We either learn to master money or it will master us. So it starts with an understanding where money is never my identity, good or bad. Scott Donald, welcome.

Founder of Gravy Stack and the author.

Of Value Creation Kids. Scott Donald, if you have an abundance mindset, you're able to see even hard things as opportunities in disguise, as blessings. As blessings. The hardest things in my past, I'm talking hard, gut wrenching, near bankruptcy, miscarriage, death. I could either say screw you to the world for this or I can say, what am I to learn here? And how can this be of service to others?

Wow.

So you want to know the number one strategy of the top hundred families in the world?

Yes.

Okay. It's teach your kids to create value first, not money.

How can someone start to reprogram their psychology or mindset in order to develop something healthy around their values so they can teach that the people in their.

Family an easy way? Really, legacy is raising children and grandchildren to blow by you in every way.

Wow.

That is the true hack for all financial competency. What is money? Let's get into this.

What is money? Welcome back everyone, to the school of greatness. Very excited about our guests. We have the inspiring Scott Donnell in the house. Good to see you, man.

Good to be here, Lewis. Thank you for having me.

Welcome to the show. There's something that I'm interested that you have, Don, that I mentioned and learning about. You studied over 100 multigenerational, high net worth families for over a decade.

Yep.

And you studied what works, what doesn't work, how they build their wealth, what they do with their wealth after they die, how they pass on the lessons or the money to the family after their legacy is over or when they move on. What are the strategies that these 100 high net worth families have? The three things they all have in common that keep them in peace with the money they're making and have good relationships with their family and their kids to make sure that money doesn't ruin their lives.

Yeah. Well, that's the first thing they have a correct view of what money actually is.

What is money?

But let me back up for 2 seconds because I'm not just studying the richest families in the world. Half of our families were the richest or were on track to become, well, extremely wealthy, who gave, who were generous, who stewarded it well for their family's investment. So one of the main things I want everyone to hear is like one of the biggest things I learned with the best families in the world is that they believed in heritage over inheritance.

What's the difference?

Well, inheritance is just leaving them stuff, leaving them money. This is what the whole financial world is trying to get you to think.

Yeah.

Your job is to die with assets, to take care of them. That's what you should define as love. And I'm like, no, no, no. 90% of generational wealth transfer gone by. The grandkids. Really gone. What people don't study. Cause I'm a 7 million family. This is my world. I wanted to know what was underneath that. Okay. What happens if you just pass on a bunch of money and assets and homes and stuff? Cause you love your kids and you wanna take care of your grandkids?

What happens if you pass on money to kids or grandkids that don't understand money?

That's right. If they don't understand it, you get a whole host of nightmares. Mental health imposter syndrome. I didn't earn this. I know I didn't earn this lottery ticket. Why does everyone that wins lotteries go crazy and go broke? They end up giving it all or in bad investments. They don't know how to manage it. They don't know how to create value in the world. They don't have the right relationship to it. And then there's mental health, violence, addiction, estrangement of kids. So many breaks in relationships, divorce, destruction, rampant.

Because of money.

Because of the money and the stuff. Or at worst, they're just waiting for their parents to go. Oh, like, how many people? Like, it's very hard for people to admit this, but even if you're doing well and then you're dealing with assets of an older family member, you're just. For the last ten to 15 years of their life, you're thinking about it a lot. You're consumed by it.

What, like when they're gonna go so you can get their stuff?

Yeah. So then they stop risking.

Cause they know eventually you're gonna get this.

You stop creating value. You don't take that chance. You don't build that new thing. You don't start that company. Like, I'm gonna wait for the pay. I got a big. I'm in this boat in a way right now. I've got a big payout coming at the end of the year. Really? From an exit of a company three years ago with like, the last 5% is hitting at the end of the year. And it's a guaranteed, you know, big check. And I'm looking at it like. And I'm teaching this and learning this from these families. And I'm unpacking and realizing that at least once a week, I'm like, yeah, but that's coming.

I don't have to work as hard, or I don't have to add value here.

I don't have to take that chance. I don't have to create that value. I don't have to dive into learning this thing. I'll do that after this. That'll give me all the freedom and peace to do it. Give me cushion, the same entitlement mentality.

Wow.

So inheritance has a lot of inherent problems, but if you focus on heritage, which to me is a last name, that means something. The values of the family, it's the mindsets, the skill sets, what we care about as a family. Right? When somebody hears the how's name in the world, what's the smell? What does it remind them of?

It's the feeling.

That's it.

What's the essence?

Yeah. The Danish have a term called huge. It's the feeling you get when you walk in someone's house. That's the smell of their family. The scent, huge to me, is heritage. So I believe families need to work on heritage instead of inheritance. If you get heritage right, and you're training them up the right way, then really the inheritance is less of an issue. You can still leave some.

Yeah.

I'm not like, tough love, let em scrape. Like, I'm not that guy.

Give them zero.

I'm not that guy. But there's a process for this, right? There's a difference between an I love you gift and a coasting gift.

What's the difference?

The moment it kills their desire to create more value in the world. You've moved from I love you to coasting. And the bigger problem is that when you have multiple children, one of them might be a high earner. Like if my parents died and left me tons and tons of cash. At this point, I am financially competent of six businesses, millions of customers, thousands of employees. I know what to do to steward it well, and it's not gonna ruin my identity, my. I'm not gonna say who, but other family members, cousins, other people, if they got the same amount of money, would crush them.

Really?

Yeah. They all want it.

What happens to someone psychologically when they are given a large sum of money that they have not earned and it's too large for them to really steward in a healthy way? What happens psychologically to a human being when you win a lottery that's too big for you to understand and comprehend? Too much money or you're passed down an inheritance that is too big.

Yeah. Well, it's like a participation trophy on steroids. So this is why, if you're not prepared for the blessing, for the reward, there's this verse in the Bible. Okay, I don't want to get too Jesus on you, but there's a verse in the Bible that says, God's not going to give you more than you can handle. I actually believe that that's. That's not pain and trials. I think that that has to do with blessing and reward. See, what I think is God actually helps us through the hard stuff, like the hard and the trials of life. I call them healthy struggles. Okay? Our book, value creation kid. The healthy struggles your children need to succeed. That's the point when you go through healthy struggles, right? Things that grow you. You're refined. You learn how to create value. You learn humility and empathy and strength and inner confidence.

Yes.

Not, hey, Louis, you're pretty, you're smart, you're nice. No, no. Inner confidence. What does our friend Alex say? He's like, you don't get confident by chanting incantations in the mirror, but by having, like, an undeniable stack of accomplishments to get to evidence and proof things you've overcome. So I actually think that that has to do with, like, God's not gonna give you more blessing than you can handle. More stuff, more opportunity. Because I think if people get there without the journey, without the value creation journey, ruins them. Like, this is how you actually lose faith. This is how you think you can do it all your own. This is where you get imposter syndrome. This is where you get fear, anxiety, or greed misplaced, right? All the bad stuff happens.

Title man, all that stuff.

But if you've gone through that journey, you're refined, you're prepared.

So how do we prepare for the blessings of more money then?

I think it starts with training up our children. This is my world, man. Like, true value creation for our kids is the game. So we have this thing called the home economy system. We could unpack how I got here if you want me to, but I think allowance is socialism. Okay, I know that comment right there is going to get you thousands of pissed off people, but can I unpack that for a minute, please?

What's the.

And even chores, like, if you just do allowance for chores, it doesn't work. And let me. Let me explain.

Why is allowance for chores or automatic allowance every week a bad thing for kids?

If you. Because allowance is codependency, and it's tied in our studies to a lack of motivation and an aversion to work. If you teach children that they get the same amount of money every week just for existing, or doing the bare minimum, or putting in the time and effort, you got a problem.

Interesting.

You're going to raise value.

It's not creating value.

That's right. What is money? Let's get into this.

What is money?

Money is not good. It's not bad. That's what people think. Money is amazing. You should focus on. Well, that's a keeping up with the Joneses identity trauma waiting to happen. If they say it's bad, that's a poverty mindset. The Bible does not say money is bad. It's the love of money, the idol of money. Money is neither good or bad. Money is a tool that makes you more of what you already are. It is a store of value.

A store of value? What does that mean?

It's a store of value that's created. So when we teach kids and families at our dinner table program, we literally say create value first. So you want to know the number one strategy of the top hundred families in the world?

Yes.

Okay. It's teach your kids to create value first, not money. Because money is a store of value. You have to go back to first principles. If you focus on value creation, material value, what you create and produce in the world, solving problems, financial reward is the reward of that emotional value. Good friendships, how you think, how you feel, spiritual value, how you love, how you live, mindset lifting me, lifting you up above your issues to a higher calling to God, getting out of your ego and like, that's spiritual value.

Yes.

So if we can teach our children, hey, we're gonna be value hunters in this home. That is the number one greatest asset you could ever give them. It's an unfair advantage for the rest of their life. And what you don't do is you focus on the money side, so you.

Don'T talk about the money.

The money comes as a result of value creation. So back to the reward allowance teaches them nothing about creating value for money. And then what parents do is they say, well, my kids do a list of chores and I give them an allowance. Okay, so now that's value because they're.

Helping out around the house or they're contributing.

But the problem there is that half those chores you should never tie to money. You should never pay your kids to make their bed and clean their room, do the dishes and trash homework.

That should be just a way of living.

That's the role in the family.

Yeah, that's what we do.

We call those expectations?

Yes. Standards.

Yep. So that's why chores doesn't work. The first part, the other half. Those chores should be a menu of ways to earn, and it should be unlimited. Okay. And then, so we call those gigs.

So this could be a list on the fridge or wherever.

That's right.

Here's 100 gigs.

Or make it up.

Or make up.

Go find ways to create value.

I'll tell you how much that's worth for me.

And that is the winner for every single family. The moment your kid starts hunting for ways to create value at home or in the neighborhood, we call those community gigs. Now they're going out and having a lens to see the world. Not what I can get, but how I can create value for others. That is the true hack for all financial competency.

What are the three most valuable gigs that you have at your home? That your kid. That you ever gave to your kids or they gave to you, and you said, yeah, I'm willing to pay more for that.

Yeah, we're at a point now they have about a dozen gigs that are on the list. Our system, the dinner table program, you literally get a printout for the fridge. It's auto repeating. You can pay your kids every week. It's a payday. But remember, we have expectations. We have gigs, but we have.

Expectations are separate.

That's free.

You don't get table stakes. You don't get paid. That's showing up and living a standard of excellence.

That's right. But the gigs, we break them up. So there's action gigs, and there's brain gigs.

What's the action gig?

Action gigs are kind of what you might think of some chores like sweep the garage, wash a window, something in the yard, clean a bathroom, make a meal. Brain gigs are my favorite part.

Read a book and give me a report on it.

