S2:E8 Mike Stewer Joins Interviews with Dads Podcast. Faith and family discussion.

I've kind of been off the grid for a while, so I don't, uh, remember every conversation I've had. So remind me how this got started, uh, and what the heck we're going to talk about if we had anything set up.

Love what you're doing. I think I just came across you, um, I think I found you probably on Instagram maybe, um, which it looks like that's where a lot of your following is. And so, right, just pretty cool that you guys are traveling around in the RV and just the passion for fatherhood, dads in general, resonates with me. I work with a ministry called Practice Ministries, and essentially it's a 25-year-old ministry, and it helps families around the world put God's word into practice through father-child Bible studies, essentially. And so we have about 18 different translations and we've got a pretty big presence in South Africa and really all over the parts of other countries as well. And so as I've kind of, I've been at the ministry a little over a year. And so, you know, just love to plug along or get to know other dads that want or passionate about calling us messed up, broken dads to what we're supposed to be doing. And so when I stumbled across what you guys were doing with your family and your wife, I loved it. Love that y'all are traveling around and just kind of wanted to get to know you a little bit more. And if there's a way I could help you or whatnot, would love to do that. But it seems as if you're just kind of interviewing a lot of dads, right? And traveling all over.

That's the podcast, yeah. The podcast segment is just simply that, Interviews with Dads. Yeah, we get a little topical, or we're starting to get a little more topical on them, um, just so the conversation has a little bit better flow, uh, yeah, or it's more entertaining to the listener. Uh, you were right, we're biggest on, uh, Instagram. You know, all our content's meme-based, so that's, that's our best format. Um, video, um, I've attempted a couple times. It gets good, it gets good, uh, reception, but The life we're living is just, uh, uh, it's the opposite of what I knew before. So there's zero structure, zero discipline, zero connectivity sometimes. Um, you know, we're in different time zones, you know, sometimes we have cell signals, sometimes we don't, sometimes we have internet, sometimes we don't. Uh, you know, some— sometimes I can record and sometimes I can't. I said, and you know, my whole career I've been used to being able to go to an office and, uh, you know, doing whatever I want and being, you know, alone if I need to be alone. And, uh, you know, now my office is this 420 square feet that we live in and it's loud all the time. And yes, uh, you know, you can't always go outside and record because, you know, um, like, I don't know if I'm picking up the wind right now, I might have to go inside, but sometimes it's windy and, you know, when you're dealing with audio and stuff that, uh Like, it's tricky. So, and then just the time to edit and all. So video's been, um, we haven't put that much— we just haven't been able to dedicate that much time to it, uh, because I think that would do well on a YouTube format, but I just— I'm slacking. And you're not calling me out on it, but I'm calling myself out on it. It's, it's our area of weakness for sure.

It seems like I'm, uh, I'm trying to remember. I mean, I've looked at some of your stuff, but not like heavily, intensely. Um, are you a believer? Like, what's kind of your faith journey backstory? Obviously you have a pretty big passion for fatherhood in general, but I'd love to know a little bit more about just that in general. Um, I mean, what dude just packed their whole family up in a 4,000 square foot place and says like, hey, I'm going to tell people they need to be a good father?

Like, if this was 4,000 square feet I would be sorry.

400. 400. 400. Yeah.

Um, okay, uh, I'll forget a few of those, just remind me. Um, so yeah, so I grew up, um, what were we? I think we were Presbyterian growing up. Um, around 3rd grade, uh, my dad converted— my father converted to Catholicism, and I went to a Catholic school. So naturally I just followed the footsteps there and went Catholic. Um, you know, in a family that my mom was probably the most faith-based, uh, you know, my father kind of believed that there was a higher power somewhere, some sort of alien out there. I'm not sure why he went Catholic. I, I have zero clue because I don't think he really follows, uh, Catholicism at all. Uh, but that's kind of the, the route I've stuck to. Uh, my wife was Catholic. She went to Catholic schools. Ironically, her parents are, not, uh, not religious in that way. They are spiritual but not religious. Uh, and so we, we kind of, uh, we got married in the Catholic Church, went to the Catholic Church, and we're from St. Augustine, Florida. And the Catholic Church in Florida is very, uh, very well seasoned. Uh, so, so you go there and there's quite an age gap between us as a young 20-year-old married couple and everyone else that attended there. And so we started seeking out a new church, and I think we started— we visited just about every church in town. I think we did 2 weeks at each church in town. Took about a year, and we found the Episcopal Church to be the most appealing to us, and that's where we still felt the presence of God. They had a much younger community there. People actually, you know, recognized that we had shown up there and that we were new, and They had a lot of young families and it had that community I think we were looking for. Probably a similar community to— I don't know if you're familiar with the Southeast or not, but what like the Baptist churches has. The Baptist churches are great for families, great for especially their youth programs are just, they're typically phenomenal. And I don't know if that's a Southeast thing or countrywide, but like even our kids, you know, we've been in the Episcopal Church ever since, you know, our kids have all been baptized Episcopalian. It's an English Catholic instead of a Roman Catholic, so our baptisms, you know, we didn't have to get rebaptized or anything. Um, and so we've been going there, and our— but our kids, so we take them to the, uh, you know, the Wednesday Baptist churches for their youth groups. So that's kind of been our, uh, our, I guess, experience with, with religion. Um, I will say lately, uh, around the time of the third kid, we, we probably stepped back more from the where we were, well, we were like most Catholics, we're like, you do, you, you follow the rules, you go to church every Sunday. Um, and, and we actually made a pretty— I know my wife kind of led it, um, she introduced it and I, you know, I backed her 100%, um, because it made sense. Our Sundays were getting so frustrating, um, and they were causing, uh, causing, you know, kind of fights and just getting out the door on time to get the masks making sure everyone was clothed. Or a couple times we showed up and one kid doesn't have shoes or this or that. And, you know, we kind of stepped back and realized there's a lot more fighting here on a Sunday, you know, on the day that's supposed to be towards the family and towards reflecting to God. There's a lot of friction happening. And so we actually started stepping back a little bit and not attending service as often. Still very spiritual, you know, we pray daily. We do Bible studies. You know, we, you know, God's just a presence in the house. We talk about, we talk about him a lot. But we didn't necessarily attend on Sundays and Sundays kind of became our family day. And so, you know, it was, we didn't have to wake up early. We kind of woke up when we woke up and we, you know, always ate breakfast together and we'd go out into nature more. And that's, that's kind of where we started to drift before we left, um, which was a, a big change for us because we were always every Sunday you go.

