The Gentlemen Project Podcast
Bi-weekly podcast highlighting impactful stories of parents and what they do to be successful at home and at work. Helping you turn the time you have with your kids into time well spent helping them learn the most important lessons in life. The Gentlemen Project Podcast is hosted by Kirk Chugg and Cory Moore-friends who are passionate about fatherhood and raising the next generation of great kids.
The Gentlemen Project Podcast
"Being the Dad You Wish You Had" with Author Nick Adams
In this episode, Nick Adams shares his insights on fatherhood and his book "Being the Dad You Wish You Had: Five Big Stones for Effective Fatherhood". We discuss the importance of creating a legacy of love, strength, and guidance for our children. We also talk about the significance of being present for our kids and focusing on the 'big rocks' to help them grow into the best versions of themselves. Join us for an episode that promises to provide you with the strategy, empathy, and intention necessary to navigate the most important role you'll ever play.
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Welcome to the gentlemen project podcast.
Speaker 2:I'm Corey Moore and I'm Kirk Chug. Today we're privileged to have Nick Adams join us on the podcast. He's joining us remotely from northeast Tennessee. I'm going to enjoy listening to his accent for the next about 45 minutes. Love the way he talks. Nick is a new author and he's written a book called being the Dad you Wish you had Five Big Stones for Effective Fatherhood. He's doing research for future books. He's done a lot of things in his life that we're going to let him kind of talk about, but youth camp founder, director, pastor, business owner, commercial residential landlord and he's a dad of four, two boys, two girls. He's done some fostering, some adoption in his parenting journey. He's married and has adult kids and still kids at home. This is going to be a great conversation today that we're really excited for. He's super active and he's super educated. So, Nick, welcome to the podcast this morning and thanks for joining us, man.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to the conversation, getting to know some of your all experiences and just to be a part of your family.
Speaker 2:Yeah, nick joined us because he sent an email. I guess he found us. So thank you, listeners, for dropping a rating and a review so that people like Nick can find us on Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. So thanks for doing that so that Nick could find us. I'm really looking forward to this. Nick, give us a little bit of a background about your professional and your private life.
Speaker 3:Well, as I was hearing you kind of hit some of the high points, it made me realize how probably ADHD I am. It's like, wow, I am all over the map, I'm going every which direction, but I really haven't had a lot of interesting experiences and opportunities. And as I've matured and kind of looking back on life as kind of the stage that I'm in now, I'm thinking what do I wish I had known or what have I gained or gleaned through the years that I could pass on to others? It's kind of the stage I'm in now where I'm starting to go. Okay, I want to write some and to start a new speaking career that I'm launching into and just really kind of enjoying a new phase of life.
Speaker 3:But, as you said, I've owned multiple businesses and started a couple of nonprofits and kind of led them. One was to take care of orphans in Rwanda and we raised funds and supported children and got them through their education. The other is a youth camp that I do here in northeast Tennessee. I'm still doing that. And then, like I say, I've purchased properties and rent them and just had my hands on a lot of different things, and so part of what I've seen is just by working with lots of different people in a whole lot of different environments, I've seen some of the things that I think are really valuable for men to be able to get their hands around, and so that's this kind of new stage is trying to share some of those ideas.
Speaker 1:So tell us a little bit more about what led to the book and maybe we can get into what was it the five big rocks. I can't remember the exact title.
Speaker 3:Yep, it's being the dad you wish you had the five big stones for effective fatherhood. Yeah, quite a great.
Speaker 1:I'm already on the edge of my seat ready to hear about it. So tell us about the book.
Speaker 3:Yeah well, the book really is birthed out of some of the things I was just saying just spending time with men in a whole lot of different environments and realizing a lot of the needs that they have. And for me, one of the things that I think is really important is that you have to be able to get into the book. And for me, one of the things that I was doing was working in the construction industry, on a construction business and that, and in the camp I just saw young men especially that didn't have a clue, and I often found myself saying to the other people on the team like he's a really talented person, he's got a lot of ability, it's just that he was raised by wolves. Like he has no idea how to be a person. Like he's got some, he's got some skill, but he can't be a person. He doesn't know how to live life.
