you know, is that an age that you're ready to say goodbye to their childhood? And I think that's enough right there to probably stop a lot of parents in their tracks and go like, you know what, I could wait another year.

[Adam Schaefer]

Or two before the big challenge with that is, and this has always been a challenge, but especially now, right, is you're trying to do this with your kids and they're like, but mom, dad.

[Scott Donnell]

Everybody else, oh, my friend, I'm left out.

[Adam Schaefer]

This is how my friends communicate. This is how we talk. Now I don't have this and I can't hang out with anybody, I can't talk with anybody. And this is, for me, at one point this was like a big, like, what am I going to do with these with my younger ones? Because. And what I did is I found families that believe in the same thing who had kids, then they're around other kids, otherwise it's an uphill battle. And when they're a certain age, adolescents, their friends are more influential on them than you are.

[Scott Donnell]

That's right.

[Adam Schaefer]

So it's like you gotta pick, you gotta pick good families. If your kid doesn't have a phone and their friends don't have a phone, it's all good.

[Scott Donnell]

That's it. Your inner circle means more than almost anything else you'll do outside your home, picking the right families that have the same values. Right. So what we do is we do this inner circle exercise where you write down the top 10 qualities of the families you want to surround yourself with and then you find them. That is, it's as simple as that, because you are who the five people you spend the most time around and their friends have a correlation to you, and then the friends of their friends have a correlation to you as well. Your network is everything. It's not just your net worth, it's your legacy. Okay? And this, this even gets deeper. I mean, I was talking to some friends who were like, we literally moved. We straight up moved. Our 12 year old started getting in the bad rooms, bad groups. We literally moved. Best decision we ever made. And I was like, more power to you. Like, we have to be as protective as humanly possible on this.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, we move schools.

[Sal Destefano]

It's just something you, you got to.

[Adam Schaefer]

Consider like what's best for, for them and their experience because it does influence them so much.

[Scott Donnell]

There's a study that we did, we did a survey on our teenagers. Who's your mentor? Who's your closest mentor in your life? The majority of them said something that was not even someone they know, somebody YouTuber, someone online.

[Sal Destefano]

Oh, God, my son. Not to say dad would crush me.

[Scott Donnell]

Well, just think about what they're looking at all the time. YouTubers, influencers, Twitch streamers that have their 24, 7 their life online. It's like, I don't want my kid to be that person. I don't want them following those people's values. Like, this is wild. Their top mentor is a digital name that they've never met, but they've consumed 100 hours of their content. It's a wild thought. So that's why, like you said, friends and your inner circle are critical.

[Adam Schaefer]

What's helped me a lot with this understanding later is I understood this in the, in the field that I, I have expertise in, which is health and fitness. One thing that I've understood for a long time with health and fitness that for some reason I never expanded out to other things, I just understood it for health and fitness is if you want to be fit and healthy, you're going to be different. You're not Going to live like most people. You're not going to eat like most people. You're not going to sit around like most people. If you do what most people do, you are not going to have good health. You're not going to be fit. Just that's just the nature or that's just the world. That's true for everything.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

So the hard, the thing that I think people need to accept, it's really helped me a lot is under. Because that's the part that's hard is like we're different. Oh my God. We don't fit in. My friends, my kids friends are over here and those parents over there do that. And it's like, well, yeah, you gotta be very, you're gonna be different. Cause if you're like everybody else. Talk about the stats. This is, this is wild. This is the first time we've seen, I saw this data not that long ago. This is the first time we've seen the younger generation have more anxiety and depression than the older generations. We've never seen that before. Yeah, it's always been like, you know, middle age is where you get the kind of peak of that. Now we're seeing this peak with teenagers. Talk about that a little bit and what's maybe causing that.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah. So we have these things, we did a ton of research on our family stuff and we have, we have this thing called the four family forces. These are the four destructive forces that are attacking our culture. Okay, I will brief, I'll just go briefly through the four. All right. Because we don't have time. We do this like in a two hour unpack for people. The first of the four is the dopamine distortion I talked about. Okay. The access of advertisers like never before. We are the product. When you don't know, when you don't know what someone's selling, you're what they're selling. Okay, what's going on with screens and technology and the easy button for families? They it texts become the easy button. Right. Like you're saying it's, I gotta do laundry, I gotta cook something, I need a break. Like they just throw the phone and the lower the income level, the higher the percentage of time on screens.

[Sal Destefano]

Oh, interesting. I know that stat.

[Scott Donnell]

Cause they just, they don't have it.

[Adam Schaefer]

They don't have much, maybe as much time.

[Scott Donnell]

They don't have the margin.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah.

[Scott Donnell]

They don't have the other stuff that can be done. They just tough. It's hard. And we have a ton of empathy for them. And so that's why we help train on, like, other ways to help the kids learn and grow and help you. Right. Like, hey, do more with the kids than for them. Like, don't turn on a screen so you can cook dinner. Cook with them. Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yep.

[Scott Donnell]

Okay. Don't turn on a screen so you can do laundry and clean up and just have a minute. Do it with them. Yep. And the more that you're getting self discipline trained kids now, they're helping take the load off of you.

[Sal Destefano]

And you could do that at such an early age. I was doing that with Max when he was just walking, barely walking around.

[Scott Donnell]

It's fun, right? Right? It's awesome.

[Sal Destefano]

Yes.

