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2857: How to Build Generational Wealth That Actually Lasts (It's Not About Money) w/ Scott Donnell
01:40:19
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- [00:00]
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- [00:30]
Justin Andrews
If you want to p and expand
- [00:33]
Scott Donnell
your mind, there's only one place to go.
- [00:36]
Sal Destefano
Mind Pump. Mind Pump.
- [00:38]
Scott Donnell
With your hosts Sal Destefano, Adam Schaefer
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Justin Andrews
and Justin Andrews, you just found the
- [00:44]
Sal Destefano
most downloaded fitness, health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, Scott Donnell came on the show to talk about creating generational wealth. So Scott and his team studied the most successful families in America and he breaks it down and teaches us and you how you can create this generational wealth and success in many different aspects for your family. It's a really fun episode. Now this episode is brought to you by a sponsor, Huel. This is a meal replacement drink. It's high protein and plant based. So this is a great way to have a meal on the go. Better than snacks, better than heavily processed foods. It's high in protein, it tastes amazing and it's really good for you. And again, the protein is high but it is a meal replacement. So you got some carbs and some fats in there. Drink it instead of breakfast when you're on the go. Go check them out. Go to huel.com that's h u e l.com mindpump use the code mindpump for 15% off. We also have a sale on our workout programs. Buy any Maps 15 style workout program. Get any other Maps 15 style workout program for free. Buy one, get one free. It's happening right now. Go to maps15bogo.com all right, real quick.
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Adam Schaefer
If you love us like we love
- [02:01]
Sal Destefano
you, why not show it by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs or training gear over@mypumpstore.com I'm talking right now.
- [02:09]
Scott Donnell
Hit pause.
- [02:10]
Adam Schaefer
Head on over to my pumpstore.com.
- [02:12]
Scott Donnell
that's it.
- [02:12]
Adam Schaefer
Enjoy the rest of the show.
- [02:14]
Sal Destefano
Scott, welcome back.
- [02:16]
Scott Donnell
I'm back.
- [02:17]
Sal Destefano
So we're going to talk about preparing your children for generational wealth. Now let's talk about wealth. Are you talking about money? Getting them set up for a lot with lots of money. What do you mean exactly?
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Scott Donnell
Wealth is way deeper than money, okay? The key is to not ruin your kids with wealth. See, here's. Here's the main thing I want to start off this with. Wealth is way more than money. Like, it's generational wealth. It's generational values, generational relationships, generational mindsets, and financial competencies. Do you have to prepare your kids not just for your wealth, but for their own? How to create their own, how to multiply and steward yours, but how to create their own? And wealth is relationships. It's values being passed on. That's. That's true wealth inside of a family. So wealth is way bigger than just money.
- [03:03]
Sal Destefano
Okay?
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Scott Donnell
But most people, they. The mistake is they think their job is to die with the highest net worth possible, right? And they forget all the other critical pieces that actually stabilize future generations. The values, the relationships, the mindsets, the depth of connection, right? Instilling all the right things in their kids. They don't know how to do those things. And so they think that the answer is just to build as high as a net worth as possible so that future generations are. Okay. Well, what they don't realize is an entitled kid will destroy your wealth. They'll just be destroyed. And an anxious kid, a victim mindset kid, will be swallowed whole by your wealth. You'll ruin them. See, this is why this is such a big deal.
- [03:52]
Adam Schaefer
I love this conversation because I know lots of people that are rich that are actually poor, and I know lots of poor people that are actually rich. So a lot of people tie that to net worth all the time. But you can have lots of money and net worth, be absolutely poor in life and miserable. And I know lots of people that don't have a lot but have incredibly rich lives. And so I think tying that all together is so important if you're going to pass this down for generations. And I know, or at least I won't speak for everybody else, but I'm pretty sure everybody in this room wants to be able to pass that down to our next generation. So when you think of that, is there a foundation like that you build on? Like when you teach or coach families how to do that? What does that look like?
- [04:42]
Scott Donnell
Yeah. Yeah. So let's start with this question. If you could pass one thing down to your kids and grandkids, out of these three, what would it be? Number one, all your money and stuff. Your Net worth. Number two, all of your knowledge, or number three, all of your wisdom and experience.
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Sal Destefano
Oh, three.
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Scott Donnell
Easy, easy. Right?
- [05:01]
Adam Schaefer
Yeah.
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Scott Donnell
Well, when you frame it that way, it's three. Yeah. But if you look at your bank account, if you look at your calendar, if you look at your actual life, which one are you focusing on? So few families. Like, when I talk about generational wealth and success, it's so much deeper than number one. Everybody, this is why the financial world has hijacked the word legacy. I want it back. They think that legacy is diversifying and stewarding your net worth so that you die with as much as humanly possible to give to your kids and grandkids. That is literally just focusing on number one. No, focus on two. Or three. And three is really the key here. So if you really want generational success, you need to focus on heritage more than you focus on inheritance. And if you nail the game of heritage, then it doesn't matter what you leave them. See, it's not going to ruin them. They're going to be grateful for it. Right, but it's not going to ruin them or destroy them or mean anything. You want to set them up well, but you have to set them up well with all the other things besides money.
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Adam Schaefer
First, I think it's obvious what focusing on inheritance looks like. Give me an example what focusing on heritage looks like.
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Scott Donnell
Heritage is a last name that means something. So this is raising kids to know, like, what our family stands for, what our values are. And you can't just come up with some list of character traits. That's not how it works. Like, think of, like, employees in a company. It's like how many employees worldwide actually can rattle off every single value and mission statement, everything. That's not how it works. Kids think in story. How good are you, for instance, at telling all of the stories of your heritage? Do you tell the stories of your ancestors, of your parents, the grandparents, how you and mom met, how you came to faith, the hardest days of your life, the milestone moments? Do your kids know those stories and can pass them on to their kids? What about making your kids the hero of the family values? See, kids carry on a heritage when they are part of hero stories of living out the values of the family so they need to be grafted in to those stories that display the values. That is how you start to build heritage. It's more about what you leave in your kids than to them. That's how you get to number three. Because on our deathbed, we're not going to sit there checking Our bank account. We're not going to wish we made a little more money. We're going to want to have one more meal with our family. We're going to go one more walk down the street or down the beach with a spouse. We're going to want to spend a little bit more time with the people we love. That's all that matters. At the end of our lives and on my deathbed, I want to have thought, okay, my kids blew by me in their faith and values, in the mindsets and skill sets in their relationships. Their marriage was stronger than mine. And Amy's right, Their relationship with their kids was stronger than my relationship with my kids. And yes, they're more financially competent, they're more skilled in their impact. I die on my deathbed happy as a clam when my kids blow by me in those areas and the grandkids blow by them and the great grandkids are starting to do it to the grandkids, that's legacy.
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Sal Destefano
You helped coach me not that long ago. So my wife and I got on a call with you. How long was it? Maybe two months ago? Yeah, and a half ago, something like that. And you gave us some great tips and some advice, but one thing you did that has been so valuable and I would love for you to speak to this was you encouraged me to speak identity into my kids every night. And so what this looks like, and I'll pull up, I'll pull up one that I give my daughter. And now I was like, okay, I'm gonna do this, but I'm not sure how this is gonna work. I think my 5 year old would be cool with it. But let me try this on my 16 year old. Let's see what happens there. And so I'll read what I have for her. And so every night I go into her room and I do this with all my kids, okay, including my niece. My niece lives with us and we do this with her as well. She's 18. So I go into my kids room and I speak identity to them. And so my daughters, my 16 year olds looks like this. It says, you are intelligent, you are disciplined, you are brave, you are capable. We are blessed by you. We delight in you. God has a plan for you. God made you on purpose and you will do great things. And so I wrote this and I speak this to her at night. Now I was like, you know, okay, let me do this. I trust Scott. He's got some great advice. This sounds cool, but she's a teenager. See how she receives this she loves this when I go in and I say this to her and I don't care what mood she's in. And again, she's a 16 year old girl so the moods are like the wind, they can change quite a bit. She lights up every single time I go in there. And just to add to this. And of course my little ones do, but I expected it from my little ones. I do this for my niece. She's 18 and there were a couple nights that I missed, I forgot we had family over or whatever and then I went in and did it again and both of them said the same thing, like you forgot the past couple nights to do this. And so explain to me why this is so powerful because I didn't understand it at first but now I see these again. These teenage kids, which you don't expect. Teenagers don't light up for a lot of things, but they totally do. Like what's happening when I'm saying these things to my daughter every night.
- [10:38]
Scott Donnell
Identity is the most essential thing that we can give to our kids and our teens. The problem with identity is that it can't be earned, it can't be self prescribed. Its identity is received. God gives us an identity, we're made in his image. Identity can only be bestowed onto someone. Anytime you try to clamor for your own identity, it's hollow. This is why it's so critical inside of the home to be speaking identity into our spouses and our kids all the time. So this is like God's view of them, how we see them, how much, how loved they are, how valuable, the traits you see in them, the beautiful things about them that you love. You speak identity into them. This, that is an anchor for the rest of their life. Like I don't think you realize man, like the long term impact that that has on your daughter. She's not going to be taken advantage of. You just insulated her from the wrong guys. Like, man, I'm telling you that's worth all the gold, man.
- [11:58]
Sal Destefano
So when I go with this, where I think about this and I'd love your input on this is, and I've heard this before, I've just never practiced it, but I can see it now in action is rather than telling your spouse or your kid what they're doing wrong or whatever, when you speak an identity to them, they become it, they live up to it. So for my niece, for example, one of hers is you are growth minded. And I say that because first off she is growth minded, but she's also very Challenged by some things because she's very shy. So she can be very shy. And I noticed as I've started saying to her, she's growth minded, which I see in her, she stretches herself more because now this is becoming her identity. Incredibly powerful. How does this contribute to heritage? How does speaking these things contribute to heritage?
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Scott Donnell
Yeah. So heritage, right? This last name, that means something. It is literally about giving your kids as many anchors as possible in your home. When you speak identity, you're speaking the values of your family into them. You're speaking who they are, who they were created to be, how powerful they're going to be in the world. This is heritage, okay? And this is why it's so important for a kid to be anchored inside of that family. If they're anchored in the identity, if they're anchored in the values, if they're anchored and they. It's like they don't go into the world with a bunch of bricks in their backpack. Like that is. She's gonna be an unbelievable wife, unbelievable mom, unbelievable entrepreneur or employee or wherever she goes. People for the rest of her life are gonna be thankful she's around. She's gonna be an insanely good friend. Cause you're literally unpacking the dumb bricks out of her backpack. And you're mobilizing her, you're stabilizing her as an anchor to go into the storms of life. See, kids that don't have these identities or values or stories of the family heritage, they don't have those anchors when they go into the world. And so then the storms, they just sway them, they just like push them off course. So that is the core of an anti fragile family. Like speaking this identity, giving them these anchors, giving them these values. And kids learn through story. That's why we talk about the stories of your family. Kids learn through story more than almost anything else. And they, they receive identity from you as you speak it over.
- [14:16]
Adam Schaefer
Is there a way to. We just got done with our training, our staff and you. And people laughed when you brought up a chat GPT thing, right? Because that's like, seems a little ironic, but what you gave was incredibly valuable. Do you see value in taking what Sal's done, like with the identity thing, taking it a step further with the storytelling, reverse engineering that and using something like Chad, you'd be like, what are five good stories? Or help me find five stories that relate to this type of identity? Like, would you. What would you do to reverse engineer? Like, kind of like that's his. Those are his identities. He's speaking to his daughter. Now I also want to tie stories into that so kids have an easier time even remembering that. Is there a way that you would do that or would you want to make sure I did that with like real stories that I have gone through that are in particular. I imagine that's ideal.
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Scott Donnell
So I would put them in two categories.
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Adam Schaefer
Right.