Uh, sure. Yeah.

Uh, so no lost faith, just maybe, um, we redirected how we praise. Maybe it's the— yes.

Yeah, yeah, because your wife— how many— you have 3 kiddos, if I think I saw, and your wife homeschools them, correct?

Yes.

Um, which is awesome. My wife— I got 4 kids, and so my wife homeschools, uh, 2 of them.

Okay. Um, what part of the country are you in?

So Texas. So we're like 30 minutes outside of Dallas.

Uh, north, south, east, or west?

South. So we're Midlothian.

Okay. We were down in Lake Whitney back in November.

Really?

Wow. Yeah.

Wow. That's incredible. Um, so what— one of the other questions I think is like, what has spurred you on to give you the passion to do this fatherhood dad thing? Right? I mean, this isn't a small endeavor. It's not like you're kind of doing this. This is a big order. You're wearing a hat that says 100% Dad on it.

Yes.

Right. And I think we need more of 100% and not 10%. Or 5% or none?

That probably gets pretty deep-rooted if we were really dig into it. It probably contributes to my upbringing and my father's upbringing and that kind of stuff. Because me and my dad, we don't have the best relationship. Okay. You know, it's something I think has been ingrained in me from a young age where, you know, my parents were divorced. I think my dad left like 3 weeks after I was born. Or something like that. So I grew up in a world where mom and dad were not there together, so it's all I knew.

Yeah.

And I always kind of, I always kind of drifted and navigated towards friends that had a mom and dad there. Like, I just liked that classic family environment. And so I took on a lot of like artificial mom and dads, uh, you know, just from friends. And it was something I, I don't know, I was just naturally drawn to it. Um, and, you know, I knew from a young age I wanted a family, wanted kids. And, um, you know, I knew from a young age I didn't want to be divorced, um, because, you know, there were, there were lots of nasty, nasty custody battles, um, in our house. And I just, I just think I wanted a a more peaceful, happier life for everyone. And, um, so that was probably the root of everything. I mean, we could certainly get in a lot deeper, but no, no, no, I think that's a—

that— yeah, maybe if your RV trailer was parked in front, come out there and sit down, we could have some more conversations, but it's not, unfortunately. But yeah, I mean, I love that. I mean, right, that's giving you the heart and the passion to do what you're doing. And it sounds like God's provided you the resources to do that. I think I briefly read, I mean, y'all were pretty much living paycheck and saving a ton of money, and then now you're basically sold, I guess, a company. You had a family company or some kind of a company you're able to cash out and retire in a sense, in some sense. Yeah.

So we've always been pretty decent with finances. We've had our broke, uh, periods, um, but when we got married, we were teenagers in college, um, And, uh, we were sure our parents were not thrilled with the fact that their teenagers were going to get married. So, uh, they— we were very certain we were going to get cut off and we were going to have to pay for college on our own. So we started kind of, you know, we both worked and we started, you know, shoving cash away because we needed to be prepared to foot our own college bills and live on our own. Um, and, uh, we both started doing that and, you know, parents came on board and we didn't have to pay for the wedding or anything like that. Um, you know, Ryan's— my wife still had her Bright Futures scholarship in Florida, um, and we ended up staying in Florida. And I actually ended up dropping out of school, um, uh, because her family had a crime ring in their business and they kind of had a clear house. And I was like, my wife was a year behind me anyway, so I was like, well, I just work for a year while we get this mess cleared up. Ryan will catch up to me in school and then we'll go off and do our thing. And, um, you know, I kind of fell in love with small business and, um, uh, I really, I just never went back. I did a couple courses at the community college, but, uh, it just wasn't for me. I, I found my love in business. Um, you know, but we had saved all that cash and we didn't need it. Um, and '08 happened. Uh, so I think we were sitting on like, gosh, When we got married, we were probably sitting on like $20,000 or something like that. And then when we went to live on our own, we just got the cheapest, crappiest apartment in town. I think it was like $550 a month or $600 a month. And I think there's 2 outlets. We had like— we had to make toast in the bathroom. And it was a whole— it was a whole— it was a great little experience. But I was making about $30,000 a year at that point. My wife was making, I think, $20,000 a year. So we were living off of her $20,000 as a golf cart attendant and we were saving my $30,000. And so I think about a year later we had about $50,000 saved. '08 happened, everything crashed. You know, we ended up buying a house, the house we still own today.