[Scott Donnell]

And it's so freeing for parents. Yeah. So dopamine distortion is the first force. What does dopamine distortion create? It creates kids who are isolated and it creates kids who are fearful because that's what happens with all the technology. That's the two things that happens. Those are two building blocks of all the anxiety issues. Second force is the anti family force. There's so much going on in culture against family. Parents rights are trying to be ripped away like crazy. Okay. School has replaced the home for a lot of families. I'll just give you an example. When we were, when we were growing up, Home improvement was the top show. Two parents, boys in the home, real conversation. A neighbor, Wilson across the fence that you couldn't see his mouth but you. But they were friends and he's given advice and they actually knew their neighbor. Traditional home. Then fast forward a decade. What's the top show in the world? Friends. Go. Inner city. No mention of parents, no mention of real siblings. Unless it's a joke, lie, a punchline. Don't get married. Don't have kids. That's a waste. Live your own life. That's it. That happened from the 80s to the 90s. Then we get into Seinfeld. Same thing. These are the top shows for decades in our culture. The family force, the family focus, has been ripped apart. Okay, and what does that cause with kids, by the way? You can have an infinite amount of identities and genders. You can have all these. You just rip truth out of the ground. Okay? There is no truth. In fact, truth, you are your truth. You are your truth, which is so ironic, destructive. It's so contradictory to what truth actually is. For truth to be truth, something has to be an exclusive statement or else it's not true anymore. There's no Such thing as 1 +1 equals 2 and 1 +1 equals 3. Those are not both true. Those Are mutually exclusive statements. Now, you both might be wrong, but they're mutually exclusive statements. So the anti family force is getting stronger by the day, and especially with big companies who have access to our children because they know that if they can rip them away from the family, then they are now the product and they can make more money off of them. Okay, so that causes rudderlessness and confusion. You see where I'm going?

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. I mean, I determine my own path. I determine my own destiny. I determine everything about myself, my happiness.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

That is confusing, by the way. You'll never get the answer.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. And then when you get older, like, don't get married because it's. Half of them fail and it's a bad idea. Don't have Don and don't have children because children are a waste of resources. They're overpopulated and they're a burden.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. You can't have fun anymore.

[Scott Donnell]

That's right. See, this just. I can go on and on, but I don't have time. So confusion and riddles. Ness is. That's what that causes. Leads right into anxiety. The third one, instant gratification. We are living in an instant culture. You have doordash, Uber eats, Amazon Prime. One click to your door every day. You have Netflix. You have swipes on social. You. Everything is instant.

[Adam Schaefer]

You don't have to wait for anything.

[Scott Donnell]

Not. There's no more waiting till next Tuesday for the next episode to come on.

[Adam Schaefer]

Let's all watch them today.

[Scott Donnell]

Let's all watch it binge today. Binge watching is literally what I'm talking about. We are breeding a generation that is instantly gratified in every area. Let me ask you, what makes for a great investor?

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. Patience.

[Scott Donnell]

Delayed gratification.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, big time.

[Scott Donnell]

What makes for a great husband or wife? Delayed gratification. You need to learn to sacrifice in marriage.

[Adam Schaefer]

Lots of grace.

[Scott Donnell]

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

[Adam Schaefer]

Absolutely.

[Scott Donnell]

That's where the fragile comes from. That's why courage, we teach the courage series to solve that force. See, fragile is a big deal. And then the last one, I think Is fascinating. It's the information revolution. The AI revolution. You ready for this? A hundred. Okay, so let's talk about information doubling. Have you guys heard about this information doubling speed? It used to be a hundred years. All right, so before the Gutenberg Printing Press, information doubled every hundred years. All the knowledge in the world, all the data, all the written things, all the things people were learning.

[Sal Destefano]

This is Moore's Law.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah. Yep. Then it went to when the Internet came. Okay, so it's then. Then the. Yeah, no, I'm sorry. It was 25 years when the Gutenberg Printing press came out. It got collapsed by four. Okay, then the Internet comes out. 80s, 90s, 2000s, it really ripped. Google comes out. That dropped to a year. Every year, all the information and knowledge and data points in the world doubles. Okay, so let's just talk about that for a second. Now, if information's doubling every year, we have had problems now for decades where medical residents graduate in their 30s with half a million dollars of debt, and then immediately half the things they learned over their education are irrelevant. Yeah, there are new double blinded, placebo controlled studies that literally contradict what they learned.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's right.

[Scott Donnell]

So how the heck does a degree work now before AI comes out? This was the problem even three or four years ago. 82% of college graduates do not use their degree in their work.

[Sal Destefano]

82, huh? Well, I knew that.

[Scott Donnell]

56% of college students go to college, start getting debt, and they don't graduate. Okay, I'm not making a slap against college. I'm saying they better catch up quick or they're going to be left in the dust. Right. These are big problems. But now AI comes out. In the last two years alone, information went down from doubling every year to 13 hours. Thirteen hours, and it's going down every 13 hours. All the data, all the information and knowledge and clips and everything around the world, the explosion of the Internet is expanding at a rate that doubles exponential. 13 hours, what does that. Now that's crazy in its own right. All right, but what does that do to a kid? What does that do to a teenager who's trying to think about their career? Immediate overwhelm. An immediate feeling of obsolete. They feel obsolete. They're like, what do I do? Because I don't even. My job is not even gonna be. It hasn't even been created yet.

[Adam Schaefer]

Let me back you up, Scott. I'll go on to find something to watch with my wife sometimes at night. And there's so many options. We don't choose anything.

[Scott Donnell]

Exactly.

[Sal Destefano]

There's a term for that. What's that?

[Adam Schaefer]

There's a term choice, fatigue or something like that.

[Scott Donnell]

There's a term paralysis by analysis.

[Adam Schaefer]

I mean, so that's literally happens.

[Scott Donnell]

Same here.

[Adam Schaefer]

I said that because I know people listening have done that. You go on. When I was a kid, we had like, we had channels and we watched something, commercials.