Yep. Podcasts, Ted talks. This one right here. Kids. Parents should be, like, offering up $4 if their kids tell you, tell their parents three things they learned from this, and one thing they're going to apply to their life. We call those brain gigs. No sugar for a week. I am statements every single day for a month.

Interesting.

These should be tied to value. Cause it's creating value with your brain. You and I, our whole life is creating value with our brain. Way more than our hands and feet. Why are we not teaching that to children?

Right.

Homework is an expectation, but there should be a ton of brain gigs. So, my three favorite. I'll give you my three favorite, and we automate these in our app. Okay. Subscription hunt. What if you had your kids save me money? What if your kids go cancel all the subscriptions that you forgot you were paying for, and they hunt and find them and you're giving them a cut?

Yeah.

What a brilliant brain gig.

Uh huh.

Couponing. The average family in our system, the kids in the teenager, starting as young as six years old, are saving them 26% on groceries.

Wow.

By learning to find the four ways. We teach them to get coupons and.

They get a cut of.

They get a savings cut, it's all automated. And then plan the next family trip. What if your kids, what if your ten year old planned the entire. My seven year old's doing it right now. What if they got three flights, three hotels or vrbo or turo, uber rental car and got the best deal? Where are we going to eat? What are we going to do? They will save you a grand. I guarantee you, they will save you a grand. And they will love that trip. They will own that trip and remember for the rest of their life. And then free you up so much time.

Interesting.

Yeah. See, our whole system, our job was, how do we teach financial competencies and money without the trauma and with a deeper relationship as an end result with the family.

Right.

Because what I just explained to you has no more conflict over chores. Kids never ask for money and stuff again.

Cause they know if I want money, I gotta do one of these things.

I know where to go. I have power.

Unlimited.

It's unlimited. See? And now here's the trick. The third e. We have expectations, extra pay and then expenses. This is where every parent goes wrong. They think that the way to buy love. No, they don't even realize it's buying.

Love, but it is buying gifts and giving them.

They pay for everything. They think it's their way to love their kids. So they buy everything that we have. A list. Or like, if you start passing off expenses now, you give your kids a motive, an intrinsic motivation to earn and create value for gigs. No more conflict. So these are like toys. Starts with toys and games and trinkets. And if they any sport, they do have them pay for something like the basketball or the cleats. Have them be in charge of skin in the game. Skin in the game. Social outings with friends. My favorite one, birthday presents for your kids. Parties that they go to. My seven year old, Regan, a couple weeks ago, she was the only kid that went to the ninja gym party.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

She's the only kid at the party that bought the present. Cause we told her it's on her list on the fridge. She knew ahead of time. We didn't have to tell her. She knew she had to make the $12 after save and invest and share. She knew she had to get this present, so she planned ahead. She grabs the present, she puts it in the little bin with tissue and signs Reagan. She's seven, dude. We go to the party. Every other kid just chucks it on the table. Their parents buy them. Anyone listening with kids, we've done this. Everyone does this. The kids do not learn generosity with any of that. They didn't even open the presents at the party. But halfway through the party, Reagan walks up to me, unprovoked with the birthday boy, our friend Dawson. And she's like, can we open my. Can he open my present now? I want to see his face. I'm like, sure. So they sit down in the ninja gym, and he opens her present and is on cloud nine. Big hug.

Wow.

She's beaming ear to ear. All the other parents, they're like, what just happened? I'm like, Reagan's learning generosity. She's gonna be that 25 year old. That's like taking care of her friends. Hospitable, service oriented. They carry. That's generosity. You gotta earn it first. Here's the whole point. Unless you earn as a kid, okay, this is why schools fail this. You can't. Homework money. We were talking about this before. Unless you earn it by creating value first, you'll never be able to learn how to save or invest or spend or share. But parents give their kids $10 to go put it to the giving thing, church or whatever. They don't learn it that way. Kids give them an allowance and say, here. Here's your debit card. Whatever. Chase for kids. Or green. Like, that doesn't work. They're just spending your money.

It's not their money.

They won't learn delayed gratification to save and invest if you're just giving them stuff. So this is why we start with value creation first and then the home economy system. Like, once you implement this, and a lot of people try this, they know what I'm saying. They all agree, but they have to do whiteboards and checklists and Google spreadsheets and stuff that they erase and go grab a bunch of roll of quarters and ones from them, and they do it for a month, and then they quit.

It's too much. It's too tiring.

Right? So our system, like dinner table and our app trains the parents on how to have this automated auto repeating gigs print out every week for the fridge, one click payments. Like, it's all set to teach the kids. So that's why we built it, is like, how do we make this super, super easy for families to do?

That's great, man. You know, one of the things I think about is the trauma that money brings to families. You know, originally, as a kid, you see your parents fighting over something. A lot of divorces are either caused or influenced around money traumas, problems, arguments that just biggest fight, resentment, frustration, lack of love, all these different things. So what is money trauma, and how can we start to heal from the money traumas we have? Yeah.

So we did a study when we started all this. Cause we've been doing business fairs for a decade. The online helping of kids, 7 million families. We surveyed a ton of them, like, four years ago. What we found was that parents said, we have no roadmap here. We have. No one's ever taught us how to pass on the financial competencies. All we were told to do was, like, give them an allowance in three jars. Maybe if we're smart, save, spend, share, get them a bank account when they hit puberty, try to save for their future, and maybe do a lemonade stand if we have time. That's all they're ever taught, which none of those really help unless you're going this way. The kids were the most profound of all of it. These kids said, we don't want to talk about money. It's the biggest fight in our home. And we're like, okay, so we did a follow up survey. What do you mean? Tell us, what did they say? What were the questions? So this is what we heard. Parents go, we can't afford that. Do you have any idea how much that costs? Money doesn't grow on trees.

Do you know how hard I worked to get you this? And you guys just blew it? Or you took it for granted. You broke that. Do you know how much that was for me to buy for you? You hear?

Yeah. The resentment, anger, frustration.

They hear parents battling over bills. They hear it.

What does that mean?

Parents think they protect them, but they're not.

What does that cause in a child? When they hear parents arguing over money.

And battling over bills, they see money as an absolute, like, firecracker for fights. It's immediate rejection of this idea of money. They have a negative connotation to it right away. And then when there is money involved, parents are buying the things for them. Like, every parent has this struggle. They think that, oh, yeah, I just want to take care of them. Like, let's go out. Let's go on the trip. I want to buy this for you.

I want to give them what I didn't have.

That's right. I want to give them all the things I never had growing up. I want to give them all the opportunities I never had. I don't want them to have to deal with the crap I dealt with. That's what parents say. And it's out of love.

The intention is good, but the fastest.

Way to entitle them, see, we have an epidemic of entitlement, and parents don't realize it because it's coming from a place of love. So what we're trying to get parents to do is be, like, really clear on how do you teach what money is? Start with value creation, and have open conversations like, we have 200 dinner table questions for families in our free community. It's like the dinner table, whatever. We'll give you the links. But you go through this with your kids in an open way. If you're investing, why are you not teaching your children, even as young as six years old, what the investment was, what the return is, how it's going to help create value for people, and why you're excited about it.

Right?

Everyone doesn't do that when you're giving. As a parent, if you're donating to something, why are you not bringing your kids into the conversation? Ask them if they think there's a better idea or who else they might want to give to. Or tell them what the service does or the value that it creates in the gift. You bring your kids along with you. I bring my kids on most trips. They're young still, but I want them learning from other people. Here's a powerful one. Families that have parents traveling, like, if dad travels a lot or mom travels for work, that causes. That wreaks havoc, because you never know until it's too late when there's lashing out and things happen. Here's a brilliant hack. So what you do is you sit your kids down before you leave, say, hey, guys, daddy or mommy? Daddy's gonna be going on this trip. Here's what I'm gonna do. I'm representing our family to help these people, and here's exactly how I'm going to be serving them. And I want you guys to be, like, checking in. I want to talk to you, like, tomorrow afternoon after, like, when I'm doing this, can we check in?

And, like, I want you to ask me these questions to see how it went, you know, or pray for me during it, right? Like, and when I get back, we're going to, like, unpack and I'm going to tell you how many people we got to help and what we taught them, and then we're going to do these really fun things together, because I'm really. I want to celebrate the trip. That conversation makes your children know that you're doing something as a team. If you don't do that, your kids think that you're going off to do something more important than they are.

Wow.

Especially to go make money, which ties it right back in me. Making money is more important than you? If you don't have those open conversations.

Yes. And so how does someone, if they've never thought about creating heritage or family values or values around money, how can someone start to reprogram their psychology or mindset in order to develop something healthy around their values so they can teach that to the people in their family?

Yeah. So an easy way. Every month we unpack a workshop with tons of families at dinner table. So we bring in crazy amounts of families and we teach them our core six strategies of legacy. And one of them is the heritage over inheritance. Okay? And it's what we've learned from the best in the world. And by the way, some of these families you'll never meet, you'll never know. Some of these families are the billionaires that people have heard about. And I'm not talking about Rothschilds and Trump's. Like, they have crazy in their family, right? I'm talking about. I'm talking about families that just unbelievable in the value they create together. Incredible in their heritage. Absolute depth of relationship. See, here's my definition of legacy, by the way. Legacy is raising children and grandchildren to blow by you in every way.

Wow.

See, most people hear the word legacy and they go, oh, I don't want to be Rothschilds and Vanderbilts. Screw that. And I'm like, that's not what we're talking about. Or they go, you're too late, Scott. I am disqualified. My kids have these problems. I hate my in laws.

Wow.

I'm divorced, I have business problems, and I'm like, well, time out. I've never met a family in the world that doesn't have crazy in it. Every family has crazy in it. What I'm talking about is a recipe. If you just follow the strategies, then over time, you're going to be moving in the right direction and everyone's going to have a legacy, whether you like it or not. The question is, what kind of legacy? So for us, we're like, look it's never too late if you have something crazy in your life. I believe that God uses setbacks in our lives to be setups to help create value for other people.

Yes.

So if that's true, then you can use it to have an incredible legacy. Just follow the recipe.

So you have six strategies for legacy.

Yeah.

How does that work out?

So it starts with the value creation setup. So we teach those three buckets material value, emotional value and spiritual value. That's the first step. Step two is the home economy that I just walked you through. Expectations, expenses and extra pay gigs. But however, there's like 300 of those. There's gigs for adult children. So I know you have listeners that have adult children, college in their twenties, and they're like, yeah. The biggest question I get is, where were you 20 years ago? And I'm like, no, no, no. Timeout. These can start now.

Yeah, yeah.

So we have that whole home economy for adult children, too. Then we go into heritage over inheritance. We go through your family values, what makes your DNA. And here's my tip for that. Children, like most people, think that, oh, yeah, we need a mission statement as a family. That's what everyone thinks. I'm like, nope, kids don't think in terms of that. Kids think in story. You need to be telling value based stories of your family heritage. We tell our children how our family came across the organ trail.

Wow.

