The Parenting Framework Every Family Needs

If you are a parent, you are not gonna wanna miss this episode with my good friends and co-authors of the Miracle Morning for Parents and Families, Mike and Lindsay McCarthy. I've known Mike and Lindsay for over a decade. We co-authored this book. Uh, we were neighbors for many years and, uh, they're two of my favorite people because they're two of the most intentional human beings on the planet, specifically when it comes to parenting. You're about to learn how creating family values, operating family meetings, and other rituals that are taught in the Miracle Morning for Parents and Families Playbook, uh, these systems and rhythms enable you to create a culture in your family that not only creates love and connection, that not only instills values in your children that you want them to have, but creates a lasting effect so that long after they're adults and they're out of the house, they want to keep coming back and they're living their lives in a way that is consistent with the values that you instilled. And the reality is most of us parents are unintentional and myself included. And then we look back with regret going, oh man, I really wish I would've done this or that. No matter what age your kids are, if you are a parent, this episode will help you be the intentional parent that your kids deserve. Mike McCarthy, Lindsay, so good to be with you.

You too, Hal.

That was such a formal introduction. Uh, we were talking about like we do life together for those that don't know. You know, like we vacation together, we do dinners. We used to be neighbors. Sadly, I moved out of the neighborhood. So that's—

Regrets it too.

I know. Yeah. A little bit. Every time I see you guys, but then I see some of our other neighbors and I'm like, ah, that was a good move. We all know, you know who you are.

It averages out.

Yeah. It averages out.

Didn't wanna deal with the HOA.

Yeah.

So again, for those that you've been on the podcast, I don't even know. It's, I didn't check the episode. It's been probably a couple years since y'all were on. Um, but I was talking about our book together, The Miracle Morning for Parents and Families. This is the revised and updated edition that y'all came to me and you're like, "Hey, we've learned so much as a family. We want to update the book," which was cool. So, we did that. And then, y'all came up with this. And this to me, they go together so well, but this is the Miracle Morning for Parents and Families Playbook, the companion guide to the Miracle Morning for Parents and Families. And I just want to start here because this is kind of the work that we've done together in the world. I wanna say this before we transition into what y'all are up to right now, which is the reason that we did this book together is because Lindsay, you approached me with Tyler, who was like 6 or 7 at the time.

Yeah.

Just little. And you're like, hey Hal, I was speaking at an event. You're like, my, was it One Life Fully Lived that I was speaking at?

Yeah. Yep.

Like, my son wants to read you his affirmations. His, you know, they were like arranged by the alphabet, right? Mm-hmm. And I was, I was like, this is amazing. And you're like, yeah, we do like our Miracle Morning, but we adjusted the SAVERS into a new acronym called CHARMS. You know, creativity is the C, right? And I was just so blown away. I was like, do you guys want to write the— like, you're literally the embodiment. And at that point, and even since then, like, my kids don't do the Miracle Morning. So I wasn't even qualified to write the book from that stance. So with all of that, I want to— I guess where to start. How did— let's actually start here. How did y'all start doing the Miracle Morning with your kids? Where did that come about?

I guess I could take that one. So when our kids were young, we homeschooled them. And, you know, our mornings were a little messy. And so the CHARMS, as we came to call them, they really like anchored our day. And as a homeschool mom, like if I only got through the CHARMS, it was a successful day.

Nice. Yeah. Run through the CHARMS real quick for those that don't know. Yeah.

So CHARMS is creativity, health, affirmations, reading, meditation, and service. And so like service was the one we kind of really added. The other ones are kind of adaptations of the SAVERS.

Yeah.

Um, but one of our personal family values is to be servant leaders. So we're like, why don't we bake that into our everyday morning ritual?

Yes, I love that. Yeah. And creativity is also new and different in that it's not part of the SAVERS and it just makes sense for when you're having kids do it, right?

It was part of scribing. Okay. The kids didn't know how to write. Ember was 2, Tyler was 6. Like they were just learning letters. So we expanded it to be creativity and they could—

and so what would they do? Play?

Color?

Draw?

Yeah, we'd give them, they had like a whole little art studio in our kitchen and they had paper and scissors and crayons and markers.

Which is for kids, like, so they're getting to play. It could be, it could have been a P, if it was P it'd be play. And then service, what did that look like every day?

I mean, basically chores.

Okay. Um, but it was contributing to the family.

