Jen Friesen (7:15)

Thank you so much for sharing. I'm like subtly looking around to see if I have a tissue or anything close by my desk, but wow. And it's incredible just to think about in eight years the influence a mom has. And you had a big family, right? You have a lot of siblings.

Xane Anderson (7:30)

I do. I gotta tell you, my, my, my dad and mom had seven kids. She died at the age of 32. I was the second oldest. My youngest brother was only seven weeks old, he was still breastfeeding. And I gotta tell you, her influence still permeates even his life. Who?

Jen Friesen (7:49)

He.

Xane Anderson (7:50)

He never remembers her, obviously, and some of my younger siblings don't remember her. But I'll tell you, I can see it, and those who know my mom can see it, that the influence that a mother has is so profound. So for those. For those of the audience here who are moms, please know you have a huge, huge impact. Greater than, you know.

Jen Friesen (8:10)

It'S amazing. What did your dad do? He's now he's by himself with seven kids. Your dad, obviously, has been a huge influence and person who's been in your life. He was your only person.

Xane Anderson (8:24)

Yeah, well, he was a great man. And he did end up getting married later, and they had one other child. So I have a total of eight siblings. And he. And he always honored my mom's memory. And my stepmom, technically, she always was willing to honor my mom's memory as well. So, you know, obviously it created some challenges for everybody, but it was a. There's no replacement for a good parent. And I've been blessed to have good parents, and I was blessed to have my mom for eight years. So. Thank you for letting me share that story with your. With your audience today, Jennifer.

Jen Friesen (9:06)

Yeah, of course. Thank you so much. In terms of kind of where you went with your career, it sounds like you went more into a business and corporate side of things, and now you've transitioned more into podcast space speaking and then trying to encourage dad specifically. What. What led you into business and what transitioned you to be more of a coach and encourager to dads?

Xane Anderson (9:29)

Well, let me tell you this. I still do business. I still have, you know, I still talk to a lot of people, but I. But I've realized, you know, sometimes I'll do a presentation for an audience, and they want to learn about, you know, how to influence people for good, which is one of the things I talk about. But you know, what's way more important to them? And I've realized this after years of speaking to them. If they can influence their children, they can find a way to influence their spouse or their troubled team or someone in their personal life that is so much more important to them, to me, to you, I'm guessing, and to the audience here. You know, I've had a background where I've been able to. A lot of my background has been in sales. For example, I've done a lot of business to business sales. I've sold to governments. I've sold to associations, I've sold to big organizations. But the principles that allow you to say, get into a high level director in New York are exactly the same principles that allow you to be a good parent and perhaps help influence your child to stop tantrum. I mean, they're the same. It's the exact same principles. They apply it. You apply them kind of in a different way, obviously, but it's the same principles. And I just felt that, you know, there was a wise man, Jennifer, who said something like this. If there's not enough good parents, there will never be enough police, there's not enough good parents, there will never be enough prisons. I mean, we can pretend that social programs can somehow fix things, but when you see major problems in the world, when you see people who are being dishonest or committing fraud or being violent or all the kind, even wars, I mean, a lot of the issues we're seeing in the world right now had their root in an overheated or a neglected family. And trying to throw a few social programs at that is like trying to stop a tsunami with a few sandbags. It's noble, but it's not going to work. If we want to solve the problems we have in society, Jennifer, we have got to figure out a way to make people realize how important it is to be a dad, how important it is to be a mom, how important it is to have the ultimate opportunity to shape generations from now.

Jen Friesen (11:50)

We talk a lot at them before us about the ramifications, especially of not having your dad in your home. You're touching on incarceration, criminality, violence, even things like childhood obesity or, you know, health, education outcomes, on and on and on. And that's kind of the impact on children when they don't have dads. What would you say are the, the big things you've sort of identified as problems for dads or the things that dads are really struggling with when it comes to being a good dad, a present dad versus being a dad, that maybe you're not involved in your kid's life. But what would you say are the biggest things that dads are struggling with?