[Sal Destefano]

I remember when I could afford my first video cassette As a young 17 year old moved out on his own and I had 11 years old video cassettes and I watched those 11 movies every night.

[Adam Schaefer]

You knew what you're gonna watch?

[Scott Donnell]

Yes.

[Adam Schaefer]

It was such an easy. Now I go on, I'm going through my wife's like, it's been 30 minutes, we haven't picked anything. It's almost time for bed.

[Scott Donnell]

You watch a bunch of trailers of.

[Sal Destefano]

Shows, then you turn it off.

[Scott Donnell]

I've been there too.

[Sal Destefano]

It's happened so many times.

[Scott Donnell]

It's a wild thought though.

[Adam Schaefer]

And I'm an adult, I'm not a teenager.

[Scott Donnell]

Oh, these forces are for all of us. They just have a different impact on children whose prefrontal cortexes are not developed.

[Adam Schaefer]

In fact, what'll happen is their brain is, because it's so plastic is going to develop around these inputs. It's a brain developing with 800 times the dopamine hits. It's a brain developing with fear and anxiety and. Oh, but I also decide my own whatever. And you actually have a brain that models itself around this, which is far worse.

[Scott Donnell]

That's right. So when you add up all those emotions and feelings and things I just said, fragile, confused, overwhelmed, isolated, addict like issues, that's what we call the anxious era. We're in the anxious era.

[Adam Schaefer]

Scott. I'm gonna, I'm gonna. I have to take it back to faith because I saw a study that showed there was, there was a huge study. Well, there's two things that are happening that love I'd love to ask you about. One of them is there was a study on what was the most protective thing for kids when it came to this anxiety and depression that we're seeing this explosion of. And what they found was the kids that have the strongest faith, the ones that go to church, read the Bible, whose parents have these morals with them or this practice with them, they had the best protection of all the factors. It was that. The second part of this question is we are, it's undoubtedly we're now seeing a revival, but this is a different revival than we've seen in modern history because for the first time ever, the younger generation is going to church more and reading the Bible more than the older generation. So Gen Z is doing it more than millennials and Gen X?

[Scott Donnell]

Yep.

[Adam Schaefer]

And for the first time in modern history, it's led by young men. Typically, it's the women that were leading it. So is that all connected? Is that what's. Is it because kids are themselves are like, I need some structure.

[Scott Donnell]

They're desperate for truth. Kids are desperate because of this anxious era that's been caused over the last decade. Kids are hungry for connection. They're hungry for meaning. They're hungry for truth. They're hungry for something real and tangible that can get them out of the nightmare. You guys know this. When the pain gets bad enough, you will do whatever it takes to get out of the pain.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's right.

[Scott Donnell]

And that is what anxiety and mental health is causing in the young generation. Okay? This is the first generation ever where parents are more worried that their teenagers will kill themselves than die in a car wreck.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's wild.

[Sal Destefano]

Is that true? Is that true?

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, that's wild.

[Sal Destefano]

That's interesting.

[Scott Donnell]

That is the fear. Now it's wild. This anxious era. And this is all we focus on every day, because our four Cs were created to directly fight those four forces. And yes, faith is such a big deal. Like, just think about it for a minute. If you can trust that God has your back, if you can trust that God has a plan, your fears go away. Oh, okay. If you're serving somebody, you can't worry. Mental health issues just start to dissipate when you're in service of somebody else, because now you're showing you're valuable to them.

[Adam Schaefer]

This is a secular data fact, by the way. Anybody listening right now, look at the data on this. I know this. I'm very familiar with it.

[Scott Donnell]

I'm giving you just general principles here, but I think this is why there's such a revival going on in faith. People are hungry for this. They don't want riddlesness. They want meaning. They can't just look around like, this is all for. Is this all that it is? Is this all I'm supposed to feel? Is this all like, this is terrible. There's got to be something more. And then they start looking, and then they find them. They find the Lord.

[Adam Schaefer]

I just talked about this study recently on the podcast. It was a huge study, 114,000 people. And what it found was. And I love this study because it's so simple, that exercise was one and a half times more effective for depression and anxiety than therapy and medication. Exercise yeah, aimless exercise. I'm not trying to like fix my. I'm just working out anything errands.

[Scott Donnell]

By the way, get out of your house and be active. Like that actually releases the counteracting chemicals that can actually get you doing something that relieves the anxiety and the stress.

[Adam Schaefer]

Do you think we've gotten too deep because we're also the most therapized society in all of history?

[Scott Donnell]

Oh man, don't get me started.

[Adam Schaefer]

And one of the hallmarks of depression is that self ruminating, thinking about myself, why am I this and what's my triggers and why am I. And just twist, twist, twist. Whereas exercise is not that. It also improves your physical health, which your brain is a part of. Yeah. What do you think about that, man?

[Scott Donnell]

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

[Sal Destefano]

It's going to piss some people off.

[Scott Donnell]

Well, there goes your comments. Yeah, but it's the truth. We have medicated ourselves and banded ourselves without going to the core.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's the great. It's the. I think it's the most common command in the Bible, if I'm not mistaken. Do not fear.

[Scott Donnell]

Do not worry. Do not fear.

[Adam Schaefer]

I think it's repeated more than almost anything else in there.