Cool.

And so that was a solid, you know, it was a down market. It kept going down, but it was a good buy and helped us a lot. Locked in our cost of living pretty low. And then we just kind of always became savers. And the goal was to pay that house off in 10 years. We had a 30-year mortgage and we just kept chunking. Anytime we had extra cash, we would chunk away at it. Okay. You know, I think, I think the house was $180,000. So we put 20% down. So it was $36,000. And then we were able to furnish it with some cash and we'd have to pay PMI. And, you know, we just lived— we kept living like we were broke. But we had a switch and I said we started living off my $30,000 and we were saving her $20,000 still. And anytime we had, you know, more than 6 months emergency fund, we would just throw that at the, at the house and kind of kept living that way. Had a kid, started a business, so we stopped paying against the house. The business is what really made us broke. So we went— I thought it was going to take like 6 months and I think we had about— I think we had about $30,000 saved up to start the business. And it took every penny of that. Which business? And more. That was— so that was a coffee distribution company. So we did office coffee services. And I bought these machines. Kraft Food Corporation had just come out with these new machines called Tassimo. And they were like a single-serve kind of Keurig-like product. And I bought 24 of those machines for like $1,200 a pop, something like that. And I just had a whole stack of them in my garage. I was driving a '96 4Runner with 300,000 miles. And, you know, it felt a lot like the Pursuit of Happiness when he has all those magnetic scanners, like, just built up like, this is our thing and that's what we're going to do well with. And, you know, fast forward 10 years when we, when we sold, I still had a bunch of those machines new in box up high on a pallet rack because, you know, for what I thought that business was going to be, I was just wrong in almost every way and how long it would take to be profitable. And, uh, even what type of machine. I mean, it ended up evolving to something totally different, which was a good thing, but just— yeah, you don't know. You don't know until you do it, for sure. Yeah, so that took about— that took about 3 years of being broke, um, and, and getting really, um, you know, I, I've always been a budgeter pretty hardcore, um, and I just ignored it. There was about a year and a half there I just didn't even look at numbers because it didn't make sense. We shouldn't be able to eat and survive. Um, you know, when we were preparing for this trip, I pulled out some of our tax records, and like, they're just— they're stupid numbers. Like, I think annual income of like $11,000, or, you know, I think the next year was maybe like $18,000, something like that. And it's just like, there's no way we should have survived. Like, it doesn't even make sense. Um, and I, you know, I remember one of the bottoms of that, uh, uh, we had never shrimped before, but we went shrimping. Uh, somebody invited us out to a dock Um, and we just caught like cooler loads full of shrimp, and we ended up eating shrimp for a long time. And we were even trading it, like we traded with my neighbor. I think the car broke, something, something in the car broke, I can't remember what, but we ended up giving him like 10 or— yeah, 10 or 15 bags of shrimp to repair the vehicle. Um, it's so— it says you look back on those things, and in the moment it doesn't seem like it, but you kind of look back and, and sit there and say there was definitely a hand of God there.

Oh, for sure, yeah.

But anyway, so that business ended up becoming profitable and doing well. The second kid was born, we started another company. The coffee business? The coffee business was doing well. That was the core company. And then when the second kid was born, we started another business that was on the contracting side, so the paper side of that business. So we would just do bigger accounts. We would feed the local stuff to ourselves and we would hire out other vendors to service those other locations. And we worked vending into that as well. And then by the time our third kid was born, we started a third company and that was doing the vending machines in micro markets. And that was in 2016. And by then I knew what I was doing and I bought that right. I was, you know, we had contracts already in existence. So from day one, that one was profitable and set up perfectly. And then we ended up, yeah, selling all those in 2019 as a package. And that set us up very well to do all this. We had already paid off, I think in 2016, we paid off our house. I think that was about the time I was 30. And so when we sold, we had already been completely debt-free and, you know, we're able to basically just live off interest at this point and pay everything in cash. Uh, you know, to continue this, this thing has definitely sucked up a lot of our resources, but we can do it without like clawing for money, you know. Yeah, continuing to put the information out for free and, and, you know, get exposure without, uh, without having an actual income to support it. You know, we'd like that one day to, you know, stop hemorrhaging, but eventually we'll get there.

What do you hope to see 100% dad in 5, 10 years? Like, what's kind of the goal as you kind of travel around?

Oh, uh, clearly much bigger. I, I will— I'm very certain we'll be off the road by then. Is the wind picking up my mic at all? No, you're—

I'll let you know if it's annoying or if I haven't heard any wind, to be honest.

Um, you know, at that point, uh, live events for sure. Uh, we want to be doing a lot more live events. Um, you know, having father gatherings, having a father-son event, father-daughter events, um, you know, mom-dad events, uh, you know, whether they're, you know, one-day, uh, what do you call, one-day workshops or like a 4-day weekend getaway or week-long, uh, you know, out in the woods or whatever it is. I think those would be a lot of fun where we could, we could, uh, really dive deep into some topics and and get improvement and get real tactical on, you know, so I love that.