Xane Anderson (12:33)

Oh, goodness. Truthfully? Well, there's a number. Let's talk about a few. I think that the same things that a lot of our kids struggle with just being present, like having a device, you get home, but then you're not really there because you're scrolling through news, you're scrolling through emails or something that's just not as important and your child's there asking for attention and they're growing up and you're trading that ability to influence them for a few dopamine hits with clicks on your social media. Truthfully, I think a lot of dads, if you're asking sincerely, are struggling with a porn addiction. I think that is a huge thing where dads feel bad about accessing pornography. And because of that, they're more angry. They're more mad at themselves. Here's the truth, Jennifer. When we're not true to our conscience, we're at war with ourself. And rather than fixing the problem, which is, you know, I have to go in and change me, which is difficult, especially when you're addicted to something, the natural tendency is to just take that war out on others. And so we see people, we see dads who frankly are. I mean, it's a huge plague, people who are addicted to pornography. And then they're coming home and they're being angry because they're really angry at themselves. Themselves. And they're being abusive or, or just unkind. And so we need dads to step up and say, you know what? I'm going to take care of the stuff inside of me so that I can show up and be the best dad I can. And we have guys who may be addicted to work and say, you know, I, I need to go keep up with the Joneses. And so I need to have a little bit bigger house or nicer car. And they miss the entire boat of being able to help their children for a few extra dollars. I mean, look at me. Let me give you one example here, Jennifer. I've asked people, and I'll ask the viewers, any of your listeners here, do you know what your great great grandparents did for a living? So this is your grandparents. Grandparents. And you kind of nodded maybe. No, Most people can't tell you. Sometimes I get somebody who can say, oh, yeah, they'll name one, maybe even two. But remember, you had eight great great grandfathers and eight great great grandmothers. You had 16 of them. Nobody cares. Do you care if they had a cool horse or if they had a cool plow? Do you care how big their house was? Nobody cares. Well, here's the thing. Your great great grandchildren, those of you who are listening with children, are not going to care if you had a few extra square feet. They're not going to care if you had a little bit nicer car. Nobody's. It's going to be completely irrelevant. But let me give you an example of something. I live in the United States of America. Do you want to know why I live here because, because I have ancestors who made a family decision many, many years ago, in some situations, centuries, where they said, we're going to get on a boat and come to the United States. Well, now I'm here. And that choice that they made hundreds of years ago in some situations is now affecting the language I'm speaking to you. It affects my economic opportunities, affects my educational opportunities, affects my religion. It affects so many things. But whether they not they had a cool horse or a cool plow or a few extra square feet at their house doesn't matter at all to me. And that's an obvious one because it's geographic, but just as obvious. Just not as obvious, but just as real as were they angry? Were they checked in, were they checked out, Were they drunk? Were they kind, what kind of parent were they? And that that can be passed down forever. So here's the stats. You could go to work and I think there was a report, I think it was by McKinsey that said that even this, even the companies on the S&P 500, so these are the biggest companies, you know, around, they're probably not going to make it past year 18. So even if, Jennifer, if you and I started a company and went huge, the chances that it makes it past year 18 aren't great. But the chances that the influence I have with my children will go on and on. So we need as dads, as moms, let's get our priorities straight. Let's realize that being a parent is the, is the ultimate career. And then we have these little sub careers to help us provide for our family. As a dad, I have, I have it like a kind of a sub career, but my real career is being a husband and father.

Jen Friesen (16:54)

That's so good. I feel like more conservative folks are really trying to re promote that for women because there's kind of been the girl boss movement and the feminist movement that was saying, you know, it's not as important to stay home with your kids. It's important to go get a career. Katie with MFRS likes to say, you can do it all, but you can't do it all at once. You can't go be a partner in a law firm for 80 hours a week and be present and be with your kids all the time. And so I think that's very important for women to consider. But you're saying too, it's really important for dads to consider, even though men might more often be that primary breadwinner and be working more outside the home to consider that your sub career and that's to help you do the real thing of raising human beings of form, you know, formation for human beings I think is such a great thing to consider. So yeah, we talked about porn addiction, being addicted to work and I think two men are really facing the pressures like you're saying, of trying to have it all at once too. Yeah, you need to get a bigger house and have more rooms and have nice cars and are your kids wearing the certain things and they're feeling maybe squished by those pressures versus feeling like they have the tools and the bandwidth to really invest in their family and their kids. I think you have a class or a series, seven videos or sessions and I know you don't want to give us all the proprietary information, but what are some of the things if, if dads are looking for resources that, that they could be doing that can help them improve in, in this way?