[Scott Donnell]

Worry and hurry are the enemy of faith. They're the enemy of all trust. It is literally the opposite, the evil one. If he can get us worried and scared and anxious as much as humanly possible, he knows he can rip us away from God. And the Jesus literally said, refuse to worry. Don't just know about it and try not to refuse to do it. And that is different. We, like you mentioned this earlier, ruminating, right? This is my problem with a lot of therapy. Okay. I think therapy is good. I think it's important to unpack things, but without a solution to it, without working on solutions and problem solving and getting past it and not making it your identity, without that, it becomes your identity. You ruminate on something and when you ruminate on a problem, guess what? It grows. When you worry more about something, it gets bigger. Not in the real world, but in your brain, in your mind, it takes over. Right. This is why Jesus said, refuse to worry. Do not be hurried. Do not be worried. Those things rip you away from me. Trust, have peace. I got it. I have a plan for you. It's a good one. Who of you by worrying can add a second to your life? You can't.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Scott Donnell]

In fact, one of the greatest lessons that I've learned late recently in my crazy life, giving up businesses and all the nuts, things that God's shown me, the biggest lesson I've learned is surrender versus performance. Can I unpack this for a second?

[Sal Destefano]

Not only that, maybe the way you set the table. Because I, at one point, I want to get to this about the business. And if that's where you're going, maybe you set the table with.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah, I'll give you some details.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah, your business journey. Because I don't know a lot about that. Imagine my audience doesn't know about the success that you've had in business and then what you've decided to do recently.

[Scott Donnell]

Now you guys want to get even wilder. How wild you want to get right now?

[Sal Destefano]

Let's hear it.

[Adam Schaefer]

We'll go as hard as you want, my friend. Let's go all in.

[Scott Donnell]

All right, let's go all in. Now we can. We'll still talk about family and parenting and legacy. That's. I love that. But there's deeper. There's deeper kingdom principles here at work. And if you get these, it'll help your family. Do you know what mammon is? So in the Bible, Jesus says something you can't say. You can't serve two masters, right? This is in Matthew 6 and Luke 16. He says, you can't serve both God and mammon is the word he uses. We think it's money. It was translated to money. But if you look at the Greek, he actually used a pronoun. He didn't say money. He says, you can't serve two masters. You'll love one, you'll hate the other. You'll be loyal to one, you'll despise the other. You can't serve both God and mammon. It is a capital letter pronoun. So now you gotta ask, what the heck is mammon? Yeah. I didn't know what it was until I did a deep research on this. Mammon is what Pharaoh called himself.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh.

[Scott Donnell]

The God of wealth and power and influence. Mammon is one of the worst chief princes of hell you could ever imagine. On the face of this planet. Mammon is the insatiable hunger for more. Mammon is greed and avarice and never having enough. You always have to have more. It's never good enough. I gotta have more. I gotta have more. Every entrepreneur struggles with this one, by the way. Mammon has you running on a rat wheel because you'll never be content. Mammon is what causes extraction, mindset, workaholism, rat wheel, life, slavery, actually. It's never enough. Let me give you an example. Something goes bad in the business, something goes bad in the gym. Something goes bad financially. If your first thought is how much money is in the account? How many months can we live off of? How long do we got? How much security do we have? What's our backup there? Financially, you're serving Mammon instead of surrendering and literally handing it, putting it in God's hands and saying, I'm just a steward. You're in charge. See, Mammon can give you the world. Mammon can give you wealth. Mammon can give you money and power and influence and achievement and all these things but it will never give you peace because Mammon demands performance. You are going to continue to perform and it's never going to be enough. And this is where we sacrifice our children. They used to sacrifice babies to Mammon in the Old. In the Babylonian times and the Syraphician times. And then thank God, that stopped, sort of. But today it didn't. No, think about it.

[Sal Destefano]

Just do it in a different way.

[Scott Donnell]

How many people are serving the idol of work and career and money and success and workaholism and achievement and sacrificing their kids, their marriages, their families in the process? Child sacrifice is alive and well and it will never give you peace. It will only give you toil. That's what Mammon does. That's why Jesus said, you can't serve both God and Mammon. Pick your master. But when you surrender, that's the answer. When you surrender to God, you immediately, instead of having to be in control which Mammon makes you feel like you have to be in control. You have to solve it. You have to get there. You're now complete and you immediately have peace. You have contentment. You're surrendered. You have trust. That's the basis of faith. And then here's the most beautiful part. God can now run on your behalf when you're fully surrendered now, God can work on your behalf. He can send his angels out concerning you. He's your rear guard. It says in scripture. He paves the path ahead of you. While you're surrendered and at peace doesn't mean you sit around lazy like a sloth and do nothing. No, no. You're just surrendered to his will and what he wants you to do next. Do you see the difference in living that this gives you totally. You immediately let go of your fists around everything. Peace. And the most beautiful thing about that. Don't you guys think that God could do a thousand times more on our behalf than we could ever do on our own? Of course, okay. The most beautiful thing about this way of thinking is that now all these things just start to get laid out before you. Things you never imagined would happen. And guess who gets the glory? God. He can't work on your behalf if you're serving Mammon, if you're performing and having all the control. He doesn't get the glory that way. He's in the break room waiting for you to surrender. So that's the difference. So you told me to go deep.

[Adam Schaefer]

You reminded me of. I hope I'm talking about the right guy. I think it was Gideon, if I'm not mistaken, where he was told to raise up an army and God said no. He had 30,000 men. He said, too big.

[Scott Donnell]

Chop it down, chop it down.

[Adam Schaefer]

He brought it down to 10,000. No, no, no, no, it's too big. He brought it down to 300. And he's like, why are you sending me out to fight this impossible battle with 300 people?

[Scott Donnell]

The ones who lapped up the water with their mouths?

[Adam Schaefer]

So that when you win, everyone knows that's right, not you. So sometimes he takes things from you so that when you come out the other end, you're like, oh, that wasn't me.

[Scott Donnell]

And that's what happened to me. It's exactly what happened to me. I was, I mean, I have been Mr. Pursuit for 20 years. 10 companies, exits, IPOs, failures. Like, guys, I've been up and down the chain many times.