Yeah. Family contribution is what we like to call it. So they were picking up their toys, but every day they would kind of come to me and say, mommy, what can I do for service today? So it was really just like getting them in the mindset of it's not all about me. We're a family. We work together. It's teamwork.

Beautiful. Love that. So it's instilling values plus personal development. Like there's so many layers to the benefits that the, the kids and the family as a, as a unit experiences. Mike, Did you, so you were the, you're a founder of GoBundance, one of the co-founders and, uh, that, is that where we met? Do you remember?

Yeah.

Okay. Well, actually I first saw you at One Life.

Okay.

Okay.

I got it.

Speak there and then I spoke at GoBundance. Spoke at GoBundance and then became friends.

And then, um, yes, we have become very good friends. Do you, oh, by the way, this dude, thank you for this.

Yeah.

This wrist, this bracelet that I got in the mail. It was like, I, I was like, this is big. I don't know that I'd wear this, but now I told Ursula, I put it on, I was like, I'm kind of getting used to this. I think I'm going to keep it on.

You always wear it when you're going to see me, at least.

I literally said that. Yeah. I'm like, sweetie, I'm like, I don't know if I'm going to wear this every day, but I'm definitely going to wear it. I'm going out to dinner with Mike and Lindsay tomorrow and have them on the podcast. So, were you— who brought the Miracle Morning in? Like, who read the book first?

I think we saw you speak first. And then we read your book. Or we saw you speak, went to a Tony Robbins event together, and then read the book, and then we're like on fire, on fire, and just sort of like momentum with our family wanting to do personal development and not wanting to let our— the fact that we had young children get in the way of that. Because I think a lot of us let our— that be our biggest excuse, like, oh, I'm too busy, I can't, I don't have time to carve out for myself. Sure. When really that's the best thing you can do for yourself is father or a mother who's overworked and tired and stressed is to take time for yourself. And when you really get to the bottom of it, the SAVERS, the CHARMS, they're really about carving out time for yourself, for self-care.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, that's, that's how I often explain it is like the Miracle Morning, when I first did it, I didn't have kids and it was just my selfish pursuit of like, I've gotta overcome my obstacles. And, but then it's like, now I do it to be the dad. And to be the husband that my wife deserves. And right, it's like to show up at your best for the people, not just for yourself, but the people that you love.

The—

Mike, you're, you're a high-level entrepreneur, extremely intentional. So it would seem that this would fit into you being like, you've got a ton of structure, you're very intentional in your business. Talk about some of the things— obviously, Miracle Morning, Charms is a big one. What are some of the things that you guys have done as a family in terms of intentional parenting that you now lead other people. You founded FamBundance, which we'll talk about that in a sec, or bring it in whenever you want. But yeah, what are some of the things that you teach in the playbook, the things that you do? I know you have a live event coming up in July at the lake event for families. Talk about some of the intentional things that you do as a family. If you go to your house, and I know I'm not letting you answer the question, I'm interrupting, but you go to your house, right? You've got the McCarthy family values are on the wall, and it's not like a printout from a a home printer. It's like an etched in stone, like gorgeous, you know, like every time you do it, they get bigger and better and they're up on the wall. So talk about some of the intentional parenting that y'all have integrated into your family.

Well, I think the first thing to say, which brings us kind of full circle, is the reason that we did a second edition and did a playbook to begin with is because we had learned so much about parenting in the 5 years between publishing the first edition and publishing the second edition. And we realized that the first edition was great. It did a lot for parents. But what we learned was that there was a lot of work that needed to be done with the family that was really like exercises and things where we needed to have conversations and really get together and make decisions together, compromise, conflict, and have it be healthy and done in a way that was was good for teaching our children how to do it in the future, but also good for us as a family in the present. And so we started to do more and more with our family meetings. That became really crucial. We started to do more and more with like our family goals. Those are two of the crucial, I think, elements of the Miracle Morning for Parents and Families playbook that we teach. And, um, when we moved to write the, the latest playbook or, or workbook that we're working through right now, it's not released, it's not for public consumption, it's something that you just get if you come to our FAMbundance events. But it is, um, got a couple, uh, similar exercises to the, the Miracle Morning for, uh, parents and families, but it's, it's very different. And it's almost like the, the first of Miracle Morning lays the foundation. The Playbook lays another foundation and is for, I would say, for when you have younger kids, it works really well. Like I would say like the 4 to 12 range is when we kind of wrote that. We had like a lot of wisdom. It's like every time you master one level of parenting, then they get older and you're like, "Shit, now I'm on my own." I don't know this. Model, this version, where's the, where's the instruction manual?

