Make More Marbles Podcast with guest Scott Donnell - Teaching Kids MONEY MANAGEMENT

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To make more marbles. My name is Brad Hart, and today I have a very special friend and guest on the show, Mr. Scott. Donald Scott is the founder of Gravy Stack. He's the former founder of Happy and a bunch of other really cool things. He's got a new book coming out we're going to talk about today. He just had a baby. His life's in shambles. What's up, Scott? Say hi to the what's up?

What's up, everybody? Hey, Brad. What? What a time to be alive, man. I just had four children in the last month. A real baby, a world's top podcast, a best selling book, and a banking app for kids.

And somehow you found some time to talk with your, your pal Brad. So I'm grateful, brother. Thank you. I love it, man. So give us the story so far. So who are you? What are you up to in the world? What's your big mission?

Yeah, we are. We're launching the largest financial literacy mission movement in the history of the world. And there's a bunch of problems out there that need to be solved. And about two years ago, we grabbed the bull by the horns and said we're going to actually move the needle and fix this one. And it's not just me. There's a whole army of people. We brought in all the legacy financial literacy gurus, you know, rich dad, poor dad, Sharon Lecter, Daymond John David Meltzer Jr. Achievement, all of the financial standards curriculum writers nationwide that don't know how to translate it to practical kids. Lear morning. So we are creating the movement here, and it's coming in the form of the world's first banking and investing app for kids and teens that plays like a game because kids don't learn about money the way they learn about math and reading and history. You can't, you can't homework your way to financial literacy. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

This is why the school system doesn't touch it. Or they don't know what to do. Or maybe the best they've got is like biz town when you're in fifth grade for a day.

Or if you're a real conspiracy not they don't want you to learn it in the first place because it keeps you subjugated to the system. But anyway, keep going.

Yeah, well, conspiracies are crazy until they're true. And we're finding out that there's kind of a threefold nightmare that we're solving with Gravy Stack and then the book, obviously. I forgot to mention we launched this two days ago.

That's called value creation, kid. The healthy struggles your children need to succeed. And that's two friends, actually, so Scott, Donald and Lee Benson. I got to have dinner with Lee on Thursday. He's a great guy.

Anyway. Yeah, yeah. So we. We launched this two days ago. It's on Amazon and Audible. I got to record the Audible with the guy who did Frank Peretti's books. He doesn't.

Doesn't that suck, by the way? Like, doesn't it just suck to stand in front of a microphone and say the same thing that you wrote 400 times?

Anyway, yes, it took. He stopped me over 1100 times, and 1100. He sends the ticker. He's like, you did good. You're in the top 10%. But I stopped you 1107. Whatever times. And 19 hours of just reading and doing the perfect.

How many sessions?

Two full days.

Wow.

It was a lot. But the book's doing well, so we're. We just hit last night, four number ones on Amazon. I think we're number 31 of all books on Amazon.

That's amazing.

In our six categories. We're number one in four. The six. So we're number one in the world, actually, on Barnes and Nobles, which is awesome. I mean, Barnes Noble is a lot smaller than Amazon, but being number one worldwide for them of all books.

That's amazing.

Congratulations.

Hey, what publisher did you go with? Or did you self publish?

We used Carrie Ober Brunner with Igniting Souls.

Okay.

They did an incredible job. And we wrote the book. We didn't have a ghostwriter. I've had a ghostwriter in the past, and it didn't work. It didn't even publish the previous book. So this is my first book ever. It was handwritten and rewritten and rewritten to get it right. And we're shooting for Wall Street Journal and USA Today this week. So we're amazing. We're pushing, man.

It's off the heels of a million projects. The huge family. Like, you make it look easy. And I feel like I'm struggling with, like, two projects and no family and a dog. You know? It's like.

Dude, it never. It's never easy, you know, but the bigger the obstacle, the harder it is. The bigger the payoff and the bigger the impact, you know, that's bigger the mission, right?

That's the big thing that underscores all this. So I think we need to tie this back, because I feel like your story is really impactful, and we kind of talked about some of the highlights of where you're at now. But like, what led you to want to be on this mission in the first place? Why is it so important for you to. For kids to have financial literacy?