[Sal Destefano]

What do you think?

[Scott Donnell]

And I had. And when I finally surrendered, everything changed.

[Sal Destefano]

Because you had such a good upbringing and such a great example and this family heritage, I'm sure. And you're a self aware guy. What was it that was driving you to keep reaching that you think it was like, because you wanted to live up to grandpa or surpass? Like what, what caused you to, to chase that drive?

[Scott Donnell]

Just, I don't, I never really had any of those competitive win. Okay, I had, I like winning. Yeah, I, I, I didn't realize before how much I was looking sideways instead of looking up. I actually believe that there's no such thing as competition. Competition is only comparison. See, I'm not talking about sports or working out. That's play. But competition drives us to try to beat and compare to everybody else. Either they're better than me and I gotta beat them, they gotta lose, I gotta win, I gotta get better. I'm jealous, I'm envious, I'm fearful if they're too good. See, this is just comparing. So we're gonna kill ourselves in our company and beat the Competition and trounce everybody else. Okay. Or they're not as good as you and you can look down on them with pride and ego. Say, thank God I'm not like those people. You're still competing. Okay? This is. This is not real. All competition is. Is just comparison. Do you know what I think the Kingdom principle is supposed to be? I think in the Kingdom, compassion drives you. Compassion is the fuel. Compassion is the love for your customer. Not trying to kill another company doing the same thing. Compassion is loving a friend or another mom or another family near you instead of trying to look better, have more money, have better cars, have better stuff. My kids are better than yours. See, comparison is what the thief of all joy. Unfortunately, we have raised children to compete, but all they're really doing is comparing sports. Is not that sports is having fun, like playing. You can learn discipline that way. Winning and losing, it's a great thing. But what happens the moment you tie your identity to winning?

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, that can happen in sports too.

[Scott Donnell]

That's. It is now I'm going to cheat to win. Now I'm going to trounce everybody else. Now I'm just going to compare.

[Adam Schaefer]

And then what do I do when I'm old?

[Sal Destefano]

I've always framed it, though, as competing with myself. Right. Even the way I look at the way we operate.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah, that's not what I'm talking about.

[Sal Destefano]

That's a good thing because even the way I look at. Because I think you can fall into that trap of comparing to others and other. Like when I look at our business every year and we're 10 years running, and I talk. I talk about all the time like I'm competing with last year. I'm competing with myself, with us, with what we like. Not. Not looking outward of, oh, well, that business is doing this.

[Scott Donnell]

But why? Huh? But why?

[Sal Destefano]

To make me a better. A better version of myself. It forces me to grow and learn.

[Scott Donnell]

For what purpose?

[Sal Destefano]

Well, yeah, so that's, you know, should be for him, for his glory, for your family. Yeah.

[Scott Donnell]

For your clients, for the listeners. That's really. I mean, I know where your heart is, but you're driven by that.

[Sal Destefano]

So it's all. No, that's not true. I just actually had this conversation with Kyle yesterday, one of my. One of our really good employees. I said the thing that motivates. And he was asking me why I no longer cared about building $100 million company. That used to be my goal in my 20s. I said, I don't care about that because I realized that I have all the things that I ever needed for myself and my life and my family. My family is secure now. What drives me is seeing me help you or anybody else that's in our company that has goals like that that serves way more of a purpose for me to help this thing. If it stays the same forever for me, I'm fine.

[Scott Donnell]

You just, you just defined compassion. You literally just defined it. You got to the heart of it.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Scott Donnell]

So many entrepreneurs, so many people in the workplace are so busy. I gotta hit this because someone somewhere told me that I gotta want to be a billionaire. I had the same goals, man. Billions, hundreds of millions. I'm gonna hit this. I'm gonna hit this award inc. 500. Like all this stuff and all I was really doing was trying to get rankings and competition looking good to my friends and like all that kind of thing. Yeah, what you just said, that's a heart of compassion. I think compassion driven companies always win over competition driven companies. Because the compassion driven companies don't waste time and energy on what other people are doing. They're focused solely on their teams and their customers and their audience. And they're driving into what they need, how we can love them and serve them and meet their needs. That's where all their energy is going. They're not worried about what other people are doing. They end up lasting longer and having more results. The competition driven companies have cutthroat, they have dog eat dog cultures. They see people as cogs in a machine. You are an expense to me, not an investment. We're gonna do everything we can to kill and murder the competition. What are you talking about? If there's another company in the world trying to serve the same people you're trying to serve and solve their problems, Lord bless them, thank God. We need more people trying to solve this problem. Because you guys have devoted your lives to care about a problem, to help people. Thank God there's other people helping people get healthy. See, that's a compassionate heart. But when you're competition driven, what does that lead to in business? Fraud, cutthroat practices, Ponzi schemes, shortcuts, scandals, affairs like the list just goes on and on and on. See, this is why we have is competition. Can it be healthy if you're playing and you're having fun? If you're wanting to get better, 1% better every day. That's not what I'm talking about. That's play. That's a good thing. That's learning discipline. But I think instead of just competing all the time, we should Think about compassion. It keeps you from all those problems I just described. It keeps you from making winning the identity. And it's a kingdom principle. Right. That's my. That's.

[Adam Schaefer]

You brought up sports. I think the best example of that in sports is when you have two teams doing their best. At the end, one of them wins, but you see respect in both of them. They both look at each other and they go, oh, man, great battle.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Like, that's. And everybody loves that. Everybody loves to see that.

[Scott Donnell]

You guys know what I'm talking about. You're doing a wad against someone else. You're working out your plane. You don't hate the person. You don't want them to get hurt or trounced or be like, no, no, you're just playing. You're having fun. Win or lose, it doesn't have any bearing on your identity.