Yeah.

So we, you know, so what we ended up doing is creating a blueprint that was really to start to create culture within the family. So it goes beyond just our rituals and our rhythms related to personal development and carving space and time out, but actually how we behave, how we interact, how we agree to do life together. And so, we created sort of a three-prong framework in our latest work, which is Dream, Define, and Do. And so, when you look at what a family does together, it's much like what a team does. They're dreaming about something they want to create or individually get out of their role in the job, in the company, in the team, or they're— thinking about collectively what are our goals, what are, what are our dreams. And then Define is all about our identity, who we are, what our mission is, what our beliefs are, and what our values are. And then the Do part is the interesting thing. It's the operating system for a family. And so now we're creating an operating system for a family that looks a little different than when we had younger kids. So now we have a kid—

how old are your kids now?

17 and 13. So we have— and the 17-year-old might as well be 27.

Sure.

So yeah, he's super independent, um, he knows what he wants, knows what he's into. He, he requi— he, he's very intelligent. Yeah. So it requires very little, like he thinks he already knows everything.

Yeah.

Um, so You know, we're in a different stage of parenting where we're now trying to build an adult relationship with our, with our kids. And we're trying to leave a legacy that's really about keeping the family together and making sure that our kids come back to us.

Yeah.

You know, I love Jim and Jamie Shields and they talk about—

they wrote the foreword for this—

18 Summers. And I agree, we need to cherish that because that's when we can tell them this is where we're going.

Yeah.

And you're coming with us. Like, and we lose that sort of control. So I get their paradigm.

Yeah.

But I like the paradigm of if you do it right, there's 19— the 19th, 20th, 21st summer.

What are the next 80 summers after the first 18?

Yeah. What do those look like? Can we get— can we have adult relationships where they come back? And so the, the, the, the family— the, the family, um, legacy blueprint, which is what we've been working on now, and this really consists of all the exercises we've been doing over time with families in FamBundance. And FamBundance is what you mentioned is the events that we do where we bring families together, where they get facilitated through Define, Dream, and Do. Because sitting around a dinner, the dinner table where one parent has to be the, the prodder or the, the go-getter that's like pushing everyone forward, which can be a challenge.

Yeah.

Even if you're the greatest leader in the world, it might even make it more difficult. Yeah, because they're, they're just tired of hearing it all the time.

Of being led.

Yeah. Being led. They're like exhausted of all the leading already going on. Yeah. And so, you know, if you can sit down and do this, this workbook though, I think it really— and Lindsey can talk to like her perspective of it. If you do it in an environment where there's other families, we really make it fun and tan— and, and really accessible so that it's really like in quick 30-minute increments you're having like pretty serious conversations about stuff that matters a whole lot when it comes to like efficiency, things being smooth and easy at home. Like a lot of that is just a matter of how intentional we are on the front end. And you mentioned that I bring a lot of my intentionality in business into the way that we lead and run our family. And I think that's true. I always want a system for how we do things. Yeah, I'm very system-focused. That's what's made me successful in business. And I think I've tried to really bring that home into the family so that we can be as systematized as possible. And so, you know, we run the plays and to be honest, we're not that, you know, we're 75% sure out of 100.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, we're not perfect at any of this stuff. So I don't want to profess or come across as like—

I've hung out with you enough to know. Yeah, she's good. No, but she's closer to perfect.

I almost had the audience convinced they I thought you were believing me for a minute that I had it all figured out, but no, I don't. It's like, it is very difficult. And this really, the work we do lays the foundation for a legacy to be built. A lot of people think the legacy is about the financial structures and the wealth and the IRAs and the retirements, you know, the 401s, the things we do with all of the money that we make and the wealth. But the legacy really is about the values, tradition, things, the ways that you treat each other, and even the ways that we treat milestones in each— in our lives. Like, there's a lack of sort of rites of passage that we've lost in our world where I think it's important to really celebrate. And some of them are rites of passage that they didn't have back in the day, like when you get your first cell phone or your first debit card or You know, there's these certain times when we want to memorialize them, but we want to— if we don't get intentional and write down what we're going to do, then we'll never do it.

Yeah.

Like, we might like, like, oh, I remembered we were going to do this thing and you might squeeze it in. Yeah. But if you're intentionally like, hey, this is how we want to do this for our— this part of our child's milestone, and we have so many of them that memorializing those is another thing that I think is really important to a family legacy, like remo— remembering those moments where you move from one stage to the next.

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We're not perfect. Our goal right now is to do 2 a month.

Month. Okay, and back up, like, talk about the evolution. So like, talk about when— how old were the kids when you started family meetings? And then you can kind of lead us up to like what it is now. It's to— what was it like before when they were younger, and how has that evolved?

Yeah, so we probably started family meetings when the kids were like 4 and 8.

Yeah.

Okay.

And we did them weekly.

Yeah, we did them weekly, and we literally had a whiteboard painted on the wall in our kitchen, and we would write up we had like little balance sheets for the kids and yeah, we wrote up the calendar. We had like a quote for the week. Um, but it was really, the whole design is just to keep us on the same page.

And so what types of things are you talking about?

Yeah, so something that's been very consistent, we always start with gratitude. Mm-hmm. Of course. We do something we call a gratitude shower. So each person in the family will say why they're grateful for Dad and we'll go around and each person gets Uh, gratitude.

And then they say why they're grateful for themselves, and then we go to the next person.

Okay, so you start with gratitude and then what's—

always start with gratitude to kick it off.

Yeah.

And then it really depends on what we're working on, but we always go over the calendar if we have like a vacation or something coming up, or a milestone like Mike was talking about, a rite of passage, or, um, you mentioned goals, family goals.

What are some family goals that you guys have together?

Um, to visit grandparents a certain amount of times, to travel together. Um, the kids each have individual goals. Everybody's working on a hard goal and a fun goal.

Okay.

Um, so like, I think Ember's hard goal right now is to finish 7th grade. Okay.

She's 13, right?

She's 13.

That's her hard goal. Okay. And then, and then there's a fun goal.

And her fun goal, do you remember her fun goal?

Volunteer?

Oh yeah, at the animal shelter once And that, by the way, shows how you guys have instilled the value of service. Like her fun goal is volunteering. Yeah, right. Which, yeah, that's, it's incredible. The so family goals and then what was the other one you talked about? You said family goals.

So we do, we also do peak experiences. So we'll talk about like what are all of the, the, the highlight moments that we've had, what's the highlight reel since our last meeting.

Okay, got it.

So we'll call out in that time When did you see somebody living the values? So that's a place where we'll actually bring our values to life and be like, yeah, Amber was really a resilient warrior at the dentist this week. She got, you know, she got a tooth pulled or whatever and was resilient.

Tyler. Tyler. So you're recognizing the kids and calling out what they did.

And, and then I was just going to ask you, we're calling them up as we like to say.

Okay. Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Versus calling them out. Calling out is when you're in trouble. Yeah. Calling up. Okay. And so, the FamBundance, let's talk about that. So, you co-founded GoBundance with David Osborn, another Miracle Morning co-author, Miracle Morning Millionaires, Pat Hybin, Tim Rhoades.

Hal Elrod, who did One Life Fully Lived, where we met.

One Life Fully Lived, right? Yeah, there's so much, everybody's got their own things and then integrates together. So, you founded GoBundance, and then didn't you seem, like, weren't you the person, or you were the couple that decided to do FamBundance? Talk about that, 'cause you were doing this, men's mastermind for wealthy men who wanted to build legacies and have this great family. But it was all integrated in, you know, success more than it seems like then, and fulfillment. What was the branch off to FamBundance?

So I ended up becoming the CEO of GoBundance. I was a co-founder and then became CEO in 2015.

Okay.

And the reason I did was because I had just replaced myself in my real estate business. And I was like, oh, I have some free time. And I immediately filled it with something else to do, just like any entrepreneur would do. So I take this other role on and I immediately had this like sense of regret because I realized that I had just traded like time with my family for this opportunity to lead, to lead another company. And I'm like, do I— why am I doing this really? And when I looked at what I was trying to do was transform men's lives. The reason I took the CEO role was because I really believed that I could give back to GoBundance members what it had given to me because it had transformed my life. I had David as a mentor. We, we did all of the things that we teach in GoBundance. We did in our, our lives flourished with abundance. Yeah. And so I felt this duty, this call, being the youngest of the elders to like take the reins and make sure that we steward this thing forward into a, into a place where it would service other people beyond just myself. And so in that time, I thought through it and realized that the actually the best thing we could do for these men was to serve their families. Like, like, like one of the things we would hear more often than not was that there was trouble with their children, challenges with their wife, or something that really related to family that was, was, you know, they would all have hot buttons. Some of them were overweight. So there was a lot of that health challenges that we've addressed. We've had guys go from you know, overweight to losing hundreds of pounds. And we've created transformation. We've helped guys restore their marriages. We've helped, you know, guys repair their relationships with their children. But we were doing events where no matter how I sliced it, I was taking them away from their families. And no matter how I could justify it in my brain, they were using their families as the excuse to go out of town. I'm doing it for them.

Yeah.

And the reality was, is if I was being honest with myself and for— on behalf of them, yeah, they were really doing it for themselves.

Yeah.

Because they liked what they got out of being in the room with a bunch of other high achievers. They liked what they felt when they closed a big deal. And the truth is that in some cases that's true. But in a lot of cases, what we found out was that they would close big deals and not feel as good as they thought they should. And they would be in the room and they would not be talking about the biggest deals that they did, but they'd be talking about how they were troubled by something in their marriage or something with their kids.

And so because they're doing the big deals, they're right, they're thriving there and then they're struggling at home. Yeah.

Yeah. And just, just like if things aren't right at home, it's hard to enjoy anything. Yeah, right. Yeah, you could be closing billion-dollar deals, but if your kids are sick—

yeah, yeah—

does money matter? Zero. Yeah. Um, so when I realized that, we started throwing family events, and the first one was in our backyard. We had no idea what we were doing. Jeremy Reisig, who works with, with you as well in the, in the Miracle Morning, um, app and has worked with you for many years—

I just talked to him right before we walked in—

good friend of ours. But he, he facilitates our FamBundance events he has for over a decade now. I love having his energy at our events, his music, but we make it fun. Like, and so this heavy thing, which is legacy, and it's really like for the entrepreneur, they also have to look into the depths of their soul and know that they're not going to live forever. Yeah, there's another part of it of why they avoid that. Yeah, it's easy to just go do business and not worry about the fact that someday, you know, we're not going to be here anymore and focus there. So I think I found it to be my role within GoBundance to sort of lead the charge around families to make sure we do family events. So twice a year we bring families together. You know, we work for the mornings a little bit, you know, 30 to 45 minutes of time. Family values, family values, family rhythms, family goals. Basically, we create— if you come to our events, you get the playbook that will help you create your entire family legacy blueprint, which would be a family constitution, would actually have a mission, vision, values, beliefs, the perspectives. It would have, it would have a more in-depth like conflict agreement, like resolution agreements. It would have deeper, I guess, content than your standard sort of books. The Miracle Morning for Parents and Families playbook that we did, this would take you to—

It's twice as thick, so 3 times as thick.

Yeah. But to get through it, you end up, when you go through it, you end up with the family constitution and it's basically this is how we operate.

And what I love about what I love about doing, because I've done FamBundance events, obviously Front Row Dads events, you know, it's like, it's stuff that I know I will not do on my own. You know, you guys are rare in that, you know, that like you actually are some of those intentional parents that I know. But for most of us, like, or it's like you can't get— it's getting your kids to do it is like pulling teeth sometimes. Or you just— for me, I think it's a lack of confidence in my ability to lead. I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing, you know?

Yeah.

And I think this definitely, or I know the Miracle Morning for Parents and Families and the playbook have helped, but I know like when I go to a Fam Bundance event, especially if the kids are there, it's like, hey, we're all doing this together, right? They're looking, it's not mom and dad. I don't, it's like, oh, oh, everybody's doing it and they're playing music and we're all having fun. Okay. Right. So it's like the environment, it's this safe environment. It's this container where you connect, collaborate with your family, create the family constitution. And then when you go home, right, you're, you're literally, you leave a different family. You leave with. And you now have the structure, right? That's the most important part of being intentional. It starts with the front-end work. And then now you go home and you've got the legacy blueprint and you're like, hey guys, right? Remember we're starting our first family meeting this week and they're bought in because they got bought in not just by mom and dad, but by this entire FAMbundance community, right? That's like together doing it, deciding it's a positive thing. So now they're like, okay, yeah, we're doing it. Like you literally, they're agreeing at the event. And then it's like, all right, our first— we're, hey, we're headed at home. Our first family meeting is tomorrow, Sunday, right? Like, okay, great. So talk about, for anybody that might not listen the whole podcast for some reason, um, the— when is, when is that event? What is that event? Because I know I can't go. I'm speaking that week with my daughter at an event, but it's going to be, uh, summer event, July 13th through the 19th, and it's in Lake Devlin.

Um, it's in Wisconsin. It's at Lake Lawn Resort, uh, beautiful resort that's right next to a lake. So we'll be doing a ton of lake activities. Um, it— that, that part of the country, if you haven't been there that time of year, is absolutely beautiful. Um, we chose it specifically for the climate and to have access to water and to also not be where it's, you know, 110 degrees.

Yeah.

Um, so it's also close to 3 different airports.

Oh, nice.

Yeah. And it's basically, uh, it's a full week, but really the, the, the meat of the event happens in the first 3 days. So the 13th, 14th, 15th, and the morning of the 16th are when we actually facilitate not only the work the families do together, but I forgot to mention that we do break out the teens and the kids into their own separate groups.

I was going to ask you, what are the age ranges?

Yeah, so usually a kid can start participating around 5.

Okay.

And we do offer babysitting if you have a lot of kids that are above 5, but you have one kid that is under. They're welcome in the room, but if they're disruptive, then we would ask that we, we find a babysitting solution or a daycare solution. But we welcome families of all ages and sizes. We actually have had a family of 10 at one of our FamBundance events, believe it or not. Okay. So, but it's, it's a mix of like doing the work and then play in the morning and then actually the afternoon is totally free for play.

Okay.

And then in the evening we get back together for lunch and then some more work. We usually do like a Shark Tank where the kids actually work together in groups to present a product that they design on the fly to the parents. And then the final night at dinner, we do a little work and then we have a talent show. So the kids actually tell jokes, they do so fun dances, they lip sync, sing. We've had some pretty good like like pianists like play and I like some, some Coldplay, Coldplay that I was like, wow.

And then what is— and Jeremy Reisig, who's one of our best collective best friends.

Yeah.

Formerly Brother James, now known as J-Hobbs, the musician. He did the Miracle Morning song and many of his own. Do you have a favorite J-Hobbs song, by the way?

I mean, you're next, Lindsay.

Think of what yours is going to be.

I like Evolve a lot.

Evolve. That's a good one.

Yeah.

I was wearing a shirt earlier. Gratitude is always a fave. Grateful.

Yeah, yeah, grateful.

Yeah, that's— I think that's my favorite. Yeah, um, because I helped him.

Animal is a good one too. Kids always love that one.

Abracadabra is fun too. Yeah, shout out to— if you don't know, go to Spotify, listen, look up Jay Hobbs. You can listen to the Miracle Morning song, Grateful, Evolve, um, so many great songs. But so yeah, he's there leading, singing, performing. He's a great facilitator, right?

Yeah, he helps design the events, so I co-design with him, but then I get to be in the audience because I'm designing this event just as much for myself to be able to do the work with my family as anyone else. The other thing that's interesting is this is the first time ever that we've opened the event to non-GoBundance members. So we're trying to help more families and spread the love and create a bigger community of families that, that really want to do this work together. So I think that's a a big thing to mention is that, you know, if you've not been a part of GoBundance or you thought that you had to be a part of GoBundance to come to FamBundance, or you were interested, you've heard of and wanted to check out GoBundance, this would be a good chance to bring the family.

What's the website to get the details?

So if you go to fambundance.com, there's a couple of things. One, you could register for the event. There's a short, like 3 or 4 question survey, and then we would set up an interview just to screen to make sure it's a match.

Okay.

And good fit. I'm also doing a podcast next Wednesday. I think the day will be the day this comes out. This day, this podcast drops.

Webinar.

It's a webinar at 12 PM Central, and there'll be a registration link for that on fambundance.com as well.

Spell fambundance for—

F-A-M-B-U-N-D-A-N-C-E. Fambundance.

Okay.

Dot com.

Where did that name come from, by the way? So GoBundance, remind me, it's abundance.

So David came up with GoBundance, which was to go towards abundance.

Okay, got it.

And then FamBundance, I was going to call it Go Families, but by the time Tracy knew that I was already doing this family event and by the time—

David's wife.

Yeah.

Got the time I got to tell her like, oh, I'm, you know, going to call it GoFamily. She had already called it FamBundance and created a logo and stuff. So I was like, okay, okay, I guess that's what we're going. I guess that's FamBundance.

So fambundance.com. The event is July 13th through 19th.

Yep. And then and also just to mention is the first 3 to 4 days are when we do the work and then the last 4 days. So basically the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th, we're just going going to play. Ah, so it's just family vacation.

This is a vacation.

It's a family vacation where you're going to leave with some meaningful work being created and it'll be a, it'll be a way easier lift than you think. And maybe Lindsay could just speak for the wives' sake because, yeah, anyone who's familiar with GoBundance knows it's a bunch of hard-charging guys and like they might think like FamBundance is like, you know, we're going to try to fix the wives and fix the, fix all the problems at home and put you know, that it's going to be intense. Yeah, but it's not really like that. I don't know if it's not intense.

It's actually really fun. And, you know, right off the bat, Jay Hobbs is up there playing his guitar and there's like a conga line. And something we do throughout the event too is these family Olympic games and you win fan bucks. So you win like fake $100 bills.

Nice.

And we'll give them out. For people dancing, for people raising their hand to answer a question. So you might get these really shy kids coming in. They don't know anybody. Shy wives too.

Yeah.

They don't know anybody.

You can be a shy wife sometimes.

Yeah.

By the end of day one, they're all raising their hands to get the mic.

Nice.

Running around like it's, it's magical.

How many years? I mean, you guys have been doing it, you guys are pros. You've been doing this for how many years now?

Over a decade.

Wow.

So, wow. That long. I think we did our first one in, in 2016, I think. Yeah.

Really?

Yeah.

Okay.

So we're right at that.

So what's— what now? So now I want to circle back to the stage that your kids are at right now.

Yeah.

And what the— what, what the— all the work that you do for other families, like how that's being integrated into your family. So you talk about legacy, what that looks like. So what does family life look like right now? Challenges included, right? I know it's, you know, but what does it look like and what's— what, what are— what's the future look like for you and for the family and As we have one turning 18 in the next year and, you know, one turning 14.

When I think as they've gotten older, in my opinion, it's gotten more fruitful because we started when they were little. So now it's like not weird.

Yeah.

For us to call a family meeting or, um, you know, be talking about goals, talking about a 5-year vision. Like, these are things you've been talking about since they Exactly.

Part of their vocabulary.

It is part of their vocabulary. And I think that's the cool thing about FamBundance too. It kind of creates this shared language, not only with our family, but the other families who come and participate. So it's not so out there anymore.

I mean, I just want to be totally transparent in that a year ago, Lindsey and I were going through hell. With our son. Like, he was suicidal.

Wow.

Um, I, I share that not knowing that he would be okay because of where he is now, and also because of how proud I am of how he went to seek help. He really raised his hand and asked for help through his counselor and, you know, was willing to be admitted into a hospital in order to get the treatment that he wanted. But it was interesting because in the middle of it all, there was sort of this tension around like, I hate all that values, family culture bullshit that you do. So there was this little part of him that was sort of like rebelling against what we had, all these structures we had created.

Yeah.

I think, though, after he went through some treatment and he talked to some counselors and he spent some time with people who had— in the hospital that were like far worse off than he was and had far worse family life.

Yeah, I'd imagine.

Yeah. Came back with a different perspective. And then what I've done in the last year is to connect with him, really leaned into what he loves. He loves cars. So like in the last year, I've joined a car club, bought an expensive car to join said car club.

Yeah, yeah.

Been bought a car condo to store all the cars.

But, but also decided that I wanted to— that I could see that he had such passion in the automotive space and he was probably going to do this for the rest of his life. And I was sort of looking for some business opportunities. And so I was like, hey, why don't I try to start some businesses in the auto space? So Tyler's actually going to work all summer in an auto body shop that he actually is going to get to own 2.5% of. Wow. Equity-wise. And he'll use money that his grandfather left him in trust to buy the 2.5%. And it's actually 2.5% of two different body shops. And then he'll go work ground floor, ground up.

Wow.

And learn and have this opportunity. My job is to turn it into 20 body shops. Yeah. And his job is to just learn how to really run one really well. And then we'll see where that goes. But I say that all because it's really about the integration of like, I'm not, I'm not giving Tyler you know, a free ride anywhere. He, he has to go work all summer long.

Yeah.

In a hot autumn, sweaty, dirty, sweaty, dirty in order to earn, you know. And yes, he's getting to invest, but he could lose his money too. Like that. We could, we could fail at what we're trying to do here. And then he'll learn a whole set of lessons there. But this season of life for me is is a season that I've really followed this rule of like 10% connection and I'm sorry, 10% correction and 90% connection.

Yeah.

And that is to make sure that 90% of my interactions and conversations and even reasons for us to, to, to be, to be dialoguing are all around things that he cares about that are all positive and uplifting that he wants to talk about.

Yeah.

And that I make sure that I try to limit it to 10% of the shit that he does not want to talk to me about, that I do have to talk to him about that 10%.

Yeah.

I can't just let him show bad behavior and then and not address it.

Yeah.

But, you know, my goal right now is to, to make sure that you know, our wealth and my success doesn't ruin him and make him think that he can just do whatever he wants and send it in and he's going to be taken care of by—

Yeah.

And he knows that that's not true. We've been very clear with him. And, and I really think that, you know, the latest work that we've done with The Blueprint, it's, it's all about creating a family constitution and a legacy letter so that that you can, in the future when you leave, you can perpetuate what, and hope and wish and share with future generations that they would continue to do certain things if they choose, if they're still effective. Like, we're not trying to like pigeonhole them and control them from the grave with our money or anything like that. We're just putting together a set of documents that say like, Hey, if your son is interested or somebody's interested in a certain business, maybe we should look at can we get into that business instead of can you work in that business? Maybe there's an opportunity that for me as a business, you know, entrepreneur, a serial entrepreneur, and an opportunity for you as a ground floor employee. And so we found that with my son, which happened in lightning, like fast. Like it manifested so fast that I was— that I almost got whiplash. And, and it feels like it all feels right. Yeah. Um, so, and I'm— and I was very clear that I wasn't gonna go chase it, and it all sort of is coming to me.

Yeah, that's a whole nother podcast on manifesting.

And like, you know, I've been doing my visualization Really?

There you go. I love that. Yeah, it is interesting, like, um, not to go off topic, but with manifestation, right? Like, it's like my logical brain is like, no, you gotta do the things. And then I have enough examples in my life where you're like, I just set the intention and like, you know, and, and maintain faith in it, and it like magically happened.

Yeah.

How does that— I don't know how that works, but, um, there's something to it for sure.

So hopefully the same will happen with Emmy. She wants to be a hairdresser.

Yeah. Whatever she wants to do. Our job is to give them the flint and kindling and not give them the fire.

I really want to just highlight what you just said, which is the 90% connection, 10% correction. And I really, I think that if anybody, like, if that's the one lesson people walk away with, you know, from this is like, um, I think it applies to all relationships.

Yeah.

Right. And I know I've been guilty in the past of being the opposite where with my kids and with teenagers, that's the thing is that you lose if you go 90% correction. As you know, right? You've probably— we've all learned the hard way. You lose that relationship, you lose that connection. They can't wait to get out of the house and never see you again. You know what I mean? Like, and I think even as a spouse being married, sometimes it's like, oh, you're this, you're seeing all the things that are being done wrong. And usually it's just projection of how you are treating yourself, right?

It's 99 and 1 with spouses.

There you go. Cool. Well, so So fambundance.com is where people can get, because I really think that if you can make it to that event, if you're looking for a vacation this summer, like, and something that is proactive for your family, it's not just the kids on their screens all day, which as you have teenagers, that's like the constant battle is as soon as you put that screen in their hand, it's like, it's real hard to get them off the devices.

This resort has human foosball.

So, well, I saw, I was on, I looked at the site website, it looks, the lake It looks gorgeous.

It's gonna be a lot of fun. If anyone can make it, we highly suggest it. And we, we plan to keep opening up some future events, um, in the future too. But yeah, this is the first one, and you know, we're looking forward to meeting some cool families.

Nice. All right, well, Miracle Morning for Parents and Families, Miracle Morning for Parents and Families Playbook, fambundance.com to join the Lake Summer Family Adventure. Mike and Linds, I love you guys.

Love you too, Hal.

I can't wait to go have dinner together as we wrap this thing up.

All right.

All right. Goal Achievers, I love you. Have a great week. Check out fanbundance.com. If you can bring your family there, you'll be happy that you did. And I'll talk to you next week.