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Scott Donnell
So speaking identity into your kids now, it's not only solidifying them, but it's actually helping you remind you as you see them doing things in their life that show those characteristics of their identity, you celebrate it, you point it out. It gives you a lens to watch them like, like unflower and become that person. And then you just get to celebrate the heck out of it. So one of our tips in families is catch your kids doing way more right than catching them doing the wrong. Because now you're building identity and these right.
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Adam Schaefer
That's perfectly aligned. It's. This is one of one of my favorite books that I tell everybody to read that's a leader or a manager. And I think obviously you're a leader in your home is one minute manager. And the whole premise of that book is to stop focusing on what they do wrong and spend one minute a day pointing out the things that they do right. And if that you do that consistently. The buy in very different is so powerful. And I remember when I was a 25 year old leader and I thought this is silly, come on, this can't. And like Sal, I just trusted the process, put it in place and measured it. And ironically the thing that told me oh my God, this is working so much was because I missed a couple of days and I had a. This is after 30 days of doing it or so a staff member comes into my office and just starts vomiting all the things he was doing wrong and apologizing me. And I'm like, where is this coming from? And I realized I had missed his. So I set alarms. I set alarms of telling them what they did right all the time.
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Scott Donnell
Yeah.
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Adam Schaefer
And he just starts telling me all the things and how he's going to fix it and solve it and apologize. And I went, oh my God, I missed his one minute coming over and telling him what a good job this week was. And look at he felt he all this guilt and all that was like, this is why. Because he wasn't living up to what I was saying. And I thought, wow, that was so powerful. And it's the same thing with our, our kids and our family is focusing on that.
- [17:03]
Scott Donnell
The greatest irony is we never take the best business principles and add them to our family.
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Adam Schaefer
Right, Right.
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Scott Donnell
Everybody, like, it's all sudden you get home, it becomes this socialist communist community and you never apply the real business. Like, I'll give you an example. Name one husband. I dare you. Name one husband who shows up better for their family with a criticizing wife. Yeah.
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Sal Destefano
Yeah.
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Scott Donnell
Never, ever. In fact, it deteriorates his existence.
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Sal Destefano
Yes. Yeah.
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Scott Donnell
A nagging wife is like a leaky roof. Better to live in the desert than share a house like that.
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Sal Destefano
Proverbs.
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Scott Donnell
You know what my wife has learned. Oh, babe, it is so sexy when you take out the trash.
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Adam Schaefer
Yeah, yeah.
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Scott Donnell
I'm like, yeah, it is any trash.
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Sal Destefano
Let me take out.
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Scott Donnell
She speaks identity. She speaks identity over me all the time. This was at literally eight years in. Something flipped. Some thank God for the woman who mentored her that something flipped where she just started celebrating the good in me, leaving the rest to God and really speaking the identities in me. And then what she found was that I would run through a brick wall for our family every time she did it. Instead of criticizing or complaining or neglecting or like, you know, the passive aggression. None of that worked with me.
- [18:22]
Adam Schaefer
It's. It's so powerful. You know, Sal shared it on the podcast right after he started doing it. And. And to your point about bringing in the business, I actually, I. Before I even heard what he was doing with identity, I was doing something different with Max. So every night when I put him down to bed, I point out one thing that he did in the day that I want the behavior I want to reinforce. Okay. I just want to let you know that I saw the way when mom asked you to do that thing, you got right up. You did it. Like, so I try. And so it's less of the identity thing and more of the behaviors that I see him do every single day. I don't know if that's less or better or more or I should also do the identity thing or am I in inverse or kind of doing that? By yeah, I.
- [19:04]
Scott Donnell
Everybody should do the identity thing. I mean, the simple answer here to everyone is like, if you got kids, I mean, even a spouse, you get a three by five card or on your phone and you are literally writing out, here's the 10 things I see in you and speaking identity over them. And you just repetition, repetition every single day. Do it to a spouse. Do it to your kids. Watch them just take off. Now what you're kind of talking about is the heritage and the family anchors and values. So what we tell people is, hey, you know, what's way better than you trying to come up with some list of character traits. Yeah. We call it the core word method. This is. We found this way to make these things come alive in the home. And. But it starts with the stories of your life. You know, don't be fake with it. You know, you want to actually look at the stories, the most transformational stories of your heritage and your parents and grandparents, where they came from, things they overcame, things they showed, things in your life, how you met, your milestone moments. And as you start to realize those stories, you're going to pull out values from them that are your family values. They're so integral to how your families have been both sides forever. And those now become the core word, which is like a family acronym that everybody can say like this. And it's so powerful for them because it's part of your family's heritage.
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Adam Schaefer
Yeah. Yeah.
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Scott Donnell
And that's actually the best place that values come from.
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Adam Schaefer
So I have a really interesting. Okay, so I'm trying to do this delicate dance with what you're saying right now, because I firmly believe in what you're. But my wife calls me out on this because I come from. I don't have any of that.
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Scott Donnell
Yeah, you got struggles.
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Adam Schaefer
I got a lot of trauma. Yeah, that. That I work through, that it's turned into blessings, because I did work through a lot of that stuff. And so I don't have the prettiest of stories. And I've got a. And I. I can't wait for the day that my son's at an age and I already started, and my wife kind of called me out, like, hey, don't you think he's a little young to. Because now. Now my son's repeating that my father killed himself, you know, and like, so she. So I got all these things where I got lots of lessons and I got a lot of things to teach through the things that I've learned. But I hesitate sometimes because he's only six years old, and a lot of that stuff could be heavy for a kid to hear that story. And I don't want to. So I'm like, I'm trying to have this delicate dance if I 100% believe what you're saying.
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Scott Donnell
So let me explain that.
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Adam Schaefer
Okay.
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Scott Donnell
There's no family in the world who came from everything perfect.
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Adam Schaefer
Right. Of course.
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Scott Donnell
Every family has crazy in it.
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Adam Schaefer
Yep.
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Scott Donnell
That's the first thing we say in our mentor family program. It's like, hey, every family's got chaos. Even the best in the world. They nail two of our four Cs for the C4 framework for families. But you can honor certain parts of where you come from without justifying the rest.
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Adam Schaefer
Okay.
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Scott Donnell
Because guess what? You still have the same last name.
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Adam Schaefer
That's right.
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Scott Donnell
Okay. Yeah. Now everybody's an example, even if it's a bad one. So you can tell stories of redemption. Yeah. You know, there's a. There's a gift for you and how you're treating your kids and your spouse and your. Your company and your employees because of some of the things you went through.
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Sal Destefano
For sure.
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Scott Donnell
That's the beauty of redemption. Yeah. But sometimes we throw the baby out with the bathwater. Okay. And this is a difficult thing to do in heritage because you want to train your kids to honor you, even though you're gonna make mistakes. And so there's a way that we can honor some of the good in your. In your mom or your aunts and uncles or a grandparents or things that have happened in your past without casting aside or justifying or overlooking the bad stuff.
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Adam Schaefer
Yeah.
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Scott Donnell
Okay. Because guess what? You still have the same last name.
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Adam Schaefer
Yeah.
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Scott Donnell
And you want to raise kids who are forgiving and loving to you, even though you're gonna make some mistakes along the way. So you're being the model now that they follow in two decades.
- [22:54]
Adam Schaefer
Sure.
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Scott Donnell
Instead of. You literally are going to cut off everything before you, and you're going to backhand your entire heritage.
- [23:04]
Adam Schaefer
Yeah.
- [23:05]
Scott Donnell
What happens when your kids get out in the real world and you guys have a disagreement? You're like, well, he cut off his family forever. I think I'm going to cut him off for a while.
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Sal Destefano
Interesting.
- [23:14]
Scott Donnell
My family's the problem. They get. They go to some crazy, progressive, idiot mentor school, and they train your kids the exact opposite of all the things you tried to raise them in. And all of a sudden, you're the enemy. Yeah. They're a victim of your oppression.
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Adam Schaefer
Wow.
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Scott Donnell
I need to. For me to be safe, for me to be healthy, I need to cut them off. No, we don't want to train that. Yeah. Yeah. See, this is why heritage is so critical. They're the next step in the line, and the goal is for them to blow by you. Yeah. And you celebrate them doing it. See, my. My boys are the only men in the world I want to blow by me. Yeah. See? Yeah.
- [23:51]
Adam Schaefer
Yeah.
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Scott Donnell
This is why this is so powerful. Yeah.
- [23:54]
Adam Schaefer
Yeah.
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Scott Donnell
I think that helps.
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Adam Schaefer
No, no, it helps. It helps a lot. And I'm lucky that I have also an incredible partner to make sure, like, something like that doesn't happen. Right. So she's done a great job of maintaining my son's relationship with even my family, even though we don't have a really good relationship, because she doesn't want that. And so I have to give her the credit of. Is it. My natural reaction is what you just said.
- [24:16]
Scott Donnell
Nobody wants to go to the grave with bitterness and resentment either. Like, I have seen people heal. This is why forgiveness is one of the most powerful things a family can do. Learn the art of repentance and forgiveness and reconciliation. That is one of the greatest glues in a family between generations. I know we're talking about generational wealth, but if you think that that's just money, you've missed the whole point.
- [24:37]
Adam Schaefer
No, I think this is. All of. This is a great point, and that's such a good thing. There's so many things that I know that we're really well with my son, and that's an area that I know that I can personally improve because I don't want that. I don't want him to ex. At one point, he'll be challenged y in his relationship, and he'll be like, oh, look, his. My dad's relationship. He doesn't have much of a relationship with his mom or his dad. So I'll admit, he cut it off. I'll just cut it off.
- [24:58]
Scott Donnell
You know where this gets really bad with money. Later on in life, parents try to pay for their mistakes. So they bribe, coerce, and buy their kids love by paying for the things as they're like older teenagers and in their 20s and 30s, they're just like, if I give them enough and I pay for all the mistakes, somehow that'll fix it. It never does.
- [25:17]
Adam Schaefer
No. No.
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Scott Donnell
Right. So this is where this generational wealth nightmare goes awry.
- [25:21]
Sal Destefano
There was this interesting study where they took a bunch of families and these were all families of faith, and they said, okay, what were the things that the families whose kids were most likely to continue to follow along in the faith, what did those families do was that they went to the church the most. And what they found was it was the parents who said sorry the most and who forgave the most. It was literally the apology, reconciliation, redemption that they got from their parents that they celebrate, and that's what got their children to stick around and continue to follow in their values and in their faith.
- [25:56]
Scott Donnell
That's exactly right.
- [25:58]
Sal Destefano
How important is it to name the values? Because you were just now working with our staff, and it was, by the way, so amazing. I see if you got a Company. You got to look into what these people do. It's phenomenal. But one thing, that was one exercise where we were going through and we were kind of thinking about the values that we got from our family. Now, I have very strong culture in my family. Had a very stable home. Not perfect, but great in many. In many ways. And there's definitely values I could listen to for sure, because our culture was so strong. But we never named them. Right. So we never said, this is what these are, what the Stephanos stand for. And here's. You know, we didn't name them. We just. I just lived them. And so I thought, well, what's the difference? And I brought this up to you, and you said, well, then it kind of evaporates with each generation because you don't name it. So explain that.
- [26:48]
Scott Donnell
Yeah.
- [26:48]
Sal Destefano
Why it's so important to put a number like a. Like a word to it.