[Adam Schaefer]

Right.

[Scott Donnell]

Good game.

[Adam Schaefer]

Right.

[Sal Destefano]

Well, I think the. The most valuable thing that sports give is actually the. All the great lessons within the game of getting better or winning. Right. It's all the overcoming adversity. It's actually the losses. It's the losses where you win the most.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah.

[Sal Destefano]

You know, when you really think about. In sports and so. And if you're going to be really good and really grow, you have to accept the losing part and not identify with, I'm a loser. It's like, no, it's a great opportunity for me to improve and get better. And to me, that's the best lesson from sports that we could get is that.

[Adam Schaefer]

Tell me about your surrender. You had said that earlier, that you had been chasing. You were stuck on that performance, and then you learned to surrender. You said it took you something like 20 years. What happened?

[Scott Donnell]

Something died. Last November, we. We felt the Lord call. My wife and I felt the Lord call us to just hand over our business, just lay it up on the altar. There was some things I felt like he wanted me to talk about. Some of the stuff we're talking about today that I wasn't able to do. It was a incredible company. $50 million company. Loved it. Built it up from the ground up. And there was some restrictions and issues and attacks. And the Lord just said, how much do you trust me? Put it on the altar. You don't put losses on the altar. You put gifts on the altar. And then watch what I do. How much do you trust me? And so ultimately I said, I do trust you. And we gave it all up. We handed over the equity. It was eight figures.

[Sal Destefano]

Just walked away from it.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah. Retired it. I Mean it's a great company. 40,000 families like growing successful. It's not like a failing company. It's a good company.

[Sal Destefano]

Yeah.

[Scott Donnell]

I love it to. I love it still to this day.

[Sal Destefano]

It's a great company is without giving up details that you can't talk about. Was it you? Did you guys getting to 50 million. I imagine you might have. Did you eventually take on money and give a board? Okay.

[Scott Donnell]

So you take on a lot of money.

[Sal Destefano]

So this is what happens.

[Scott Donnell]

A lot of board.

[Sal Destefano]

So you had a board and you had people to answer to.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah. And I just felt really led to be talking about some of these deep issues of family and legacy and faith and all these things and yeah. Ultimately said how much you trust me? Can you surrender? Can you take your firm tight grip on this behemoth and let it go?

[Adam Schaefer]

How did you hear that voice? What did it sound like?

[Scott Donnell]

It was through prayer and it was a nudging of the Holy Spirit and it was confirmed through my wife and I.

[Adam Schaefer]

So she's like I feel the same thing.

[Scott Donnell]

Yep. And then we had a couple mentors pray with us and they felt the same trepidly to be honest. And then sought the Lord in scripture because I believe that that's the living active word of God sharpening a two edged sword. Like I've had a thousand circumstances in my life where the Lord speaks straight through a verse that I open to. I've done this, I've played Bible roulette. And that happened. And it went straight to God and mammon and not worrying. Follow the Lord on your deathbed, you'll be glad. So we gave it up. We gave up the millions we put into it. We gave up the social media. I went to zero last year. Like we gave up all the social. I had no followers last year. I just went into the cave, gave up our best selling book, gave up the domains. The IP was handed all over, said, go with God. We love this mission. Serve people. We're called to this.

[Sal Destefano]

Is that why I saw your following go from like you had a huge following and now you're back down to like 60 something thousand or whatever. Is that. Is that what happened? You switched. Oh wow. I wonder what happened.

[Scott Donnell]

We handed it over because I'd been following you longer than we changed the usernames and that's fine. Like we gave it up. We wanted them. I want them to be successful.

[Sal Destefano]

Yes.

[Scott Donnell]

It's a great company. They're focused on helping families create value and financial literacy and teaching all these gigs. I love it.

[Sal Destefano]

So okay. So walk me through this so I understand.

[Adam Schaefer]

Were they like, yeah, cool, thanks for giving it to us. Where they're like, you're crazy, what are you doing?

[Sal Destefano]

I'm sure they actually I was say, I'm sure they wanted you still. You built it. So. Okay, walk me through this.

[Scott Donnell]

And I'm. And the agreement was, you know, I'm going to go off and work on faith and family and legacy stuff and help people and then they're going to focus on what they're focusing on and everything's good.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay.

[Scott Donnell]

So publicly that's what we say and everything is good. I have no issues with them.

[Sal Destefano]

Okay, so step.

[Scott Donnell]

But yes, it sounds crazy. I'm not going to lie.

[Sal Destefano]

So, okay, step me through this because I totally know exactly what probably happened or how this could happen. I mean we're in a place like that right there. We could have the opportunity to take on a. I get emails every day of people trying to give us money to scale this thing even bigger and faster. And we, one of the reasons why we don't is we don't ever want to give control or ever be censored on what we say. We've talked about this since day one. That we always want to be able to speak our minds and have the conversations that are on our heart that we feel like and we never want to give that up even for X amount more money. But let's say I did or we did and then you know, it takes it to 50 million or 100 million and then I realize we're being censored and then we're going to walk away. But I feel like if I were to do that I would still cash out and then just give it up. I wouldn't just hand it completely over. So you gotta step me through that thought process because I feel like you could still serve him and still give up. And, and by the way, walking away from a fifty million dollar machine is no matter whether you cash out or not cash out, incredibly difficult to do no matter what.

[Adam Schaefer]

So yeah, why there no cash out?

[Sal Destefano]

Why the let's.

[Scott Donnell]

Because we didn't want to. It's one thing to be like, well I'm going to get my due from this or I'm going to, I'll just stay, keep it all and you guys grow and I'll get the benefit later. We felt the Lord telling us full stop, make sure that the investors and everybody gets full benefit and retire your shares.