We have the journal of Camilla Donnell from like five generations ago. She was the medic, 19 years old. Like, crazy stories. We tell these to our kids. We talk about. We go all the way back to the McDonald clan in Scotland. We were pilgrims. Like, my grandpa was in the korean war and saved 1000 orphans on cargo planes to come back to the US. My dad's dad invented the rope tower for skiing. Like, unbelievable. Like, my dad's dad. And my dad built a billion dollar bank. He was Ronald Reagan's bank chair.

Wow.

Barney Beeksma. Up in Washington, where we grew up, I have streets and parks named after me up north. Right. My kids know these stories, but did they give me the money? No. I'm so thankful for that.

Your parents, your grandparents didn't give me the money.

They helped with some college. Sure. They helped with some car. And there was like a little I love you gifts when we got married. And.

Yeah, yeah, there's. See?

I love, I love you gift is.

Good because what, like a moment in time where you guys. It's like supporting you in the launch of something but not enabling you forever.

Yeah. I don't think helping with the home is a bad thing. Unless that's, like, kills their value creation.

Or it's almost like a reward. Like, wow, you've done so well over the last five to seven years. Like, you've. You've really not only lived up to the standards of, like, doing your best in school, but also adding value in the world. You've been a generous human being. You've shown up in service and community. You went on trips and spent six months and did whatever.

That's right.

And so, gosh, you're getting married. You're about to have a home. Here's ten grand. Here's 50 grand, or whatever it is, how much money the person has.

But $1,000, I mean, anything you show you love them, but there's a difference between I love you and coasting gifts, right?

What's the difference between that?

So the moment it crosses over to, like, they're not gonna go through healthy struggles to grow, you're letting them coast. That's it. If you kill the value creation drive, then you are robbing your children of the future they could have.

But is it. Is it a lack of love if you rob them? But you say, I don't want them to struggle and go through pain. I don't want them to suffer, so I want to take care of them. Which one is more loving?

See, healthy struggles are not the same as trauma. Trauma is neglect, abuse. Tough love, even those are unhealthy struggles.

Like extreme tough love.

Healthy struggles are emotional skills that come out of this relationship. Skills, business skills, practical skills, financial competencies. These are the outcome of healthy struggles. See, the difference here is a healthy struggle. Is a struggle that you're with them in. I'm on your team. I'm your coach. I got your back. I'm here to support and love you through this. An unhealthy struggle is where you're, like, causing the trauma from it. You're either with them in it or you're impressing on these problems. And so the goal here is to have good processes and protect your relationship. That's the whole point.

Right? Okay, so this is heritage over inheritance and what makes your DNA. So you have a process for.

We help families unpack their DNA. Their DNA. So they get.

It's not a mission statement of our family.

Right.

Did you build our family crest?

Yeah. It's like acronyms and crests and stories that you're telling. And we have a whole dinner style dinner views and conversations around it. See, here's the thing. If you don't give your kids an identity of what it means to be in your family. They will find that identity somewhere else in the world. See, modern. In the last ten years, it's shifted. There's so much popularity of social media, text group chats, YouTube channels. Teenagers are hunting for identity. And either you give them the roots in your family and identity, or they're gonna find it somewhere else and it's probably not even their friends or a coach. It's gonna be online. That is a wild thought for today. But if you ask most children, well, first you go, what do you want to be when you grow up? Most of them say famous online, right?

YouTuber Tiktoker or whatever it is.

Or they say something that their parents did because that's all they know. Yes, but the goal here is like, we have to give kids roots and wings. You give them roots in your home, a strong identity of who they are, what it means to carry on your last name. And you tell that through stories, principle based stories. Like, in 30 years, your kids are not gonna sit around the table looking at a wall, at a mission statement.

Right? Right.

They're gonna tell stories.

Right. So what would you say are the main values of the DNA of your family and your inherent heritage?

Oh, my kids say it every day. Faith, family and fish. They know exactly what it means to be a donal. We love God. We back each other as a family and fish, which is fun and adventure, integrity, service and hard work. Faith, family, fish. And we wanted to learn to fish just like I was learning to fish first business at eight years old, like I was trained.

It's literally fish for, you know, the four things in fish. But, like, learning how to fish yourself and not be given the fish. Yeah, yeah.

My three year old says it every day at dinner. And now we have a map. So now we're hunting for things that every night at dinner, like, they're hunting for stories of the day and they did to display faith, family and friends, really, every day. And then we have a power clap. Cause our kids are young and they think that's cool still. But, yeah, we're. Every day they're telling stories and we're like, power clap for Sawyer, huh? You know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They just have this identity now.

Now when they fish during the day and share what they, they fished for, I guess. Do they get rewarded financially for contributing at the dinner table?

Nope. That one's just like, celebrate. Okay, that's a standard. That's a celebration. Now the gigs is different, right? We will reward them for the gigs. Yes.

Yes.

If we're doing that. Home economy three ease.

Wow.

So on the fridge every day. Reagan and Sawyer, our oldest, too. They know what they can do to earn. And they have a list of the next three expenses that they're in charge of. So now they got the motive. See, they never ask us for money and stuff.

Never.

Not since three years old.

Dad, mom, I wanna get this. Can you get this for me?

Yeah. See. Cause that's a problem in homes. It's a big problem in homes.

I wanna buy these shoes. I wanna buy this jacket. I need these sunglasses.

Whatever it is, it's a lose lose in the home. Because if your kids ask you, you say yes. You're slowly entitling and spoiling them. That's another trouble.

At some point, you have to cut it off so they can do it on their own.

Yep.

And if they've been ten years, 20 years, you doing it, and all of a sudden I don't know how to do this.

And if you say no, you're the bad guy.

Right?

So what we did is we created a system where they don't even ask you, they just know exactly where to go. Okay. So what we're doing is protecting relationship in the home. So many parents are buying love, bribing their kids, or coercing them with money and stuff. Especially in co parenting.

Oh, man.

See, this is the biggest thing.

Get more love. Who's got more love and affection.

Bribery and coercion. Buy the love, make it better than dad's house back. And then the kids just breed entitlement everywhere. Unless you can get a co parenting strategy with this home economy, that probably.

Creates a lot of trauma.

Yep. Massive trauma. People think that the trauma comes from the split. The trauma comes from all the other things that happen because of the split.

The manipulation.

Yeah.

So that's step three in the strategy of legacy. What's number four?

Breakthroughs. We call them relationship breakthroughs. I don't have time with you to unpack it. Cause this is a several hour thing. But let me ask you about this idea. You're engaged now, right? Congratulations.

Thank you.

Soon to be married. What if you were loving your fiance in a ten state? For you, that's only a one state.

For her, loving her, what I think is a ten, but for her, she's receiving it as a one.

Yeah.

Is that what you mean?

Like my wife and I, this happens.

What would it be like?

She gets. She gets one 10th of the love you're trying to give her, man, that'd be tough. My wife's love languages are acts of service, words of encouragement. Me, I'm a dog. Time and touch.

Yeah.

So for years, we had issues, and I'm like, I just want to, like, hug her and kiss her and sit on the couch and pet my head like a dog.

She's like, go do this for me.

Yeah. She's like, go do the trash. Go take care of the kids. And it wasn't until we unpacked these languages, but Lily wrote down, when you do these five things for me, I feel a ten. You literally should rank this with your partner.

Yes. Yeah, we did this early on.

Yeah.

It was a game changer.

But then you do it with your children. How many kids and parents, you're trying to love them in your way.

Yeah.

And parent them, but they're getting it as a one, and you don't realize.

That they're not receiving it.

They're not receiving the love. So you're like, you know, I just want to hug you at the end of the day or spend time together. And they're like, I want to go play ball. I want you to speak words of encouragement over me. You know, I want a surprise fun thing together. That's a gifting mentality. So we unpack those with both the parents and then with their children. Cause it saves so much of the relationship, so much pain, saves so much of the trauma and the pain.

What's number five?

Number five is something we call pay to a point.

Pay to a point.

Yeah. These are the questions that no estate planner or lawyer will ever ask you. But we ask them all because we've worked with 7 million families. We know, like, it starts with this. Do you believe that you own everything, or do you believe that it was given to you and you're a steward of it?

For me, I believe I'm a steward. Yeah. See, at some point, I'm not gonna own it. When I'm gone, someone else, it's gonna be out in the world for someone else to grab.

We ask the question of, do you see money this way, mine, or do you see money this way?

Yeah.

Right. Are you an abundance mindset or a scarcity mindset? Right. I think that God, people can call it whatever they want, but I believe God does this. He gives to you the amount that flows through you. Okay. He's preparing us. And generosity, I think, is the number one money skill. Earn, save, spend, share. Invest, protect, borrow. Cher wins the game. A generous kid has an open hand of the world. The pie will get bigger. Tomorrow will be better. Than today. It is abundance mindset. Do you think the deals come to that person? The job comes, the friends. That's a giving person.

Yes.

I think that leads to everything else.

What do you think is the energy behind scarcity mindset versus abundance mindset? And how does someone shift from one to the other?

So I was in the uber car on the way over here, and my uber driver overheard me coaching a family. And we were just on, like, a quick zoom coaching, and I got off, and he's like, man, this is, like, the craziest thing. I can't believe you're saying this to me. I have all these problems with my kids. Like, one of them is estranged. Like, we don't talk. Like, we have all these problems. I can't believe they're not helping me. They're doing things I don't like. They're hurting. They hurt me. My ex, she hurt me. I am the victim in all this stuff. And I was like, man, I am so sorry. This sucks. But I was like, can I just give you a thought? What if you used these things that happened and turned them into incredible opportunity to create value for other people? No one had ever said the words value creation to him before, said, what if what you've gone through can be an incredible opportunity to help others and grow? And he went, what? Never even thought about it. So we just start moving. If you go into value creation, how can I create material value, emotional value, and spiritual value for others?

Your abundant mindset, that's when you tap into abundance.

That's when you tap into abundance.

When you think of, how do I create value? Not how do I be the victim?

That's right. Victimhood, entitlement, spoiling, even anxiety and anxiousness and self doubt. Right? Laziness, those are all scarcity mindsets, okay? And scarcity mindset's very dangerous.

What does someone get when they have a scarcity mindset?

They think that tomorrow will be worse. There's not enough to go around. I need my cut. You owe me. I deserve this. Is entitled kid turned into a grownup. Nothing's worse than a lazy victim kid that becomes a grown up. Because when they fail, which everyone has failures, but when they fail, they blame others. It's mom and dad's fault, it's the government's fault, it's my employer's fault, it's.

The president, it's this. It's whatever. Yeah, that's it.

That's a scarcity mindset.

And when someone has that energy of scarcity within them, it lives in them physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally. What are they saying to the world? Like, what does that energy say?

I think it says I.

And can people feel that energy?

Yeah, it says, you owe me and you've hurt me and I don't need to do anything to you but be frustrated. Wow. But if you have an abundance mindset, you're able to see even hard things as opportunities in disguise, as blessings. As blessings.