Speaker 3:And and I kind of had that experience and of course, I've done some counseling with, with families and and in a lot of settings I've just thought, wow, there's just some big pieces that are missing. And so one night around the dinner table we were doing conversation starters and my son read this conversation starter and the question basically was if you could change one thing in the world, what would it be? And with, I mean just with lightning bolt clarity, I knew the one thing I would change is I would create effective fathers, because I feel like if you had effective fathers in our world, you would change the world. That by by creating an environment where fathers could really be effective, that immediately we would see local, national, international transformation. And so from that moment I realized that that was a book that I was going to write, was something to try to make a difference in fatherhood, and so that's how the book started.
Speaker 2:That's a pretty cool backstory. I mean, if you look at the mission and the vision of the gentlemen project, it's the same as to influence Men at home so that their influence ripples through communities and environments that they interact with, and so we're right on board with you there, nick.
Speaker 3:Right, that's. I really thought we had a lot of similarities in what we're trying to accomplish.
Speaker 2:So when did the book come out?
Speaker 3:The book came out in I'm trying to think October.
Speaker 2:Oh, just barely so. You're a couple months out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're just, we're just out of the gate.
Speaker 2:OK, so we're talking about the book. We're going to let everybody know what the book's about during the podcast today. Maybe we can touch on a few of the the tenants or the pillars that you touch on in the book today. Where do people go find this book and how do they order it? What's the best way to get in their hands?
Speaker 3:Sure, the easiest way is to go to Amazon. You can search Amazon. It's available as a paperback and for digital purchase. It is going to be an audio that will probably be two or three months down the road and it'll also at some point be available as a hardback, but right now it's paperback and digital and it is on Amazon. You can just search. Being the dad you wish you had.
Speaker 2:So that's awesome. Thank you, Tell us about the title. Do you have some personal experience in like? What was your dad like and what was your upbringing like? What was your experience with fatherhood on the other side of it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's interesting. I was listening to one of your old podcasts recently and the gentleman I laughed to myself and thought, well, the story I have to tell could not be any more different than that. Because his story was basically, you know, everything was great and he lived in Virginia on a compound of some sort, anyway, and that his parents were the most influential people in his life and his grandparents and had mentored him and kind of. My story with my dad is when I became a father. One of the things that terrified me is I knew I didn't know how to be a dad and I heard people talking about oh, you know, my dad gave me this thing. He said all the time, or this principle or this value. I had nothing I mean nothing In the book.
Speaker 3:I tell the story that the only thing I ever remember my father telling me that was like here is we're sitting down here's intentional me mentoring, giving you here's how it is to be a man, you know, and said the thing he had to say to me was I don't ever want you to fight, but if you have to fight, make sure you throw the first punch and don't stop hitting until it's over. That was it. That is all the life wisdom I got from my father. You know that was intentional. Now, that's the whole. That's a whole lot of what comes out of the book is.
Speaker 3:You know, I'm trying to encourage men that you may not have had a great background with a father, or maybe you do. It really doesn't matter. Maybe your father was pretty much perfect. You still have to figure out how you're going to be the dad that you you know that you want your kids to have experienced.
Speaker 3:So, but the thing that is amazing to me is, as I look back over life, although my father didn't give me those principles and didn't like say here's the values, what really did happen is he impacted my life and he left a mark that it's still. You know, it's not going away. Here we are, I'm 60 and this man has imprinted on me some of it really good, some of it pretty terrible, and yet he has made an impact in my life. And so one of the things I'm trying to say in this book to fathers is you've got way more power than you know. You've got way more influence than you know. You've got way more ability to impact the longevity of what happens in your kids lives than you're probably aware of and you know it's not rocket science, like really and truly. My dad left a lot of really good things in my life and he never tried, like he didn't even know it, but I still blamed really important life lessons.
Speaker 2:What were some of those that happened on accident? Maybe he was less purposeful than you'd hoped, but maybe he did imprint a few things. And sometimes you learn like. I had this conversation with my wife this week and I said how did that kid come out of that environment? Because I knew the environment he grew up in and he had turned out to be like this young man. That was like, wow, that's the type of kid that I want my daughter to date. And how did he come out of that environment? Narrowed it down to he had such a bad example that perhaps he just learned what not to do over and over and over. And now that he's got control of his life and the direction of everything that he's decided that that is not the way I'm going.