Xane Anderson (18:29)

Well, here's the thing. I, I, I'm on a movement here Jennifer, so I, I'm happy to give this@dadfluence.org is where I have it. It's a seven week system. For anybody listening to this, you can get it for free. If when you check out you just put in the code word family, F A M I L, Y. And it's, it has what I think are some of the best things you can do to try to, to prevent problems. You know, a lot of dads, a lot of moms, they wait until there's a crisis. You know, something, you know, my, my kids doing drugs or my kids commit, commit suicide or my, something huge has to happen for sometimes people to wake up. And what this is designed to do is to try to influence your children way before there's any problems. How do we make it so that we have a great family life? And so, you know, this isn't about making money. This is about trying to. Let me tell you this, Jennifer. I talked to a policeman recently and he said 90%. So this is my unscientific survey, but I'm going to tell you this. This One policeman said 90% of the people he's taking to jail don't have dads in the home. There's something about a dad being there, you know, who can firmly but kindly say, you know, we need to treat people with respect. How do we treat our sister? How do we treat our brother? Why is it important to be honest? Let's talk about the golden rule. How do we handle it when we're angry? I mean all of these things, dads are specially suited to do. In fact, kids are so much more confident when they have a dad who's checked in at home. There's something about a dad who can say, you know, you got this. Then the kid hears that, that, that confident voice in their head. My dad thinks I've got it, I must be okay, you know. And so please dads, any dads who are listening or moms who are listening, you want to elbow your dad, your husband or somebody, you know who's dad, let them know what a great opportunity. I'd be happy to talk to any of them. And again, you can give them that dadfluence.org course, use the COVID family and they could get that seven week system for free.

Jen Friesen (20:24)

That's awesome. Yeah, thanks so much for sharing that you have talked a little bit about the way dads go about some of these things is really important too. Some folks might think raised by a military dad, dad's investment means I got to get you up at 7am you need to go run outside, you make your bed. It's kind of more about rules and I'm going to be really hard on you and make sure I'm turning you into a man. Which I think, you know, men are going to parent much differently than women in that way. We talk about that, that men are going to be much more likely to push competitiveness, to challenge, to push limits, to, to direct them to do hard work, to direct them to wrestle and be physical with each other, you know, and appropriately so where women are a lot more likely to say cooperation, you need to work well with others, you need to be kind, you need to be generous, you know, and, but those are complementary things that, that's not one's bad and one's good. But men can go about some of those things in less helpful ways or more helpful ways. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Xane Anderson (21:29)