Um, a couple things I'm thinking about, uh, when you talk about kind of the deep dive or the campout or whatever, are you setting this up from like a, hey, we're gonna dive into like what God's word says, or is this just kind of like, it can be God's word, like all kinds of things? What's kind of the central focus? Is it like encouraging and equipping dads with So obviously there's lots of tools in the tool belt.

Yeah, if you've really followed this, um, followed the content we put out, you can tell it's biblically based. Um, yeah, and if you're— and if you really follow, you can say I almost never say that. Um, because my theory on— my whole theory on that has been I don't want to just go after, you know, from a business standpoint, market to Christian fathers, right? I want to market to all fathers, and if by chance we can convert some non-believers to believers, awesome. That is a great goal to have in life. But, you know, I think my calling seems to be recognizing good dads and getting dads that are struggling to improve and just kind of cleaning up the entire dad space. And I don't want that to be contingent on whether you believe or not. I don't want to turn somebody off that maybe had a bad experience in a church somewhere. Sure, sure. Because, you know, we are Christian-based, so, so I, I don't push it. I think one day in the future, maybe that 10-year mark, we might push it harder if we have that kind of, uh, that kind of foundation. But, you know, I, I don't want to be abrasive to somebody that may have had a past, um, sure, sure, negative experience. And those people exist out there because that's, you know, churches are filled with people. So there's, there's people, even myself. Yeah. Um, okay, so we're rooted. And, and as we begin live events, well, the most logical, um, course is to go through churches and start having, you know, smaller groups within churches because logistically churches have the audio video setups, they have a, you know, a little mini marketing machine there that they can put out to their congregation, their neighborhoods, and say, hey, on Saturday we're having this. Um, and so that would be the logical place to start, as opposed to, you know, renting out a random facility and then us trying to find people to go to it and then setting up audio and video on our own while living in an RV. Um, that would be the most logical place to start, so that we probably will do.

Okay, I just kind of threw up a little bit in the private chat, a couple things. So, and I don't— there's a, there's a reason, Townsend, that we got connected. Obviously, you were gracious enough to say, hey, come hop on, record, however you use this, whatever that looks like. I just wanted to get to know you because I think the more that I understand 100% Dad and kind of what you were doing, I believe at some point, whether that's at a live event, a camp, a session, your own family, maybe we should just start there. That you guys can benefit from our curriculum. So again, our curriculum is free. Uh, I literally was just doing it with my son. He's got his little Bible study tonight, and literally it is booklets. Okay, this is one of them. So this is Practice Ministries. This is the leader book, Ten Commandments One Leader Book. Okay, so there's a literally a leader book for a dad to take this and lead a group their dad and their son or daughters through God's word. Then there's a workbook that they literally fill out with their son or daughter, the answers. Okay, so this one was, um, the prodigal son. So what are examples of how the younger son behaved irresponsibly? We look at verse 12. So basically, this— what I tell dads is this is a turnkey solution to teach your kids God's word. Super easy, super practical, and super free. And so I, I love it. I did it with my dad 25 years ago, 24 years ago, when my parents separated when I was 7. And so the Lord called me back to work at this ministry with a guy that— there's been one guy that's running it, and it's all over the world. And so it's super easy. You can look at our website, you can follow the curriculum, and you can go through lesson series, um, with your family if you want. But I believe in some form or fashion you guys could use it. So, no, that sounds cool.

So when you say ministry, um, is it part of a church or is it like a nonprofit?

Nonprofit.

Okay, okay. And that's, uh, and so I guess, what is your— what is your— you say your biggest in South Africa, so that makes it seem like you're maybe not through the churches as much as you are mission work.

Yeah, we have like other pastors that partner with us that are pastors and they do other things there. Of course, practice ministers isn't the only thing that they do, but you know, they might be a pastor leading a congregation. They're going to remote or rural areas and encouraging essentially somewhat of— I feel like what you're doing and what we're all supposed to do is just encouraging fathers to lead their families, right? Like, hey dads, you have a role in the family. And it's important and it matters, and we are subject to passivity just because of the fall. And so how do we do that? Because something that is near and dear to my own heart is, right, we see everywhere in organizations in the world that they have mission statements. And so at the board table, if someone brings an idea, If that idea falls in line with the mission of what that organization should be doing, then great, let's do it. If not, it makes clear sense that we should probably not pursue that thing. And so when the dude comes home from working 40+ hours a week, he's missionless in the home. He doesn't know where to take his family. And I believe that's one of the biggest problems that we as men have. And so in 20— 18, I created a mission statement for my family. And so as a father of 4, I can tell you that that mission statement has helped keep me focused on the road that we need to be going after and traveling on with my own family and allowing kids to do that and taking my wife along with me. And so having that mission statement has been just very pivotal for, for us. And so getting—

is that a statement? Is that a statement you want to share?

Yeah, yeah, I'd love to share it. So I have it over here actually on the wall because like anywhere we want to put it on the walls so we know exactly what it is. So one of it hangs at the kitchen table and one of it's over here. So it says, our family is anchored and driven by our Father's unconditional love and grace. We desire to rebuild a multi-generational family on mission to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, ultimately, so others see and experience Christ through us. So if you look at the Bible, it's very clear that God builds generationally. And so we obviously live in the West, and so everything's very individualized. And so the nuclear family, as you know, is a complete war. It's a complete odds against everything. We go do this, we go do this. Like, we are meant to build. For the generations. And so what does my family look like 100 years from now is a question we should be asking.