Yeah.

The hardest things in my past, I'm talking hard, like on the floor, gut wrenching, near bankruptcy, miscarriage, death, health issues, pain. I could either say screw you to the world for this, or I can say, what am I to learn here? And how can this be of service to others? And you know what? This is hard. But thank God for this. This, this. Wow. Over the orchestration of my life I never saw before. Right? Like, if you can train your mind in abundance that way, you are telling the world, hey, we all go through tough stuff, but we can either use that to build and build diamonds or just burn coal, whatever you want. But I would rather go the diamond route. And I want my kids to go that route because that's legacy to me. I want my kids to blow by me in their mindsets, in their skill sets, in their financial competency, in their generosity, in their impact in the world, their values. That's my desire. That's my deathbed desire, man. No one has ever talked about work on their deathbed. It's always family. So if family is my number one investment, then I'm going to do the coaching, do the learning, figure this out now while they're with me so that they can be abundant.

Why do so many people say that their family is everything, but they don't back it with their time, their calendar, their words, their love and affection.

Identity, I think works, actually. Here's why. Because raising children is like planting a seed and hitting a bonus is immediate. So when you raise kids, it's a thankless job for decades. For decades. And you have no idea how you did. There's no instant gratification with parenting. Here's what I think. Parenting.

Unless you give your child somebody a gift and they love you and hug you in a moment or something.

Yeah, but the long term, it's like, we'll see how it happens. You put the recipe in, like, let's see what happens, right? But I think parenting is really hard. But for all the right reasons, right? Like, you know, you have to get 8 hours of sleep. That's hard working out, hard eating the right stuff. Hard parenting is hard but in all the good ways that you always have wanted to become in the first place. What better way to learn selflessness? What better way to learn sacrifice? What better way to, like, find true inner, like, deep joy and satisfaction? That all comes from being an amazing parent. You can get in other places, too, but it comes from being an amazing parent and raising humans that start out completely scarcity, completely selfish, completely entitled. And our job is to mold them into productive adults, not future children.

Wow. Yeah, but you don't get that instant gratification is what you're saying.

You don't.

It's thankless.

It's thankless for so long and. But that's why I love adults of, like, parents of adult children that have, like, grown as amazing adults. Cause you ever met, there's two types of older people, people that are bitter towards the world. The old guy on the corner of the street that's cussing at you and.

Says whatever he thinks, hitting you with.

A stick, mad at the government and whatever the Democrats are doing. But then there's the old sweet person, like the old lady or the old guy who's just so kind, so loving, so generous, so helpful. Like, what turns people into that? Is it a life of, like, bitterness and victimhood and entitlement? Probably for that old man, the anger one, or a life of, like, refinement and growth and value creation turns that into a sweet old person. I want the sweet old man. That's my goal.

Sure.

So when parents are, like, when their kids are growing up, that's just a sweet, sweet thing.

Yes. I saw someone, a friend of mine, Noah Kagan, did an interview with. I can't remember, some billionaire, some super successful billionaire. He was an older gentleman, probably in his seventies, maybe 80, and he asked him, like, what's his definition of success at this season of his life? And he said, my adult children wanting to spend time with me because they actually enjoy spending time with me, not because I have money, not because I'm successful, not because I give them anything, because they just want to hang out with me. That's right. I was like, that's probably what every elderly individual of adults.

That's what they all say want. That's right.

They're kids. To come over their house on the weekends and hang out.

Yeah. If you want to have an incredible legacy, you should spend half as much money on your children and twice as much time. See, there is no. Kids do not know the difference between quality time and quantity time. There's no difference. It's not up to you. To decide that doing legos with your five year old could be a core memory for the rest of their life. And you had no idea, right. With children, it's just time clocked.

But how do you, Scott, when, you know, managing all these businesses have all this. You're traveling constantly. You've got coaching, tons of people. You're, you know, you're always on the go. How do you find the time, quality, or quantity to invest in your family and your kids?

Yeah. So it starts with our structure. Okay? So I've put people around me in my life who agree first. It starts with inner circle. So we have a structure in our world where the five closest families around us and our children have the same values of investing in our families together. Your friend families, our closest families, we are on the same mission. And all of the values I just walked you through.

And that could be together as all the families, or it could be like, on the weekends, we do this as anyone's welcome to come over together on weekends. Family time. Yeah.

Travel. Like, we. This is our inner circle because this is done in community. If you're on an island, it's very difficult. So, parenting, I believe, should be done in community, which is why we do coaching with families all the time at dinner table. So you have to unpack this with other families. You have to have families that align with your values. See, here's the teenager hack. You ready? You need coaches and trusted other adults in your teenager's life that can reinforce the things you care about most. You have to have that.

They may not always listen to you.

They won't after a while, there's a chunk of time, but if there's five.

Other coaches or teachers or mentors that say the same thing, they might resonate with them and say, okay, maybe dad was right all along.

You probably have 100,000 teenagers that have listened to you that go to their parents and go, you guys, I just learned this awesome thing from Louis.

They're like, I've been saying this my.

Whole life, but you want to say that to your kids?

Yeah. Yeah.

You want your kids coming to you with, like, revealed knowledge that you've been trying to teach them for ten years. It doesn't matter who gave them the light bulb. You celebrate it.

It's a thankless job, I guess, right?

That's it.

You teach it, but someone else gets their credit.

So it starts with your inner circle. Like, we are clear on that piece. And then it goes into structure. And so, with structure, my wife and I, every year, we block out stuff first for our family.

Like the whole calendar year.

The whole year. Trips, dates, family stuff. Like what we're doing with our kids. Big event like that goes first. Then we can fill in work and other things after. You have to do that every Sunday night. We're like, going over the weekend. We're just blocking out date night. We're blocking out when the kids events are. Work fills in that gap.

Right.

Like, that is the best way to focus your time and effort.

So schedule family stuff first, then fill in the gaps with work or other things.

That's exactly right.

Structure, inner circle. Is there another element to this?

I mean, going through our six strategies.

I got pay to a point was five.

That's right. Yep. And then. But the last part of pay to point is like, how do you do first phone. What do you pay for? Like, how do I do car? How do I do college? Are we doing college? Do we care about college? Is it an indoctrination station or is it good? Like, what about the 25, 35 year old I love you versus coasting. What do we want to die with? What is our number that we're okay with? How much do we want to give? Like, these are questions that nobody asks their children or themselves and what our thing is. Like, we need to be open about these conversations. We have to have a roadmap because if you don't have a roadmap for this, you're reactive. See, there's all these other parenting and you've had other amazing parent people here. But there's about a thousand different parenting strategies out there. Free range, gentle, like, whatever, helicopter, laissez faire. There's a million of them. I look at it with one lens. You're either parenting proactively or you're parenting reactively. Most parents are just trying to get through it. Get them fed, keep them safe, get them to get them to bed, get them to school.

They're being reactive when all these things come up. And that's what causes a lot of these problems. If you can just be a little bit proactive. These are little nudges. Nothing I've told you today is hard, crazy. These are little nudges in the right direction and then just unpack them with someone and take your first step. See, that's proactive parenting. That's all that matters. Yeah.

And you don't have to have it all figured out on a weekend or something. This is going to take time to develop and.

That's right.

Navigate and adjust over time.

Long term communities.

Yeah.

Yep.

So the 6th step for 6th strategy for legacy. What's the 6th one?

Inner circle.

That's inner circle.

And dinner views.

Dinner views?

Yeah. Interview dinners. We. It's part of that hack. What we love to do is our entire upstairs in our home is wide open for guests and friends and family and board members and investors and those people we love. That thing is full two thirds of the year. Our kids have a constant cycle of like great people in our lives that come to dinner and our kids research them and find questions and ask them questions.

Interesting.

Tell me about this. Okay. You married? How did you guys get married? How did you do that business? Tell us about your biggest mistake. What's your biggest fear? How old are your kids? Like our little kids. Ask good questions.

It was kind of like lunch and learn of a business, but for your family.

But for your family for dinner. And they learn.

That's interesting.

They learn from other people so much more. A lot of families take for granted the kids and the parents, but when you bring other people that are reinforcing things, it just sticks. You could probably do this if you took 1 minute to think what were the five most pivotal moments or conversations of my life. I know my five. Those are with mentors and trusted people at events that happened that completely took my life in a different direction, that had that not happened, I would not be anywhere close to who I am today.

Right, right.

That's the power of doing this with your kids.

How many? How many, I guess dinner views do you have?

Three a month.

Three a month is a good.

That's a good starting point.

Yeah, yeah.

But just like, be intentional about this stuff, man. So here's another thing about inner circles. There's a study that came out and I'm going to butcher the sources, but I think it was Stanford. A few years back, they did a study on obesity and network.

Oh, tell me.

Okay. They found huge study. If you have close friends in your inner circle that are obese, you're 45% more likely to gain weight in the next year.

Oh, man.

And I'm looking at this from a different lens. Right? Like this relates to families and children. If that's 45%, but then they took it a rung out. If you don't directly know the person but it's a friend of an inner circle friend, you're 20% more likely to gain weight in the next year. And if it's a third rung, friend to friend to friend, you're 10% more likely.

Wow.

And I go, that's the best analogy of inner circle. And network that I've ever seen.

It's probably the same thing around money. How is your inner circle related to how much money you make or can make?

Your view of money, your generosity, your investing mindset, your. Your. Your delayed gratification thinking, your level. Your up leveling. I've up. I've up leveled. I'm not, like, just, like, throwing away friends, but I'm saying I've up leveled my networks 20 times in my life already.

Wow.

And because I want to be around the people that have, like, stepped in my shoes, and they're, like, in one domain of their life where I want to head as the north star. And I think that the trick here that a lot of people don't realize is mentors become friends as you grow in what they teach you.

Yeah. As you learn and get to a.

Level, they're your peers.

Yeah, exactly.

And what a lot of people don't realize is that. And so some of my best friends in the world were mentors to start.

Wow.

Yeah. We have a lot of older friends that I just. We love them and their families, and now I mentor their children.

Wow.

It's like a slingshot, right? I have a bunch of young guys in their twenties come over to our house every month around the campfire till midnight, and we just train coach. They're asking, and all their parents are like, dear friends of ours. That's the best way to do it.

Oh, that's cool.

Yeah.

Campfire. How many times you do a campfire?

Once a month.

That's pretty cool.

Bring them over. We do campfires and s'mores all the time.

Really?

Oh, yeah. We're always playing the backyard in the pool and doing campfires. We have, like, the gas fires.

That's amazing.

Yeah, man.

Wow. Okay, so the six strategies for legacy. Value creation. Setup. Home economy. The three e's. Heritage over inheritance. Building your family DNA. Relationship breakthroughs.

Yep.

Pay to a point strategy.

Can I say one more thing on those relationships?

Yes.