Absolutely, absolutely. So you're absolutely right that, that dads and moms bring different things to the table. And isn't that a great thing? Let me give you one of the things that dads are specially suited for. So let's say that your child falls down and skins their knee. Okay? If, if the way a parent reacts, whether it's a mom or a dad, is really important to these little things. Like for example, if they fall down and skin their knee and the parent says, oh my goodness, I can't believe this, you skinned your knee. You know, and they get really intense and kind of panicky and we got to get you home and get some Neosporin and get abandoned and they get panicky. What, what the child, the unspoken message to that child is you're fragile. Just hear that. And then when they skin their knee and the parent is not there, they might freak out because they heard the parent freak out. On the other hand, if you have a confident parent and dads are generally pretty good at this and say, you know, it looks like you skinned your knee, I've skinned my knee and you know it's going to hurt for a while, but you're going to be okay. And you say it into confidence in a confident, good way. It's not like you're being insensitive, but what you're trying to do is embed that voice in their head so that when they have, when they skin their knee and they're not, you're not there, they're like, my dad said, I'm going to be okay. And they can almost hear that voice in their head and they say, I'm going to be okay. Let me give you one more example I have. I had a five year old daughter, Jennifer, who came to me and I live in the Rocky Mountain area, okay? And very near where I live there's a mountain that's 11,750ft tall. So 11,700ft. And I like to hike this mountain sometimes. And my 5 year old daughter came to me years ago and she said, hey dad, I want to hike this mountain with you. She's five, by the way. This is a 15 mile round trip. You go almost 5,000ft. It's a big hike, okay? And I could have said, you know what, you're too young, sorry, you're five years old, can't do it. But instead of that, you know, and by the way, I haven't always handled things great all the time, but at this one point I think, luckily I think I did handle this a little bit better than I, than I could have. I just. Well, you, are you sure you really want to do this? And she said, I'm sure. I said, well, we got to start hiking early in the morning. We've got to hike all day. What's going to happen when your feet start to hurt? Because they might start to hurt. She said, well, I'll just take a rest and we'll keep hiking. I said, well, if you really want to try it, let's try it. Well, I got to tell you, Jennifer, we got on that mountain and she made it to the top. And you have never seen so many people on the trail giving her high Five saying, good job, good job. And when she got to the top of this mountain on the summit at 11,700ft, there were a group of people there who stood up and gave her this standing ovation. Now, it wasn't about that. What it really was is when she got down the mountain, she had this confidence in her, like, I can do hard things. Do you see what I'm saying? That ability to take, like let your kids kind of lead. But as a dad, with confidence, I mean, I'm not going to let her hike that mountain by herself. I'm not going to do something that's dangerous because my job is to protect her. Right? But to hike it with her. The real thing was I was doing, was trying to say, okay, you can do this. And now she knows deep in her soul that she can do hard things. And her feet did hurt and she didn't have to rest. And it was. And she even had blisters at the end, and that was okay. Well, that is, that kind of thing that I'm just talking about is something that a dad is uniquely positioned to help their kids be confident, to help their kids have this I can do it attitude. And so, like, take advantage of those opportunities, like, let your kids do stuff that's hard. And I think dads are frankly a little more suited to do that. I'm not trying to say women couldn't do that. One last story on that same line. I had my kids ask me, they said, hey, dad, we want to sleep in the backyard. And here's the problem, Jennifer. It was December, it was 20 degrees at night, okay? And they said, we want to sleep in the backyard. And I could have done the same thing, which is like, hey, can't go in the backyard. But instead I just said, okay, you really want to know? It's going to be 20 degrees, it's going to be below freezing. Let's talk about why you don't want to get wet when you're freezing. Let's talk about how you need to layer. Let's talk about this thing. And so what we did is we threw up a tent in the backyard and I slept out in the tent with them. And we had this great time sleeping in freezing degree weather. And. And now they. There was this opportunity to help him learn survival skills or learn like principles of, you know, how do you do this? But I think those kind of opportunities are popping up all the time, which is why we need to be checked in, we need to be off our phones, we need to be learning that Those little. The way react to little things. Jennifer is gonna. It could make our children super more successful or less based on those reactions. So let's be checked in as dads.

Jen Friesen (26:14)

If your daughter had come to you and said, I want to hike this mountain, and you immediately were just thinking, well, tomorrow, you know, on Monday, I have to go do this call, or your kids want to camp in the backyard, but that's uncomfortable for you. I just want to go sleep in my bed like normal. And you immediately shut those things down. Like you're saying you miss an opportunity to build confidence, to challenge, to create these incredible memories with your kids. It's showing something really amazing to other people around as well. Some people have pointed out now, Elon Musk, we do not, at number four, say Elon Musk is father of the year. Just in the sense of, yes, he's promoting having more kids and he's bringing kids into public spaces. But we would be like, it's better to be in your house married to the mom with your kids. So that's our caveat from them for us. But people have, yeah, people have pointed out how neat it is that he's bringing one of his kids with him to places. It's kind of presencing children, I think, is really neat. So when people see you with your kid on the side of the mountain there, it's communicating something incredible to other people as well. You've talked about being a good dad also has something to do with your daily habits. There's things you can try to cultivate daily that are helping you build those connections with your kids. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Xane Anderson (27:32)

Yeah. You know, truthfully, just having a daily. I just like a daily devotional where you talk about real principles, where you talk about important things, where you can talk about, you know, why it's important to align with these principles and not ignore them. I mean, those. The daily little things you do are really the big things. It's, you know, if people think you, you know, if you take some big trip or you just do some big thing, that's not where the magic is. The magic is the little tiny daily things, and that's where that you get the really big gains. And so, like, one of the things we do is we let you know, every day we have sit down for probably 20, 30 minutes or more or less a little bit somewhere in there, and we talk about things that are really, really important.

Jen Friesen (28:16)

That's really good. Kind of our final thought, if someone's listening to this and their dad, maybe their kids are a little bit older teenagers and they're going through the teen angst or they have a newborn and they're scared. What would you, what advice would you give to dads that think they've sort of missed the boat? I don't know how to start. Or maybe dads, hey, this is brand new. And I don't know what to, you know, when you're, when it's a little baby, maybe you're not, you're not, you're obviously not taking them on a 11 mile hike, maybe right away. Well, you're carrying them if you are. But yeah, for dads that think they, it's like too late. How do I start? And then new dads, what are, what are kind of your pieces of advice for them?