Yeah. So. So the mission is 50 million kids financially competent and ready to succeed. And kind of the setup for this is before Gravy Stack, before the book, before our show Smart Money Parenting, I started the largest school fundraising company in the country. So about 12 years ago, it was called Apex Fun Run. It turned into Apex Leadership Co. We do fun runs at schools and obstacle courses and dance marathons. And we'd go in for two weeks, teach leadership and fitness to the school. They raised pledges. My wife was a first grade teacher. That's why I started the company to help her class. Her school raised three times more than they've ever made before in any fundraiser. And it was hassle free. It was all students included. It was leadership and fitness. Instead of selling chocolate and pizza and not making any money, and the company took off. So we started in Arizona. Now we're in 44 states. We've got 600 employees in that company. We just sold it a year and a half ago, but the company's still thriving. And we've served 6 million families in that company.

Wow.

In Apex. So if anyone's listening and they're at a school, get Apex to your school. It's an incredible, incredible value add. But in that process, we also started doing children's business fairs. So now there's about 1500 of them around the country. Around the world, actually. We're in 10 countries. And what it is is kids learn business on a Saturday morning. They come with products that they make, you know, soap, slime, brownies, air, paper airplanes, whatever business they make up. We teach them how to find their passion, make something with their hands that would be valuable to others and cost and price and profit and how to pitch it. And they come to the fair, you know, it's a free thing to do. Parents set up the tables, bring all their friends in, and the kids sell safely to the strangers. And they make like $300 a pop. So they learn all about business as a kid, like a 5 to 13 year old, right? And we've been doing that for 10 years. I don't know how many, maybe 100,000 kids have gone through it now. And doing both of those companies and teaching financial literacy this whole time, I realized the biggest hole in the education system. You know, we've been in 10,000 schools. I see what they're not Learning. And the biggest issue is financial competency. It's. Everyone calls it financial literacy, but it's truly financial competency because literacy makes you think about reading. You can't read money like you can a book. You have to learn money through using money and making money and managing money. Right? You get this. You talk about this all day, every day. You get it. Kids only learn in two ways. Having fun and real life experience. Practical skills and practical knowledge. That's how all education should be ranked and prioritized, by the way. That's our mission.

Yeah. And I had a really hard time learning math for this one reason. I had this teacher who I'd ask like, what are we learning this for? And I was good at math. I was actually a year ahead for a long time. And I got to this one class is like, sequential too. And I'm like, what are we using this for? It was like logic proofs and some other stuff. And they couldn't tell me what it was used for in real life. And I kept asking that. I kept asking like, why are we learning this? What is this used for? If they had said, hey, this is how we plot the trajectory of a rocket from Earth to Mars, I'd be like, I'm in. If they would have said, hey, this is how we build a bridge.

I'm in.

If they would have said, hey, this is how we figure out the angle of curvature so skyscraper doesn't fall down.

I'm in. Right?

But they couldn't tell me any of that. And therefore I lost interest. And it took me two years to complete that one thing. And then I was behind. So I went from ahead to behind just because they couldn't tell me what the hell it was for.

That's right. Kids are hungry for connecting it to the real world. Right? Like, we make this joke all the time at Gravy Stack. It's like, how did geometry help me with my taxes? You know, how did calculus helped me with my monthly budget? It doesn't. And so we think that we believe, and we've seen it now in the families we're training. All education should be based on the value that it creates in the world. Right? Hence, value creation. Kid, healthy struggles create capabilities which create confidence, which create value. Healthy struggles create capability, which creates confidence, which creates value. It's a cycle. We call it the value creation cycle. It's the core of the book. And we need to set up environments for kids to operationalize value creation by consistently going through healthy struggles and helping them grow. A lot of times Parents do things like, I just want to make sure my kids never had to deal with what I had to deal with growing up. I want to make sure my kids will have all the stuff I never had growing up. I want them to have all the opportunities. I don't want them to have to go through the nightmares I had to go through. Well, how do you think you became you? Like, of course you don't pass on trauma, neglect and abuse and things. It's not tough love. But you can put your kids in healthy struggles every day to create material value, emotional value, and spiritual value all around them. And that's the point. And schools miss the boat. Teachers don't want to talk about money, for instance, at all. Like, they're very scared to talk about this one because parents have different viewpoints of debt and investment.

And it's shameful for them because they don't. They're not financially successful themselves. If you're a teacher teaching at a public school, you're not making a lot of money. You don't know how money works.

Yeah, they need the training. They need the support first. Right. And then we get to banks. Don't even get me started. Banks make money when we're bad at banking. Right? Like, they don't care about any kids because kids don't have deposits for them to go leverage with the Feds and make their money. Right. In fact, Brad, why do you have checking accounts if no kid is ever going to write a check ever again? Right. Okay. Talk about archaic.