- [26:52]
Scott Donnell
Yeah. So this core word method we have, I'll give you an example. My family is Faith family fish. That's what the Donalds stand for. Faith, family fish. We love God, we back each other. And fish, which is our core word, which stands for fun and adventure, integrity, service, and heavenly work. Okay. The reason why this is powerful is that all of my kids, including my 2 year old, they literally rattle this off at dinner or on the way home from school. Like, I don't even instigate it. Now they know exactly what it means to operate in the world as a Donald. That's why this is so important, see, because if you don't have these things codified, then the kids find out through discipline. They find out after the facts, like, what you want to do is give them a proactive way to go into the world to operate with, knowing what their last name means. And so. And we got those values, by the way, by going back generations and really pulling out, like, the key stories of transformation. Our family came across the Oregon Trail. We were like early pilgrims in the North. We go all the way back to the king of Scotland. But then the more we unpack this, we realized that faith family fish were like the through line for all the generations. And it's so easy to remember the alliteration of a word like an acronym is so powerful because then my kids, literally 10 seconds after we announced it, they can remember them all. And now when they're in class, we're on the team, they're losing the sports game, they're interacting with their friends. They. They know they have a roadmap of how we act and how we Respond. And so now all my wife and I get to do is celebrate whenever we see it. Right. It's like a rubric. Like, we literally get to just celebrate the heck out of our kids. Every time they're doing something with integrity, they're doing the right thing, even though they didn't know if anyone was watching. They're taking initiative. Right. They're serving other people. They're. They're doing the right kind of work. Right. They're finishing what they start. Please and thank yous all. That is part of our family values. And so I, I would just say, like, you can't hit a target that's not there.
- [28:54]
Adam Schaefer
Well, you can't help it getting watered down without doing that. So we had one person who said 10.
- [28:59]
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
- [29:00]
Adam Schaefer
So will. And I knew right away it was him because he's. You could just.
- [29:03]
Sal Destefano
I would have guessed.
- [29:04]
Adam Schaefer
I would have guessed too, because you could tell.
- [29:06]
Scott Donnell
Why?
- [29:06]
Sal Destefano
Tell me.
- [29:06]
Adam Schaefer
Because he has. He has these attributes of a kid who has been raised with high integrity, morals, values, code, honor, like, all. Like, you could tell. And what I was saying to him was that, you know, you. You inherited that. But if you, as a kid or as a young man, don't start thinking about how do you instill that in your generation? It'll naturally get watered down. Because even though you. You may think you know all that because your parents, you have. You have no idea really, how much work and effort they put in to make sure that you had that.
- [29:38]
Scott Donnell
That's right.
- [29:39]
Adam Schaefer
You only spend a percentage of your time with them. Just like Sal, you only spend a small, smaller precision than you think of your dad. Your dad was working, doing all those things. And so you adopted like, okay, I see. But you actually don't even realize how much was done for you to actually see that and receive that. So if you don't put in the same amount of effort as they did, or more. Or have some sort of a system in place, it's all system to carry it on, then it's going to get watered down. Each generation. Like, modeling was the most important thing of everything.
- [30:06]
Sal Destefano
But to actually define it, vocalize it, you know, in terms of like, even talking about their identity and their characteristics
- [30:16]
Adam Schaefer
or just like how you perceive them.
- [30:18]
Sal Destefano
They're. Otherwise they're going to be out in
- [30:20]
Adam Schaefer
the world looking for that.
- [30:21]
Sal Destefano
I was just going to say it's a myth. This is a huge lie from the world. I would love to hear your input on this. How often do we hear or believe that you go out in the world and you Figure out who you are. That's what you do as a kid.
- [30:35]
Adam Schaefer
You gotta go.
- [30:36]
Sal Destefano
That's the journey. You learn who you are. You gotta try things out. You figure out your identity. If you don't speak this into your kids, somebody else will. Somebody else. And for sure they don't love your kid as much as you do. So let's talk about that lie.
- [30:48]
Scott Donnell
So here's how I'll start that comment. Don't be surprised when you send your kids out into the world to get an identity from Caesar and they come back as Romans.
- [31:00]
Sal Destefano
Yeah,
- [31:04]
Scott Donnell
I actually don't know what to add to that.
- [31:05]
Sal Destefano
That's it.
- [31:06]
Scott Donnell
Because that's it. Like, either you give them an anchor or the world's gonna give an identity. And I do not want culture giving my kids an identity. Are you kidding me? Instant gratification, like addiction, like crazy shopaholism, like pornography, all these other things. They're cycling them because the world wants to sell them things so that all they have to do to sell them a bunch of things is tell them they're not enough. Tell them they're not worthy of love. Tell them that they're lacking, that the world is coming to an end. And any other schema and childhood wound that they can prod in them to get them to be hooked onto something else, whether it's a screen or a pill or a drug or a program, that's what the world's gonna try to give our kids. And don't tell me that the world has good values right now because culture is ripping our kids away from wanting a family. How many Gen Z's are you talking to right now? You guys hire a ton of them. They're amazingly gifted in a lot of ways, but they're like family. What?
- [32:02]
Adam Schaefer
Yeah. Yeah.
- [32:02]
Scott Donnell
I don't want to get married. Half of those end in divorce. Who's going to jump out of a plane if half the parachutes don't open? Kids are a drain. They're a net drain on society. They're an expense, not an investment. Overpopulation. I could. With all of my trauma, I couldn't put a kid into the world like this. What a victim mentality.
- [32:21]
Sal Destefano
Also a lie. It's also a lie. Come on. My grandparents grew up super poor in Sicily during the Great Depression. My grandfather didn't have shoes.
- [32:30]
Scott Donnell
Kids are the greatest blessing, not a curse.
- [32:32]
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
- [32:33]
Scott Donnell
Are you kidding me?
- [32:34]
Sal Destefano
Yeah. That's crazy. You know, it's blowing my mind so much right now as we're talking. And it hit me out there when you Were coaching our team, but now it's really just blowing my mind. This has to happen to a lot of people. Can't just be me where I know how to train a team that works for me. I want my team chanting mind pump. I want them to know our purpose and our values and what we aim for. I want them to dress the same. I want them to move in the same direction. Then I go home and it's different. Yeah, like, it's different. I feel that I'm like, wait a minute. By the way, if you play in a team, you're on a winning team, you got a chant, you know what direction you're going, you know your team, your mascot. Oh, my God. You know what your mascot is? You fight for your mascot. It's a stupid stuffed animal or whatever. Meanwhile, when you go home, this has to happen to a lot of parents, a lot of entrepreneurs where they're killers with developing their teams at work. They know how to lead a team, how to move it in a direction. Then they go home and it's kind
- [33:31]
Scott Donnell
of like, yeah, it's the biggest, it's the biggest loss opportunity for high impact people, highly skilled, well trained, well developed, like crushing at work, to go home and leave and give your last and your least to your family, which is your most important investment. Your family is the most important business in your life, is not the one you go to every morning, it's the one you come home to. So people literally, like, give it all at work and give nothing at home. I'm like, this is your legacy. These kids, this spouse, this family is it. And you're giving them the last ounce and you're just hoping they go to bed so you can just finally relax on the couch and scroll down like crazy? And we, for some reason, we like, we go into the world, we learn all these amazing things that create success and good, like, profitable systems and great training, great personal development. We go to these expensive events and we, we, all we talk about is business and money and business money. And then when we go home to the most important investment in our lives, it's like communist China. We pay for everything. We give them whatever they want. Yeah, we solve all their problems for them. We're just trying to get everybody fed and in bed and they see they, they just don't nail the right strategies. And I see this all the time. It's like, do you know how many billionaires I'm on zoom with every every month that are like, I'd give it all. I would literally give all the crap I've made to solve this nightmare I've got going on. Like, I, I don't know the number anymore. And it's always the same thing. Hey, let's talk, let's talk careerism and workaholism for a second.
- [35:12]
Adam Schaefer
I was going to say. I was going to say it's probably a much higher percentage in your centimillionaires and billionaires because you're an outlier. It's like a professional athlete. The amount of sacrifice, discipline, and focus on that one thing to be great at it. You tend to ignore everything else, and that's what made you hyper good at that thing. So if you're in the elite class of a billionaire, a centimillionaire, that percentage, or a professional athlete, you probably kind of suck at the other thing because you sacrificed it.
- [35:42]
Scott Donnell
Now, is it possible? Yes. This is why I'm not here saying, like, you have to give up everything to have a good family. Nope. We know the success stabilizes in a family, that it doesn't matter how well you're doing in your net worth and your financial world. You know how to make sure the kids aren't ruined by it. You know how to make sure that they can multiply and steward and they can create their own and they have healthier relationships and values than you. Yeah. Okay. So it is possible.
- [36:06]
Adam Schaefer
Yeah.
- [36:06]
Scott Donnell
I've met superstars. Yeah. Okay. And we study them like they're like unicorns. We're like, okay, give me everything. Okay? I live, I live with the. I literally go live with these people for three days.
- [36:15]
Adam Schaefer
Yeah.
- [36:15]
Scott Donnell
And I deep dive their lives. And I am a very good detective because I've been at this game with 10 million families. Now I want to know everything. Okay? Because it's like a unicorn. But what happens most of the time is we get laser focused and myopic on one thing. Right? Like, oh, no, it's my spouse's job to take care of the kids. They do the home, they do the kids. My job is to go hunt and kill and make the money. Okay. And so the workaholism, the careerism, like that focus, they don't, they don't realize the destruction it creates on the family when they're not balanced.
- [36:50]
Adam Schaefer
Do you think there's a point at which you have to catch them where there's. Where. In other words, like, so I'll share my story with you with, like, where my. Or my journey on this, because my wife was really concerned before we had a kid. You know, am I going to be that guy who just keeps moving the goalpost.
- [37:07]
Scott Donnell
Yep.
- [37:07]
Adam Schaefer
And because I was buried into building and going, and I promised her a long time ago, I said no. And I'm a firm believer in money is a tool. I want to get to a place that it creates freedom so I could be such a present father. And I promise you that I won't just keep moving the goalpost. And so I had that vision in place that once we reach to kind of a financial place, like, yeah, I still have goals in the business. And yes, I want to scale still, but not at the sacrifice of the thing that why I did it for.
- [37:32]
Sal Destefano
Right.
- [37:33]
Adam Schaefer
And so I was an older dad. Okay. So that's probably why that's. I waited until I was older because I wanted to be able to do that.
- [37:41]
Scott Donnell
Yeah.
- [37:42]
Adam Schaefer
Do you feel like you have to catch somebody at a certain place in their journey who wants both? Right. Who says, yeah, I want to be uber successful financially and be able to have all this freedom and time for my kids. But then also I want to make all this money and be a present father. Do you find that you have to catch them at a certain point to teach this?
- [38:03]
Scott Donnell
I mean, the best time for me to catch a family is before they have kids. But it's never too late. I work with a lot of families with adult children, even grandchildren that. Yep. Now we're digging out of some holes and we're unpacking some stuff. But it's never too late to heal, to reconcile, to get on the right track. It's never too late. Yeah. Okay. I gotta say that to anyone listening because the number one question I get asked is, where were you 20 years ago?
- [38:25]
Adam Schaefer
Yeah.
- [38:25]
Scott Donnell
This happens all the time. It is never too late. But the earlier the better for this stuff. Yeah. Because like, let's remember what we talked about today about wealth.
- [38:33]
Adam Schaefer
Yeah.
- [38:34]
Scott Donnell
Wealthy people don't chase money.
- [38:36]
Adam Schaefer
Yeah.
- [38:37]
Scott Donnell
They build profitable scalable systems. This is what investing is. Right. The job of those dollars is to go make more dollars. Okay. That's what passive income. Like you're making money in your sleep. You build systems inside of companies that scale. It's not just about creating like a self managing company. It's about creating a self multiplying company that's scaling and you get to have, you know, own it and grow it.
- [39:01]
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
- [39:01]
Scott Donnell
Okay. And that does allow you to be more present for the people in your family. Right. Okay. There are seasons where you're going more. But here's what I see a lot. People keep chasing.
- [39:11]
Adam Schaefer
Yep.