We teach the ten love the love languages in the ten states, but we also talk about forgiveness, because I know the thread of this talk is trauma and money trauma and how we think about this. Right. Money trauma is a massive issue. It's the only trauma that we wake up and work for for the rest of our life.

What do you mean?

So when you're a silver spoon kid, where things are paid for, okay, you know, that you didn't earn things growing up, you're not fully prepared, and then you get there and you're like, I can't do this to my kids. Hard knocks, tough love, make it work on your own, because you usually screw up somewhere, and then it's like, you know, hard, good men, strong times, strong men, weak time, weak times. Like, bad, weak men, bad times. And then that goes the cycle. This is what happens in families every generation. You come from, like, everything was provided for. I never had to struggle and grow to like, you're like, oh, no. And then your kids struggle. You either screw it up and your kids go back to nothing, or the other way where you start from nothing, and then you grow up and you're like, I can't do this to my kids. I got to pay for everything and give them everything. So we teeter, totter, every generation just teeter totters back and forth. And it causes immense money traumas. And then the problem there is you're waking up every day and working for that trauma with all the other types of trauma.

You're like, how do I not think about this? How do I heal from this? How do I let this go? Right? You're trying to, like, get therapy and help at best and, like, move through to forgiveness. And, like, this one, you gotta then wake up the next day and figure out, how am I paying the bills.

Wow. So how does someone start to heal from these money wounds or money traumas then?

Well, I think that the main thing we gotta understand is we're told to forgive. Like the Bible tells us to forgive. The Bible does. I don't think the Bible teaches us how to forgive.

Just says do it.

Just says do it and do it a lot. Because, like, to the degree, the degree you forgive others, you're going to be forgiven. I believe in that. But I don't think it teaches us actually how to let things go. So we got a lot of really good training when we went through some really tough stuff, and it was through some of the top. I won't say all the names, there's like six of them, but they are trauma forgiveness. Let go, therapists. And what you do is you basically go through a system where you can call forth in your mind what happened, call the person forward that it was, or the situation, and declare what happened, and you're in a safe setting in your mind. Then you can actually move and feel that. And then there's a moment in every trauma or painful thing in our life where you can find what I call the gift doesn't justify what happens. It doesn't make it. What you do is you say, because of that difficult thing, I am now this kind of a person. And I'm so thankful for how I love my kids better, I love my new partner better, I am better in business from this.

I care about my health better. That's the gift. And now you can sit in that gift and feel that and swell that overwhelmingly. And when you sit there long enough, it starts to spill over to forgiveness, where you can actually say, I forgive you in love. That's the love where you say you don't justify, I forgive this. I can let this go. I won't let this eat me away anymore. That's actual forgiveness.

Yeah. There's a book called the gift from Edith Egger, who as a Holocaust survivor, and talks about this gift from being a Holocaust survivor through all the pain and suffering and sadness and horror. And obviously Victor Frankl talks about the meaning, man's search for meaning with suffering, sadness, loss, breakdown, you know, horrible abuse, all these different things. It's like, where is the meaning in it? And it's hard to find it right away in the mess or the sadness or the suffering. It's usually later when we reflect back on the stories that we remember.

Yeah.

When we're adults and we get into our twenties and thirties and we have breakdowns around money or anxiety or traumas, or we are. We're not good stewards of it. We get into debt a lot, or we hoard it and we are scarce with it. We're not giving any of it away.

That's all we think about all day, every day.

We obsess about it on our accounts and all these different things. It's like there's anxious, there's avoidant, there's a lack of secure emotions tied to money and the stories that were created from these memories. How does someone navigate into a secure attachment around money where they're generous, but not overly generous, giving it all away, but they're also intentional, and they save, and they're not getting taken advantage of, they're not taking out too much debt. How do they have a secure attachment style with money.

We either learn to master money or it will master us. It starts with an understanding where money doesn't identify. Money is never my identity, good or bad. Money is never my achievement, my status, how other people think of me keeping up with the Joneses or money. I don't believe that money will never come to me. I don't believe that I'm bad with money. I don't believe that I'm not worth anything. Those are the negative poverty mindsets that hit people all the time. Those both need to be rejected. And what you need to do is you put money in its proper place as simply a store of value. And I'm going to focus on being of value to others and then being disciplined when I do get money, right, there's two sides. Money comes from creating value unless you steal it. Money comes from creating value for others. So what are my skills? What are the ways I'm creating value for other people? In the material value, right? There's other types of value. But in this world, what do I love to do? Where am I creating immense value for other people, and where am I really good at things?

We call that the sweet spot. Okay, this is very controversial, but I don't believe in a calling. And all my, like, God friends and I love God, they're like, how dare you say that there's a calling for everyone. I'm like, yeah, but then when something goes wrong, you think you missed your calling. I don't believe in any of that. I think that God gives us incredible skills and talents, things that we love to do, because some people love things they suck at and they're, like, really good at things they hate. And then that has to meet huge needs in the world that create a lot of value. It's a sweet spot, and that's what we need to do with our children. We often ask kids, what do you want to do when you grow up? That's a bad question. You gotta ask your kids what lights you up? And then you hone to what excites you? What is a big need in the world for you? What do you think is a huge need that we can solve? Like, get them thinking that way? And when you're focusing on creating value in the world, a lot of that baggage just kind of melts.

Like, you know, they talk about if you're depressed or suicidal or sad, the best way to get out of it is to go serve somebody, go help someone, go encourage somebody. It's the best, quickest hack. So that creates value. And so the point here with, like, a 35 year old that's spinning and they're in their midlife crisis and they're struggling, it's like, go back to basics and realize that money is just a store of value and that I want to hone my skills to do what I love, what I'm good at, and what meets massive needs in the world.

How does someone, when they understand money is a store of value and they realize they don't have any of it? How do they not say, well, that means I don't have any value because I haven't learned how to make money or manage it properly. So I am worthless.

Money is not a store of your value. Money is simply a store of its own value. That's why you have to remove the identity structure. You, Louis, are invaluable. As a human, you are invaluable. That's the first step. I'm valuable just by being a person.

Yes.

But the value that I can create for others, the problems I can solve, the wants and needs I can meet, the empathy and service and ways to hunt for, like helping.

Yes.

One of the rewards is financial. So money is a store of creating that kind of value. So one better question to ask yourself instead of saying, why am I so worthless? Is to say, how might I create more value? See, there's a story. You know who Sharon Lecter is?

No.

She's the kind of the godmother of financial literacy. Rich dad, poor dad. Uh huh.

Yeah.

Cash flow game. She has 14 international bestsellers. She's helped the last six presidents. She's like 80 years old. She's unbelievable.

Wow.

She kind of passed the baton when we did our book, value creation kid. She said, scott, when I was a teenager and when I was a kid, my dad asked me one question that changed my whole life. You wanna know what it was?

Sure.

He said, every night before bed, he'd ask me this question. Who did you add value to today? One question over and over and over. And she said, over time, I started to see a lens. The whole world was a lens. Oh, I can create value for this person right now. Oh, I can encourage this person right now. Oh, my gosh. The teacher needs me to do this. My sibling. I can invite my parents. Oh, this is a business opportunity. Oh, my neighbors need help here. Oh, I could charge for this. This is incredible. Like hunting for value everywhere she went. And it's one of the greatest unlocks that we teach parents.

That's beautiful. I love that most people just, you know, have their kids say a prayer a night or just go to bed. But it's like, also ask this question, how did you add value today?

It's an incredible question.

That's powerful.

And it's an unlimited question. It's not a yes or no.

Er. Right, right.

Cause you want kids to be in, like, the spirit of play, right?

Make it a game. Make it a game.

Make it fun. Like, until further notice with your children. Celebrate everything. You should make things fun. The spirit of play trumps the spirit of coercion and power every single time. If you have a defiant kid, if you have a kid, that's just tough. It's like this kid battles me. I gotta sit there for 30 minutes after dinner to make him take that last bite. Everyone has those kids. I have one.

Wow.

The way to win that is to win their heart. You have to have fun. Enjoy that child. If you can enjoy the child and play, you win their heart. And then you win loyalty.

Yes.

And then all those tough traits that you were frustrated before now get to be used for power. See, that kid grows up, they're not gonna be swayed. They're not gonna be, you know, bullied. They won't let other people bully. In fact, if that's a teenage girl, when you. When you win that loyalty and you win that heart, they're not gonna be taken advantage of. They're not gonna let the bullies and the cliques tell them who they are.

Wow.

You see the power of that kind of a kid.

Yes.

So the key is to switch it.

What is the. I guess, what is the big risk at stake when someone attaches their identity with their self worth to their net worth?

You might have just asked the hardest one. This is why it's so critical to remove what money is. Okay. It's a tool. When you swing a hammer, do you think you're the hammer? No, you're not. Money is a tool store of value, and it's a tool that makes you more of who you already are. If you're a jerk and you make a million dollars, you're just going to be a million times the jerk. If you're humble, if you're generous, if you're kind, if you're diligent, if you have delayed gratification, if you're caring, you're going to be that a million fold with more. Right. It makes you more of who you already are.

Yes.

So we have to actually remove money from self worth.

How do you do that?

When you start around money, this is about certain types of value. I know teachers who make 40 grand a year that are absolute saints. They're not making money as value. That's one type of value. They're making immense emotional and spiritual values all the time, their bank account. And that is overflowing.

Yes.

Okay. I know friends that have crazy businesses that I don't like what they do for their business that are making $100 million.

Yes.

They make zero emotional and spiritual value in the world. They're actually negative in those, right. They're sucking that value out of the world. So just because somebody has a bunch of money. Don't misplace a blessed life with money. I am the richest guy I know because of my relationship with my wife, my faith in God, my four beautiful children, the incredible friends we have around us, our businesses that get to serve millions of people and kids and families. I am the richest guy I know. But we like to give way more than we like to invest. Even that's true wealth. So don't tie it to the dollar amount in the bank account. You have to think of a broader.

View of value when people's network of friends or family tie their value to material things. The Joneses possessions.

Keeping up with the Joneses.

Yeah. Their credentials of how much they paid for something to get a college degree. And look at me. All these external things that create validation or identity for them, when that's a part of their upbringing, their parents, their siblings, their friends, their whole inner circle. How do they break free of that without breaking free of those relationships fully and just divorcing their friends and family in their life? When everyone else puts so much value and identity on net worth and material things versus the self worth of intrinsic qualities, generosity, humility, character traits, love, thoughtfulness, integrity, connection, listening, all these things, how do they break free without breaking up? Breaking up? Yes.

Break free without breaking up? Yeah. See, there's family that you have. You're born with them. There's family you choose.

Yes.

You know, you and I have our value sets. We would agree that it's good to be financially secure and create value and continually grow that, not stealing it create a lot of value for a lot of people, and the money takes care of itself.

Yes.