You know, and I've— so I first heard that term nuclear family, um, from another guy in Texas. Um, I forget his name. Trey, Trey something. Trey and Leah, they do a Stronger Marriages workshop out there in Texas. Um, and, uh, I just don't quite understand. So it just seems like such a negative connotation to it, the nuclear family. I've been trying to figure out what exactly they, uh, they mean by that, um, because, you know, nuclear just to me just has that, uh, uh, you know, nuclear reactor, nuclear bomb, just that negative connotation. I have heard one theory of someone saying it's because when they're doing nuclear testing, uh, they would set up a family with like Mom, Dad, Bobby, and Sally, you know, that perfect, you know, vision of a family, you know, Mom, Dad, boy, girl. And that was, you know, the nuclear family. I guess that's where they came from. But I didn't know if you had heard why that term— why it's not traditional or traditional family or normal or something different.

So nuclear family just being the nucleus of the family. So I put an article in here, it's a really long article about the title, The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake. It's quite a fascinating read. But really, yeah, it's by— it's in The Atlantic. And so I'll get some of my other points that I mentioned in the chat here in just a second. But I guess to somehow somewhat answer your question, just like when I think about my own nuclear family, I think about my wife and my kids like that being the nucleus, the nuclear family. But you also have like my grandparents or my mom and my grand— like, all of that kind of being the nuclear family. But really, through my own testimony, the nuclear family has been broken up because of choice my parents made when I was 7 to divorce. And so that caused a ripple effect through the generations that's like shattered and broken siblings.

My—

I'm the youngest of 4, and so seeing they're kind of just like— everyone's just kind of all over the place. And so just kind of like almost like that an analogy of just like, that's going to be blown up. And so how do I— I, I believe the Lord is testing me to kind of rebuild that and, and to build generationally. And so there's a whole story behind that, and that generational— the Lord's used that in a lot of crazy ways in my own family. The long story short of that, because you have to know because you're in RV now, is my in-laws— my wife and I married, we were in 2010, we met at Dallas Baptist University. I actually dated her roommate. Funny God story there. But, um, they— the Lord told my father-in-law about 3 years ago that they need to move down here to be closer to the grandkids. And so of course, when the Lord says go, they listened, and they sold everything, uh, where they lived in Springdale, Arkansas, and moved down here not knowing what they were going to do. So they started— they got into real estate and they live in an RV. They've lived in an RV for 2 years now, um, about 15 minutes from us. So I know— I've been in an RV, I've slept in their RV, I know the space situation you're working with. And God bless your soul, I'm going to be praying for you. But like, that right there, Townsend Russell Russell, that's what we don't— that's just analogy of like, hey, go just throw your kids into an RV with your wife and like figure out how to deal with some of the collisions you're going to experience. And I guess to kind of come full circle, we as fathers, it's hard for us to know how to handle that because most of the time, generally, we're out doing all these other grand things that we think are great when really the home is the what's at odds and what's suffering. And so it's hard to kind of butt up against some of those collisions because I put a guy's name in there I think you need to get an interview with. His name is Jeremy Pryor. He's someone who I, who I followed very closely. And we're involved with their family teams deal. And it talks about rebuilding a multi-generational family. Great, another great resource, a great speaker to have one day for you. But he says that, right, in the West, and even myself included at times, see, we see kids as an asset to the family. Or we see kids are an asset to the family, not a liability. Too often we see them as a liability, right? So I just— that has always resonated with me.

Uh, elaborate on that first because I want to. I just want to see what you mean on that.

So when—

define liability.

Great. Yeah, so, well, so like a problem, like they're going to get in the way, they're going to cause issues, like we just get them out of the way, let them go do their own thing. I, I've got this under control. Let's just use a basic example. A new toy comes in, we go get a bicycle and I gotta build it and all my kids want to get in and help me build. No, no, no, no, no, no, get out. I've got this, guys. Stop, you're gonna mess it up. Okay, like, quit. What are you doing with the wrench? It's in the mud. Wrenches don't go in the mud. What are you doing, Nixon?

You know what I mean?

And so like, rather than to change that mindset and be like, hey, like, you're really an asset to helping me build this bike, like, grab the wrench, let me, let me train you. Train up a child in the way that he should go so when he's old he does not depart part from it, right? That is the training that scripture is talking about. That, for most fathers including myself, is a hard— it's hard to do. I have to shift my whole Western culture mindset to think like, I need to include my kids in this. Like, they need to be a part of this. Like, we're a team.

100% agree. And that's— I, you know, uh, you know, part of that comes down to where your priorities lay. But so that's a big thing with me, um, because I'm, I'm genuinely at my heart and soul a workaholic. Um, I enjoy work, and from a very real practical standpoint, um, having a family holds me back. Having kids holds me back.

100%.