- [39:12]
Scott Donnell
So like they're just professional Arsonists. You know, I kill myself in this season and solve all these problems to give myself more time. To go create more fires.
- [39:20]
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
- [39:21]
Scott Donnell
To go solve. Yeah. Yeah. So when they say the goalpost moves, what they're really saying is, I'm signing up again to go to war. Yeah. Right afterwards. Yeah. And. And you're chasing the wrong goals. Yeah. What I would say to families is like, stop chasing money. Money is a tool. Like you said, money is a store of value that's created. Yeah. The more value you can create sustainably and scalably, the more financial power you get. Yeah. And that gives you more freedom so that as actually allows you to be more present, to focus on the values, to focus on the relationships, to be more mentally available and physically present. See, being. Being with your family is not just being there physically some. Some of the day, it's. It's being mentally available.
- [40:06]
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
- [40:06]
Scott Donnell
How many times have we been at home at the end of the day and we're thinking about work?
- [40:10]
Adam Schaefer
Of course, everyone's guilty of that.
- [40:11]
Scott Donnell
Your phone is buzzing, that it's not a way. Your wife's thinking about all the crazy schedule and chores, and neither of you are mentally there. And your kids feel it. They sense it.
- [40:23]
Adam Schaefer
Of course.
- [40:23]
Scott Donnell
So it's really about, like, I know people that they work hard in their work. Like they, they have great companies, they have great things. But you know what? They're not saving their last and their least for the home.
- [40:33]
Adam Schaefer
Yeah.
- [40:34]
Scott Donnell
They give themselves 15 minutes before they walk in that door and they're like, I'm about to recharge my gas tank because I got to be at least two thirds tonight. That's how you got to do it. You walk in with over half that gas thing to like light it up.
- [40:47]
Adam Schaefer
The most. One of the most profound things I ever heard Jordan Peterson say. Jordan Peterson said it on Joe Rogan's podcast when he talked about how much time and effort that someone puts into a one week vacation that they do once in their lifetime. Right. This big trip to Rome or wherever. The amount of hours that they put into that for that one week of their life compared to the first 15 minutes that you see your wife or your kids when you walk in through the door, which will be ten of a thousand times more time. But so how much time do you put into thought, like, how do I show up for those first 15 minutes? And just the stopping. I've put this into practice and it's done wonders for my relationship, my. With both my wife and my kid is that you can't control what happens here and how crazy it is, but I can't control how when I walk through that door, how I am. And so, like, parking in the. In the driveway for 10 minutes and like, okay, I'm switching to dad, and I go in the house, I kiss my wife real quick, and my son, I go straight upstairs and I put my. A different outfit on. And so I've created this routine of, like, I'm transitioning from CEO guy to now CEO of my family dad. And even changing the clothes and that whole process. And it's life changing. And if you don't. And if I don't do it, there's been times I'm guilty of not doing that. It's real easy to allow all those things to happen and to carry it into the house.
- [42:09]
Sal Destefano
One thing you. We were talking about money earlier. Another thing you coached me on, and I would love for you to get into this because again, this is another thing. All right, let's see how this turns out is. You encouraged me to come up with gigs for my kids, especially my teenage kids. And it was instead of giving them money for things would be to give them jobs and then to pay them for those jobs. So it's like, hey, you know, why don't you go pull the weeds or make us dinner tonight? My daughter will do that. Sometimes we do this thing, and then at the end we decide we're going to pay her, you know, this much or whatever. My fear initially was, well, if I do that, are they going to do their normal chores? Are they going to want to do things for free? What I found was they're more. They're. They're way more likely to do the free stuff because of the gigs. I thought they would just want to get paid for everything.
- [42:59]
Scott Donnell
Right.
- [42:59]
Sal Destefano
But it's not the case. Explain that how that works, because it's so opposite of what I thought it would do.
- [43:05]
Scott Donnell
Yeah, so this comes back to the generational wealth. You got to train them to be prepared for it, to create their own. And you can't spell learn without earn. And so it is so critical in the home. If you. If you're the family that never talks about money, then you're paying for everything for your kids and you're just setting them up for big, big issues later. You've got to be dealing with incentives in the home and ways for the kids to earn the poverty. We talked about this today. The poverty mindset tells kids we can't afford that or how dare you even want that. Do you have any Idea how much that costs. Do you know how hard I worked to get you guys this thing and you guys just took it for granted? Money doesn't grow on trees. See, we've all grown up with hearing these things. Oh, yeah, those are all poverty mindsets, okay? Instead of saying, we can't afford, or, you know, no way, we can't afford, that is, hey, what can you do to earn that? Like, I don't want to kill my kids drive. I don't want to. If they want something and it's not going to hurt them, I want them to, like, find a way to learn how to get the things they want. And that's where these gigs come in. So we call it the home economy, right? So we have roles, responsibilities, and Rewards. Nail those three Rs in the home, and your kids are going to start to learn all these superpowers for the rest of their life, okay? And so you. The roles in the home is like, there's no money attached. This is just your role in the family, okay? You should never pay your kids to make their bed, clean their room, dishes and trash, get their homework done on time. Like, that's an expectation. That's a role in the family. Okay? It's part of having our last name. Yeah, but then you have other responsibilities and rewards attached. So this is all the other stuff that they can do to earn the things that they want to get. I want my kids to, like, I want them to want the scooter. I want them to, like, want the game. I want them to, like, be excited about certain privileges and freedoms in the home and then find ways to earn them. So this is what most parents miss is they, like, they literally make their kids do three or four chores where, what if your kids could do a hundred things around the house, earn for it, learn financial competency, learn to get the things they want and the freedoms and the privileges for taking on responsibility. And then they're going to learn about a hundred more skills than you ever imagined, and they're going to go out into the world and it's like shooting fish in a barrel. That's what the home economy is for. So, like, have you ever thought about having your kids plan a family trip doing all the laundry at a young age? All the stuff with pets, backyard, front yard, like, all this stuff kids can do, and they want to do it because they want more freedoms. They want to earn more to get the things they want, and they want more responsibility.
- [45:43]
Sal Destefano
And here's a side effect of it all. They're coming to me and asking me if they could do certain things. My daughter comes to me and says, hey, can I make dinner tomorrow night? Like, sure.
- [45:53]
Scott Donnell
Boom.
- [45:53]
Sal Destefano
Yeah. Can I make some money? Can I make some dinner? Hey, can I go wash the car? Hey, can I? I'm like, okay, cool. And they're finding all these different things to do. In fact, my daughter wanted this. These really expensive pair of sweats. And so normally what she would do in the past is she would just text me a picture of it. Hey, can I have these, please? Or whatever. Instead, she sent it. Oh, my God, they cost this much. What can I do to earn this? And so my wife is like, all right, for the next 60 days, you're going to read to your little brother for 15 minutes every night. And I have a set of books, and we homeschool them. So. So that's what she does every night. She goes and reads to him. And she's knocking off her list. She's got the next 60 days to do because of these pair of expensive sweats that she bought and was totally on her initiative, which is remarkable. And again, I thought it would do the opposite. I thought it would be like they would only do things to get paid for, but it's not. It's actually strengthening this whole idea of responsibility initiative.
- [46:51]
Scott Donnell
Entitlement. Entitlement happens when kids get all the rewards of life without any responsibilities. That's the problem.
- [46:58]
Sal Destefano
Yeah. You also taught me to attach anything that they want. Right. You could turn anything into something like that. Hey, can I have a treat? Well, how about if you go clean your playroom for that?
- [47:10]
Scott Donnell
Yeah. So this is the simple principle. If you give all the rewards without any responsibilities, they become entitled. Now, if you drill sergeant tough love, Give them all the responsibilities with no rewards, now, they're resentful.
- [47:24]
Adam Schaefer
Yeah.
- [47:24]
Scott Donnell
Yeah. But if you want rocket fuel, you got to marry the two. And so most families, they just give their kids all the rewards they like, all the freedoms, all the privileges, the tech time, the toys they want. They're buying everything. They're letting them do whatever they want. Or they're like, they're getting them into the sports they want, or they're buying the things, or they're, oh, yeah, add to your wish list. And then all of a sudden, grandma and Grandpa give them 20 things all at once for a birthday or Christmas, and they're like, dang it, you have to tie rewards to earning to responsibility. This is how they learn to create value. Right. Like the other day, I'll give you an example. The other Day, my daughter, she wanted to get the hover scooter, okay? She's nine years old. Her brother got one. She's like, I really want one of those. And she had. She had 40 bucks. She needed $41 more to get it. So she comes to me and she's like, what can I do to earn the other 41 bucks? First question I asked her was, is it 41? She's like, oh, yeah, sorry, 55. Because she knows she's got a share and she's saving and investing the other 20% and then 70% of it.
- [48:22]
Sal Destefano
Oh, interesting. Yeah.
- [48:24]
Scott Donnell
So she already knows. So I'm like, okay, cool. You're gonna trim back the hedges by the car. That's a big one. You gotta help put your three brothers to bed three times this week, okay? Handle it all. The whole evening routine, which saved Amy and I, like, four hours. Okay? She helped Amy with dinner twice. She sorted the laundry twice. And I said, and we call them brain gigs, which is teaching kids to create value with their brain. So she did two Tuttle twins and a Prager U. So they tell us what they learn from those. Because I want my kids to use their brain to create value, not just hands and feet, okay? So she knocked out all those. And I said, and one icing on the cake. You got to create one. Create a gig that we didn't see or something you see that needs to be done. Which happened the next day. We had some friends over, and so she entertained all the young kids, the little, the younger kids, for two hours. So the parents really just hung out. It was awesome. Okay? She nailed. And I said, and by the way, it's an all or nothing. Like, you either do all of this or it's a no go. That was. Was like 30 seconds. She nailed them all. She got the scooter, and she saved us a ton of work. She learned all these other skills, like she's learning to create value, which. That's what financial competency is the greatest thing you can do for generational wealth, specifically financially. Teach your kids not to. To go for money. Teach them to create value. Money is a store of value. So the better they are at hunting for ways to create value. Solve problems, think critically, find the wants and needs of other people, see what needs to be done, and find a way to leave things better and then take initiative to do it before people ask. That is the greatest superpower for the rest of their life. Then I don't care if you leave them five bucks or five million bucks, they're Going to crush.
- [50:09]
Sal Destefano
What are some of the ways? Because there is a lot of generational trauma around money around either maybe you couldn't afford things, or maybe it was always about. It was. It was just. It wasn't just the money, wasn't just worth the value, but it was the value. So it's how much money you can make and buy. Like, how do you deal with that yourself so you don't pass that on to your kids? Like, what are things to look out for with that?
- [50:36]
Scott Donnell
Yeah, well, I started talking about this a while back. Got me in some hot water. We were talking about this earlier. It's probably gonna do it again right now. So money traumas, I think, are some of the worst traumas in the world because they're the only trauma you wake up and work for for the rest of your life.
- [50:53]
Sal Destefano
What do you mean by that? What do you mean by work for?
- [50:56]
Scott Donnell
Well, everyone's raised with certain money mindsets and certain poverty mindsets and certain issues, right? Parents fighting over bills. If a family. The number one issue of divorce inside of a home is a money issue. So kids see that as a nightmare. They're terrified of it. There's tons of guilt and shame around money. Maybe their parents used money to bribe and coerce and buy their love. Maybe they had co parenting and they literally went back and forth and mom and dad literally tried to have to bribe them with a better experience using money at their house. See, these are all money traumas, okay? Parents arguing over bills, telling them they can't afford anything. Like, how dare you want that? Money doesn't grow. All these things are money mindsets. The kids are raised around, or the parents literally never said anything. So the kids get off into the real world, have zero training, and they get hit with a Mack truck, and then they're resentful of how they were raised. These are all money mindset issues, okay? And so the greatest way to heal from those is to first call them out. Yeah. Right. Well, I think one of the biggest takeaways from the training with your team today was when we said a problem well defined.