Xane Anderson (28:54)

Well, I, it's never too late to start. Start. You know, let me, let me tell you too. And then take a little bit of time to try to learn. I mean, how much time do you take to prepare for your careers? A lot of people have gone to school for years and years or to learn a trade or to get certified in some sort of something that makes it so they can provide. But how much time do we take to just learn to be a better dad? You know, let me give you one example. There's a book called the Power of Positive Parenting by Glenn Latham, one of the best books out there. In fact, it's, it's called the Power of Positive Parenting by Glenn Latham. It changed the way I parented one book. It basically said the whole premise of the book, Jennifer, was, you know, behaviors are like seeds and attention is like water. And you, if you water certain behaviors, they get bigger. Well, the problem is a lot of dads, going back to the first part here, a lot of dads, you know, the kid comes in, they say, I can't believe you didn't make your bed. And you didn't, you stayed up till three in the morning and you're getting a C minus math and they're bringing up all these negative things when the research shows that if we can catch our kids doing something right, our ability to influence them will go through the roof. Let me give you, you know, let me give you one example from this book. The book talks about this, this boy who's being sent to the principal's office all the time. And this counselor comes in and says, well, it was such a big deal. They got a counselor to kind of watch to see what was going to happen. So she sat in this classroom. I hope I'm Telling the story right. Something close to this. The boy, every time he. The counselor observed that he was doing a lot of things right. He was listening, he was paying, obeying directions. But as soon as he'd do something wrong, the teacher would say, oh, there you go, and write his name on the board. Then he'd do something else wrong and he'd get a check mark. Then he'd do something else and get another check mark. Soon he had enough check marks to be sent down to the principal's office. And so this, this teacher was literally like, if you imagine I have a pitcher of water, she was literally watering the behavior she did not want to see grow with attention. Then when he gets down to the principal's office, the principal, the late. The girl at the desk there said, oh, I know you'd be here. She sat him right next. She had him sit down next to this window. And then the. The bell rang and it was lunch and all the kids were coming by and waving. So he was getting doubly reinforced. He was getting a lot of attention from his friends and from his. His. The teacher for doing something wrong. And. And the counselor said, you know what? This is actually predictable behavior. He's getting almost no attention for doing what's right and a ton of attention for doing what's wrong. Well, what if we as dads started keen in and being like, wow, you got up and you made your bed. I didn't even have to ask you. That was awesome. Hey, I love all the effort you're putting into that math problem. Good job. Hey, I love how you're sharing with your. With your brother there. I love it how you're being calm. The way you're talking to me right now is really calm. And it's. And it's. It's helpful for things. If we catch our kids doing something right. They found that that's the most effective way to shape human behavior long term. It's not by pointing out the negative. So you don't have to be this, you know, army sergeant like you were talking about. You can be firm but kind and point out what they're doing, right? Well, that book changed me. Anyone who's listening, go get that book. By the way, I don't get anything. I want you to know I don't get any. There's no. I'm not an affiliated. I'm not affiliated with anyone reading this book. But is such a good book that could change the way you as a parent. Parent.

Jen Friesen (32:14)

That's awesome. I feel like there's so many ways, you know, for teachers to be doing that for. For coaches to be doing that. Yeah. For. For anyone who was working with kids or has kids. Okay. Well, Xane, where can people find you? Thanks so much. You said dadfluence.org to go find the program or the series and put in. Family has the coupon code and people can get it for free. But where else can people find your work?

Xane Anderson (32:39)

So my business site is EKS influence, so my first name is spelled is EKS. You say it x EKS influence.com I do. I speak to groups all over the country, even a little internationally now. But I, you know, even when we're speaking to groups about business, I'm always trying to let people know that business is not the most important thing. You can find me at the business side, EKS influence.com or dadfluence.org and love to chat, connect with any of you who are on the same mission.

Jen Friesen (33:12)

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time. Thanks for the work that you're doing to help. Encouraging, Encouraging dads to be good dads. Present dads. It's so important, like, we agree them for us. You agree these. This is civilizational matters. You know, family and the strength of families are so important. So we're so appreciative of your work and your voice.

Xane Anderson (33:31)

Thanks, Jennifer. Such an honor to be on your show. Really appreciate you.