We also agree in character traits, mindsets like self worth and self confidence, or the other value buckets, you need to figure out what your top ten list of your values are, how you view money, how you view relationships, how you view God, how you view, like, what matters most in your life. Have you ever written. Have people ever written those down? Most don't. Most, like, sway, and they just get whatever social media tells them.

Yeah, react.

Or so get that clear. And then you say, now I'm gonna hunt for my family. Doesn't mean you break up with a sibling or a parent or someone. It just means you might not give them the weight because they haven't earned that. Just because you're related to somebody doesn't mean that they have the say on your identity. They can still be related to you, but you could put them in another level of weight and the value that you take from them and what they say. Yeah, that's okay. When we do this inner circle thing with kids, and here's a good way to see it. When you have children. I was talking to my buddy, Brandon Turner. If you have children that have somebody in their life that's a negative person, like, you think that they might get them bad material in their life or say terrible things, or they'll see negative content or they'll hurt them. Like, I will uproot my family to get away from that kid. I will do anything so that that kid has no say in my kids identity. Oh, yeah. I'm going straight to mom and dad. I'm like, you're never like, I will do what it takes.

Like Papa Bear style.

Holy tough.

You have to protect that. But we don't do that with ourselves. We let our cousins say weird crap. We let our in laws say things. We let our siblings say things. We hear stuff from an uncle or a parent. That's just vitriol. Why do you take that? You can still love somebody and not be completely shifted by every word that comes out of their mouth or criticism. That is the case. What's the trauma that you're trying to get, like, daddy issues and buying, like, getting their love back? You know, how many entrepreneurs do we know have just bad dad issues? Cause their dad never told them they loved them for sure.

Yeah. And they were driven to succeed and prove them wrong or whatever. Yeah.

Do you love me now?

Yeah. Right? That's crazy.

On a grand scale.

That's crazy, man. Did you ever struggle with money issues growing up or as an adult? Did you ever have traumas yourself? Or were your parents and grandparents just perfect at giving you this whole formula of values and family crest and DNA and not giving you too much, but empowering you and gifting you at the right times? Like, did you just have it so easy?

No. No. Never easy, but good. And I think that's how it should be. Never easy, but good. I would say out of all the things that we've been studying now with the best families in the world, I just want to honor my family. They did great. They probably did, like, two thirds of them pretty good. We have a long ways to go, and there's crazy. There's always crazy. In every family I've ever met, someone has crazy. But the recipe book is pretty good. But I will say money was not given. Like, they didn't just give us everything. They had plenty, right?

They had a lot. Your grandparents had a lot.

Yeah, my dad. My grandpa sold a bank for, like, a billion dollars. They put almost all of it into charitable trust.

Really?

To help other families around the world and not give it to me. Thank God. I am so thankful for that.

Were you ever resentful of that? How come you didn't pass me this billion dollars?

Never. They help us in college, help with, like, some car when we got married. They're like, you guys are awesome. Here's a couple grand. Like, thankful. But I don't. I didn't expect that. I wasn't entitled.

Why didn't you expect the money from your grandparents or your parents to be passed down?

Cause they said, we don't own this. We're stewards of this.

Wow.

And if we give it to you, you're gonna be ruined.

You're gonna waste it.

You're gonna waste it. You're gonna waste the gift that we're stewarding. We want you to learn how to fish and hunt, because guess what, Scott? You're gonna blow by us. And I have. I have because of the way they've been speaking into me for three decades.

Wow.

I've blown by them. Thank God. So, yeah, I'm so thankful for that. I had delayed gratification when I was ten. It only came from that. And so, yeah, man, I'm not, like, one of those, like, horror stories turned, like, redemption. Sure, I've had my struggles. God is constantly using my life and my business career and new investments to, like, grow my trust and grow my abundance mindset. You know, God asked. I feel like God was telling me the other day, can you out give me?

Really? What does that mean?

If you ask God the question, Lord, like, how much should I give? What you're really asking is, how much can I keep?

Right, right. How much can I keep for me?

And also, yeah, but I believe that God gives to us at the level that it flows through us, not just financially in all ways. And so it's really important for people to think about, like, is it yours or just. Or is you stewarding it?

So how do you make a decision on how much you're gonna give? And maybe this has evolved over time, but at this season of your life.

Yeah.

When you think, God, you know, how much should I give? Right?

Yeah.

What are you thinking about in terms of your financial donations or generosity on a yearly basis right now? Is it thinking, I'm gonna give 99% of my money away to charities and, you know, things and churches and charities that. That need it more than me because I have so much and I know more is coming in. Is it 10% is it a percentage? Is it a feeling? Is it an energy exchange? How do you make those decisions of how much to give?

Yeah. The first question I want to ask is all this, I'm a steward of.

It's not mine.

It's not mine.

How much? So you don't think that the money that you've made or earned is yours?

Nope. No.

When money comes in, when you get.

A money, I don't think my whole life is mine. I believe my whole life is like, I'm a steward of my whole life to God. That's just my money, my energy, the love I give, my relationships, my network, my health, my body, it's all a gift. So when you have that mindset, it's so easy to have an abundant mindset.

Yes. When money comes in and you get a dollar or millions that come in with a check handed to you in a bank account, what is your reaction to seeing money come in? And what is your reaction when money flows out of your account or your hand?

Well, when we got our first big exit, my wife's knees buckled.

Yeah.

Yeah. Like, it was crazy. And she started crying, and I was like, whoa, where's this coming from? She's like, I was a teacher when we met, making 38 grand a year. We just made enough money for our great, great grandkids to be just fine.

Wow. And I said, that's the wrong way to look at it, though, right?

That's right. She knew we weren't going to keep that. I said, it's incredible. But now we get to steward it.

Ooh.

So now, like, we've been helping all over the world with it. Like, we put it, charitable trust. So you get the tax deduction so you can give more.

So how does that work? You put the whole thing into a charitable.

Not the whole thing. No, no. We have. We have investments. I mean, I'm still reinvesting in my companies.

Yeah, yeah, of course.

You know, I knew that God didn't want me to sit, go create more value. That's right.

And so you gotta invest it in other ways to add value.

That's why retiring is like telling God to take the parts back. Like, why would you do that? You wanna keep creating value. What you should do is retire from the things you hate doing that don't add value to the world that make you miserable. You shouldn't have been doing that in the first place.

Right.

So when I say, create value, this is a lifelong journey. And so I knew that when we made that exit, that was just first base. That was step one.

Wow.

And so. God. And he's called most of it back. Really? Yeah. Giving, investing, starting our new company. I mean, we're eight figures into investing in this new company to help families and children. Dinnertable.com dot.

Right.

We want to help 50 million families learn legacy and learn financial competency and be free of this. Like, that's our mission, and it is way bigger than our first exit. Like, this is crazy. I have friends who are like, you're crazy. I'm like, no, I'm just living out what I was called to do.

You're committed.

Yeah, yeah.

You're not crazy. You're committed to a bigger vision. So you have.

So there's percentages. Like, we'll do 10%. We'll do. There's. There's, like, tithes, and then there's offerings above that. But sometimes we're just like, you know what? This person has need. This organization has need. One of my close friends is Tim Tebow. Yeah, they had a need.

Yeah, of course.

And he's. I'm on speed dial with this man. Like, what do you need? Cause he and I are fighting this trafficking world hard. So I'm like, tell me what you need. And so. And there's other organizations like that, friends that are, like, helping in nonprofits and, like, ymcas and young life.

Sure, sure.

Like, our job, if we're creating immense value that has financial reward, our job is to, like, take care of those others that are huge in the emotional and spiritual buckets. Yes.

Wow. How do you think about wants and needs with family members asking for money when you're like, well, Scott, you got all this money. You've got this abundance of money. It's flowing into you. I could really use ten grand right now because I'm just struggling and going through a hard time or, you know, I'm sick or I've got this thing I want to do. I need to invest in this program or coaching or schooling. Can I just. Can you just borrow me 20 grand? Two grand? $500? Like, I just need some help right now.

Yeah.

How do you know when to give money to a family member or a friend?

I will.

And they will steward it versus. They've created bad habits in their life.

That's the difference.

That's them needing a bailout.

That's the difference. What are they gonna do with it? It's a heart matter. They're just grabbing, and you know that they're gonna do something wrong or it's not going to help them create more value that's a hard no. Even loaning money, like the borrower, slave to the lender. Like, why would I do that with a family member or friend if I'm going to help them? Here, just take. I don't even want to know. This never happened here. There's no strings ever. But I usually will try to help friends create value. My friends call it the Donnell effect. Cause I'm a strategy mind engineer. Mind created billions and billions and billions of dollars in value with all my friends businesses. So they come to me and they're like, hey, I'm having this issue. How do I ten x it? How do I fix the financial issue, the product market fit, the scale problem, the cash burn. And so I would much rather help them create value in the world than just fix the whole thing so they don't learn anything with the check. Right? That's the main thing.

Gotcha. And if they're creating value, you might help them along the way. If they're investing, showing that they're adding value in certain ways, they're taking the steps for themselves.

Yeah.

What are your thoughts on debt? Because we were mentioning this kind of before about there's one camp that says have zero debt.

Michelle, remain nameless. The fight I was in.

Yeah. There's one camp of mindset which is don't have any debt.

They're going to know who we're talking about, dude.

Pay everything with cash, get out of debt, pay off all the loans you have and start building wealth. And there's other camps that are just like, borrow as much as you can. Kiyosaki talks about this. Borrow, borrow, borrow.

I don't have cash. Cash is stupid.

Yeah, cash is trash. Cash is stupid. There's two different trains of thought. And there's a middle that's kind of like a balance of borrow some. Where do you think about debt and taking money from banks or other people to go invest in things that may or may not work out, that there is risk to that. So I would say versus I only pay everything in cash and I don't work the financial system in any way.

So here's what I'm gonna say about debt first. Cause I work with children.

Yes.

And families. Debt is a level three conversation. What's level one? Basic financial competency. If you're not spending less than you make, debt shouldn't be a part of your life.

No.

Get out of debt, pay off high interest first. Get out of debt, spend less than you make, and invest the difference. That's the key to all wealth. This is level one, when you spend, spend on needs first and then wants, right? Save first, pay yourself first. We tell this to children all the time in our bank account for dinner table and gravy stack you make $20. You don't get to spend all 20. You're saving 1st 20% automatically, you're giving 10% automatically. And then the rest goes into your debit card jar where you're spending on needs first and then once and get very clear about what's a need and then what's a want, what's the difference? Yeah, see, these are levels.

You need these like nike shoes. Do you? Yeah.

Then level. That's level one.

Uh huh.

Level two is increasing, increasing your value creation. Charging for results, not time and effort. The greatest unlock that I ever teach young kids and teenagers cause their parents finally learn it is to charge for results, not time and effort. I was just coaching a twelve year old kid in Colorado the other day.

Could take me 10 hours or ten minutes if I can get the result done in ten minutes.

That's right.

I'm gonna get paid for that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We shouldn't be charging for just showing up and putting in some work. If you wanna have a life of wealthy and value creation. Charge for results. This twelve year old kid was mowing a lawn and he was like, I made $71 today, you know, and I'm like, that's awesome, buddy. Did you work hard? He's like, I work really hard. I was like, wanna make a thousand tomorrow? He's like, yes. I was like, here's what you're gonna do tonight. You're gonna go to the next neighborhood and put a piece of paper on all the doors. Say, hi, my name is Brody. I'm going to every door tomorrow and I'd love to mow your lawn and pull some weeds around it for $40. I'll see you tomorrow. He goes around, hits 25 houses in 8 hours. Whatever it was nails it all. And he is hustling, but he's sitting there just like I'm charging for value and the result, not time and effort. So he made $1,000 instead of 71 in a day. And his whole mindset shifted right there. And most parents who hear that, they're like, there's no way that's possible.

I'm like, really start thinking about value and start thinking about results. I just went to a business and they were going to pay me like 30 grand to coach them. And I was like, no, I'll take 10% of the upscale of what I do for you? Charge you nothing right now.

Right.

I won't tell you how much we made.

That's great.

They ten x their company.

Wow. That's great.

The company, right?

It's big.

So this is what happens when you think about results, not time and effort.

Mm hmm. Wow. So debt as an adult, though, if.

You'Re thinking now, level three.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm just. You got me thinking on so many things that I want to be telling kids. Cause I have a huge family call coming.

But, yeah, level three, I'm prepping you for that.

So level three with debt. I am. There's a huge difference between appreciating and depreciating debt. Okay. I don't like either of these camps. They're like, it's all or it's nothing. Right? I don't agree with that. There's appreciating debt and there's depreciating debt.

What's the difference?

Depreciating debt is high interest, credit card shark loans, paydays. I mean, this is controversial. College debt.

Yeah.

If you have kids that you think college is good, you might think it's not like that's another conversation. But if you're gonna do the college route, you should pay for the last half of college, dollar for dollar, for whatever your kids save and make for it. So now they're hunting for scholarships. They're having multiple jobs and grants. They're creating value. They're owning it. And you pay for the last half. Cause 82% of college kids never get the degree, and they get all the debt.

Oh, man.

Or, I'm sorry. 56% graduate. Don't graduate, but get the debt. 82% never have a job related to their degree.

Yeah, that was that for sure.

Which is even worse. So those are depreciating in a way, appreciating debt is like, oh, even car loans is a depreciating asset. The car's not going up in value. It's going down.

You keep paying the same payment.

Yep. Now, home or business, if you're securing it, you can cover the payments of it. Long term. Those are appreciating over time. That's a good thing, right? As long as you're financially competent and you're having really good value creation. Right? Like, you shouldn't have a mindset for your career as, like, I'm just gonna make x amount until I retire at age. Whatever you should be constantly thinking of, I'm gonna uplevel my value creation skills in the world. Okay. Hone them and drive them and go up and up and up. That's the thinking.

Wow. Okay, that's fascinating. What is the thing that you wish more people knew about around money that most people don't talk about?

There's so much. It'll never make you happy. Okay. I think the reason why money trauma tricks so many people is they think it will fix so many things and it doesn't. Do you know how many billionaires that I'm trying to coach that are miserable?

Why are the billionaires miserable?

They're not miserable because of the money. They're miserable because of what the money did.

What did it do?

Ruin their marriage? Kids won't talk to them. What they sacrificed to get there lost, priceless things. So there's a point where you're like, yeah, you gotta be fed, you gotta be clothed, probably have good shelter, do some fun stuff. But that's a smaller number than most people think. What you really should focus on is being rich in relationship, in mindset, in values, in family belief. Those things are what create a wealthy, rich life.

Wow.

I know so many wealthy people that are miserable.

What do they say to you, you know, someone who's 40, 50, 60 years old, who's got 100 million in the bank or billion dollars in net worth or whatever it might be, but they're on their second or third marriage, their kids don't talk to them. Or they just have some weird relationship dynamics that are controlling or power struggle.

No, it's not just that. Their cousins won't talk to them. Their siblings are jealous and mad. Their old friends are no longer talking. The air is rare and lonely. That's what it is. Some of these guys and gals, and I was talking to a woman who did it. She's like, I have no one. And it was not because I did anything wrong. I made every dollar fair. I showed up for people. But I am in rare air. I'm at the top of the mountain and it's lonely. And I have nobody to unpack this stuff with. And the people that I loved before, I would just want stuff.

They don't understand me.

They don't understand me. I can't connect with me about this. Yeah, loneliness.

So how do you not be lonely and also create financial wealth and abundance at the same time?

Be generous. A family that if you want to.

Live together, pay to a point.

Pay to a point.

Be generous, but pay to a point.

Yeah, baby, generate. Don't be, no, pay to a point for your kids and then give.

Yeah, yeah, right.

Like you want to be generous. Like if I know billionaire families, the hobby lobby family is a great example. They give away billions as a family and they give it together. Gen two, Gen three, and now Gen four give together.

How do you give when it's not your money that you didn't make?

Yeah, they help. They have a stewardship mindset. So David Green, who's a good friend, he basically has the kids and grandkids. They get votes on, like, hey, what are we going to do with this together? And they give together. You want to live a long time as a legacy family? Give together.

Wow.

Because now you're not having that jealousy and ambitious like selfishness and pride and entitlement and lottery ticket syndrome. You're giving it, you're stewarding it.

Not saying, this is all mine. And.

Yeah, and those kids are killers, by the way. I know Derek, the grandson, he's my age, guys. He's running. He's built up from UPS ground grounds, like technician all the way up, managing hundreds of millions of dollars. This guy's a killer.

Wow.

So they teach value creation. He's one. They're one of the families that we have in our hundred. We study it.

If someone has created a lot of value in the world and they've built a business and they've, you know, built something, they've exited, they've got a lot of money and they're running a big organization that their family just has no clue or has a completely different lifestyle. Just doesn't understand that lifestyle. Nothing wrong, right or wrong, just doesn't understand them. And they have isolated themselves financially from their circle, their friends, their family so far that they don't know how to connect with them financially or emotionally anymore.

Yeah.

What can they do to start to reconnect with friends, family and their circle that has no clue about their financial literacy or abundance on what they've done to get there.

Yeah. I have a lot of families in this boat. They're separated, they're isolated, they're struggling.

Cause every time they're lonely, they're divorced. All these things.

Everybody has crazy everyone. Dude, I had a great uncle that blew himself up through a roof of a barn cause he was depressed. We call him crazy Uncle Dewilde. He did it 100 years ago. Every family has crazy. So I think you have to get to a point where your family, you're just, you're okay loving them no matter what. Cause there's hurt there, there's trauma there. There's sadness, jealousy. There's jealousy and pain. You have to almost get to a point where you're just. You're gonna love them no matter what. And you have good boundaries, but you have, like, good relationship and you're making the effort. Okay, I tell this to families all the time. Rules and relationship together is rocket fuel for children. But if you have rules without relationship, it's rebellion. Okay, that's true. And this is so true. If you're an older person with siblings and cousins and parents, and you're crushing it, and there's this isolation, you've got to have good boundaries with them and have the heart and the good conversations with them, but also just focus on the relationships, knowing it's never going to be perfect because you have boundaries around things and just, like, working on your love.

Because parents ask me this all the time. They're like, I feel like they're not listening. I feel like I'm isolated. I feel like my kids don't care. And I say this. When you go fishing with, like, if you're trying to build a relationship with your, with your kid, you get points for fishing, not catching fish. Every time you drop the lure and cast the rod, you win. You get points. You have to see it that way, even if they're not biting. And that's true in every relationship. You casting, texting a friend that you know has been struggling or just checking in with someone. The first person to ask for forgiveness in a marriage wins. First person to say sorry, will you forgive me? Wins.

Wow.

Okay. Even no one wins in marriage but you. These are acts of worship. They're acts of sacrifice. They are. They're fishing. They're, like, casting the line out. That's what leaders do. And so if you're feeling this way in any situation in your family that's painful, just remember that you get points for cast of the wine.

Yes. That's beautiful. This is an issue one. I've got a few more questions for you. This one's about choosing your partner. Marriage. What are three money questions you should ask the person you're dating and potentially going to get married to before you get married, to do your best to set yourself up for harmony and financial peace in the marriage.

A lot. I have more than about ten. One of the best first ones you can talk to someone with is unpack where they came from. So the question is, how did you grow up around money? And what does money mean to your family? What did it mean to you growing up? You're going to hear a lot. You're going to know if it was silver spoon or if it was hard knock.

Right?

You're going to hear if it was entitlement or if it was value creation or if it was scarcity. Right. Those things manifest themselves all throughout marriages and relationships. And often we find opposites.

And if someone is an abundance, generous.

The order finds the savior.

Yeah. What happens when you're an abundance, generous person, value creation individual, and you somehow attracted a person who is scarce scarcity hoarder. Insecure hoarder.

They went from frugal to cheap.

Yeah, exactly. What happens in a marriage when you have those opposites of financial abundance versus scarcity in marriage, it can be one.

Of the biggest fights. It is one of the number one causes of divorce.

Wow.

When you have an in alignment on money. And so you have to have.

So you gotta have those questions.

Real conversation. Like, real. Like, hey, what we have together, how we buy things, how we make these decisions on investment, house, car, college. Like, are we. We both see the accounts together. It's not. You get your own account. I get. I actually say, no, you bring these things together and you have real conversation because it's a partnership. Right. I know you're gonna ask me about prenups, but what I'm saying is when. Okay, here's my answer on prenups. You should always marry somebody who was. Who's who. Who's worth more than half your crap.

What do you mean by that?

Always marry somebody who is worth way more than half your crap if it goes wrong.

So. Okay. Who has. I don't know what that means.

I'm just kidding. There's always margin on this. Yeah, but I'm saying, like, so many. And I know we jumped to prenup.

Yeah, it's all good. What is.

You gotta be careful, though, because there's a way to do a prenup that's bad and a way to do a prenup that's good.

What's the difference?

Okay. A bad prenup is where you're literally like, here's mine, here's yours, and this is my insurance. If I don't like you anymore, right, that's bad. But if there's a way to, like, protect, like, the children in a situation, if there's a way to say, hey, this is set aside for our future family, regardless, this is set aside for investment and generosity and giving. Like, here's the not me protecting myself from you, here's me protecting our future legacy. There's a difference. Okay. And this is a longer conversation.

Sure.

But you gotta have those questions about how someone was raised around money, their viewpoint of money, where they want to go in their family? Like, do they want to be at home raising the kids? Do they want to be working, growing, and being, like, working really hard to provide?

And what are we gonna do if we're both working really hard?