Speaker 3:I think there's absolute truth to that. I think there's a whole lot of ability to learn things kind of in reverse. It's not nobody's teaching you, you're learning what you don't want to have happen. In my situation. My father was a very simple man. On one hand, I would say that he had a simple perspective of life. He didn't have a high school education. He was a farmer, which in Northeast Tennessee means that you're just dirt poor because we don't do it. This is not a big farming. I'm like we farm, you know what I'm saying but there's not big states where we're doing farming and making lots of money. At the event, for a long time he did tobacco. When I was young he raised tobacco. But one of the things that happened with my dad is, although he wasn't educated, he was very simple. He had very simple expectations out of life. He was a philosopher. He really thought about life. He had a lot of very interesting insights. That all. Especially as I got older and was going to college and getting degrees, I'd sit and talk to dad and think he's probably got a better handle on life in a lot of ways than some of my professors. Then, on the other hand, my dad's life was extremely dysfunctional. My mom and dad's marriage ended when I was about 12.
Speaker 3:I start the book with the story. It ended with my dad, drunk with a gun, threatening to kill my mom and I. We were kind of put in a back of a car and I laid in the floorboard and they drove us out of the city and we hid for a period of time. He was a very angry man, had lots of anger issues that were never resolved. In the middle of that, he was also a really giving person.
Speaker 3:One of the things that I learned from my father is just being generous, because although he didn't make much, he never had anything. There was never a time that we would pass the Salvation Army buckets or that we'd pass a person on the side of the road trying to get money from somebody, or there was a need among some of his friends and they were passing the bucket around to collect money. All of those environments I would see him give it really impacted me especially. One day he was a big bowler. We were at the bowling alley and they were taking up a collection for somebody who I don't even. I can't remember what the issue was, but they needed money.
Speaker 3:Dad threw in a hundred dollar bill, which this was in the 70s and I'm telling you, my father was dirt poor. I gasped, probably because he was like, oh my god, but he was generous. That's one of the things that I find imprinted in my life is I have a desire to be generous and to help others. My dad, as I said earlier, was a very simple person, although we have very different lives. We're six hours from the ocean. My father never saw the ocean in his lifetime.
Speaker 2:I've been to six of the seven continents.
Speaker 3:We have very different experiences and yet I value simplicity that I experienced with him and saw in his life. Although I have a lot more things than he ever had, things aren't really that important to me. I've got him because it just worked out that way, but it really is not the focus of my life. Helping people, being a part of people's lives, making a difference in our world those things are much more important to me. I know that that came from my father's influence.
Speaker 1:I think this is an important topic that we're hitting here and I think, for parents who are listening and certainly for kids who are listening, I think a good conversation to have with your kids is hey, here's some things that I think I've done pretty good at teaching you or that I'd like to teach you, you know, and being purposeful, and here's some things I'm not very good at. And guess what kids you don't have to be like me. You can choose right now who you want to be and who you don't want to be, because I think all of us got some amazing things from our parents, whether on purpose or just be an example, like like your dad, with with being generous. I had that conversation with my kids not long ago and I said, look, I'm quick to anger, I've talked about that on the podcast lots of times and I tell my kids you don't have to do that. Right, you know you can decide. If you decide, if you tell yourself now you're not going to do those things, the chances are you won't.
Speaker 1:And so I think and I'm guessing, nick, that this, this influenced the book. You know, you kind of asked yourself over time what worked and didn't work with my parents what worked and didn't work when I was a parent. Right, and we haven't got to your parent journey yet but we will and then that probably led to the book. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about now, like your parent journey and what you did as you approached parenthood, and how you've changed through that, that life cycle of parenthood.
Speaker 3:You know, as I mentioned earlier, the journey of parenthood was terrifying because when, when my first daughter was born, I was just so aware of how little I had as far as resources from my background to be able to be very effective as a father, and so I did a lot of reading. Of course, I did a lot. I had been working with. I've worked with youth my entire life. I started as a youth pastor, did some some teaching in local boys and girls clubs and worked with them, and so I've worked with kids my whole life and I've watched what parents did with their kids that were that was effective and tried to learn from that.
Speaker 3:I've done a lot of reading, a lot of, you know, exposing myself to conferences and people and ideas that to try to figure out. You know what does this look like? And then you know really, boy, this is a terrible thing to say, but isn't it true? There's a whole lot of just trial and error. It's like you hate to admit that you're practicing being a parent on your kids, but it really is what happens, you know, it's like I don't have a clue what I'm doing. Let's see if this works.