Oh, I was sitting in the bank the other day with Joseph, my banker, and he's like, oh, you got to now lock all your checks because there's this new check fraud thing that can take it out your account. We can't do anything about it. I'm like, wait a second. You're telling me in 2023.

Oh, my God.

We're still dealing with the same problems that started with Frank Abagnale back in the 60s and 70s? Are you out of your minds?

Chase bank deal with check fraud.

Why do we still have checks? What is wrong with you?

Chase bank spent $300 million last year on financial literacy. Did you hear about it?

Nope.

Nope.

I heard about Kevin Hart. That was about what I heard about.

Yeah, yeah, it's pr. Nobody knows how to teach it to their kids. And here's the third leg of the problem. Parents don't know what to do. They don't have a roadmap. We interviewed a thousand parents when we started all this, and the parents said whether they had A lot of money or not. The ones that had a lot of money said, I don't know how to teach this to my kids, in what order in. And even if they'll listen to me in the first place. The other parents said, we don't want our kids to know what we make. I don't want my kids to know about our debt. I don't even know what to teach them. So everyone has a problem and they're busy. Parents are really busy. And kids, if you don't make and manage money at home, you're not going to care about money. So they don't want to budget, they don't want to think about money, and they're going to wait until they get out into the real world and make all these mistakes and go into debt. Wall Street Journal just put out an article two days ago. The average debt for Gen z went up 40%. Credit card debt last year alone. Yeah, 40%.

They're going to walk onto a college campus. First thing they're going to go to is a kiosk with a credit card application.

And then, congratulations, here's free money. And then you're in debt forever. And so we have a massive, massive hole in, in the development of young people. And so that's what Gravy Stack and the book and the show are filling. So we created an automated roadmap for families to be able to create the home economy for their kids to be able to operationalize value creation and financial competency in the real world. So we have, you know, I love your, your example in school about how you're connecting the lessons learned to the real world. Every single time the kids come into Gravy Stack and play the. It's a bank account. They get a investing account, a savings account, a sharing account, and a spending account for their debit card. And every dollar they make goes through the money machine and the coins fall into the jars. Is it live?

Can we just show them? Is that possible?

Yeah, I'll show you as we talk again.

And we'll, we'll, we'll share screen. That'd be great. I think this is really important. Since we had the visual aid, you could just see it in action. It's pretty awesome. What you guys.

Yeah, I'll be there in a sec. And then, and the reason we do that, you know, they, they literally, they show this swiper and then the kids actually watch the money flow for every dollar that they make. And they even have revenue streams in the bank account. There are pipes of revenue that the coins fall into based on where they made the money. And the reason we do this is pretty simple, and we've patented it. But the reason we do it is because kids have to connect the flow of money. Right? Everyone logs into Chase and Wells Fargo and Bank of America right now, and they see one number and you, they hide the statements because nobody looks at their statements anymore. That's the problem. Right? And then you have, you don't see money coming in, you don't see money coming out. And so what happens is kids, they can't connect the digital flow of money to the real world. Right? You have to connect cash, which is what people used to do, to the digital world. And so our money machine actually shows that. Does that make sense?

That's killer. Yeah.

And it's.

This river of money is flowing around the world. There's trillions of dollars floating around the world, but we don't see it. So we don't really pay attention to it and therefore we never visualize it. But visualizing it really helps you understand and reframe your habits around it. Because a lot of people have a scarcity around money, but there's so much money, it's like there's. There's more money than you could ever fathom and it's all over the place and you just got to be able to visualize it.

That's right. So when parents come into the app, they sign up for their kids. The games are free to play. The bank accounts like seven bucks a month, price of a cup of coffee. And then in the third game in the missions, they save $550 on average in the subscription hunt, by the way. So it pays for us for seven years. But here's the cool part. When I sign up as a, like, they add their kids and the kids come and they play a hundred games in the bank account app to become fully financially competent and add it to practical use in the real world. That's the key. You're not just playing games. You know, 30 of these hundred games are real life missions, subscription hunts, coupons for groceries where you like, rank against your friends based on how many coupons you can get dinner. Budget challenges, where you're making dinner on a budget for your family. Tax saving challenges, family travel planning, budget challenges for the kids. They're doing a job fair tree house where they're learning the price of every job in America, what they'll make. And they have to help characters in the game figure out the right job based on their education and their skills and what they love. And then my favorite part, they have to help those characters in the game live on the monthly revenue from the job. So then they go through the budgeting game. So you see how this actually makes kids learn it rather than great. Here's a, here's homework kid. Go, go home tonight and make a fake budget. No one's going to do that. So here is the actual homepage of the kids bank account. There you create an avatar. There's over 800,000 variations. You earn grits in the game, the banking is real money, but the game, it has grits that you up level. You compete with your friends on leaderboards. If I click on bank on the bottom left, it's like a little jar with coins. It pops up. The money machine.