That's right. You gotta have those conversations. Cause then it's like, well, then, do you want someone else raising children? Are you both okay with that? These are hard conversations, man.

You gotta make sure you're in alignment.

That's right. And the beautiful thing, I think, about starting from, like, a point together is that everything you build together is now together. You get to celebrate in that.

But when you got married, I'm assuming you were making more with your business.

Twelve years ago, I was still on the lower end, thankfully.

So you weren't, like, balling and she was, like, making 35 grand a year as a teacher?

Yeah, I was doing. I was just a few years out of college, maybe three years out of college, four years, and I was doing fine. Yeah, it was six figure, not seven or eight or nine.

Right.

Okay.

It's still a big gap.

Yeah, it's a gap. But again, I was like, you know what? We're gonna start from scratch. Really? Yeah, we're gonna build together everything we have.

When 50% of divorce, of marriages end in divorce, do you think people should talk about a prenup or have the conversation around what that could look like?

A friend of mine, Bill, he said, why do you get married? It's like jumping out of a plane with a parachute that 50% of the time won't open, you know?

Well, the hope that it works, you opens.

Yeah. It's like, he's like, you're crazy for getting married.

This is before I got married.

No, I mean, I honestly don't know what I think on a prenup. Like, I've had so many different valuable points on both sides, but I'm assuming.

A lot of the families that you've coached or worked with, half of them have gone through a divorce. When there's been a lot of money in the bank and there's been a.

Lot of pain, dear friends, going through.

It right now, there's pain and trauma for months and years of figuring out who gets what of the material wealth. And that causes wounds and anger and resentment, all these things, and spoiling and.

Entitlement and victimhood of the children.

And could you eliminate by getting alignment early on of, hey, listen, if for whatever reason this doesn't work out in the future.

Yeah.

How do we create a win win?

Yeah.

Is there a conversation that should be had around that, or you think, just suffer in 20 years when you get a divorce and just, if it doesn't work out, you know, just put your kids through trauma and put yourself through trauma without having clear agreements.

Yeah.

If we're not able to work this out in a loving way together, then we've gotta. This is the way it should be. Let's agree on this. I don't know.

I mean, I've heard so many different things, man. I know you want me to drop on one side or the other, but I'll tell you, my wife and I have had very difficult times. Marriage times, really. Health miss. Yeah, hard, really. You have a miscarriage and you can't, like, grieve it. One in five women have had it that are trying to have children. I think that's just one example, you know, crazy death issues of close people to us. Business. Just multi year burning, hundreds of thousands of dollars a month and driving and hurting and deep pain and 100 hours a week work. That's tough on a marriage we've had. Tough. But when we got married, it was like, we're burning the ships.

Wow. That's cool.

I asked my grandpa, we should end on this. Cause I know I gotta jump, too. My grandpa, 91 years old, the legend. Grandpa the billionaire. Bank gave it all away. He's gonna die with almost none.

Wow.

Unbelievable, man. I was with him. He's. Two weeks ago, I flew up from Phoenix to Oak Harbor, Washington, to be with him for the day. Cause I knew if I didn't, I'd regret it. Cause he's coming to the end. He was married to my grandma for 67 years.

Wow.

She just passed a couple years ago. And he's, like, waiting to go be with her, right? He's like, I'm ready to go see grandma. And I remember, I asked him, what's his best advice? But first I said, hey, did you ever think about divorcing grandma in 67 years, has it ever crossed your mind? He goes, divorce, no. Murder?

Yeah. Oh, my God.

But divorce? Never. Like, he's like, hilarious. And there's this. But it shows the resiliency of it, you know? He's like, we've been to hell and back through war, and we raised incredible kids and grandkids and great grandkids. If I'd have blown up that dynamite years ago, I'd never seen your face.

Wow.

I said, okay, what's your best advice? Best advice from a 91 year old man who's seen the whole world. He said, take things positively that was it laugh? Take things positively. The best relationship, especially when it comes with money. You win or you learn. You don't win or lose. Every expense in your life is an investment. This is taking things positively. Employees, they're not expenses. They're investments. You lose money on something, you screw up, you make a mistake. Guess what? That's a powerful PhD you just got. And sometimes my price tags have been millions. But you have to take things positively. You have to take things positively with your children, take things positive with your partner. Everything has to be taken in that optimistic, abundant gratitude light.

Yes.

If not, you'll spiral out of control, start blaming each other. Start thinking about that eject button. Start thinking about, like, this is all my money, right? How dare these kids do x, y, z. I wish my spouse would only love me in this way. It would fix everything. How dare, like, you got to take things positively. And so for Amy and I just back to your question on prenups. We don't have one. We had very little when we started, though. She's worth half my crap. I'll just give you that. She's worth more than all I have.

Wow.

I mean, like, it's. I don't know. There's a beauty in that. I just love the fact that we burned all our ships.

Wow. Beautiful.

And we're. And I'll die with her.

Wow.

One of us is going first, but, like, we're going no matter what happens.

That's beautiful, man. I've got two final questions for you, but before I ask them, Scott, I want to acknowledge you for the value you add here and the value you add to so many millions of people, parents, kids, and the many millions that you will be adding value to for many years to come. Because I think this is one of the most complicated and challenging topics for people besides love. Money is challenging and complicated and scary. I think it's scary for a lot of people. Like the fear around how do I make money? How do I invest money? How do I make sure I don't lose all my money? How do I, you know, what do I spend it on?

What are they going to think of me if I do the wrong thing?

With money, it's just like there's so much fear around money and insecurity, lack of knowledge and lack of information and lack of experience that people have with money in general. And I think love is the greatest thing to explore. But money is a thing that we live with every single day as well, and it causes a lot of trauma and sadness in people's lives, and it hurts relationships a lot more than it does help relationships.

Yep.

And it sounds like you're adding value for people to learn how to use money to help relationships and make it fun. Make relationships fun, families fun.

Totally.

Being a parent fun, being a kid fun, as opposed to being in fear around money. So I want to acknowledge you for your desire to put yourself out there more and not be behind the scenes, but be in front of the scenes and share and use your voice and the decades of wisdom that you learned from your grandfather and great grandparents who have brought you this information, this legacy, so that others can have harmony around money as well. So I acknowledge you for that, Scott. Where can people go to learn all these things? Because, like, I want to, I don't have kids yet, but I want to learn more of this so I'm prepared when I have kids. So how can we figure out the six strategies? How can we figure out how to create a family crest and value system and all these different things?

Yeah, we get a lot of pregnant people, by the way. They're like, oh, no, I'm gonna be a dad. I'm gonna be a mom. So we have a bunch of things. Social media just. I'm Scott Donnell. Pretty easy, but we give out daily content. But dinner table is really our brand. So we have our 18 strategies in there. We have the home economy. It's a free course. We give. So if they go to community dinnertable.com and then we'll just do slash Lewis on there. But, yeah, community dot dinnertable.com, it's our free parenting community. So this is what I'm realizing.

It's a free community.

Yep, yep. 7 million families that we've served and across all of our companies, the best way that you start doing this and keeping accountable is in groups, coaching with other families, other parents that have kids 510 years older, they're telling you what they did.

Crazier, yeah.

Celebrating wins, asking questions. Here's what worked, here's what didn't. And then coach, like, facilitators that we train up, we call them licensees. So now anyone can license our brand and have like, a six figure business in a box. We give them all the tech on go high level, all the white label, everything. They give it to their employees, they give it to their clients, they give it to their schools, they give it to their coaching community, their mastermind. So we're just opening it up as a platform for anybody to take and run with.

Wow.

So if people just go to like, dinnertable.com and like, send in, like, a message to learn more about it.

Is there a place they can get, like, templates and tools as well?

Yeah, we have in that free community, the dinner table community. We have a. The home economy. We'll start with the home economy. It's a free course that we give out to everybody. So it's like, here's how you do expectations. Here's how you do expenses. Here's how you do extra pay. Here's the setup. We have our app that's free. That, like, the bank got it.

So these courses with the, you know, the strategies and the home economy, that's all in dinnertable.com dot.

Yeah.

And they're free.

Community dot dinnertable.com. go there for the community. Go there for the resource. We have a child readiness score. We have our book for a dollar quiz, funnel quiz. We have all these things.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. Just a ton of stuff.

A lot of free courses, too, though.

Teach us tons of free stuff. And then if people want to join our live coaching, they just, it's like a few hundred bucks.

Sure. And then monthly coaching.

They get monthly coaching with a bunch of other families. There's like, there's like, dad groups and there's grandparent groups, and there's a special needs group for families, teenager groups. There's single parent groups. Like, there's all these different groups that people are forming as licensees. And I'm training and our team trains them on how to facilitate all this coaching.

Wow. That's cool, man.

They just run with it. There you go.

Scott Donnell on social media, dinnertable.com, comma, community dot dinnertable.com. lewis, all these different places. We'll link it up as well. But where else can we send people to? Is this the main place?

Yeah, this will be the main spot.

Okay. Two final questions. This is a question I ask everyone at the end. It's called the three truths. It's a hypothetical question. Imagine you get to live as long as you want to live. You can live beyond your grandfather right now. You need to be 100 something, right? And you actualize all of your biggest dreams times a million. And you have the health, the relationship, the family, the children, the great grandchildren, and the impact that you want to create. And you steward your money and all these different things, they happen. The vision that you have for yourself from this moment and to that last day. But for whatever reason, in this hypothetical scenario, you have to take all of your work with you. So this content that you're creating and will be creating, we don't have access to it anymore. Hypothetically?

Yep.

All the courses, all the books, all this content, the social, all of it gone. Hypothetical. But on the last day, you get to leave behind three truths, and this is all the world would have of your content and your information, everything that you gained wisdom on, that you would leave behind. That's it. What would those three truths be for you?

What you don't heal from you will pass down. Tip well. That you can unpack that for a lifetime. And this is the one thing my mom said when she dropped me off for college. She just gave me a big hug. She said, if it doesn't point to Jesus, there's no point.

Wow.

She meant was live a life that loves other people above yourself.

Wow. Those are beautiful truths. I don't think I've heard those three before. Before I ask the final question, why tip wealthy.

That's what my dad said when he dropped me off for college. In his hand was a $50 bill when he shook it.

There you go.

Well, and the point here is, you can't outgive God. And you want abundance. You want a bigger pie mindset. You want to live this way or this way? Tip well. Care for other people. Care for the waitress. Care for the uber driver. I just tipped my uber driver $98 before I got in here.

Wow.

Like, you tip well. And it's a mindset. You pay your people well, you make sure partners do well. Yeah, I pay myself first when I'm, like, building business, but I'm making sure that everyone's taken care of. That's life, man. Tip well.

That's beautiful. Final question, Scott, what's your definition of greatness?

Meeting the dream version of yourself at 70 and liking the guy.

There you go. Scott tunnel. Thanks, man. Appreciate you. I hope you enjoyed today's episode, and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And I want to remind you of no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you are matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.