Speaker 2:Every person listening to the podcast is nodding their head right now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is. It's just the way it works. And if you've had great parents, you still feel that way. I think If you had not such great parenting experience, you still feel like I'm not real sure what's going on. And if that wasn't hard enough, each one of those little suckers are different, you know. I mean like I felt like I did pretty good. You know, some of them are pretty easy to parent. You know I'd see things in them that were a whole lot like me and it's like, oh, I know how to, I know what you need, you know. And then there's it's like. The other ones is like, oh my gosh, like I have no idea where you're coming from, I can't, and so it's all just a learning journey of, you know, trying to figure out what's going to work with each student, each child. And so again back to the book.
Speaker 3:That's one of the things that really tried to hone in on for dads is you're not going to do this, all right, you're going to make mistakes, and it's okay. The goal isn't perfection. The goal is to be making progress, because we're all going to blow it. You know and and and something that the Corey said there a minute ago that you know, if you can acknowledge to your kids this is an area I'm not strong in, man. I think that is one of the and it's just goals right there, because being able to own our mistakes and being able to say, hey, I'm in progress, I'm a work in progress, I don't think I've got this all right it empowers our kids to be works in progress and to not feel like they've got to be perfect and they've got to present this image to the world. It enables them just to be human. Yeah, and I think that's really powerful.
Speaker 2:This morning I did a morning meditation and there was a quote in there from Victor Frankel which I know Corey really likes man search for, for meaning. But the quote was between stimulus and response there's a space. Yes, in that, in that space lies power to choose our response and in our response lies our growth and our freedom. And I shared that this morning with my kids. I texted in our family texts and I just said you know I've worked on my temper and having more patience over the years and when I'm frustrated I realized that I have a pretty short fuse. But that choice exists between the stimulus and my response. And I just said you know I haven't been very good at that, but pausing, which is something I learned from the podcast, is like count to three before you say anything. That pauses helped me out a lot. So you know, my kids know one that I guess I'm working to get better to that. I've recognized my mistakes in the past. And three I'm admitting it to them. So it's okay if they're quick to to anger, because there's that's your choice, that's your, that's your growth in your freedom is the response. Between that stimulus and response, I think that that's super powerful, corey. I'm glad you brought that up.
Speaker 2:I took from one of our other podcasts to that said that they do a trip when their kids turn 16 years old and they get to choose where they go. They get a budget and they get to choose mom or dad. So I have twin boys who just turned 16. So I've been traveling quite a bit Awesome Over in the last, in the last month, and I realized on that trip with both my boys that that was the longest I had ever spent alone with that individual.
Speaker 2:And I think for most families you've probably you know, before their age 16, you've probably spent a week together alone. But because they're twins, they went everywhere with me together, because it was their best friend and their dad. Right, and I made it a point, I realized it on the first trip, but I made it a point during both trips to say hey, I missed the mark on this, like it should not have taken me 16 years to spend a week alone with you and I hope that and both of them were very like, well, like we didn't miss it, we didn't miss anything. We've spent tons of time together and I'm like I know, but we haven't spent one on one time together for an extended period of time and I feel like my relationship with both my sons after that trip is different than it was before.
Speaker 3:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:So I mean, I just admitted it. I'm like you know what, like I missed the mark on this, and I hope you guys don't miss the mark on that with your kids.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think that transparency, that just being real, opens up a deeper level of relationship. You know, and one of the things, one of the big stones that I've talked about in the book and people often ask me about, is be lovable. And I think what you're really talking about right now is being lovable. It's being able to say, hey, I didn't do this. Well, I didn't do this right, and that is lovable. When people can kind of own their stuff and admit their mistakes and say, hey, I wish we'd had more time, just you and I. That was important and I missed it. That makes you lovable as a father.
Speaker 3:And if we can be lovable, you know, dads often get the brunt of being disciplinarian and kind of being the backstop, if you will. You know, mom, not in any way to diminish mothers, because, my Lord, we wouldn't make it without them, but just to acknowledge that often, when it gets really serious, you know, dad gets called in and we tend to be a little more focused on structure and discipline and in follow through and being responsible and all those kinds of things, and that can create an environment where we have, where we're creating angst with our kids in ways that we don't have to. There's times, you know, I tell my. One of my kids said to me one day well, I'm mad at you and I'm like that's okay, that's great, that's. You probably have the right to be mad.