- [52:06]
Adam Schaefer
Yeah. Is half solved, so. Good.
- [52:08]
Scott Donnell
Because most people don't realize that they're walking around with this baggage. They don't realize it's affecting their job. It's their income, their earning potential, their own children, their own relationship. Like, I see this all the time with newlyweds. One of them came from a home that was, like, frugal. One of them came from a home of, like, gifts. Giving you things and stuff is like How I love you. And so one's a hoarder, one's a spender, and then you put them together and two become one. And all of a sudden you have this nightmare. Right. And then you try to figure out why a couple years in you're always arguing over stuff. Well, this is the money traumas. So this is a big deal to heal from or else you're just going to pass them down to your kids. Every one of these comes out without
- [52:55]
Adam Schaefer
realizing it or you overcorrect the other side. Right. Like that's. I tell a story all the time that if I would have had a kid at 25, I would have passed my money trauma down in a different way thinking that I solved the money trauma. Right. So I thought, oh, I saw all these things with money, therefore I went the opposite extreme other way. And one of those things was I was serving it.
- [53:14]
Sal Destefano
Right.
- [53:14]
Adam Schaefer
So I was at a place where I worked so hard to make a bunch of it that I know that that was still an insecurity of mine. And so I would have been the 25 year old dad who put his kid in Louis Vuitton shoes and done thinking that, oh, I'm giving him the life that I didn't have because I still hadn't worked through that. So like it's first you got to call it out, become self aware of it and then there's work to do to reframe it.
- [53:40]
Scott Donnell
Right.
- [53:40]
Adam Schaefer
And change it. Otherwise you either pass it down because you're unaware of it or you pass down the other extreme Right. End of it.
- [53:48]
Scott Donnell
You teeter totter.
- [53:49]
Adam Schaefer
Yeah.
- [53:49]
Scott Donnell
You come from nothing. You give them everything.
- [53:50]
Adam Schaefer
Yeah.
- [53:51]
Scott Donnell
Right. So I see this a lot of times. First generation success families, they, they're like, I'm going to, I am, I'm going to make sure my kids never have to go through what I went through. Right. Oh, when I have kids, I'm going to give them those, I never had those things. I'm going to make sure they get those things. Yeah. I'm going to give them every opportunity I never had. And then all of a sudden, 15 years later, you have entitled, spoiled, anxious
- [54:15]
Adam Schaefer
kids forgetting that all the, all that stuff they didn't get is what created the, the success they have.
- [54:20]
Scott Donnell
What made you you.
- [54:21]
Adam Schaefer
Exactly.
- [54:21]
Scott Donnell
I mean, it's like we teeter totter all the time. I also see this. When people feel the guilt and shame of like, kind of like a spoiled childhood where they got everything well, then they teeter totter to tough love.
- [54:33]
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
- [54:34]
Scott Donnell
Because they hit a mack truck at 18 to 30. They went through hell.
- [54:38]
Sal Destefano
Got to prepare my kid for life.
- [54:39]
Scott Donnell
Yep. Yeah. So now they're like freaking David Goggins, Navy SEAL parents, tough love, told you so's drill sergeant. Like I'm a train you up. Like.
- [54:50]
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
- [54:51]
Scott Donnell
No, that causes just as much of a problem. Yeah. So we don't want to teeter totter. Like it's about systems. It's about running the playbooks in the home. Yeah. That build long term generational success. Yeah. Yeah.
- [55:03]
Sal Destefano
You said, you said it's the only trauma that you work for. What do you mean by that?
- [55:06]
Scott Donnell
Yeah, money. You wake up and work for it every other.
- [55:09]
Adam Schaefer
There's no way get away getting from it every day.
- [55:11]
Scott Donnell
Every other trauma, every other trauma you
- [55:12]
Adam Schaefer
could run from, you can hide from.
- [55:14]
Scott Donnell
Think of all the other types of traumas that happen in people's lives. These other core wounds.
- [55:17]
Sal Destefano
The, the abandonment you can, you can avoid a lot.
- [55:21]
Scott Donnell
Everybody avoids. They try to forget it. They try to put out of their brain or they try to move through in love. They try to get. Get over it with money. You just wake up and you got to work for it. You got to pay your bills. You got to think about it a lot.
- [55:33]
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
- [55:33]
Scott Donnell
So that's. The trauma is literally. And then if you don't heal from it, it's your master. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you. Because you either work for money or it works for you.
- [55:42]
Adam Schaefer
Yep.
- [55:43]
Scott Donnell
And wealthy families learn how to have money work for them. And it doesn't like ruin their identity,
- [55:48]
Sal Destefano
would you say, because society has gotten so much more prosperous just in comparison generally to previous generations, that a lot of the issues now around money revolve around like confusing wants with needs. Like, I want this, I want that. I'm gonna get this. I want. You know. And so they end up. We see consumerism has been an issue for a while, but now it seems. And I'll tell you where I'm going. I had this, this debate with my cousins a while ago. And I remember they were so dead set on their position, but by the end, they could see my point. And it was this, it started like this. My grandparents passed away recently and we recently sold their house. Okay. And it was a house in San Jose. It's very expensive, San Jose, one of the most expensive cities in the world. But when my grandfather came here, it was farmland, so it wasn't Silicon Valley. And he bought the house before it was built. And I think he bought it for like 20 something thousand dollars. It sold there for 1.8 million. This is a little tiny track home. Okay? 1.8 million. And my cousins were like, oh, gosh. You know, when Nonno was, you know, working, you know, he was a janitor, and he was able to support a family of, you know, with four kids in a home. And Nona didn't have to work. And nowadays you can't do any of that. And I'm like, hold on a second. I said, let's. Let's have you live exactly the way they did. So did they have Internet? No. How many cars do they have? One. Did they go on vacations? Never. Did they eat out? Never. What about clothes? Oh, my grandmother made their clothes half the time. And so I went down the list,
- [57:21]
Scott Donnell
but they barely got hot water.
- [57:23]
Sal Destefano
I'm going down the list and I'm like, actually, you guys are way better off. You just have this idea of like, this is all the stuff. Well, I need Internet. I need all these services. I need two cars, I need a TV in every room. So maybe speak to that a little bit, because it seems like the money trauma now is in the other direction, where it's like, I just need all the stuff. When reality, it's like, what?
- [57:46]
Scott Donnell
Yeah, entitlement. Yeah, entitlement is all the rewards of life without the responsibilities. And so we live in a society that's more prosperous overall, healthier, more people out of dollar a day poverty, more opportunity than ever before. Yet we're the most anxious, we're the most drugged, were the most riddled in anxiety and depression and suicidality.
- [58:08]
Sal Destefano
The most therapized.
- [58:09]
Scott Donnell
Most therapized. And most therapy is rumination, where the biggest problem in the therapy world is where people just unpack problems. And that's the whole thing they do. The more you dwell on a problem, the bigger it gets, unless you have a solve for it or a strategy to work through it, to transform from it. So we're in this society where people have had it better than ever before, that they feel like more of a victim than ever before. And that's the curse that's on society right now. Remember I was thinking about this the other day, Remember when planes got wi fi so no one had ever had it before? You're in a tin can in the sky, and then all of a sudden, everybody has access to the Internet on their phones or laptops, and it's like the coolest thing ever. And then 30 minutes into the flight light, all of a sudden, the WI fi cuts out and pissed. Everyone's pissed. It's like a modern miracle just happened. And you're pissed 30 minutes later. That's like a microcosm of what's going on in our society. And so for me, I think we have to do the best we can in our families and with our employees, by the way. But in all these areas to help people learn, like, you have to get rid of entitlement, you have to get rid of victimhood. You have to get rid of like this anxious self doubt. All these things create this nightmare that we're seeing in our societies.
- [59:33]
Sal Destefano
Another thing you suggested to me, I have yet to do this just because I have to plan it out and I'm waiting while my daughter's out of school and it's like a one thing, but I think there's things you could do every day that are impactful and there's big things that are impactful. One thing you suggested was to take my daughter on a mission trip to go to some other country to help people who need help to go sleep in uncomfortable place or whatever. How in the research you've done with successful families, is this common? Is it a common thing for families to go and serve and go in these areas that are, you know, to see people who are far less fortunate?
- [60:10]
Scott Donnell
100%. So there's, there's several things. This is our whole program as we studied the most successful families financially and other, like just your kids blow by you for four generations. So we have all of the strategies they do and we codified it. A service mindset is one of the top principles that we saw. The greatest way to the anecdote, or sorry, not the antidote, but the way to cast out all of the victimhood and entitlement is to give them a grateful mindset and a clear view of how the rest of the world operates so they can have a heart of service. Does that make sense? So this is, yeah, missions is huge. Going and doing it with your kids, not sending them off. One of the biggest things these families did is they didn't outsource the parenting, right? They didn't outsource it and just send them off to all these other people. They did it with them. And so going on a mission trip with your kids, going to feed the homeless, going to another country and building a home or working in an orphanage or seeing how the rest of the world is living, it immediately gives the kids this, this worldview of like, oh, wow, I have it, I have it right now. So much better than so many people. And I want to help them. I want to have a life that helps other people. Okay. Because the greatest thing you can do with your kids is not give them handouts, give them legs up, give them a leg up in life. And so you want them to think that way about like how can we like create value for the people around us to serve and help them. That is the dream life. That is how a kid, that's how you eradicate entitlement out of a kid's life. Okay? But if you insulate them and you pay for everything and you solve all their problems and you bubble wrap them, you're going to get an entitled kid. It's just going to happen. They're spoiled, they're anxious and then they, then they hit the real world and become a victim because they're not ready for it. They're selfish. And when you're selfish, it's all about you, not God or others. It's all about you. And so then you have to have control. Right? And that's where all the anger and anxiety and frustration comes from. Instead of a selfless service mindset with strong capability and skill sets, that's how you create a world changer. A kid with strong skills and capability to create value, solve problems. Right. Who has a selfless service mindset with compassion and generosity to help. That is a world changer kid. And if you don't do that, it's coddling. It's drill sergeant. It's like a caretaker kid where you get all the entitlement and the victimhood
- [62:45]
Adam Schaefer
in your experience is there, I imagine you're going to say at any age. Good. But have you seen like that there's a, there's a prime age for this lesson. So when we first started with you, my son was just 5 years old turning 6. And so we're, we're barely now getting to this place where I think I can start to teach the gigs things of that. But one of the things that's been so powerful is he's young enough and he's age enough where he asked to do a lot of things and we've practiced the. Instead of saying no, it's like first go help mom with laundry. Help this. So we're already I think setting the foundation for assume the money and understanding what money kind of is. We're entering that. So when I think of something like a mission, I feel like he's almost too young to really get that message. Do you find there's a prime age
- [63:28]
Scott Donnell
for like 2 years old. So it starts with the quarter system. Okay. So here's the basis of money training in the home. Okay. We Talked about the home economy. Teach them to earn, teach them to create value. It starts at 2 years old, 2 to 5. You do the quarter system. Get a roll of quarters and one of go on, go on Amazon or whatever and buy the three jar. So it's save, spend, share. You go buy that jar and it's one of the fastest ways to help correct them. And you skip a lot of discipline cycles and you're teaching them, you're reinforcing the right behavior and helping weed out the wrong behavior. And so what you do is every time a two year old is helpful, like they can't add, they can't count to 100, but every time they're helpful or they practice the first time follower rule, they do the thing the first time or they show a good character trait, they're help, they're kind, they're loving, whatever it would be, they get a quarter. Okay. And they get to go put the quarter in one of the jars. Okay. And every time they put it in save, you double it. So you teach them saving and investing right there. And then they can put it in share or spend and it doesn't matter where they put those quarters, but every time they get to 10 quarters, they get a special treat or a reward.
- [64:36]
Adam Schaefer
Okay.
- [64:36]
Scott Donnell
It's beautiful. It teaches them the basics of financial commoncy. Any of the quarters in share, when next time you're at church or you can help, they get to give those quarters away. They love it. Okay. But when they're misbehaving, instead of going through a whole discipline cycle, it's like, oh buddy, you gotta go get a quarter, you gotta go give me a quarter out of your spend jar, not the other ones. So you teach them that like the spend is the stuff that they can get with it. But. And the little dollar toys and things, it's so good.
- [65:07]
Adam Schaefer
Yeah, no, that works great. I mean that totally connects with me because I can see him being able to connect to that.
- [65:12]
Scott Donnell
So you start there with a share jar.
- [65:14]
Adam Schaefer
Yeah.
- [65:14]
Scott Donnell
Like we talked about, what's the number one and most important money skill in the home? You got earn, save, spend, share, invest. The number one by far in a legacy wealth family is share. Because giving together, teaching children to be generous gives them an abundance mindset. Okay. Not a scarcity mindset. It's not a lack mindset, it's abundance mindset. The pie can get bigger, I can create value. Tomorrow's going to be better than today. There's more than enough to go around. I can share. See, and we love the word Share. Because kids first think about sharing a toy before they think about like giving money to a kid in another country or something. So you talk about share and kids can't give what they don't earn. So yes, you need to teach them earning. But sharing is like one of the most powerful skills because it helps you become a better investor, helps become a better like spender, helps you take care of the people around you. More opportunities come to people who are more generous, period. It's an abundant mindset. Okay, so here's a great tip. Like when they're young, sub 10 12, the mission trip stuff. I just took my 7 and 9 year old to Zambia right last summer. So young. Like let's go.
- [66:27]
Adam Schaefer
Oh, even at seven, huh?
- [66:28]
Scott Donnell
Okay. And it was wild and it was unbelievable and their lives are never going to be the same. But here's a great idea. How about next Christmas, give your kids 100 bucks or 200 bucks and they have to give away 100 of it within a week. Teach them what it's like to give, give away and have them get creative on how they want to give it away.
- [66:50]
Adam Schaefer
Okay.
- [66:51]
Scott Donnell
Like I have this joke, you heard it today. Any, anybody who says that money doesn't buy happiness, just hasn't given enough of it away. So share like this idea of service and generosity is the most critical last thing I'll say on generational wealth. The family who gives together stays together. So everyone's worried about ruining their kids, ruining their grandkids, ruin them with wealth. If you want to have glue between generations, give together, give money together. Set up a daft, set up a trust, set up a foundation, Give together to missions and ministries and things that you all care about. If you do that, you are binding your children together because they're giving together, they're on mission together. So regardless of what you're going to pass down financially, set up a system where they're giving together. That, that, that locks families in for generations. It's unbelievable how you do that.
- [67:50]
Sal Destefano
You know, I don't, I don't know if this is really the right way to do it, but I have noticed some positives. And so what we, what we do is we have these condensed, this is just how we do it. So we have these condensed versions of the gospel. This is really these free little mini Bibles and we put money in them and we have them. And every time we see a homeless person or if we do, we tend to give them. Well, our kids, our little ones see this and so now we give it to them to Hand to them. And so now what's happened? If we're out, we don't have anything. My son will see someone and go, papa, can we help him? Can we go help him? Oh, turn around. There was someone over there. And so they're finding joy in doing this and pointing people out. We go over, we help them, and then they talk about it afterwards. So just a little bit of, just to back up a little what you're saying. I've noticed it's perfect that the kids, it seems to foster something in them, which is really interesting.
- [68:38]
Scott Donnell
It really comes down to, are they going to be me centered or are they going to be others and God centered? That's really the greatest skill and gift you can give them as they're growing up. The more they're centered on others, the more that they're going to be successful in life. You can have anything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want. The market grows. The more people serve the needs and wants of others, families are stronger, marriages are stronger. The more people are selfless, the more that they're taking care of the needs of others around, the more they're like they have a lens to look at the world to help the people around them. Okay, that's love. At the end of the day, that's compassion, right? Like I want my kids, I don't want my kids to have pity on people or sympathy for people. I want them to have compassion, which is, it's having sympathy enough to act on it. See, like faith, this is where people mistake what faith is. They just think, oh, if I believe in God, I have faith. No, no, no. Faith is believing in God enough to act on it, right? That's why faith and actions are together. Like I. Faith is actually sitting in a chair knowing it's going to hold me, right? It's being sure of what you hope for, certain of what you don't see enough to act on it. So that's what compassion is. So compassion is not just sympathy and pity for the bad person.
- [69:56]
Sal Destefano
I feel bad for them. And then you're gone.
- [69:58]
Scott Donnell
Do something about it. Like, this is why, you know, I was talking to you guys about Thibaut and I, we work on anti trafficking all the time. I can't talk too much about the secret stuff about it. But I'll tell you, when I talk to families, I'm like, hey, I just want you guys to think about this for a second. Pity is feeling bad for something. Compassion is acting on it. Do you want to raise Kids who just have pity? Or do you want to raise kids who take action when they see a problem, when they see an issue? I want a legacy where my kids learn to take action when they see an issue.
- [70:30]
Sal Destefano
You know what sympathy and pity look like sometimes is False action. Posting, you know, false anger or trying to get someone else to do something, but not actually doing virtue. Something. Yourself or virtue, Everybody. Look how mad I am. Sad. Meanwhile, people aren't getting help. And you mentioned faith. It's like, it would be like talking to someone and they're like, oh, yeah, I really value fitness. Like, oh, cool. Like when you work out. Well, I actually don't work out. Okay, well, you obviously don't value fitness.
- [70:57]
Scott Donnell
Dude, they're 50 pounds overweight and their cholesterol's through the roof. I'm all about fitness.
- [71:02]
Sal Destefano
Yeah. Yeah. No, no, you're not.
- [71:04]
Scott Donnell
Yeah, the fruit. Yeah, the fruit smells bad.
- [71:09]
Sal Destefano
Is this your favorite thing to speak to? Because I know you also train entrepreneurs, you work with businesses. Is this your favorite thing to speak to?
- [71:15]
Scott Donnell
By far. I think that every business is just a group of families getting together on a common mission. So, you know, the irony of what we've been doing is I said goodbye to all the dozens of huge business stuff and all the other things I just said, forget it. The most important thing in the world right now to me is to take back the family. So family goes. So. So society goes. So we just went all in to learn, like, what does it take? How do we build the strongest families in the world? How do we create a system for it? Because I'm a systems thinker. It's how. It's how I've done business forever. You create systems that scale sustainably. That's wealth. That's how you build it. That's how you have impact. And so what we've just found is the family is kind of like the central business of society.
- [72:03]
Sal Destefano
Fact.
- [72:04]
Scott Donnell
But we have sacrificed a lot of families and we have deprioritized the family for career and success and achievement and power and influence and all the things that we want. When family is the greatest blessing you could ever have, a well organized, beautiful legacy is the greatest blessing in life. And so I want. I want to focus all my efforts there. And then what we found was that, oh, by focusing on explaining this to teenagers and kids and families, we just came up with some of the most incredible business training in the world because we're focusing on the foundational business unit, the family, right? So we got all these people who do do all These things in business and then have train wreck homes because they're going the opposite direction. The people I admire most in business have the most well oiled, functioning homes with the deepest relationships and the most connection. Now you have the integrity and respect to do this in work. This is what entrepreneurs need to realize is like, hey, you nail this stuff at home, you're going to nail it at work. And then everybody else is going to see the truth. They're going to see the fruit on the business front and on the home front. I want to be very careful who I listen to because I want them to be like holistically in line. Does that make sense?
- [73:22]
Sal Destefano
You mean all the business influencers or all that crap?
- [73:26]
Scott Donnell
We call them 1C experts, right? Like they're myopically gifted. They crush in one area and fail in every other area. And I'm not saying you can't learn some good stuff from them, but I'm saying if I want to model my life after someone, I want someone who has their priorities in order. And they're nailing all these different areas because I don't want success in just one area. I want success in all the areas. That's why this is such a big deal to us.
- [73:52]
Adam Schaefer
Well, our team put together like, what 15 hot seat questions here for you. They went through a lot of your content and stuff.
- [74:00]
Sal Destefano
It's like rapid fire. Give us a few words. Words or, or what you think about each one of these.
- [74:05]
Adam Schaefer
And I, I definitely think we're talking about the family and, and talking about generational wealth. I think kicking it off with one of the first ones right here is, is, is paying your kids for chores. So where do you stand on that? Because I think that's, I think a common thing that people do is, oh, you take out the trash, you make your bed, you do these things and you get this allowance.
- [74:25]
Sal Destefano
Every single weekly allowance. Yeah.
- [74:27]
Adam Schaefer
And so what are your, what are your thoughts on paying for, for chores and allowances?
- [74:31]
Scott Donnell
Allowance is socialism. You're literally getting money for existing. Okay. Chores is a cuss word. That's why we changed this whole thing to gigs and earning. Okay, so here's the problem. If you just give your kids an allowance, okay, it's basically just giving them money to exist. And you're like, well, at least they're learning about money. Well, hold on a second. Like they need to learn to earn the money first or else they'll never learn a money skill with it. Okay, well then other people go, well, we give our kids chores and then they can Earn an allowance. Okay, so you're giving them a list of things to do, and then they get one lump sum every week. 80% of the time, they're still getting the lump sum every week. They're not tying it individually to anything. Right. And then you're still arguing over the chores. You're still reminding them 10 times to do everything. Yeah, okay. Or they say the last biggest problem is they're like, oh, no, no, my kids don't get an allowance. Don't worry. I make them do all the chores like they're told.
- [75:29]
Adam Schaefer
So slavery.
- [75:30]
Scott Donnell
I'm like, oh, yeah. Congratulations, Drill Sergeant. You have compliant children. And be careful. Everybody's like, I don't want defiant children. I want compliant children. No, you're thinking about it wrong. Did you know that a defiant child is actually going to become the most loyal, most powerful kid that will never be taken advantage of? Later in their life, they'll know what they stand for. They'll carry on your values more than any other kid. Defiance is a superpower. You just have to know how to manage it.
- [75:58]
Sal Destefano
Well, that's right. Okay.
- [76:00]
Scott Donnell
But I will say, when they say, I don't pay them anything, I make them do the chores, I go, well, then, okay, good. You're paying for everything for them for their entire childhood and teenage years, and now they're learning nothing about money. So that's why the home economy system
- [76:14]
Sal Destefano
works so well, because you are paying them. You're buying them stuff. You're paying for the roof of their head.
- [76:18]
T-Mobile Advertiser
That's.
- [76:18]
Sal Destefano
Don't realize the value.
- [76:19]
Scott Donnell
That's right.
- [76:20]
Adam Schaefer
What do you think?
- [76:21]
Sal Destefano
This is a tough one, but what do you think about, like, taking away something that you think is valuable for behavior issues? For example, your kid loves football or loves baseball. They have a behavior issue, you take it away. Be like, God, they need that. They need the sport. It's a good thing. Or they have piano lessons and they love it. Or they do this thing that. And it's really good for them, and you take it away for behavior issue. Or do you focus on something else? Like, how do you juggle that?
- [76:48]
Scott Donnell
The two biggest problems I see in the home are when parents don't enforce consequences. It's a. It's false. It's. It's a false threat. Okay. It's too hard to do it. So they just keep warning them and repeating themselves all the time, which is a nightmare. Okay. Or they just give them a bunch of rewards. Regardless, the average family gives their kids over a dozen different rewards. Freedoms, upgrades, experiences, privileges, money. Stuff, they're just giving them all these different rewards that could be tied to responsibilities and earning it. You're missing gold here. Okay, So I think that there has to be a consequence. You know, the best form of discipline to me, is just choice. Consequence set up the strategy and the system in the home where they know the consequences of decisions and choices that they make. Right. It's not about you being against them or anything. It's just. It's the environment of this home. You make these choices, here's the consequences. And if the consequences aren't a big deal, they're not a consequence. So if the incentive structures are not aligned and it's something that maybe you want them to do, but they really, really want it, and it's not really a consequence that they care about. Like a kid who goes to their room but loves being in their room.
- [78:00]
Adam Schaefer
That was my sister.
- [78:00]
Scott Donnell
Yeah. That's not a consequence. My daughter loves to read. She has more AR points than any fourth grader at the school that has ever been there. She's a reading freak. She earns money to buy more books. I am, like, amazed by this. Okay, we have to use reading time and books as the consequence. She doesn't get to do that.
- [78:21]
Sal Destefano
They have to feel some pain.
- [78:22]
Scott Donnell
They have to feel it.
- [78:23]
Sal Destefano
Oh, interesting.
- [78:24]
Scott Donnell
I remember being young, I missed the first youth group when in sixth grade. Like, the first. First youth group when I was like, all my friends there. Everyone's going, this is like church, like, learning about God. I missed it because I acted out. And I to this day, remember, like 30 years later, that moment, because it was like I desperately wanted that thing and I lost that opportunity because of the decision I made. So you gotta force a consequence that's really gonna mean something to your kids.
- [78:50]
Sal Destefano
What's your hot take on spanking?
- [78:54]
Scott Donnell
But I thought I already got canceled earlier in this podcast. Spanking. Spanking is not abuse. There's your first answer. Spanking is not the only answer, okay? We have this fights all the time, arguments with families. How could you? How dare you? Oh, spare the rod, lose the child. What's wrong with you? You're going to raise a nightmare. There's two sides of this coin, and I don't land on either. Okay? But here's what I need to tell you about discipline. It's a heart issue. All discipline is a heart issue. No matter how you're gonna discipline them, it has to be a consequence that they don't want, okay? And I think people do spanking because it's an immediate consequence. Instead of, oh, you're losing your privilege for this for the next two months. And now the parents are like, I gotta freaking. I gotta keep track of this for two months because of one outburst. Like, that's the hard part. I just, like, get it over with. But you need immediate consequences somehow that mean something. So figure that out. Whatever you do find immediate consequences that mean something to your kid. There you go. But you never lose the heart. See, it's a heart issue. The worst thing I see is if parents will spank their kid and send him away. So if the kid acts out, they spank them right there in the moment out of frustration, and they send them out of their presence. Now that's losing the heart, right? You never discipline in anger. It's about choices and consequences. And at the end of whatever you do with the consequence, you recapture the relationship because you're going after their heart, not their compliance. So it's like, hey, they say they're sorry. They really mean it. Say, hey, God forgives us. I forgive you. I love you. Big hug. Hey, let's go make this right. High five. And you go make it right with a sibling, with mom, with dad, whatever it is, that is what you're after. In a discipline cycle, you're trying to keep their heart. I'll say that. The other thing I'll say is discipline. Most discipline in the home comes from a lack of training. Discipline is usually a reactive answer to just a lack of training. Like, you get frustrated because you've told your kids a bunch of times, you've reminded them a million times, you didn't train them with the systems with enough choice consequence to, like, get the systems in the home. Most parents are exhausted because they haven't trained. They're just reacting through discipline, and they just get frustrated and exhausted all the time. So double down on training, and then you really cut the discipline in half.
- [81:27]
Adam Schaefer
I find this. This one is so interesting to me because we've talked about this on our podcast, and I'm the one who's, like, pro spanking, yet I've never spanked. So I find that really, it's that.
- [81:37]
Scott Donnell
So.
- [81:37]
Adam Schaefer
And it's because I never felt like I've had to. I've never had to. I. I can make the case for where I could see, like, for example, if my son was a type of kid who might pick up a toy and hit another kid over the head. And I want to disrupt that in the moment, in the time that I see it, I could see the. The. The importance or the value of, hey, whacking him on the butt and then teaching him that's not okay behavior. But he's never been able, I've always been able to communicate to him and talk to him what's right, what's wrong and stop him without doing that. So I've never had to do it, although I feel like I would if I needed to. But I've made it this far and not had to.
- [82:13]
Scott Donnell
Two of my kids never need it. One of them, he needed it and he woke up real quick and now he's like the most loyal, most first time follower. We actually had the closest relationship, ironically. Okay, okay. So this is why we gotta give each other a break here. There's plenty of other stuff we can argue about in families and homes and life in the world.
- [82:33]
Adam Schaefer
Yeah.
- [82:34]
Scott Donnell
Like how about we try to figure out ways to help our kids become the healthiest, strongest kids possible and give each other a break.
- [82:40]
Sal Destefano
I definitely think there's a difference too, between, of course, is how you spank, but there's also. Is it at anger and rage?
- [82:47]
Scott Donnell
Right.
- [82:48]
Sal Destefano
Because you can also not spank your kid and you can yell at them out of anger and rage, which is traumatizing to children. And we know this.
- [82:55]
Scott Donnell
Or worse, you just let them live that way.
- [82:57]
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
- [82:57]
Scott Donnell
What's Jordan Peterson's quote? I love it. He said, don't, don't let your kids do anything that makes you dislike them.
- [83:02]
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
- [83:03]
Scott Donnell
Yeah. Because they're going to be a nightmare to everybody around you. Yeah.
- [83:06]
Sal Destefano
You know, as a parent, you're going to make mistakes. How do you feel about apologizing to
- [83:11]
Scott Donnell
your kids all the time? So every time you mess up, learn to apologize, ask for forgiveness. You have to model these things 100%. I think, I actually think probably the, the worst issue, like, yes, there's like blatant abuse. There's terrible things that happen in people's childhoods. But close behind that is when people never share anything with their kids. Everything's behind closed doors. Their kids never see any issues or struggles or conflict. They literally just act like everything's perfect in the home and nothing was ever wrong when a ton of stuff actually was. So then fast forward and then the parents split and then the kids immediately blame themselves.
- [83:53]
Sal Destefano
Okay.
- [83:53]
Scott Donnell
And then they're carrying that baggage for the rest of their life.
- [83:56]
Sal Destefano
They're wired, careful. Their children are wired to place the blame on themselves and they think something is wrong. That's right. So if you're. I've apologized to my kids just for being distant or in a bad mood. Because it's not like they don't know. And so afterwards, like, hey, you know, earlier I was just totally in a bad mood and I'm really sorry and I got a lot of stuff on my mind. You don't need to necessarily tell them all your, your struggles, especially if they're little, they're not gonna understand, but just let them know like, hey, here's something's going on. The thing you felt, it's real.
- [84:26]
Scott Donnell
Yep.
- [84:26]
Sal Destefano
I actually was in a bad mood.
- [84:27]
Adam Schaefer
I think it's one of the most powerful things that we can do.
- [84:30]
Scott Donnell
100.
- [84:30]
Adam Schaefer
Yeah. I mean we obviously, we cover a lot of things and covered a lot of things with you personally. I think because it's inevitable as a parent, you're gonna make a mistake or you're, you're not gonna handle a situation perfect. So that's inevitable. But if you own it and then you apologize to your kid, I think the connection that you get from is unbelievable. I've watched it happen.
- [84:51]
Scott Donnell
Yeah. I mean if there's a break and a repair, it usually gets stronger. Yeah. Right. Think of bones like muscles, like tendons. How do you grow muscle? You break down the muscle so it grows back stronger. This is how family works. That's why we say like repentance and forgiveness and saying I'm sorry is the glue between generations. Okay. When none of that is modeled it just between your kids and then your grandkids, like then there's just so much harbored resentment, there's so much bitterness. There's so much like victim mindset of these things. Like I see families and they're like, yeah, I haven't talked to my mom in five years because of this one random issue. I'm like, it's not the one random issue. It was 25 years of you guys never modeling this. And then the one break, the one thing happens and you're an adult and you think it's all over. Are you kidding me? No. We need to model this early and often as much as we can in the home. Yeah.
- [85:41]
Adam Schaefer
Should you take your kids devices at night?
- [85:44]
Scott Donnell
You shouldn't give your kids devices anyway.
- [85:46]
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
- [85:47]
Scott Donnell
I mean talk, let's talk about age here. But I mean I'm in several groups with like Jonathan Haidt and Dr. Amen and all these Deloney and all these guys. We've kind of all come to the conclusion that's like that phone has actually more destructive potential than the car.
- [86:03]
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
- [86:04]
Scott Donnell
So my kids are not going to get a full on smartphone till after they're driving. I love that I'm giving them an Apple watch or a Fitbit that can geotarget them and they can text and call if they need something. And other than that, they don't need it.
- [86:18]
Sal Destefano
Go as long as you can.
- [86:19]
Scott Donnell
Go as long as you can. I had a friend one time recently, she said she had three sons. She was right in the middle of this like anxious, anxious generation kind of stuff. Her son's got phones earlier all this. She said, scott, the moment they got that smartphone, I can pinpoint to the day for all three of them. We said goodbye to their childhood. See, that's the pain of this. You don't know that. It's so much destruction that's on there. And it's not just explicit images and seeing something terrible. It's the dopamine distortion and the pre addiction training that it gives you and the lack of attention and connection you're ever gonna have with them ever again.
- [86:58]
Sal Destefano
You know what's crazy? Talk to any parent of teenagers who's taken their kids, by the way, requires a lot from a parent to do this because you deal with, you know what, storm, but you just deal with it and they get over it. If parents of teenagers have ever taken their kid's phone away for like a week, they will all tell you the same thing. Oh my God. Two days into it, man, they were great.
- [87:21]
Scott Donnell
Thank you, dad.
- [87:21]
Sal Destefano
They changed. They were awesome. They were wonderful. They were, they were receptive. They were present. Like they throw a fit for a day or two and then afterwards they're better kids. It's like, oh, what's this phone doing to my kid?
- [87:31]
Scott Donnell
Yeah, it's like they wake up, they're alive again.
- [87:33]
Adam Schaefer
So I'm going to take a step further because this is what I plan to do. Obviously mine's really young and I will delay it as long as possible. I imagine when he gets to be a teenager, that's when the hardest conversation will. At that point you'll be in high school. And at that point you'll understand what a book report report looks like. And there's three books that I've read that he'll have to read and give me a report on because then he'll understand why I regulate it the way I do. And that's Irresistible Unplugged in Igen. And all three of those books talk about how those things were engineered and what they do and the dangers of all them, all the statistics, all the stuff on it. And I feel like if he's mature enough to drive a car, mature enough to have have those things and he's mature, mature enough to read those books and write his dad a report. And when his, and then when he's, when I sit down with him and I hand him this thing and I say, hey, this is when you can use it. This is how you use it. This is why you have. Like, he'll understand because he did those things.
- [88:25]
Scott Donnell
I, I look at technology, I mean the quick answer that you were saying earlier is like, I don't want tech, any tech in their rooms at all. Yeah, for especially younger, like pre puberty or anything. Don't. No iPads in the rooms, none of that stuff. Like we just keep it all out of it. Even me. Like I have to be restrictive on. My phone is going away at dinner and it's away. I have to make myself. It's away for the rest of the night as much as possible because I want to connect with my wife too. Right. But I look at it like a weapon. It's training. You have to train them to be prepared for a weapon. The phone is just like a weapon. So yeah, we have in our, we just finished the Connection series a ton of kids coaching videos on technology and devices and they've never even heard of, like, hey, what you say online is there forever. Like you don't even know who's on the other end of the phone on the other account. Like, do you guys even know what catfishing is and grooming? Like they need to learn these things in their young teenagers before they ever get it. The worst case scenario is when they get it and you wait till the nightmare happens and then you teach them about it. No, we need to be ahead of the game on this. And so yeah, we've got to be educating. I think that there should be standards before kids are allowed to have these smartphones. There needs to be like a training rubric.
- [89:37]
Adam Schaefer
I watched my cousin do a really good job of this. She's got five kids and she's got teenagers now who grew up in this and they were smart enough to be ahead of it. And it was such a cool conversation to have with a 16 year old, 16 going on 17 year old who has lots of restrictions around her phone and how she uses it, what she can't have on it, what she can't have on it. And I remember asking her, do you wish you had all the other things? She goes, yeah, yeah, of course. No, all my friends have this and that. And then I asked her, well, when you become a mother one day and you have kids, will you do the Same thing, she says, absolutely. So it's. It's so cool to see that if you, if you train that early, that even, yeah, they, they understand the desires, the wants, and, you know, this or that, but then also understands why they did it then. And it's, how would you do it with your kids? Oh, I'm gonna do the same thing.
- [90:22]
Scott Donnell
Did you see the massive study that just came out, like, last month?
- [90:25]
Adam Schaefer
Which one?
- [90:26]
Scott Donnell
The age of giving kids a smartphone versus mental health. Eamonn just talked about this. We saw the report the day it came out. So huge study, 100,000 kids, teenagers. They found that when the kids got a smartphone between the ages of, I think it's 7 and 10, which is a young. We're like, whoa, that's young. Well, think of lower. Lower and lower economic statuses. They're giving the kids smartphones earlier and earlier because it's the easy button. Because they can cook or go to their job or something like.
- [90:51]
Sal Destefano
That's right.
- [90:52]
Scott Donnell
So many of these kids are getting it. If you get a phone under 10, a smartphone under 10, the mental health rate is 50% as a teenager. Mental health stress, like anxiety, depression, suicidality. With boys, it's anger lashing out. 50%. And if you give a smartphone between 11 and 13, it's down to 25%, which is still 25%.
- [91:17]
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
- [91:17]
Scott Donnell
That's a hundredfold what it was a couple decades, like a decade and a half ago. A hundredfold. So the smartphone is the most addicting substance for young people in the world. It's just something we give them as a gift at some point instead of drugs and other things that, like you
- [91:36]
Adam Schaefer
said, instead of training them, like it's a gun, like a weapon, you got to train them.
- [91:39]
Scott Donnell
It's like it's a weapon. Yeah. It is so hard when a kid sees these things the first time. Like, the hit it gives them. Like, this is why pornography is so destructive. Like, it is insanely destructive on young people's minds. You know, like when we were young, like, let's just be honest, you didn't have it readily available at your fingertips all day, every day. Thank God you had the pervert weird friend that you're like, oh, they're creepy friend that had some, like, magazine from Maxim. And everyone felt really risky and weird, like, going over and. But everyone saw it at, like, a younger age. Like, whoa, that was crazy. I gotta run from that. I remember being like 10 years old the first time we saw, like, the first page of a pic that our friend Travis showed us.
- [92:20]
Sal Destefano
Call him out.
- [92:21]
Scott Donnell
Yeah. Travis, if you're listening. Well, here's what happened because he was in like a double wide across the street. The next day he goes to juvie because he was. We didn't know. I didn't know until much later why. But he was selling drugs for selling pot. And so he goes away to jail. And me and my buddy Matt thought that it was because of the magazine. So for the rest of our years,
- [92:42]
Adam Schaefer
we were scared to death.
- [92:44]
Scott Donnell
I never going to just look at this as long as I live.
- [92:47]
Sal Destefano
I was 12 years old on a construction site. And then, I mean, that's where you. Construction site. It was. They put. They had them in the porta potty.
- [92:55]
Scott Donnell
Yeah.
- [92:55]
Sal Destefano
Just stuck up on the thing, you know, but.
- [92:57]
Scott Donnell
But it's different now. Like if you. And this is why kids will never.
- [93:02]
Sal Destefano
That's crazy.
- [93:02]
Scott Donnell
Most of our kids that are doing this are addicted to this. Parents have no clue.
- [93:06]
Sal Destefano
It's deadly. It is.
- [93:07]
Scott Donnell
It is deadly for them.
- [93:08]
Adam Schaefer
And so, yeah, talking about when we were kids, here's. I'm going to say a saying that we all probably heard growing up. And I want to hear your thoughts on this because I said so.
- [93:19]
Sal Destefano
Why do I got to do that? Because I said so.
- [93:22]
Scott Donnell
Yeah. Part of the values back to that is building an identity in our kids and a value system of trust where the kids go. Oh yeah, my parents have my best interests at heart. Okay. A parent doesn't necessarily have to just explain themselves and give all the reasoning. My job is not to convince my kids. Yeah. Okay. They just need to know that I have their best interest at heart.
- [93:47]
Sal Destefano
There's a condition there that has to
- [93:48]
Scott Donnell
happen and I'm out for their good. And I want my kids to be respectful. Like there's a God gives the command, like, respect your. Your mother and father. Yeah. And that means like I'm going to honor them and I'm going to follow and obey the things they tell me because look, good parents are out for the good of their kids. And so for my kids, I actually, you know, we practice the first time follower rule. We don't repeat ourselves in the home like that. Actually you help. It's very helpful to build that into there. I don't say, I don't tell my kids because I said so anymore because they don't talk back. Yeah. They know that like the first time follower rule is a valuable thing in our home. Yeah. Because first time follower rule is the rule of which. Like, hey, in our home we really celebrate you falling the first time because when you're gonna run into traffic if you like, as a young kid, a little kid.
- [94:36]
Adam Schaefer
Yeah.
- [94:37]
Scott Donnell
You only get one, you only get one shot at that.
- [94:39]
Adam Schaefer
Yeah.
- [94:40]
Scott Donnell
Stop. Yeah, like you need to have your kids follow the first time.
- [94:43]
Adam Schaefer
Yeah.
- [94:43]
Scott Donnell
And when it comes to repeating ourselves, sometimes men can, they can get bigger and louder really quickly and it like, forces compliance with the children. Oh, I gotta listen. Because dad's scarier at times. Yeah, well, your wife can't do that. She can't do that. So you're taking, you're robbing her ability to have authority in the home. That's the problem. And so when we train families, we say, hey, you gotta not repeat yourself. Just let the consequence be the teacher. And it's harder to do because it's way easier to just be like, I told you this. Do it. I missed one more time, the last warning. How many times do I have to tell you? Yeah, don't repeat yourself. Because the more you repeat yourself, the less weight your words have, the more they disrespect. The first five times you say it. I like, oh, they're not going to get super pissed until the sixth time. So I'm good, I can ignore them.
- [95:29]
Adam Schaefer
I like how you frame that because I take it as a challenge when my son's asking me questions, asking me, why to teach him, because he's at an age right now where everything is, why, why are we going to the store, why are we doing that? So he's at that age and so educating him. I could see on explaining the why behind everything. But I feel like if it's a question you've already asked me and daddy's already told you that we, you know, we don't do this before bed or we don't do that, then it's like, I don't have to, I shouldn't have to re. Repeat why. You already know why, like, type of deal.
- [95:58]
Scott Donnell
They're not looking for reasoning.
- [95:59]
Adam Schaefer
Right. But he's at that, that five to six age where they're just, they are just so curious and interested. And I want him to, I also don't want to just dismiss him, right. And be like, oh, I. Because I told you so, I'm your dad. It's like, no, let me explain why why that happens this way. And then. But it's like after I've done that.
- [96:15]
Scott Donnell
Well, let me give you another really good tip that stops a lot of that. We, the strongest families I've ever met, they take, they, they take every opportunity with their children to be a learning experience. Okay? See this Is it's. I call the Socratic families versus, like the dictator families, the strongest families. Literally, they're Every single opportunity in the home is like another thing. I'm going to ask you a question about or try to teach you or train into you something or hey, what do you think about this? Hey, how would you do this? Everything is a learning experience.
- [96:45]
Adam Schaefer
Yeah.
- [96:45]
Scott Donnell
And so many families, they miss that. Yeah. They're literally just like, I'm tell because I told you so, do this, do that. And they're not ever using as a training teacher.
- [96:54]
Adam Schaefer
Mom and dads are really good at this. If you have any friends who are. My mom was a teacher. My best friend's a teacher. If you ever watch them with kids, they're so good at this. Everything is a lesson.
- [97:04]
Scott Donnell
That's right.
- [97:05]
Adam Schaefer
Every play, every dinner, everything. Like, they find ways. And you educate and teach so good,
- [97:10]
Scott Donnell
you naturally invite your kids into it with you.
- [97:12]
Adam Schaefer
Yeah. If you've never been around that. A hack is to put yourself, get a friend, get someone close. Watch how a teacher is with a kid, a young kid that's in that adolescent age, and watch what they do.
- [97:25]
Scott Donnell
But you got to be a little bit careful because sometimes just teachers are teaching. They're like telling you how to do everything instead of asking you how you would do it.
- [97:33]
Adam Schaefer
Sure, sure.
- [97:34]
Scott Donnell
See, you have to be a Socratic teacher. This is the difference. So in our home, I want my kids to learn critical thinking. Yeah. I can't just tell them everything and expect them to be good critical thinkers. I have to ask the question back. Kind of like what we talked about, of helping the team solve their own problems. So with the kids, I'm like, hey, how would you do this? Hey, these have to be. We have to get this done in the yard. And figures. How would you handle this situation? Hey, how would you do the dishes here? How would you handle this problem?
- [98:00]
Adam Schaefer
Yeah.
- [98:01]
Scott Donnell
So I'm actually inviting them in as a learning experience. Yeah. Right. That's. That's why teachers are good.
- [98:05]
Adam Schaefer
Yeah.
- [98:06]
Scott Donnell
Most teachers are good at that. But some teachers are like, I'm telling you just everything.
- [98:09]
Adam Schaefer
Yeah. Yeah. No, it's like, what, what? I mean, my kid's so young, Right. What shapes are these? And if we eat three of these grapes and leave two of these grapes, how many are left over? Like, you just. You could take all kinds of simple things like that in terms of teaching experiences.
- [98:22]
Scott Donnell
And here's the real simple strategy. It's like, do more with your kids than for them at a young age. And then you'll free yourself up because they'll learn how to do it on their own. That's teaching. That's good training. Yeah. That's good mentorship and coaching to your kids. Like teach. One of my favorite rules is like treat your kids two years older than they are at all times and at all times they will rise to the occasion. Yeah. Like a seven year old can do laundry. A six year old can help you cook. Like they can help put younger siblings to bed at a younger age. Like it's not to bed but get them all ready for bed. Yeah. There's so many things that kids can help out in the home with if you just give them the responsibility they love to too. Like a 12 year old should start driving something like a, like a dirt bike off road or like get ready for 16 when they're on the road driving with a license. Yeah. Start them early. Like you have. You know how cool it is for like a 12 year old boy to be like, hey, you want to go ride the tractor? Hey, we're going dirt biking. Hey, we're like treat them older than they are and they'll rise to the occasion. Or I've heard it said, put a crown two inches above your kids heads at all times and they'll grow into royalty.
- [99:29]
Sal Destefano
That's great.
- [99:30]
Adam Schaefer
I like that.
- [99:31]
Sal Destefano
That's great.
- [99:31]
Scott Donnell
Yeah.
- [99:31]
Sal Destefano
Scott, this is awesome.
- [99:32]
Scott Donnell
Yeah. Thanks guys.
- [99:33]
Sal Destefano
Great having you come talk to the team. Yep. Great having on the show. Really appreciate what you do, my friend.
- [99:38]
Scott Donnell
Yep, you guys too. Thanks for helping the world.
- [99:41]
Justin Andrews
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- [100:48]
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