From not, not from life, but from a, um, a business standpoint, from a success standpoint. Uh, maybe success is bad. What a lot of people think success is. Um, I could have grown much bigger businesses. I could be doing something to making a whole lot more money right now. But the, you know, as a father, you need to make, you need to make sacrifices, especially when it comes to your time and your priorities. And, um, you know, we, we built our life to be where family is more important than the business. The business is obviously important. If the business needed me, the business got me. There are plenty of times where wife and kids came down to the warehouse and, you know, that's where we had dinner. And, you know, vice versa. There are plenty of times where I was having breakfast, lunch, and dinner with the family. You know, because as a small business owner, you can do that. And then going back to the office. Yeah. But so I can see that for a lot of guys were like, man, you have this, you kind of have this rocket on your back and you know where you want to point it and where you want to go. Uh, you see success, it's easy to see success.

You don't see success in home building a bike.

But if you light it, if you light it, you leave behind, uh, you leave behind everyone else because, you know, there's a real, there's a real selfishness that comes with it that, that's needed to be able to focus that intensely on something. And so I, I get that aspect of liability because it kind of there's real truth to it. And you know, I get what you're saying, but you know, I 100% agree with what you say, you know, where your priorities lay and how you look at things really matters. And that was a great example with the bike of, you know, included everyone. Like, we don't need to be frustrated about this. We'll just, you know, every mess can be cleaned up. Every broken thing can usually be fixed. And you know, those are just learning experiences. So, uh, no, I mean, that's interesting. I've never heard anybody phrase it— I've never heard anybody phrase it of asset and liability at, you know, the kids before.

I'm not the one phrasing that. That's a Jeremy Pryor, just so we're clear.

So I had him on the— which— well, tell me a little bit about him so I can remember which one. It's very possible. Did you find one on the podcast?

No, no, no, no, I'm saying Okay, I don't— from what I've seen, I don't think you've interviewed him, but he's someone that I would highly suggest getting in contact and seeing if he would do an interview with you in some sense.

The name somehow sounds familiar.

Yeah, he's—

I thought you had said I, uh, we did a podcast with him.

No, no, no, I was just saying you need to. I should— I would encourage you to do one with him. He's great. Um, so mentioned the family teams thing, Jeremy Pryor. So on kind of top of this, including the family, uh, years ago the Lord gave me— I'm not, I'm, I'm not necessarily one of those that starts a business like yourself, right? It's just like, oh yeah, I'm gonna go be entrepreneur, business-minded. But you know, a couple years ago the Lord— my wife, as I mentioned, she just homeschooled, so there were the kids were going over catechisms and of the mezuzah, which is like what the Jewish put like on their doors. And she had put these catechisms like all over the doors. And literally I was like one evening, I was getting a kid off the pot and putting another kid to bed. And I said, man, what if we created something like this for the family? And so that was kind of the birth of Bind and Impress. So essentially, Mind and Impress is Post-it notes with God's Word on it. And so this is something we enveloped our whole family in, Townsend Russell, and so like, I'm having them help package and sign cards and I'm paying them at the end of the month. And so we're literally doing this whole quote unquote business together as a family. As a family team, as a unit, and asking for them.

So you guys sell those postcards?

Yeah, so they're called— it's called Descripter. So it's pretty neat deal, complete God deal. And so we started doing that last month, actually. And so that's been just fantastic and really fun to be able to do with the family and Yeah, love if you check that out. Check— I think we— I think that's how I came across you was on that Instagram. It's how I found you.

That's a pretty interesting little business you got there.

Yeah, so just a real practical way for moms or dads to kind of, you know, stick it on a lunchbox, a helmet, just to encourage their kids or teach their kids God's Word, right? Whether that's at the dinner table or whatever.

Yeah. How are you marketing that?

I have it on Instagram, we have a Facebook page. I'm trying to get it on Pinterest, you know, buying ads. I'm really trying to be as wise as possible. Again, this is like you doing the first coffee thing. Like, I really don't know what I'm doing in a sense, but the Lord gave it to me and, you know, we already sold out of our first 1,000. So we just got our second shipment in yesterday. And so—

I see you're doing better than me.

It's been really fun. And so like, right, part of this, the part of this next thing is, you know, I'm gonna create a hat that has our logo on it, like kind of like a manly hat, just to encourage some dads. Because this comes out of Deuteronomy 6, right? So when you, when you get up, when you lie down, you should bind it on a doorpost. You should impress it upon your kids. You should talk about like— and everything that we do, Townsend Russell Russell, right? Building a bicycle. Like, we need to be showing our kids practical ways of the Gospel, and so this is like a super practical way to do that, and so we want to keep finding material or, you know, however the Lord wants to give it to us to be able to help families do that for God's Word to go out in a very practical way.

I agree. I think that's a great idea, and outside of outside of Bible and religion together, you know, teaching kids, I feel like it just doesn't happen as much anymore because we kind of— we put kids in daycare, we put kids in our schools, we put them in their sports programs, we put them in their after-school whatever, um, you know, we, we get weekends together a little bit, but then sports start to take over that, ballet recitals start to take over that, we get busy, we're going to parties, we're going to this, we're doing that, we got vacation scheduled, and Life does not get taught, um, that's right, you know, because, because we're moving so fast and, and just the basic things. I mean, there's kids, there's kids that are going off to college and they've never cooked a meal by themselves before. They just don't know how to make food for themselves. They don't know how to do laundry. They have no clue anything about insurance. They don't know how to change a tire. They don't know that their engine needs oil because, my God, that thing takes gas, not oil.

Yeah, yeah, or it's electric, right?

Um, so there's, there's a lot of just real-world skills, um, you know, that A, we hire out now because I'll be honest with you, I mean, I, I haven't changed my oil since I was a teenager. I, I take it somewhere.

Um, sure.

And you know, if I, you know, if, if the car breaks down, I, it gets towed somewhere.

Another, I need to put this in there. It's another book. So this book is actually by Jeremy Pryor. So the subtitle is How Ancient Wisdom Can Heal the Modern Family. The book will— it's just, it's crazy. So somewhat up to that, right? Forget, you've forgotten the importance of these trades. That's necessarily what the book is talking about. But off of your point of what you just said, right?

Yeah.

Like, I'm not the handiest man. That was never taught to me. My dad wasn't handy. But like, okay, if I want my kids to be handy, like, by gosh, I need to figure out how to be handy myself.

And the great thing is you can, you can figure it out while teaching them. I mean, in today's world, YouTube's right at your fingertips.

Yes.

Even if, even if they know, even if they are watching you read the manual, then tell them what it says.

Yes.

Yeah, that is still 10 million times better than never doing it at all. Um, I actually just got to— we were out in Joshua Tree, uh, which is, uh, east of here, the desert. Uh, we were boondocking out there, so connected to nothing, out in the middle of nowhere.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I was having a little too much fun with the truck, and, um, uh, on a turn at too fast of a speed, we hit a rock that had a sharp point and blew out the sidewall of the tire. And so, you know, out in the desert, in the middle of the RV, or you just on your truck? No, it was more just, you know, we're kind of 4x4ing a little bit, um, with the truck. The RV was out there, um, I had to walk back to it to get some of my power tools, uh, because I have an impact gun, so I'm going to use it, and I got my compressor in the RV, so I'm going to use it. But yeah, so we got to teach the boys how to change a tire. Again, something, you know, normally I would just drop off or call someone to come take care of, but you know, when you're in the middle of the desert, you have to. Yeah, but even, even if they just— even if you're figuring it out as you go, yeah, that's still an experience with Dad.

100%.

It doesn't matter if you're an expert on it or not. You can both stumble upon it and figure it out together. You can both watch the YouTube video. That's right.

Um, and who knows, that's probably one.

Yeah, just true. And that's probably one of the great things about, um, you know, 2021 is, yeah, we move a lot faster, we're in a technology age Um, so there's not the moments we had 30 years ago with our, with our dad. But now when, you know, when you're curious about how something works or when you want an answer, you know, you don't have to be— you don't just have to say, I don't know anymore. You can pull out your phone, sit your kid next to you, and you can look it up and you can watch a video on how an engine actually works. Um, you know, because it's a hard thing to explain to a kid, you know, unless you're a mechanic and maybe You can, you have a good way, um, you can figure it out together. How is paper made?

Yeah.

Oh, I don't know, let's, let's figure it out. And it's still an experience with the two of you there. And I think those things are big. And there's, there's so many possible opportunities out there, and, uh, we just have to be cognizant of that and have our priorities set up in a way that we take advantage of them.

My, uh, wife has something she writes down there: connection over curriculum. Right, so you know this with homeschooling, at least seeing it, right? We have the opportunity to kind of envelop them into some of these things that, you know, maybe school didn't happen, but you had a flat tire and they figured out how to change a tire. Like, that beats school that day, hands down, right? And so like, it's those opportunities that we have to give our kids and show them and teach them. And so I love that.

Well, so there's a trend out there called unschooling. I don't know if you've heard of it.

Yes.

Um, oh yeah, which I am, I am half and half on that. I, I'm not, I'm not really on board with unschooling at all, where you just ignore any curriculum and you teach kids through just general life of how to do things.

Sure.

Uh, I think my personal opinion is you should have the curriculum and you should be doing that. And so the whole unschooling philosophy is that, you know, We don't teach math by learning a workbook. We teach math by going to the grocery store and the kids are going to kind of add up how much things cost and how much we have and what we're going to be able to spend money on and what's the sales tax of this, you know.

Yeah.

You know, that's— you learn by doing, you learn by living normal life, which is amazing, which is great, which you should definitely do, you know, involve your kids in how the world actually works. Right. I am However, in favor of a normal curriculum on top of that.

So groceries do actually cost money. They would want to surprise them with that when they get out.

Say that one more time.

Say groceries do cost money. We don't want to surprise them with that when they get out into the real world. Dad paid for these things? Mom paid for these things?

Yeah, yeah. Well, even just, you know, just budgeting and knowing, you know, there's finite resources. There's finite dedications and we have to work within that. We're going to have to make sacrifices here of, oh, we can't get that, but we can get this, or this is on sale. So instead of getting, you know, red meat this week, we'll get chicken this week or whatever it is. We used to, I mean, we used to, my wife had, you know, I never did the grocery shopping other than the occasional errand, but I mean, she used to have to go through at our brokest times with a calculator and she would actually have to add everything up the things with sales tax too, because, you know, we had, you know, however many dollars in an envelope of cash and that's how much we could spend. So when you got to the line, you didn't want to be over.

Yeah.

And so, you know, luckily we don't do that anymore.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, is there anything that I can do to help you or Anything you—

yeah, I'd love to get— I'd love to get my hands on that book, uh, you were talking about, that workshop. Um, which one? Uh, uh, the Bible study with your sons one.

Yeah, Practice Ministry. So I— can you see my private comments I'm making?

Yeah, I wasn't pulling them up. I, you know, after you said private chat for like the third time, I pulled them up. So I see practiceministries.org, blindinthepress.com. FamilyTeams.com, Jeremy Pryor.

Okay, cool.

Then you see the Atlantic.

Yeah, so if you just go to thepracticeministries.org, you can see— if you go to our lesson library, you download— remind— how old is your oldest? I think he's close to— is he 8?

Uh, no, we're 10, 7, and 4.

Okay, yeah, so, um, you can look at some of the curriculum that we have on there. Ten Commandments is a good one. Genesis, Heroes of the Bible. I think they'd really like Heroes of the Bible. So Heroes of the Bible just takes them through, obviously, just different heroes. And, um, it's— you can use all of it, you can use portions of it. It's— but I, I really think you should check it out for sure for your own family and then anyone else.

And so Practice Ministries is a nonprofit that's, um, creating, uh, Bible studies for father-sons, uh, and I assume father-daughters as well.

Yes, correct.

And that is a nonprofit, so I assume you guys make money by soliciting donations.

Yeah, any, any fathers— most of our giving comes from alumni, but any, anyone that wants to give, you know, feels like it's impacted their family or the group that they were in or whatever, you know, we absolutely love that, but we're not gonna pressure anyone into that. But, uh, we just want to encourage dads.

So, but definitely, yeah, that's all that one does. That's all Practice Ministry does, right?

Correct. That's right.

Okay. Uh, the, the Blind and Impress, what was that one?

So Bind and Impress is something our family started like a month ago, and that's the—

okay, that's the Post-it notes.

Correct. Yes.

Got it.

Yeah. And then family, family teams is something my wife and I got involved into, which part of the mission statement came out of, um, learning about coming more in contact with Henry and John Ethke and just a lot of like ancient wisdom and a lot of stuff that they're doing. Um, it's really awesome stuff.

So cool. Um, how many kids do you have?

So I got 4 kids, 2 boys, 2 girls. Yeah, so 7, 6, 3, and a newborn.

Cranking them out. Are you done at 4?

Yeah, we're done, I'm pretty sure. Yeah.

Okay, uh, that— I guess, uh, so you're old— you said your oldest is 7, right? 7, 6, 4, newborn. Uh-huh. Okay. Uh, uh, how old are you?

33. Oh, that's awesome.

So my, my, my whole theory growing up was I wanted to have kids young, um, yes, so I could play with them and I kind of remembered how it was, um, yeah, because there's so many things that aggravated me and I didn't want to be that, um, uh, not that having kids older is, is a bad thing. I've certainly met plenty of people who, you know, had a kid when they were, you know, 40 or 45 or so. And, you know, it's a, it's a different life, it's a different perspective. Um, sure, but still fun regardless.

Yeah.

But all right, cool.

Uh, so, well, hey, I'm gonna stay— obviously we're following you guys on Instagram and love what you're doing and continue to obviously pray for you guys. And, but if you're ever in the Texas area again or cruising around or If I think of other resources or if I, um, anything else, I'd love to— I'll just probably shoot you an email and say, hey, check this resource out, if you're cool with that.

Yeah, we spent about 3 months in Texas, so we might be done with Texas for a while. We spent most of the— we spent most of the winter trotting around Texas. Uh, uh, yeah, because we were— when we first came down, we were down by you. I think we did, uh, uh, Amarillo first, then jumped over to Oklahoma, then down to south of Dallas and Whitney, and then everything else since then. Um, yeah, uh, so we're actually— we're going up the West Coast at this point. Um, okay, and then awesome. Then I think you have it all mapped out. Uh, we have where we've been mapped out. Um, we got a cool little like Indiana Jones style RV that, you know, leaves a red line behind as this makes all the different stops. Uh, and then we've got them mapped out on the side of the rig and, uh, We know for the most part where we're going to be going over the next year. Uh, not necessarily each campground, uh, because some of that stuff you can't book until like 60 days out. So it, it, that kind of stuff varies, but we know we're going up the West Coast. We'll be done with the— we'll be up at the top of Washington by, uh, probably mid-summer, August, August or so. And then at that point, we're gonna have to kind of shoot across and get, uh, east of the Mississippi. And kind of do those Midwestern states of like Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana. And then around that time, winter will happen, and we'll just stay up in that region until winter forces us south. And that will, uh, we'll probably flee to Florida January, February and do all the Florida parts that we don't know. And then once it thaws out in March, we'll shoot up and do the Northeast. Then hang out in the Northeast and then cut across into Alaska for the summer. Um, and I think that's gonna be our last hurrah. I think, uh, that'll be 2022 at that point. And, you know, if Canada's open up, we might throw some Canada stops in there.

Okay, cool.

But yeah, that's, that's probably when we'll end it, end the tour, and, uh, really, really be able to be in one spot and focus on the business.

Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Well, blessings to you guys in your car and your RV and your family and all of that. It's— you're gonna need it, right? We all have it.

We'll take all we can get.

So, uh, well, I'll shoot you some emails, stay in touch, but appreciate what you're doing. Townsend Russell, bless your heart, and, um, blessings to your wife and your kids and, uh, Yeah, let me know if you have any questions about the material and we'll hopefully talk soon.

All right, perfect. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Hey, absolutely. We'll see you.

Bye. Bye.