Speaker 3:They're like I don't like you and I'm like that's, that's okay too. You don't have to like me, not right this minute, because this isn't, this isn't positive. But then Two hours later, you know, you come back and you try to rebuild that relationship and reconnect. Discipline isn't fun when you're telling a kid no, you can't have two more candy bars today. That's not just not going to work, they don't like that and they resent that. Anytime you have to put a barrier in somebody's way, they're not happy about it. And so when you realize you're having to do those things, you have to take extra effort to be lovable. You know, to make sure that you're connecting, that you're keeping relationship, that the positives outweigh the negatives.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think back to the scripture that says, essentially, when you have those times and moments when you have to discipline, then you need to have an increase of love afterwards.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that's. That really is what we're talking about, and I think I'm not sure how it happened and I'm sure part of it is just cultural, but there seems to be a sense that, you know, moms are really lovable and moms are, you know, the ones who are much more compassionate and engaging, and that's part of being a female, I think. But as fathers, we can't just abdicate our responsibility to really have deep, profound relationships with our kids, because that is where we pass on values and it is where we pass on, you know, all the things that we want our kids to become, as far as the way they enter, engage with the world, and the kind of people they turn out to be, and the way they influence and affect society. It comes out of relationship with us.
Speaker 1:So, nick, in addition to being lovable, you know approachable, not just a disciplinarian type of father, what other? Don't give away all your big rocks, because you know we want people to go see the book, but what are? What is another like in your mind, one of the most important big rocks, or big stones, as you call them?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it really is the one that I've already kind of referenced. It's it's, it's big stone number one and it's the power of being, and I really and I spent three chapters talking about that that there's just enormous power for a father just in being, just in being present. I talk about being present, but sometimes we get so focused on you know, I've got to be really print that everything gets jacked up Like really relax, be you and then bring your kids into it. And as long as you're trying to grow as a person, as long as you're moving forward, then that's probably as good as it's going to get you know, instead of trying to get all you know.
Speaker 3:Today, I know this person who. He's all about leadership and all about being intentional and intentionality, and I am all about all those things as well. I think that's great, great stuff. But he's so focused on having these intentional moments with his kids that he misses their life. Does that make sense? Like he's creating this picture where we're going to do this thing and it's going to be in this way and every, but then he misses that every day of his life. His kids are with him and experiencing him and and there's a whole lot of power and the truth is his kids have gotten pretty negative about who he is because what he's trying to promote to them isn't the same as who he actually is in living. Does that, if that makes any sense? And so they're like they really are kind of pushing him out of their lives because if there's a disconnect, but as dads, every day we just have this amazing power that comes out of who God's created us to be that we can pass on to our children.
Speaker 2:I love that the, as you've been talking, nick, I've been thinking about like what's, what's the word I would give to this, and I think a lot of kids feel like their dads aren't accessible. Yes, my dad's so busy, my dad's, you know, working, and he's got all these other things if he serves in the community or the church or you know, and then I kind of get his leftovers and that's just the way it is, because I'm not that important as actually the way the subconscious views it. But I think when we give our kids the license to access us and say I am, I am 100% your coach. If you ever need to talk to me about anything, I will drop everything I'm doing because it's important to you, it's important to me, you know, and, and I think just letting our kids know that they have access to us at any time they need it, none of us dads would say anything that I do for a living or anybody that I'm serving outside my home is more important than my kid Needing me acutely.
Speaker 2:We're never going to turn our kid away and say, hold on a minute, right. But when we give our kids, like that specific conversation that you have access to me, I am. I'm 100% on your side and you can access me at any point during the day. You send me an SOS text. I will call you, no matter what I'm doing, and I think that's just a powerful conversation for us to have. And then they go. You know what my dad is on my team. I do have the ability, I have this superpower and I've got this guy that's always got my back.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and I think you know one of the things I know in my parenting journey I've Early on someone said to me that it's important to gauge the response that you give to the excitement of your kids. So I didn't do a good job of phrasing that. But you measure how excited they are about something and you need to respond with that same kind of interest or excitement, because you know kid comes up and they've got a new baby doll and they're three years old. So if you've had a busy day at work, a new doll is not really that exciting, but the kid's excited and if you don't reflect back to them that same level of excitement, the message that they get inadvertently is you're not really that important, and that just keeps going.