Boom, boom.

So if you see this, the money machine is revenue streams. You're going to see random text coming in. Revenue streams for home gigs, community gigs and extra pay. So the kids learn how to create money at home and in the community. And they get paid by doing it. Because a kid has to learn how to make money first before they can learn how to manage it. Right. If someone gives you money, this is why allowance is a terrible idea. If someone gives you money for free, you will not manage it correctly.

You will not value it.

You won't value it. You have to earn the value to manage it well. So then once they make the money, watch this. I swipe the bar. The bubble of money pops out. That's a pay for mom and dad. Extra pay goes into their bank account and then auto splits between their save spend and share accounts. You see that?

Yeah.

The coins flow based on the percentage they set up for each jar. So it's auto saving, auto sharing, auto spending, auto investing. It shows them that flow. So when they play this game, they see their last 10 transactions. This is our replacement for monthly statements because nobody looks at them. Then when you go into the game, here's the game of Windfall. It's a bunch of characters and these are all covered in clouds because like.

Mario or Donkey Kong where you got to kind of like navigate through the island.

That's right. So if I click on Savings Beach, I see the gecko who's the guardian of the first savings beach. And he says, let's go. And he puts me into Savings Beach. Okay, so this is 10 missions all around. Saving for kids. They do their money motto. They, they have their subscription hunt. They do the wants versus needs minigame challenge against their friends to beat the high scores. They learn over 200 wants and needs they emergency expense, water balloon fight with a hyena to learn, 30 types of emergency expenses to save for and a bunch more things and then practical real life challenges that they have to bring back the results into the game to up level and grow in the game and get higher ranking.

I was going to ask if there's a desktop version, then I kind of answered my own question. Why would you have a desktop version for a kid that only has a phone? Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah. But there will be, there will be tablet and we will have PC versions for schools and stuff because a bunch of schools are lined up for this. But most of this will be Android, iOS and then like iPad and Chrome stuff. I love it.

Is there any game that teaches them how to buy quality versus crap? Like, you know, so you don't have to purchase the same thing over and over again. You could just buy once and buy quality.

We have a bulk, we have a quality versus cheap and a bulk versus generic or sorry, bulk versus single and then generic versus quality game where they actually go and they find ways to get bulk things that are cheaper per unit. Okay. So if we're going to the store, we might as well buy a little bit more if we have a larger family that lasts us a little bit longer so it's cheaper per. Right. Or you know, you could buy the really cruddy equipment for sports that breaks in six, you know, weeks. Or you could get something that's going to last you for years so they have to make these trade offs.

Yeah. I have this personally because I just went to Costco with Jasmine for the first time. I haven't been to like Costco in 15 years because I associate when I start going to Costco means I'm old. Right. My mom and my stepdad always, oh.

I go to Costco every week.

Yeah, of course, because you have a giant family. Right. But we're two people so we're like just starting to get into it. So we get our Costco card and I start doing all the math. I start reading up on Costco. You know, I've had the same hot dog and soda combo since 1983. It's still a $50. They're losing money on that thing for like the last two decades. That's one thing. They only ever mark anything up 15%. So that's just to keep the employees paid and the lights on. And they only make profit on their fricking subscription. So that $60 a year subscription is the only way to make any profit. It's wild and they're the fifth largest retailer in the US So. But it's not always cheaper. Like I was going through my Amazon app. Sometimes Amazon was a little bit cheaper, sometimes it's the same and sometimes it was like half the price. So you got to really like kind of go through once and play that game and it's kind of fun to see what's what. And then, you know, see, this is.

The stuff that most people don't learn. You know, you and I are experts at this, but most people never learn this. They don't even know why. You know, when I get a paycheck, I don't just blow it, right? So the fact that we're auto splitting it into saving and investing and sharing and spending, it trains this in kids. And this is the goal of what we're doing. I mean, there is a game in the second level called Swap and they literally have to go to a yard sale in the neighborhood and flip products and make profit. So teaching them assets, appreciating Gary Vee.