[Adam Schaefer]

You said something interesting that you don't put losses on the altar, you put.

[Scott Donnell]

Gifts, you Put gifts.

[Adam Schaefer]

And this is Cain and Abel.

[Scott Donnell]

This is, you know, like Abraham and Isaac.

[Adam Schaefer]

Abraham and Isaac. Even more. Yeah. It was your child.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah. It was terrifying. I'm not gonna lie. I didn't do it happily.

[Adam Schaefer]

What happened after that? You said a bunch of miracles happened after that.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah. So I'll just give you a few of them. So we did it not expecting anything. So you don't. This is the thing you don't give to give.

[Sal Destefano]

It's not a gift.

[Adam Schaefer]

No, you're not letting.

[Sal Destefano]

It's not a gift if you give it with anything expecting in return.

[Scott Donnell]

Ye. My mentor said this to me. That really helped me after this happened. He said, look, few are. Many are gifted. Many are gifted, but few are anointed because of the cost of the oil. Wow. Many are gifted, but few are anointed because of the cost of the oil.

[Sal Destefano]

That's a powerful line.

[Scott Donnell]

It is. It changed my whole framing of my life. And since that moment, what's happened in my life has proved that true in countless ways.

[Sal Destefano]

That fast already?

[Scott Donnell]

Oh, my goodness, yes. I'll just give you a few crazy things that happened. So the day after we gave it up, we owed $86,000. And I. And I'm like, uh, oh yeah, Hope Lord, what? You're in charge. Because I surrendered it all. And I'm like, maybe we have to get a heloc. Where we're going to try to sell some, you know, some stock stuff. Margin more. We're already millions margined on our stock to even do other stuff before. So it sounds like I gave it up and was like, now we're good. Gave it up and we had issues. Buddy calls me my friend John. He goes, hey, remember that investment in the veterinary clinics from years and years ago? We didn't know if they were working or not. Well, they're working. Here's the first distribution. 86 grand.

[Sal Destefano]

Shut up. Shut your face to the.

[Scott Donnell]

Shut your $10$.

[Adam Schaefer]

I've heard a few stories exactly like this 86 grand to the dollar.

[Sal Destefano]

Guy gives me chills.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's rad.

[Scott Donnell]

This next day, my CPA calls me because you're not going to believe it. Remember that the double tax that the Arizona Department of Revenue took from us a couple years ago that we've been fighting to get back and. And they just went dark and they admitted they took 150 grand or whatever it was. They never paid us back. He goes, check your account. So like two years before Wells Fargo drained our checking to nothing. We're like, is this even Legal. How does this happen? And they fought forever. And then they went dark. And everyone just kind of gave up for a while. Until maybe the next tax season, we'd try again. Hit our count. Second day, which covered another debt that we owed. Third day, get a call from a guy gave his life to the Lord the night before. From our conversation, big tech company. I made one introduction and it turned into like this crazy license deal with them. Huge win. He goes, my wife and I gave our lives to Christ. From your conversation. And we prayed this morning for the first time. And we felt the Lord tell us to give you 150,000 shares of our company.

[Adam Schaefer]

No way.

[Scott Donnell]

At penny warrants Wild. Now, let me be clear. God is not a slot machine. No, you don't put quarters in hoping to get dollars out. Nobody gives to get. When we put things on altars, we are putting them in for the Lord. Even if none of this happened because.

[Adam Schaefer]

You don't know what his will is.

[Scott Donnell]

No, I don't know what his will is. His will is not for everyone to be millionaires and billionaires. And that's. No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm just telling you the miracles that happened in my life. The next day I get a call from a very prominent, I won't say who, very prominent organization in the world with great faith based leaders. You can probably guess a few of them. They're very, very well known. They asked me to run the whole thing. They're like, you're one of the greatest leaders we've ever met. We want you to run our entire massive organization. And it was the honor of a lifetime. And I went, well, I'm doing this new thing where I surrender fully and I have a gold medal in running headlong after things that God did not tell me to do. So I'm gonna pray. I'm honored. I thank you. I needed to hear this. I think maybe the reason was I needed to hear this from you. Thank you so much. Because I've been in the dumps. I think I'm the worst. You know, this has been so hard. So ultimately I didn't take that, but I needed to know the Lord was sharing it. Next day, somebody huge at the department of ED reaches out. They're like, we saw your content. The old content, they didn't even know.

[Adam Schaefer]

I gave it all up.

[Scott Donnell]

They're like, we saw your content. We are interested in potentially, if you want to help us run the Department of Education and what the future of this looks like, we're going to Dismantle it from the feds and the list just goes on of this kind of stuff.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's wild.

[Scott Donnell]

I said the same thing to them. Billionaire organizations asking me to do the same, like, crazy stuff. Few days later, massive earnout of an old exit of a business that covered our margin on our stock. Cover the margin. Like almost the dollar covered it, millions covered it. So within like a week, we were whole. And I'm just like spinning, like, how good are you, Lord? You take care of everything. You take care of the lilies of the field, the birds of the air. Why would I ever worry? And I've had more peace, more joy, more rest, and more of God's paving the way that I could never imagine since that happened than any time in my life combined. And I have gone many, many years in businesses, rat race, like hustle drive, 100 hour week, sleepless nights, pain, like very difficult stuff. And I think that I'm going to stay in the surrender model because it's a beautiful life. Right after this happened, a few months after this happened, my wife, Amy, she's an angel. You know, we haven't had it easy. We've had struggles. Four little kids, lots of businesses. You can imagine. It's crazy. For the first time in our marriage, she gave us a 10 out of 10. Usually it's like, yeah, we're doing good, like seven, eight. And I'm like, yeah, I'll take it. She goes like, we have, we're at a 10. This is awesome. Miracle with little kids, I mean, it's just never had more time with my kids. Never had more being in tune with the Holy Spirit. Never had such a wild amount of trust. Never been so bold to talk about Jesus. Actually, never in my life. And not in a way that's like, you have to do this, you have to do this. It's like, hey, I think this can help you. Can I pray for you?