Speaker 3:I have such a marked memory of my youngest son, who is our adopted son and he also has some special needs, some learning difficulties and but he's a great artist and he loves to draw. And so we were setting up for church, getting everything ready for church, and we were coming right down to at this point I was the pastor of the church and we were coming right down to service and things just weren't ready and I was trying to rush around and get the last few minute things. And my son, who has this absolute, unbelievable ability to interrupt and interrupt, and interrupt and like it's on a special needs level, it's not, it's not like it's really, it's hard to even describe, but he insists on attention when he needs it and so he kept saying hey dad, hey dad, and I'm like buddy, just just, just a minute, let me, let me get this, let me get this, let me get and. And he was super excited and I kind of knew what he. He'd drawn something. He wanted me to see it. I mean, I was getting ready to have to present to a whole room full of people and things weren't ready, you know, and and so I just kept pushing to get my stuff together and we were having sound issues anyway. So finally I look over, because it's been probably two minutes and he hasn't interrupted me with hey dad, look at this. And it hit me, I stole the joy from that kid and he doesn't. He doesn't want me to look at it anymore because I put him off one time too many. It broke my heart stopped right in the middle of what I was doing. I walked over to him and I'm like hey, did you draw something, can I see that? And and he space lights up because suddenly he realizes I am important and what I've done is important.
Speaker 3:But what I know is it's easy for me to be slamming through life If somebody sends me an SOS test text you got me, you know what I'm saying If you have a major issue, something's really going on in life. But it's easy for me to miss those moments where it's not an SOS, you know, it's just my kid needs some attention and and I, I, I miss that, and not just with the little ones, like my daughter, who's 24, was at my house the other day and I hadn't seen her in a couple of days and she was standing there. I'm like, hey, babe, and I just turned to do something else and I saw her face drop and I'm like, oh, did that not feel like you got a very good welcome? She's like, no, I've not seen you in a while. And then so I walk over and give her a hug and just change the whole dynamic, because it's just easy to miss those little moments.
Speaker 2:That's gold stuff right there. I love that. And matching the energy, I think can be the positive and the negative. Like you think of the kid who lost his ice cream cone at the, you know at the park and that's like the end of the world. Or he loses his balloon and you're like, oh well, it's just a balloon. Well, it's not just a balloon to that kid, like that was his whole day.
Speaker 2:And so I think we need to match the energy. And I mean what that is is just empathy. It's practicing empathy, right. When someone's down, you comfort them. When someone's up, you're there with them, because it's like watching an episode of Seinfeld. Right, it's no fun to do it by yourself. If something's cool is going on in your life, you want to share it with somebody, right? And so I think that's great advice. I'm going to take that one to heart that I need to match my kid's energy, make sure that they have that access to me and that they can share what's going on in their life. Those are my big takeaways so far. I can't even hardly believe I just looked at my clock I can't even hardly believe that that was 45 minutes.
Speaker 1:And I went so fast.
Speaker 2:I really enjoyed this podcast a lot.
Speaker 3:I have enjoyed being with you guys. It's been awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm kind of reflecting on. I'm excited to get your book and learn about some of the other big stones. And as you were talking there, I was thinking to myself. You know, our listeners have listened to lots of podcasts and I think sometimes they I certainly do get a little overwhelmed with the tactics that could be employed as a parent, right? So I mean, I could make a list of a hundred things that would be good ideas to do as a parent that we've heard on the podcast, maybe a thousand, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think one of the things that, nick, I think your title alludes to and that I'll add to is I think, as a parent, really think about the big picture, like the strategy behind being a parent. Don't think about only the little things that you do all the time. I think you have to have a big picture. I want to be this kind of parent and I want to teach my kids generally to be these kind of people and then just pick one or two tactics. You don't need to have a list of 25 things that you need to do every day, every week, every month.
Speaker 1:Some people are going on a trip at 16s Great. Other people saying prayers at night. Other people might be. You know, it depends on the kid it depends. But if you have this general view, a general strategy of hey, this is the kind of parent and this is the kind of kid I want to raise, the tactics can kind of change and you can try different things, but just don't get overwhelmed, is what I'm getting at. I think you can just pick one or two tactics. They have this quote from Sun Tzu which is from the art of war, but we're going to talk about parenting, and it says strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. So you really need strategy in life, in business and certainly in the home, not just tactics. You got to have kind of a plan right. And so I thought I think, nick, your book is kind of saying, hey, like, have a strategy, pick some big rocks and big stones to focus on. And that was my minor takeaway.
Speaker 3:That was perfect, corey, and I tell you the idea of the five stones. It comes from Stephen Covey and he talks about in the context of time management, and I tell that story that he tells in the book of time management and then I apply it to fatherhood. Just like you just said, it's like if you get the important things in place, then you can put. If you get the big rocks in to your big container, then you can put some small rocks in, and if you get the small rocks in, you can put sand in. If you get the sand in, you can put water in. But if you fill it up with water to start with, you can't get your big stones in there. And so that really you encapsulated the whole idea of the book is focus on the important things and some of the rest of that will fall in place.
Speaker 2:I love that. One of my favorite object lessons from Sunday school when I was a kid was that Somebody brought the mason jar and they put in the little stones first and not everything fit. We dumped it out and did it in reverse and you know it's a great. That makes the title of your book make so much sense to me. It makes me excited to read your book, and thanks for writing it. By the way, writing a book is a labor of love and I'm sure that you spent many, many, many hours and lots of effort to put that book out into the world and I hope that our listeners will show appreciation for that effort. Go get your book.
Speaker 2:I don't think any of the, any of the people that write, you know, self published books are looking to get rich and that's why I like them that way is because they're they're doing it because they have an idea they think will benefit the world and we just want to help you get the audience so that those ideas can can spread and propagate and make a difference. So thank you for that.
Speaker 3:By the way, I sort of appreciate that.
Speaker 2:Well, corey, I'm looking at my clock and unfortunately, it's time to wrap up. Nick, at the end of every podcast, we ask our guests what they think it means to be a gentleman, and so we'll ask you that question, and and let you let you answer that one.
Speaker 3:Well, it was interesting. I woke up in the middle of the night last night because I know that's part of what you do on your podcast, and so I woke up in the middle of the night and thought, oh, I know what I think it means to be a gentleman. So it kind of came to me last night. I'm right now in the middle of research and it's the stuff I'm speaking on in my speaking career about how to be a man, what it means to be a man, how to to present in the world in a masculine, healthy way. And there's I've got four big pillars of masculinity and I realized, oh, that's really what I think a gentleman is.
Speaker 3:It's someone who is respect, it shows respect both to themselves and to others, someone who has mastered themselves. They have self mastery, so they're presenting in the world, and in a controlled way, because men have a lot of power and they can use that for good or for bad. And so, self mastery, they're living justly in the world. So they're, they're not, they're acting with courage and with loyalty and with chivalry and with honor. And then the fourth one is self reliance. That I think any man and a gentleman is able to be reliant on themselves, and I don't mean that we don't have other relationships and we don't need other people, but that we understand. At the end of the day, I'm responsible for me, and so I've got to figure it out. Typically, that was with other people as a part of my life, but I got to figure it out and then I've got to present in the world and so to me, to be a gentleman is really those four things.
Speaker 2:What a thoughtful answer and that was fantastic. 100% agree with all four of those myself. So thank you, nick, we appreciate your time.
Speaker 3:Hey, I present you all.
Speaker 2:Thank you for being with us today. Thanks for our listeners. We appreciate the time that you spend in listening to long form media and giving us 45 minutes of your time today. Hopefully the 45 minutes that you spent with us today pays off and that you can take some of the ideas, some of the motivation and some confidence back to your home and you'll be able to be the dad that you want to be. And if you haven't been being that dad or that parent, there's a whole army of people out here trying to do the same thing and none of us are perfect. And you got this. Thank you for being a listener. If you've enjoyed the podcast and you'd like to leave us a rating and a review, that sure helps us. Helps people like Nick find us, helps people who might be struggling as parents find us. And if you've liked the podcast or, I guess, if you haven't liked the podcast don't leave a review. But if you'd like the podcast, leave us a great review. We do appreciate that. Thanks for joining us. I'm Kirk Chug.
Speaker 1:Corey Moore Focus on your family. I hope you enjoy the podcast. Thanks, everyone.
Speaker 3:Thank you, nick, thank you.