Gecko is the, is the character Gary.

V. We're going to get Gary Vee on this level. I'm hoping to get Gary Vee to do the second video for the second level, which we're working on right now. And they, and then they have to go find things around the house that mom and dad don't want and sell them online safely, but sell them online for a profit. Kids have to learn these practical skills. These are very, very practical skills. The average family in the subscription hunt saves $547. The kids do it all. Average family in beta saves that much. The average family saves 26% on their grocery bill when the kids do the coupon hunt. And then my favorite game out of all of them might be the Broke Celebrity Challenge because they, they meet over 50 fake celebrities that are connected to real life. Celebrities that made more than $20 million and then lost it all. It's in the, it's in the spending woods, the third level. So they learn you can't just out make bad spending. You have to spend less than you make. That's the goal. So they learn this through interviewing these characters. It's like a puzzle style game. And they realize that this is actually connected to real life. Like they meet MC Screwdriver who lost all his money. They meet in the game, he's an athlete. So they do all these things to like realize, oh yeah, I have to be saving and using these fun principles throughout my life. I love it.

I love it because you came back you're utilizing the time and the energy and the attention of the children because they have a lot more of that. Like, parents are so busy, they're too busy to learn and do this stuff themselves. They use a refresher. And now you're getting the kids to learn it as well as actually save you money, which is great. So it's like, not only are you educating your kids, you're giving them a leg up, but you're actually saving money in the process because they're going to help you manage your household more. Because, like, you just don't have the time to do all this nitpicky stuff. You don't have time to go clip coupons. Who the hell's doing.

That's right.

No, I'm not taking. My kids don't have time cycling.

Who. What?

Who's going to do that? But the kids love it.

Yeah, my. My favorite part of the app is the home economy system that. That saves parents the most time. So Jumpstart Coalition did a study, and they found they're like, one of the largest economic education groups. We help them a lot. They found that allowance is tied to a lack of work and an aversion to work and a lack of motivation in kids. And most parents in America, they do three mistakes. First one, they give their kids an allowance, which is like basically socialism, here's free money, or the second thing. And then the kids just. All they do is they want to spend it. Right. And even if they split it up into three sections, they're still getting free money. They're not learning to create value. The second one is like, well, I pay my kids allowance for chores. Well, the stats are that 75% of parents still pay their kids the allowance even if they didn't do the chores. Right. And then how are you actually teaching the kid the value of what they're doing if you're just making them do a big list of things for one allowance? And then a lot of things shouldn't be paid for. There's things that you need to do in this home as an expectation, not pay. Like, you're going to get up, make your bed, clean your room, take out the trash, do the dishes, brush your teeth, do your best in school, like that. I'm not paying you for that. That's part of being a Donald. That's part of being in my family. That's rent. Right. And then the third mistake is parents go, I don't pay my kids anything. They're the good kids that do all their chores anyway. It's like, okay, well that kid will never learn financial competency. Then you're paying for everything for them. You're buying all their travel, toys, trinkets, outings, social outings with friends. You're buying all the birthday presents for their parties. We need to start passing this stuff off to our kids to help them become financially competent. So in the app we created Home gigs and we patented it. Home gigs is a three step process to the home economy. The first one, expectations. You set the expectations for your kids. Here's what we expect you to do in the home for free. Okay? This is your table stakes, like the things I mentioned. The second one, expenses. There's 12 expenses that most parents don't let their kids pay for. They pay for it for their kids. Things like the toys, the in app purchases, the technology, the extra sporting equipment, social outings with friends, birthday presents. And then when they're a little bit older, it's like gas for car and insurance and stuff or 50% of the car payment, whatever it would be, right? They pay for that stuff for their kids. And if you can actually say no, we're Starting at age 8, we're going to have start transitioning all these expenses to our kids by the time they're 16, then those kids will become financially responsible in your home, which is the goal. And now you have hundreds of dollars a month saved that you don't have to buy to pay the kids in Home Gigs. That's the third e extra pay. So we have this system in the app that is 55 home gigs that kids can do for pay a couple dollars here, a couple dollars there, sweep the garage, pump up the bike tires, you know, wash the windows, clean a floor, make a meal, clean a bathroom, organize a closet, alphabetize my books, do stuff in the yard, take care of the animal, whatever. Parents choose what's expected and what's for pay. But now the kids are starting to connect. Value creation, that's the key. So then the kids start earning money and they just check it off in the app and it auto repeats every day, week, month or one offs for the parents. So it's set at once and forget it. You get a print off for the fridge, the kids see exactly what they have to do. And my favorite part about this system is that kids stop asking mom and dad for money ever again within like four weeks of doing it. Now that is powerful. The bank of mom and dad will shut down when they get their driver's license, you know what I mean? Instead of going on into their 20s and 30s and sometimes even 40 years old. Right.

I think kids need to realize, like, even if your parents wanted to, they can't like pay your way for their whole life, right? They just can't do it, like until you can get out there and just make value happen. That's the biggest shift I see in adults when I work with them to build their masterminds, their businesses, is like the second you realize you can create something from nothing with a complete stranger, your whole worldview shifts. It's like, oh, what else could I do? Like, and it's the same process to sell something intangible or something tangible to something like a skyscraper or a huge project or whatever it is just multiple sales and you can learn that skill. It's like unbelievable. And then you back that up with the integrity to actually deliver and over deliver, you're in really good shape.

This the fastest way to promotion, the fastest way to getting any job is learning a valuable skill that creates value in the world. That should be the focus. A valuable skill is 10 times more powerful than a degree today, not just like in a few years right now. And so kids that have the lens, this is why value creation kid is so powerful. I mean, I just woke up this morning, we sold another 3,000.

Wow.

It's going organic, dude. Parents are like some light bulb moment I think is happening right now because they're seeing the education system. Here's what happened. Covid hit. Two things happen. Kids come home from school and two really powerful things happen. Kids learned first what their parents did all day, right? And then number two, parents learned what their kids were learning in school or not learning. So there is a massive movement right now for a transformation and an innovation in the education system. And so parents are seeing if I can get my kid to have a lens. How do I create value in the world, Material value, emotional value and spiritual value for myself and my community and everyone around me. It's the antidote for entitlement. It's the antidote for self doubt and anxiety. It's the antidote for laziness and victimhood. This is the model. And so parents are seeing, okay, I can take control again and make sure my kid's ready to succeed in the real world just by giving them the lens of value creation. And a kid that enters the real world to add value to their friends, add value to their school, whatever, they go to college or not, add value to their community, their work, that's the fastest way to success, is adding value.

And it's crazy to me that nobody's tackled this gigantic problem until now.

Sharon Lecter. Sharon Lecter is the queen. She rich dad, poor dad, you know, she's got 14 bestselling books. She's basically been the goat for financial literacy for the last 30 years. She's just turned 80. She was Obama and Bush's head of the National Financial Standards for a decade. She passed the baton to me two weeks ago. She's like, go. What you have is a grassroots ground up movement that kids can intrinsically now turn this into something operational that's practical. We've been trying. She's been trying for 30 years to go top down through the education system. And she gets blocked by every union known to man. That's why the schools can't teach it. So the fact that we're going grass groundswell in the home with kids falling in love and adding all their friends, she's like, this is actually the way to move that needle. So I think that's why it hasn't worked. Because again, you can't homework your way to financial competency. You can't learn money the way you learn other things in school. Money has to be. You have to feel the sting of making a dumb decision. You have to feel the struggle, the healthy struggle of earning a dollar by creating value. That's how it's learned. And I would argue that's how all education is supposed to be done. But especially money, especially financial competency.

Yeah. And I'm just kind of like. Because, you know, you block out a lot of memories from childhood. This is bringing up stuff like, I remember when I was 12 and started mowing lawns. I remember when I was 13, I was like a plumber's apprentice and getting high on glue all day. Like all this weird stuff I would do to like make a buck. And then I worked on a shooting range and like, you know, I kind of learned accidentally. And then I'm thinking, like, who else learned how to be entrepreneurial at that time? And the only ones I could think of were the drug dealers. The only people I could think of that actually learned how to run a business in any way, shape or form, like manage inventory, have a customer base, you know, deal with regulatory issues, so to speak.

I know, you're right. So here's, here's the thing. Only 5% of kids have that hustle gene.

Yeah, right.

My friend Gina Wickman, founder of eos, he's an investor in Gravy Stack. He wrote the Entrepreneurial Leap. And in all his studies, he's showing only 5% of kids have that entrepreneur die hard gene like you and me. The other 95% just don't have the gene. But here's the issue. Entrepreneurship as a word is kind of becoming a. Some people it's a heroic term. Other people, it's a cuss word because parents that aren't entrepreneurs, they're like, I don't want my kids to be an entrepreneur and go lose all their money and gamble it away and screw up their life. I'm not an entrepreneur. So I don't want my, I don't, I'm, I don't want my kids to know about that. Right? And the truth is, some kids should not be entrepreneurs. They should be working for somebody else.

My adults shouldn't be either.

But yeah, yeah, that's, that's, yeah, a lot of adults. But it's fine to do it if you have the gene, right? If you don't have the gene, then you, what you, but you, what you do have to do is you have to learn to be entrepreneurial. Because what an entrepreneur does is they create value, they solve problems for a profit. You want to get a job, solve a problem in the business, you want to get a promotion. Add value to everyone around you and replace yourself and you'll get promoted. It's the same principles. I mean, I, I've worked for companies my first few jobs. I've been an entrepreneur my whole life, but I've worked in for other companies and I was getting promoted every week because I would see the problem, see how to fix it, become like an intrapreneur and just get, explode within the organization. It's the best way anyone can grow, right? Anyone in sales knows how to add value. Anybody in tech knows how to add value. Like if you have this lens, the entrepreneurial skills, you can actually thrive. But if you stay, if you steer clear of it, you're just going to be plotting. It's just a plot mentality. And so what I want to try to get away from is the whole education system right now is pass the test so that the teacher can say that the kids passed the Common Core test, get the grade so you can get into the school so you can get the degree so you can get the job. How does that add value to anybody?

Is that even really the model anymore? I mean, that's what they're promoting it.

To be, but that's not, that's not the model.

And that, that stopped being a thing. I realized when I got out of college. I had this degree and a hundred.

Thousand dollars in debt? Yeah.

No, me, Luckily, I. I was smart enough not to get through that. My parents luckily got out without any debt, but going out in the job market in 2007, shotgunning my resume 200 times just to get one interview where they sat me down and said, hey, you don't have your PhD listed here. Where'd you get that? Sir, I don't have my PhD. But if I did, what would you pay me? Just humor me here. We pay our PhDs 35,000 a year. I'm like, I'm making triple that as a bartender. You want me to go to eight more years of school, write a book, go $100,000 in debt, $250,000 in debt, and then you'll pay me 35 grand? Forget it. So I realized it was kind of a sham at that point, but it's just wild to think about, man. It's really wild. And we need to teach kids how to play to win, not just play, not to lose. That's exactly the biggest thing, you know, like, how do you win this game? What is the game? A right. There is a game. We gotta know there's a game. What is the game? What are the rules, and what's the strategy that's gonna actually produce teaching?

Teaching to the lowest common denominator is not the same as creating value. That's. You know, I think we talked about math earlier in this episode, and we say this in the book. The perhaps the most important math that we could ever learn is the future impact of the decisions we make today. That's my argument in one of the chapters. If you could actually get an idea and a lens to see the world and create value from what you're doing right now and connect it to the delayed gratification and compounding of value in the future, it would be the fastest way to make a kid move across the action line to change. Hmm. But they're so protected or insulated from seeing it that way that it's just all about whatever classes I'm in, whatever clicks I'm in, whatever likes I can get on social media. And I'll deal with the future when I graduate and leave the nest.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, right?

So we really want to help parents make their lives easier. We really want to help kids start to have this lens of, how can I create value in my home right now? How can I create value in my neighborhood? It's not just money, man. Like, you should create emotional value with everyone you interact with. You're doing it for me. Right now you're giving me an incredible lift from the chaos of my life and all these boxes. And you should create spiritual value all around you. And spiritual value just means how are you connecting yourself and everyone around you to something greater? Right. Obviously I'm a man of faith, so that's my spiritual value is, is Jesus. But you know what else was spiritual value in the 60s? We're going to take a man, we're going to put him on the moon, and we're going to return him safely by the end of the decade. How much do you think that united our country? You know what I mean? That's a way to lift people up to something greater. Any business that has a mission, that's, that's spiritual value. You're lifting a community, right? You're lifting people up to a common goal and a common cause. That is value. So we want to get kids to think, how can I create material value by what I create and produce? How can I create emotional value by way that think the way I think and feel and make others think and feel? And spiritual value connecting people to something greater. Right?

Yeah, that's, that's so underpinned lately. You know, there's so many downtrodden, naysayers and people who are low vibe just like pissing all over inspiration these days. Like it's easy to tear people down. It's harder to build something, you know, teach kids that they need to be building something. It's the man in the arena that matters, not the one on the side jeering. You know.

That's right.

That's right.

And if we can get kids to think that way, it actually here's the irony. You know the subtitle of the book, the healthy struggles your children need to succeed. So many parents insulate their kid from healthy struggles. They push to get their kid the playing time on the sports team without the kid doing the effort. They fight the teacher for the good grade. They do the science project for the science fair for the kids so they look cool. I had a friend in high school that got the driver's ed teacher fired because her daughter failed the test. Okay, how is that helping kids grow? How is that adding value? Right? It's not. And so the book has 90 healthy struggles that are not taught in schools that every kid needs to learn and go through by the time they leave the nest. Not just financial competency. I mean, we have soft skills, hard skills, relational skills, career skills, practical business skills, technology skills, online security skills, budgeting skills. Like these are critical. And they're all healthy struggles. And when we say healthy struggle, it's not the same as trauma. It's not tough love. You know, we don't want to pass on to our kids generational trauma, you know, neglect, abuse, abandonment, all this stuff. Right. But a healthy struggle actually help kids, helps kids thrive, and it actually can bring you closer to them, a deeper, more loving relationship with your kids. Right. That's the point of the book, is how do we operationalize a system in the home where kids go through healthy struggles and then the parents have, you know, there's no more bribery, there's no more coercion, there's no more power struggles. You become this, you know, loving coach to the kid to go through healthy struggle, and you. You change your mindset. Like something tough has a big payoff at the other at the end. We just talked about this at the beginning of the episode. Difficult things when accomplished and overcome build confidence and capability for the rest of their life. So parents need to have this mindset. How do I get my kids in a cycle of value creation with everything in their life, how can I coach them and work with them and love them through this and help them go through struggles and see it as a good thing because of the. The benefit on the other side? You know, it's an upward spiral. Healthy struggle, capability, confidence, value creation in a big old cycle. Right? That's the way out. Sharon Lecter said this to me a couple weeks ago, and I've. I'll never forget it. Her dad. This is how Sharon Lecter said she became Sharon Lecter. Her dad, every night when she. He would put her down for bed starting at age 3, would say this one question. What value did you create for someone today?

Wow.

And I'm now doing that with my kids in the last two weeks. Powerful, man, that raising a kid that way will change their life forever. And if Sharon was raised that way and became who she was, imagine what millions of other families can do by doing that one. It's way better than saying, what'd you learn in school today? Right. How was school today? Good. Right. What value did you create for someone today? What a heck of a question. What a dinner conversation starter that is.

It's a great question. I love it. That's powerful. All right, Scott, how can we support you? It is the Make More Marvels podcast. We want to make sure we're out there, you know, hustling, shaking, moving trees, doing things, making sure you're out there and visible. What can we do to help?

Yeah, well, I mean, anybody you know, with kids join the movement. So I think best way to help grab the book, obviously we're, you know, value creation kid. It's on anywhere you buy books or listen to books. We're rolling this week. Wrote it with Lee Benson who you know is, is an absolute dear friend and a gem. He's like the next John C. Maxwell. He's an absolute stud. So the book is, it's a huge one. And then we have the smart money parenting show on Apple that's number two in the world for families now, which is bite sized content for families to be able to listen to. It's I'm doing that with Chad Wilson, my buddy. And then the app, the app goes live in a couple weeks. You can join the wait list@gravystack.com if you go to gravy stack.com Scott, you'll get some extra stuff on there and then, yeah, anybody you have like we're going to be launching in two months, we're going to launch a huge affiliate program with kind of a team of an army of financial literacy ambassadors. So these are financial planners that want to get out to all their clients and see the success of their clients schools and PTAs that want to bring it to their school. And then these are influencers that are, they become financial literacy ambassadors and send out Gravy Stack and the content and how they're using it and their families using it to their audience. So that's a massive army of people that we're launching in a little bit. So they can just go to gravy stack.com partner if they want to join us and join the movement with us. And then you can just follow me on social. I'm Scott Donald, all over the place.

So that's S C O T T D O double N, E double L. That's it, man. Scott, thank you so much for being on the show, brother. I'm so grateful for your stand, your mission in the world. It's been awesome to get to know you and Amy and I hope to meet the kids again soon and you're just a rock star, man. Thanks for doing what you're doing and keep it up.

So great to hang out, man. Thanks for the break and the little bit of mental levity. Appreciate it.

My pleasure. Bye everybody.