[Adam Schaefer]

That's great.

[Scott Donnell]

And seeing breakthroughs in other people's lives where they get to meet the real Jesus, not the religion, do this, do that stuff that everybody's traumatized about, the real Jesus, that loves us unconditionally, that gave his life for us, for us to receive it as a free gift, it cost him his life. That's the power of God. And when we receive him, the Holy Spirit enters our hearts. He enters us. He's the helper, the healer. He can help us. This is such a blessing. I don't know why everyone doesn't do it. It's an unbelievable blessing in someone's life if they just open themselves up to it. But we are so quick to close ourselves off and serve our own way, perform ourselves out of it.

[Sal Destefano]

Do you think the two calls from the big companies were a test?

[Scott Donnell]

Yes, they were both a test and an encouragement.

[Sal Destefano]

Right, right.

[Scott Donnell]

And it wasn't just two. There was. There's been eight massive things and each time I go into prayer on it. Oh, it happened, you guys. It's this non stop surrender. It's such a fun way to do it. So a few months ago we had a property manager steal a bunch of money from us up in Washington. And I was about to do detective, like get a personal investigator and see what they're doing. It's probably like they're robbing multiple people, you know, I knew that was probably what's going on. And we go to church. I sent a text, I'm like, hey, I just found this out. Next steps we'll figure out. I'll figure out tonight what I'm going to do next with this. But I just want to let you know, I know I go to church, pray about it, but I'm in surrender mode. And I felt read in scripture, it was about loving your enemies, it was about giving to those who want from you. Give him like your tunic as well. I was like, huh, okay Lord, what do you want me to do here? Start praying. I'm quiet for a minute. Holy Spirit's like, if he comes clean tonight by like 9:30, forgive the whole debt. I'm like okay, 9:00 clock that night he sends me a long text. I did it 100% responsible and I'm sorry. And I was taking care of my mom, died taking care of two homes with my ex. All these crazy things. I will get half the money for you tomorrow and I'll try to figure out the other half and blah blah. Respond text. Hey. So God told me this morning at church that if you came clean, I'm just going to forgive you your whole debt. So you're totally forgiven. You never owe me a dime. You're good man. Thanks for telling me the truth. Go with God, take care of your family. Make sure you don't do this again. Go and sin no more. Guy totally comes clean, gives his life over to Jesus. So just. Dude, that stuff's happened like crazy. I needed. We were 20 grand shy on our bills like a couple months ago and because we're supporting the anti trafficking we're doing, I'm not just, I'm still giving and I'm just waiting for the Lord, it's like, you either do it or I go broke. Whatever you want. And we're 20 grand shy on the donations. And then, like, the team, because we're building some of our new family content, we're just getting going with it again. Get a text. I was like, all right, Lord, totally surrender. You're up to you. Next morning, I get a DM on Instagram. Random group wants me to speak and headline the conference for 20 grand. They offered me 30, and I was like, actually, no, 20 is good. How wild is that? Because I was praying while I was talking to him and you guys, I'm just saying there's a whole other levels to this faith thing, but if you get clear on the kingdom of heaven, if you get clear, all that matters is God's rule and reign and his love for us, like, flooding this world. Well, it'll change your life.

[Adam Schaefer]

I am, I'm. I am so happy that you're. Feel free to speak that way and communicate the things that you are good at talking about with kids and families, but not feel censored to talk about the most important things. I think that's a complete gift. I think that's a total gift.

[Scott Donnell]

It's so freeing.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's awesome. This has been an unexpected but amazing podcast.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah. Yeah. A lot of topics.

[Adam Schaefer]

Appreciate it. Yeah, it's been great, man. And it's cool to see. I can't wait to see where you're going to go with all this.

[Scott Donnell]

It's in God's hands.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah. So we're. We just launched a couple weeks ago our Fig and Eagle program. So we just. We. We're calling it mentor family, actually. So mentor family is basically the coach versus Caretaker kind of idea. But I think families, there's two reasons why you need to learn the mentor family approach, which is all the best strategies we've learned from the top. Number one, you gotta learn to mentor your kids. Because if you don't mentor these things and transfer them and translate them well, instead of just teaching and telling, then it dies with you. All of the stuff, the important stuff, Right? So mentorship is critical for future generations, but mentorship is also critical for the families around you. Does that make sense? I think it's the call of every good family in the world to be mentoring other families along the way. So that's why we call it mentor family. So Fig and Eagle, mentor family. Our goal is 10,000 families. I think we'll make a huge impact with that across the world.

[Adam Schaefer]

I love it. I love the idea.

[Sal Destefano]

So great.

[Adam Schaefer]

So great. Yeah, Scott, it's been awesome. Yep. Thank you so much for coming on the show, my friend.

[Sal Destefano]

Hopefully won't be the last time.

[Scott Donnell]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

We'll think we have you back. We'll have you back.

[Scott Donnell]

If you're okay with that next time I'm here. All right. All right.

[Adam Schaefer]

Thank you.

[Scott Donnell]

Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB super [e-mail] the RGB Super Bundle includes maps, Anabolic maps, Performance and Maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks from, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30 day money back guarantee and you can get it now. Plus other valuable free [e-mail] if you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on itunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump.