Getting Kids Involved In The Family Business

This is a YouTube interview (Ben Greenfield with Marilee and Dan Pompa) about bringing their children into the family business now called "Pompa Program." The Pompas recount prophetic and faith-based moments that motivated the transition, personal adversity (Dan's illness; taking in two children through a will and a later bankruptcy), and how those hardships shaped their children and work ethic. Daniel led the social-media and scaling effort; other children hold roles (Isaac in operations, Olivia as training head/chiropractor; Simon and Dylan intermittently involved). The family reports rapid company growth across a few years and significant reach, and emphasizes core values, faith, and teaching children foundational premises for life.
Questions this video answers
September 6, 2023
First-year ~ $7 million; next year > $10 million; later > $20 million; current year projected ~$60 million (family-reported estimates)
Chapters
When your core values are strong and you know the foundational premise by which you function. And it is so important to know that you know for everyone listening, if you haven't yet done this, you need to sit down with your kids or just sit down with your spouse. Identify your function, your foundational premise for how you live your life. What are your values? What is the most important things in order of priority and stay there, stand on those.
I'm curious how you guys actually began to implement the kids in the family business and what that looked like.
Well, let me tell you something. This is actually a God thing, and that business is actually called Pompa Program now, and that's what they run. So I'll quickly tell the story, then Marilee can add to it. But it was four Christmases ago, maybe, I don't know. Four? Yeah, four. I was going to say it's close to five, but no, it's only four. And every year I pray for a word from God and I give a little family. What would you call it?
Encouragement through inspiration that God's given you. I mean, you pray about it in advance and God lays something on your heart.
This year he laid it heavy on my heart, and it was prophetic. And I sat there where I always sit in the living room every year, and I delivered a very prophetic message to the children that they were going to take this message far higher than me, you know, And I've been helping. I've been teaching Doctors for almost 20 years now. Everything I learned because of my own illness and coming out of my own illness of just unexplainable illness, we'll just keep it simple like that. It took me several years, but everything that I learned coming out of my own illness, I now teach. But this has been a mission of mine for many, many years. Here God gives me this prophetic word to my children that they're going to take it. They're all going to be working in this mission, and they're going to take it higher than me. Of course, they're sitting there with looks of like, what are you talking about? We don't want anything to do with what you do. Dad, they thought I was crazy, all five of them. Trust me. Well, it wasn't but a year later that I'm talking to Daniel about taking this, what I do, and scaling it to the world in a very way that we do it because you have to understand cellular detox. It has to be different for everybody. You can't give someone the same box. You can't Put this person on the same detox as this person. Varied doses are different, cellular support is different. How could I structure this? I started thinking about this whole process. I came up with it and Daniel being savantly brilliant with social media said basically here's how we can take it to the world. And pomp a program was born. We went from a company because of his efforts. And then my son Isaac became part of operations. Now my daughter Olivia graduated chiropractic school. Now she's like training head, training coach for all the coaches. And Simon, well, he's been in and out of the business, Dylan's been in and out of the business.
And Daniel and Simon are actually starting a sibo jerky company.
Yeah.
So Daniel's helping.
Did you say sibo jerky? You mean like jerky for people with small intestine bacterial overgrowth?
So hold on. So the bottom line is we went from a company, zero worth nothing startup.
Right.
And the first year, I don't know, maybe he did 7 million and helped. I forget how many thousands of people we took it to. The next year it was over 10 million, it's now over 20 million. And this year looks like it's going to be $60 million company reaching hundreds of thousands of people. It's been a godsend and a blessing. So already that word from God they have taken my message to more than I did in 20 years. That's the ability that my children have.
Daniel had always really was very disturbed by the fact that his dad couldn't help more people with the information and the ability that he had that he was helping people one on one. So Daniel was always saying, dad, you have to help more people. We have to think of a way to help more people. And I would just say simply that, you know, my, when people would ask me about raising kids, my only intention was that I really had every plan and intention that I was trusting God for to raise five leaders. That was always my thing. Lord, I just, I'm going to raise five leaders. That's all I know. Especially given the fact that you know our story and the challenges with getting two children that were not ours and the challenges that came through that as well. But that was my whole intention. And the other thing that I've always said to the kids is our ceiling will be your floor. And heatedly, I really do believe that when you, I mean, I know honestly Daniel would be the one kid that would say to you, my mom put a lot of heavy stuff on me. And that heavy stuff was honestly just the thing in my heart that I really believed that God was going to do something great. And in fact, I was reading something this morning on Facebook, and it was a whole little thing about how men would go to God, right? Men would travel in the Old Testament, they would seek God, they would find him on the mountaintops, and they would be with him and he would speak to them. And women can't do that. And in this message, it was, well, but God comes to women. And I just thought of that. It was such a big deal for me because I said, oh, my gosh, it's so true. God has come to me twice in my life. And the first time was when Danny was very sick and there were no answers. And he was not going to compromise. His philosophy of the body doesn't need help healing. It just doesn't need interference. What is the interference? And we already ate well, according to everything that God has given us. And we avoided things. If man messed with it, we stayed away from it. And we didn't understand environmental toxins, of course, at that time. But that was when I remember saying in just big frustration, enormous frustration, lord, what is happening with Danny? And God spoke to my heart. And I heard so clearly, not audibly, but I know he spoke to me. And he said, not only will Deanna get well, but I'm going to use them to take a message to the world.
Let me speak into that a little bit. I never liked when she said that to me because I was sick. And my exact words back to her were, I would laugh. I would say, I can't even get myself well. So why would you say. Why would you put that on me? Take a measure. How possibly could I do that? And so I would get angry, but she would always repeat it to me, despite my dislike of it. But that's what happened. She's right.
I remember one time, I mean, it was very bad. My husband was very sick. And I remember one time. But by the way, I really feel that it was because God deposited that into me, that no matter what he felt, no matter how difficult he was or experiencing himself to be, or me experiencing him, it anchored me to the future and to the hope. And as believers, isn't that how we're to live anyway? Right? We're to be anchored to the hope of our faith. And the second time God spoke to me was when my cousin was killed and we were to take the kids.
That's a whole story that we. Her best friend Lisa, growing up, horrible tragedy in their family. But they. Mom and dad died. Her Cousin Lisa and her husband. And we ended up with the kids through the will, actually, but two boy and a girl, they were seven at the time. And they're, they're now 20. Well, 26. Well, 27.
Is that Dylan and Olivia?
Yeah.
Okay.
And so we at the time had a five year old Daniel, a three year old Isaac. You know, my husband's still just beginning to get well. He now knew what was wrong. He was on the path. And a six week old baby, that was Simon.
So imagine I just am starting to get better and thinking, oh my gosh, it's so good to have my life back again. And we go from two kids in.
Six weeks to five, newborn baby and then these two that got willed to you.
And my mom was begging me not to take the kids, begging me. And of course I never ever thought otherwise. You know, basically I knew that not that God willed it, but in his providence, he provided and he allowed for all this to be figured out in advance. And so I remember one of the things my mother finally said to me after everything else she had been trying to say to me, to appeal to me was, what about Daniel? And I stopped in that moment because I had never thought about Daniel, but obviously birth order disrupt, you know, the whole thing. And I remember freezing in that moment. And again I said, lord, what about Daniel And God? Again, same experience, but like, boom. And he said, not only will I do great things for Daniel, I will do great things through Daniel. And that's a whole other story because we have another kid in our life that I thought would have been a Daniel. Luke Winters. He's on the US Ski team. He is like our kid.
Oh, yeah. I meant Luke when I was down there. He's a beast.
Yeah. And I thought Daniel would be my ski kid because he just loved it so much. And I thought, oh, that's going to be the thing God does for Daniel. No, God has really chosen Daniel to take this mission.
Yeah.
I mean, so it's pretty remarkable, the people that we've been able to turn their lives around through everything, like I said, all the knowledge that I learned to her first prophetic word that God will use me to take a message to the world. And then God speaking through me to the kids, he's going to take it higher through you kids. And now we're reaching people all over.
Wow. It's interesting how your son. It sounds like Olivia also leapt at the chance to be a part of the family business. And.
From the time I've met you guys, you've Been pretty well off.
And seem to make a good income and you have a nice house and your kids are well taken care of and get all the black olives and supplements that they want. And when you interact with the family like that, I think a lot of times the kids do have kind of a silver spoon mentality and everything's been paid for them and. And they maybe don't work so hard or at least tend to sometimes slack off a little bit. And I'm curious if you guys did things like.
What'S it called? Why am I blanking on the word? When you give your kids money allowance, like if you gave your kids allowances or if you have like, certain methods or strategies that you use to ensure that they didn't develop a silver spoon mentality growing up in a well to do household, like, did you guys do anything that would have made them kind of more hungry to be a part of the family business and contribute?
We had a greater blessing than that. We lost everything in our life. So there was a time before you knew us, Ben, where we absolutely. We went bankrupt. Lost everything.
Yeah. I didn't know that.
Yeah. So when we took on the twins, we ended up in a battle with the grandmother, and it was horrible. We were in court for three years now, maybe two, I don't remember. But we lost everything. And our kids going through that. It ended up to be so many blessings to us. If you would have told me that all of this was going to be one of the greatest blessings in your life. I mean, even coming out of my sickness, that ended up to be the greatest blessing of my life. And then dealing with all these legal things after we took on two kids, that disrupted our whole family.
I don't even know. It just disrupted everything in our life and dealing with this court stuff and the grandmother and all of that ended up to be more than a blessing. And one of them was that our kids knew what it was like to have. Knew what it was like to have nothing and to struggle. And then honestly, that was the greatest lesson that could ever be taught. And God taught it, not us.
If you asked, especially Daniel, just the emotional connection, I think, with your firstborn is because he's privy. Right. Firstborn kids are just kind of privy to you emotionally. He's definitely wired closely with us and was as a kid. And he would tell you if you asked him about a time when he can remember in that adversity. And we had moved to our condo in the mountains and he would drive the kids when he would go to the office, an hour and a half one way to school. And he did that for the balance of the year. And it was, you know, another six months from the time we moved. We chose that.
When I think about that now, I don't even know how I did it.
Yeah, that's a long ride to the bus stop. Jeez.
And, yeah, and he did that. And there was a time when, you know, Danny didn't have gas for the truck and was on the side of the road basically, you know, crying out to God. And I don't. I believe all the kids were there, but it was definitely a time that Daniel has spoken of as just, you know, just seeing your dad. First of all, seeing your dad sick. You know, my husband wasn't able to play with his kids when they were little, you know, to be the wife and experience, that was really hard. But yet again, the fortitude that I have or had came from God. So he enabled me to frame it in a way that allowed us to get through it with hope, as hard as it was. And then to have our kids go through that experience, absolutely. They know the substance of our parts. They know who we are at our core. They know when things fall apart or when things are difficult, what our source is and who it is and how we anchor to him. And circumstances don't have to make sense. Life is hard. I mean, my gosh, look around right now, right, at the insanity, the absolute lunacy. And yet those situations have huge impact on your life. But when your core values are strong and you know the foundational premise by which you function, and it is so important to know that, you know, for everyone listening, if you haven't yet done this, you need to sit down with your kids or just sit down with your spouse. Identify your foundational premise for how you live your life. What are your values? What is the most important things in order of priority, and stay there, stand on those, teach your kids and demonstrate that.
And I think our kids, you know, obviously, everyone's going to go through hard stuff and trials, and it's how you go through it, right? My kids can quote the scriptures that I quoted, you know, hanging on and telling them it's going to be okay. Because I believe this, right? So you could look at all the hard stuff as opportunities. You know, the going through my sickness, I always say I probably didn't get through it perfectly. I lacked faith at the times and, you know, probably got angry at God at times and questioned him at times. But the next big valley in our life, I went through it very differently, you know, with a lot more faith and a lot more hope that I did the first time. And so when we hit adversity, you know, our kids know where we're reaching, we're reaching out.
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