Welcome to the building to walk in the marketplace christian to the next level. Here's your host, Christian entrepreneur Tyler McCart.
SPEAKER_03What's going on, truly? Life Legacy. Yours truly, Tyler McCart, coming at you. Excited to be able to do this video and podcast audio. And I have an interview today. Now, I know for all my podcast listeners, uh, the ones that have been with me for many, many years, uh, you might remember the name Chris Patton. Now, Chris has been a friend of mine for goodness, a good little while since I interviewed him, and we reconnected over a year ago. Um, actually, it had to have been through the prompt of the Holy Spirit. Uh, because I reached out to Chris, and Chris, you'd be able to tell the story better than I will, but we got back together uh pretty much um right as soon as you were leaving. Um or just stepped away.
SPEAKER_02You had just reached out a week, two or three before the FDI or FDE conference in Gainesville, and then we're walking through the grass there, and you I just I'm walking through and I hear, Chris Patton, are you what are you doing here? So then we got to sit down and actually it's first time we've met in person.
SPEAKER_03First time in person, that's exactly right. First time in person. So, you know, today, uh, to my audience, um, I want to hear, so so guys, here I want to set this up and then I want Chris to kind of unpack this a little bit. But so Chris has been on a journey, and I've been on this journey with him. And Chris is actually the gentleman that actually, when you've heard me kind of tell my story a little bit, Chris is the one that actually encouraged me to check out and look at what Legacy Stone and Seventh Gen Consulting was doing. And he was the first one that actually said that. And now we're come almost a whole year because it was actually in June when all that took place, and now here we are in July doing this interview. And Chris just had an awesome experience, and he's gonna go into all that with his family. But Chris, I want to go back to this whole journey, okay, of where you were at a year ago of getting all somewhat of your decks in a row and being frustrated in the process. Kind of go me take me back to that moment of whenever you started to think through this whole legacy and generational uh thing right here. Take me through that, walk me through that right there.
First of all, Tyler, this may need to be in volumes or episodes because it's not a story, um, but I will short, I'll shorten it as best I can. Uh, I would say that um five years ago, my wife and I went on vacation in a camper and it rained the entire week. And during that week, we played a lot of cards, and after about three or four days of that, we finally resorted to conversation. We had conversation around what does the next five to ten years look like? And at the time, my vision for that next five to ten years was we would buy a cabin up in the mountains of North Carolina. We were in South Carolina at the time, and we'd retire there eventually, not retire, but move there and and live in the mountains. I wanted some land in the mountains, I wanted the elevation. And my wife said, in a very quick answer, when I asked the question, what do you see? She said, We're gonna live in Georgia right next to Arcettis. And that's not where my head was or my heart. And I will say selfishly for myself, I was thinking, I want to go do my thing, and they can come visit me. Fortunately, God has changed my heart on that. Uh, but he started by having my wife say, I want to be in Georgia with the kids. Now it's at the time we had one in Peru, one in Florida, and one in Georgia, but we knew over time they're gonna move to Georgia or back. So three years later, two years ago, we bought property just outside of Atlanta, out in the country, and we started working toward building a place that the kids would want to come back and visit uh and hopefully be here within 30 minutes of us or at least an hour. So fast forward to uh that move. I'm still doing my job in in South Carolina, but it was remote, so I could move to Georgia and just fly out of Atlanta. And then the job comes to an end. God says, You need to step off this path. There's a new path. So finish that up. That was last year when you and I met. And I was going in the process of discerning what does God want from me next? What is this next path? I had no idea. I wanted to work with C12. I had various things I thought I wanted to do, but he put it on my heart and pricked my heart at the same time around scripture that kept talking about this generational family. Uh, and then everywhere I bumped into somebody or something, I'm hearing about generational family. So last September, finished the job, spent the next three months really digging deep, praying, listening to God, what is this about, and what does it look like? And started January, fired up and ready to go to build this generational family on mission thing.
SPEAKER_03Don't even have a real word for it, but don't know what to call it.
SPEAKER_02No, I don't, but the the idea is this I've come to realize in the last year, two years, three years, it's been an evolution because I'm slow, but I'm worth the wait. And God has worked on my heart, and this is what I see. I see, I've got my wife and I have been married 31 years. We've got three grown adult children, two are married, one is not yet. And I am not done with my role as the parent of this family. I'm done parenting because I got three adult children. They're on their own, they're doing their adult thing. I don't have authority anymore, but I've got influence. And my picture of family has gone from get them to 18, launch them, and let them do their thing and come visit when they want to or on holidays to now. I want to see, I want to be able to see from whatever perspective I will have in 150 years. I want to see a family, assuming that the Lord has not returned yet at that point. I want to see a family that is, I don't know, 500 strong. And it's five generations in. And don't check the math on that because I don't thought about that part, but I want to see a five generations in family still doing mission for the Lord, still pursuing the greatest commandments and the great condition, and using this thing that some guy five generations ago and his wife and his kids built that is now funding our mission. It is discipling our families and children, and it's continuing to appoint each new generation to the Lord in a way that gets them to see this mission that they're on, that He's put individually put them on, but also as a family. That's now my picture. And I'm trying to build this, build business within it so that they're intrigued and they're drawn in, build banking within it, because I want them to be able to and use this funding for various things. But all of this surrounded is surrounding a faith that I want to pass down. That's the gist of it. So
to catch up to today, just last two weeks ago, three weeks ago, we took our kids on a family vacation, went to an all-inclusive resort, brought everybody in, and sat down the first morning of vacation and spent two hours in uh in one of the meeting rooms walking them through an overview of this thing, the why behind it, where their mom and I have started five years ago, where we've come over the last couple of years, why we want to do this. We explained, hey, we have the option to take what we've built over time, what God has given us to steward financially, and just live off of it for the next 20, 30 years and enjoy the heck out of it. And if there's anything left for you guys, we'll leave it in the wheel. That would be one option. Another option is we feel that we are stewards of his resources, so we just give it all away to various organizations and still there's nothing. Or we could just dump it on all of you and potentially ruin it. But here's what we've chosen to do is invest it into this idea that is our family on mission, invest it in a way that it continues to grow and build and fund ministry for the next 100-150 years through our family, not just other organizations. So went through the pitch, took two hours, went slow. What's in it for them as children who who have not yet bought into this whole thing? Uh, not sure what even to think about what mom and dad are talking about. But after two hours, Tyler, and I'll stop with this and you can ask questions. After two hours, I got great engagement. I went through five or six iterations of that presentation. And the first one would have put the most professional bank to sleep. And uh the last one engaged my kids and fortunately had some wise people speak into it and came out with a better presentation. But now I've got the interest of each of these three children, plus the two spouses. We're having conversations about it, and I am fired up. That was a lot. Wow.
SPEAKER_03Well, Chris, I mean, wow, I mean, bravo, buddy. Bravo. Uh, and you know, before I before I forget, give me the context of your kids' ages so that just for so that they can understand uh the context of your kids' ages.
SPEAKER_02I've got twin girls that are 27 years old and a son that's 29. Uh, my son is married, has been for two years, lives up in about an hour from us in North Atlanta. One of the twin girls is married, lives about an hour west of or east of us, uh outside of Atlanta. And then her sister, the third child uh twin, is in Peru and teaching second grade there, has been doing that for five years.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_02So no grandkids yet.
SPEAKER_03No grandkids yet, okay. Because I mean, I just I had to give that context right there because you know, and how old are you right now?
SPEAKER_02I'm 55.
SPEAKER_0355. Okay, so no grandkids yet, but we know that they're probably on the way. Hopefully, Lord willing.
SPEAKER_02Lord willing.
SPEAKER_03Um, so Chris, I want to go, I think it's so interesting.
I want to go back to that time in the camper. Okay. And when your wife says, This is what I was wanting, and you know, tell me that moment right there a little bit more. Because I mean, obviously, that probably took you off the rails or kind of like made you go tilt.
SPEAKER_02I'll say it this way my heart sank into my pants.
SPEAKER_03Why?
SPEAKER_02My head's because I had a what I call today a selfish fix, and I know myself, and yes, I was very selfishly thinking, what we've uh all this happens in in nanoseconds in my brain. She says, Oh, that's easy. I want to be in Georgia next to the kids, and I want to be able to be involved in their lives daily if I want to. I don't want them living in our home or on our property necessarily, but I want to be right there with them. And if I want to see them three times in a week or seven times in a week, I want to be able to do that. And the next what seemed like a minute or two in my head, but in real time was a second or two. I went, I just lost the cabin in the mountains where summer it gets up to 75 degrees.
SPEAKER_03I just won't vanish.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I wanted elevation, I wanted cool weather. I love the mountains. There's something spiritual for me when I drive up into the mountains and the rhododendron and the green, where I've left, you know, dead and dry Georgia, and I'm up in the mountains and it's all lush and whatever. I just love that atmosphere. I love the old guy that's driving this old 57 Ford pickup to the general store. I've got this Mayberry picture of the mountains. Yeah. That was my vision for years. That's what I've really wanted to get to. Not that I would quit working. I imagined working with a computer and a and a Zoom call and that kind of thing. I don't want, I don't feel like I need to retire, so to speak, but it was the location that I was so set on. And when she said that, my heart dropped, my head started spinning. And the first thought I had was but she just moved, and we won't go all the way into this, but she had just moved to South Carolina from Georgia, leaving her teaching career, leaving our kids, leaving her mother and sister and family, my family, our church, some extremely close women friends to move to South Carolina to know nobody because my work took us there. At this point in time, it would have been three or four years earlier, turned into a total of seven years. Um, that we're in South Carolina. And my next thought goes to, but she's done this, and you're literally about to what? We're not moving to Georgia, and so I pause long enough to to get my wits about me to say, tell me more.
SPEAKER_03Wise man.
SPEAKER_02That's the classic, buy myself some time, right? And started talking through some of it. And as she does, I'm thinking, how do I not let this get set in concrete because I don't want to lock it in yet? But anyway, cut to the face, I just said, let's talk through what that would look like. Yeah, let's say we do that and we start now, and it takes us a couple of years. I'm working remote, so we can make that happen. I can go to Peter, my boss, and we'll make that happen. And I just came out with it like this. I said, Could could you agree that we would not go into a neighborhood, but instead would find some land, like I was thinking we'd find in the mountains, just find it out in the country somewhere.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_02She goes, Yeah, that'd be easy. And so I start thinking through all of what could and would happen, and I realized the only sacrifice I was making was elevation, elevation, right? And the truth is God was starting something then that is consuming me today, but at the time I thought was opposing me.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So Chris, so you you get this thought, you're going through, you know, after you go leave the uh the camping site, you go back, you y'all at least talked about the whole you know different elevation. We're gonna be now in somewhere rural Georgia with some land, but you still haven't started thinking generationally yet, I don't think. No, you still haven't thought about any kind of enterprise thing involving family. So, how how did that start to creep in and start to kind of bump up and start to change your vision, yeah, you know, for where things are at? Where was
that at?
SPEAKER_02Couple of different things. I can't name there was no one point in time in a small group at church. We were reading, uh I think we're going through a book, but I read some scripture that was crystal clear. I don't even remember where it was. I couldn't quote it right now, but at the moment it was crystal clear about the generational idea of a family and how much the Bible in the Bible is talking about generation after generation in various contexts. So that was one thing that struck me. I'm like, I've never looked at our family as generational. I've looked at our family as, you know, I've got parents, kids, eventual grandkids. That's about the extent of what I'm gonna see at any given time. What does this mean if I started shifting my view to a generation? The first thing that came to mind was in my work, I bumped into the Kathy family a good bit at Chick-fil-A, had the privilege of knowing some people that work there, got to go to to spend some time at headquarters, spent some time with Dan, Kathy, and hearing what that they have a 100-year plan for their family and business. And it's not about the restaurants, it's about the family. You've heard the term family office, so it's that kind of a mindset. But when they said a hundred-year plan, I'm thinking you can't even predict technology 25 years, much less 100. How do you, or how do you anyway? That was a mystery to me, but now I get it. They're not planning detail 100 years from now, they're planning purpose and values, they're carrying that through their family, they're building training and discipling processes and governance in their family that goes out a hundred years and then some. So as I start getting bits and pieces thrown at me, God is working with me slowly because I'm not that's not where my head was. Yeah, and once you get past a certain number of those incidents where God's speaking to you, I and I'm during the season, I'm also sitting at my at the barn. I've got a little my quiet time. So I go down every morning, about 360 mornings a year, and I build a little fire and I do my quiet time. And I couldn't stop seeing generations, I couldn't stop seeing where God says, you know, you need to be thinking much longer down the line than just how do I get my grandkids to come to this property? What are you going to teach them when they do? How are you going to pour into them and their parents, your kids? And it just is blossom from there. And then I reach out and you know, God puts you and I back together and I say, What are you doing? I don't know, it's this legacy stuff.
SPEAKER_03You know, it just keeps dropping back up.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So it's been a process, it's been a couple of years process. The last 12 months have been the fastest um forming of it, but it it goes back, you know, several years before that.
SPEAKER_03Chris, I know we could keep talking more and more about all this, and we're already like 20 uh minutes in. But I just um I appreciate your wife. I just I just gotta put that out there because you know, she was thinking generationally. I mean, and I'm not sitting there knocking, you know, because the mindset is out there that hey, I'm an MT master, I've done my job, I raised them, kicked them out, they can do the stuff on their own, individually, because that's what I our Western society does.
SPEAKER_02Exactly.
SPEAKER_03And I can go for you, I can go to the mountains and kind of come back down, visit my family, but I'm gonna be up there doing my own thing, so to speak, where that praise God, you know, you had a course correction and you know you and I I do wanna I do want to take I do want to yeah, just take a moment right here with that. With that of like, hey, because you shared that with me earlier, and I just want you to take about two or three minutes on this right here, Chris, about how you reintroduce that to your kids. Your course correction of saying, hey, instead of you guys just doing your own thing, I want it to be us. Yeah, take about two or three minutes and kind of riff on that for me.
Also, like the pitch we did at the vacation a couple weeks ago, back at Easter. Um I had a different timeline in mind for the next actions. We're gonna work on family values, that kind of thing, war values, mission, vision, that kind of thing. And it just didn't pan out. But to start, the Saturday before Easter, we did Zoom call with the one in Peru, and the the rest of the kids are sitting in front of me with their spouses. And Kim and I sat in front of them and we said, we want to apologize and ask forgiveness from you for something you don't even realize we did wrong to you. And I went into the Western mindset, though I didn't describe it that way. I just said your mom and I basically followed the culture that we're in, and we had plans to raise you to 18, make you independent, get you able to go and do your own thing. And it's all sounds good. But we go to Latin America through my work and we realize there are other families that are two or three generations in the same house, or even four, and we're like, this is mind-blowing. And we start realizing we like that better, but then we start looking in scripture, and God is constantly talking about the generations and not send them away. So we want to ask your forgiveness, number one, for doing that, but not just for that. Mainly it's for this, because we are about to do a hard 180 on you, and we need you to know we're not trying to make things difficult for you. We just asking forgiveness for the direction change because now we're gonna really put emphasis on gathering, living, doing life together with you guys. And you have the option to opt in or out of this because we've already given you new households, right? You are the two of you are married, and the the one in Peru is is doing her own thing for years. So we are not demanding anything. We have no authority here, we just have influence. As the parents that raised you in this way, we would like to change direction and have you want to be in a part of this whole thing we're doing.
SPEAKER_03And I'm sure, Chris, that you'd had already before that Zoom call right there, you'd already had many like small conversations, yeah, somewhat with them to kind of prep them for this. You just didn't drop the drop the bomb on them at a zoom call.
SPEAKER_02I didn't go into a lot of depth in any of those conversations because one, I'm still figuring it out through those conversations, and two, yeah, I didn't want to push them away or scare them off. And yeah, so I didn't do anything, I didn't say anything concrete, but I just said, you know, we're we're we're shifting gears a little bit, we're trying some of this, or we'd love to have you guys come, you know, here and I think we're gonna do a family vacation with everybody. And anyway, it was just yes, I had prepped them a little bit. It wasn't just this total shock. And frankly, they didn't know what to think. They're like, Why would you apologize? Why are you asking forgiveness? Y'all I said, I think it'll become more clear as we go that we are changing drastically, changing our focus, and it will impact you some ways. It'll be very positive. Some ways you may be like, I don't want anything to do with you guys in this area. This is my life. Yeah, and here's the thing: I kept saying, you guys get to choose. We're telling you we're shifting gears on what we desire, but you can you do not have to, you're not forced into this.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Well, I number one, I think that's wise. Um, and to give them autonomy because you'd already set the precedent before of you know, we're raising you up to be responsible adults, yeah, and to go out and do your own thing. And then here you are now saying, Hey, I want us to be team patent.
SPEAKER_02That's yeah.
SPEAKER_03You know, I want us to be, you know, this interdependent family. And I and and I think, you know, what what's taking place is that after this, you know, summer kind of vacation meeting, you know, I almost kind of sometimes want to call it a family assembly, where that you gather them all together, you laid out the vision of where the new family enterprise is going.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_03And again, you you reiterated, I think you even told me you reiterated in that meeting that we we want you on board, but we're not gonna make you be on board.
SPEAKER_02Okay, and your family, whether you choose to or not to, we're still family, you're not excluded if you choose not to.
SPEAKER_03So, and uh I I like what you said. Um, you know, again, before we started recording, that this was just the start. It was a good start, and it's not over, and it's gonna evolve even more. And I think that's the the good thing about you know just us continuing this conversation and recording it a little bit, Chris, down the road as we as we kick the can, so to speak, down the road, and we kind of can look back, say in the next couple months and say, all right, here's what what we saw that God did, you know, through things, because you know, I know that you've been kind of working and festering over this and kind of frustrated a little bit, kind of almost like in a holding pattern until after this time right here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03And you know, I think um, you know, you'd you've taken the right approach. Uh, I'm just kind of reiterating this things that are important. You know, you have this micro conversations with your with your kids, but you also got in alignment uh with Kim. You know, you you got in alignment with her. Um, not so much about you, she actually got you thinking differently.
SPEAKER_02Yes,
for sure. But for example, Tyler, we went to, you know, when I hit January 1st with this new picture, I said, I need to learn, and I want her learning with me, not every single step, every single class, so to speak, but I want her kept up with what I'm thinking and what I'm seeing. So we went to three different conferences. We did one in January, one in February, one in March, made it a weekend away and enjoyed the time together, but spent time in class or workshop or whatever, learning about the various facets of this generational family. It was revolutionary, right? A lot of what I saw in each of the three, I'd already read in another book or seen another podcast or whatever, but she hadn't. And then we had conversation around it each of those times and a month in between each one, giving us time to kind of simmer in it, that kind of thing. So, yes, what she and I are in alignment, and that is part of my job is to make sure that I don't run out ahead of her, yeah, and or deem her, well, she's not interested in this part, so I'll just do this myself. And I'm not dumping it on her either. It's just keep her abreast of it, keep checking checking in and talking through it. And man, she's got a better sense of what the kids will and won't respond to than I did. At least a couple, you know, at least certainly the girls, um, if not necessarily.
SPEAKER_03I think I call my wife Amy. Uh, she's my holy script skirt. And uh trust me, I I need her her insight a whole lot more than my little limited brain can have uh a lot of times. Um well Chris, um, I kind of want to wrap this up. Land is playing
here. Um you know, to to the viewers, to the viewers and the listeners that are out there listening to this right now, you know, if if you could go back, okay, say say someone's listening to this and they're 40 years old, what what would you tell Chris Patton at 40 about this right now? What would you tell him?
SPEAKER_02So my kids would have been 12 and 14, 12, 12, and 14, and that's about the time frame that I would like to go back. I mean, I'd go back 20 years in theory. I don't really want to relive all that. I'll be honest. Teen years were tough, right? Yeah, but if I could give myself advice from here back to that time point, it would be change now your lenses and start thinking generationally. Start spending time, intentional time with the kids to have conversation around these things. Don't dump it on them, don't suddenly start, you know, hammering them with it, but just build this into your conversation, your language, and your your view of life for this next 30, 40 years for this at that point, and get it through your skull that this is what God wants out of you through your family. And my mindset is if I were to have received that then, I would start learning. Start digging in scripture now. I'm I'm looking for examples. I've started a list in my in my uh laptop, a list of scriptures and different topics that I'm seeing that I want to be able to teach over time to them that's all about the generational mindset. And it's not all only looking out three or four generations, but it's the mindset you have today that will continue generationally as long as you keep it that way, if that makes sense. It's yeah, it's so I would just I would slap myself in the face, I would say, man, you've got a different picture. This is one area where you've missed it completely. Take a look at this. And for others that are now at that age, I would just tell them dig into scripture, start praying, ask the Lord to reveal to them how and he wants them to see this picture and what are some things that they could do right now to begin that transformation within their family. You know, we mentioned family teams as a uh an organization that speaks up with a family that has kids in the home and a lot of uh traditions and and things that they do, uh rhythms that they put in place to help with that mindset so that I would be looking for others that are already down the path and built the the process, and I'd start copying and pasting, which is my norm anyway.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Man, so good, Chris. Um Chris, I appreciate you, buddy. Uh, big time uh for coming on here and being my first uh actual interview since uh it's been a long time since I interviewed anybody, but I think it's important because you know, you and I we've been walking this past for now over a year, and you know, you it's it's cool to see a nice victory and be able to celebrate that, but also kind of talk through that journey, and you know, and I know there's more victory to come, and there's more long with that struggle that's gonna happen, but uh I just appreciate you coming on here and doing that right here.
SPEAKER_02Anytime. Love
it.
SPEAKER_03So, True Life. Uh, listen, guys, um, you know, I know that uh if you got questions or anything like that, you can obviously reach out to me um and ask some questions. Uh direct message me or whatever I've got. TrueLifeConsulting.com is the website uh that you can go on to. And uh, but again, uh we'll have Chris back on at a later date to kind of follow up because you know this journey doesn't end, and that's the thing about it is it's you know, maybe one day we might actually bring your kids on and uh interview them and listen to their story of how they've kind of bought into the family enterprise, uh the family on a mission, you know, like what you just talked about, Chris. Uh so without further ado, I'm gonna land this plane and call it around. Thanks so much, Chris.
SPEAKER_02Enjoy it. Thank you, Tom. I appreciate all that you're doing.