ISI Brotherhood Podcast

152. She Says I Work Too Much… But the Bills Say I Don’t.

• Aaron Walker • Season 2 • Episode 152

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We’re revisiting an important conversation from last year—one that strikes at the heart of nearly every driven husband and father.

You know the moment. Your spouse gently says, “You’ve been working a lot lately.” Instinctively, you want to justify it. After all, your effort is fueled by love and responsibility. Providing matters. Leadership matters. But somewhere inside, there’s a quiet awareness that something may be slipping.

This episode unpacks what we describe as the “Provider’s Prison”—a subtle cycle where men pour themselves into work for the sake of their families, only to find that the very people they’re striving for begin to feel distant. The intention is noble. The outcome, often painful.

The conversation centers on clarity. Without a defined picture of what success truly means across faith, marriage, parenting, and business, financial achievement can quietly dominate every decision. A written vision becomes the compass. Clear boundaries become protection. Delegation and selective commitments create breathing room for what matters most.

One of the most sobering reminders in this discussion is simple: income can be rebuilt, but childhood cannot be replayed. Each extra meeting, each late night at the office, carries a relational trade-off. The episode offers practical ways to create consistent connection—small but intentional touchpoints that strengthen your marriage and anchor your children.

This isn’t about splitting time evenly between work and home. It’s about ensuring your daily schedule reflects your core convictions. When your priorities are visible on your calendar, you no longer have to choose between being a provider and being present—you can lead well in both.

If you’ve ever felt pulled between ambition and home life, this conversation is worth your time.

Key Takeaways:

  • Why providing financially can unintentionally weaken emotional connection
  • How “The Provider’s Prison” keeps driven men overextended
  • The importance of a written vision that defines success holistically
  • The irreplaceable nature of time with your spouse and children
  • How alignment—not perfection—creates freedom in work and family life

Connect:

SPEAKER_01

So you love your wife, you love your kids, you even love your business, but it feels as though you're losing ground, or at least that you're playing a losing game. And then that moment comes when your wife looks you in the eye and she says, I think you're working too much. And you want to justify, you want to defend, but at the end of the day, you know she's right. But you still got to pay those bills. Maybe that's where you find yourself today.

SPEAKER_00

Seth, I don't know about you, man, but this is something that I've battled now. This coming Saturday will be 45 years. This has been an Achilles heel for me because I love to work. You and Helen have probably never dealt with this, but Robin and I have dealt with this extensively. And I thought, man, I may as well jump in and try to teach out of our experience. So what about you? Do you ever or have you ever heard you work too much?

What Counts As Work, Really

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, I have. And and one of the things uh for solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, self-employed people is what constitutes work, right? It gets really, really blurry. Or when people will say things like, Are you done yet? And then you just in your back of your mind, you're like, oh my gosh, what what is done? Like, when would I ever be done? You know, it's just not a realistic question, but they're that's not really what they're asking us, right?

Painting The Overworked Life

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you know, I've tried to argue those semantics with Robin before. It doesn't serve me well uh to get in, to try to constitute what's work, what's enjoyable, what's hobby. You know, she's like, okay, the point is, is you're not here enough. Yeah. And when you're present, you're really not present. Let me set the stage for you guys that are listening right now. Let me just paint a little bit of a picture for you. Maybe you can place yourself there. You're a small business owner or you're a decision maker, and you've got a team of maybe say eight to twelve people that really rely on you. You've built something from the ground up, but honestly, you're in pretty deep. Debt is real, savings are pretty slim, the stress is daily. You're getting home late, you're missing more dinners than you make. And half the time your kids are looking for you in the grandstands and you're not there. Your wife, she's holding it all together, but she's tired also. And she tells you straight faced, Hey Big A, hey Seth, you work too much. And down deep, she's probably not wrong. But here's the thing, Seth, we're not lazy. We're being absent because we do care, not because we don't care. And you don't know how to break the cycle. That's where we find ourselves each and every day. And that's what we're gonna unpack a little bit today.

Success Without Peace

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's an interesting topic and it's it's very real. Um, you know, because we want to be that provider, but if we're not careful, it morphs, it becomes a prison to us, a prison of our own making. And it's it's interesting that we're having this conversation today because uh I have two things that come to my mind that I'll share. One is I was just speaking to a business owner who's retained me to help them sell their business. And and I, you know, this gentleman has uh he told me once, just out of the blue, like he's worth like$70 million. Okay. And so we were talking today, and he's so busy he can't even gather the information. He hasn't been able to gather the information that we need to help sell his business. And so that was the context of our call. He's like, man, I'm gonna be, I'm just about to go to Hawaii, and then I've got this big hunt, and then my boat is getting off the dock, and we're gonna do tournament fishing, and I got three houses that I'm in, you know. And and he's like, now I did it to myself, right? And he even told me he didn't even didn't even exactly know what day it was. I was like, hey, happy Tuesday. And he's like, Is it oh yeah, is this is it Tuesday? You know, and so there's a guy who has all of the trappings of success. To to my knowledge, he's not a person of faith, but he's quote unquote killing it in the business world, right? But you're like, is that what winning looks like? You know, and and then and then let me let me kind of contrast another one. Uh actually I'll get to the other one. I want to talk about a conversation I had with my son. Uh, and uh recently we were out uh on a golfing on on Father's Day, and uh I'll fill you in on his thought. But but that first guy had all the trappings of success, but he was definitely he was along for the ride at this point, big A.

SPEAKER_00

I wonder if we interviewed his wife, if she would feel like that's been successful.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's an interesting question. She's in the business with him, and I think she runs hard too, right? And so uh, you know, there's no intervation, there's no intervention coming from your wife if she's an accomplice.

Provision, Idols, And Trust

SPEAKER_00

You know. You know, I've always used the excuse that I really love y'all a lot, and that's why I work so hard. And uh I know that my wife, her love language is quality time. Right. But here, let's get down to the real brass tacks of things, though, quite honestly, because I still have not mastered this, quite honestly, because I love what I do. I love to work. Yeah. And uh the thing is, is for the most part, I can say I really did do that for my family. Right. I really love Robin. I really love my kids, my grandkids, I love the people we serve. So I can say with no impure motive that I have really worked, I really think hard for my family, but where does it cross the line? And that's where it has really interrupted my personal relationship with Robin is we've had this discussion, you know, countless times, sitting on the couch, and it almost cost me my marriage 20 years ago, 25 years ago. It almost literally cost me my marriage. Robin said, I feel like a single mom. Yeah, I'm raising these kids, I'm doing these things by myself, and you're not there, and I'm taking them to practice and all those kind of things. Because provision isn't just financial. If you really start thinking about your relationship with your spouse, it's emotional, it's spiritual, it's relational, it's all those things. So, how do we get our arms around that?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, no, I think uh some of it is it's this continual process we have of being called into a relationship with God that's one of trust. Like, can we trust God enough to tap the brakes, to put the phone down, to do the, to let go of my need to provide for myself or provide for others or to be responsible and all of these things, which can be good in them in and of themselves. But, you know, they can become idols, right? And they do become idols if if we're not we're not careful. Uh, you know, I think about the word provider. You know, there's a biblical uh historic name for God, which was Jehovah Jirah. I think that meant my provider. And there's songs about that. And it's like the the myth that we're the provider, it's like we, yeah, we've got to work hard, but we also have to rest and relax and and and do the other jobs. I mean, like why do we why do we obsess over the provider role when it's relative to our work and our income, but maybe we don't have that same level of intensity around the emotional availability and just the time, just relaxing and valuing time of talking to our kids, you know.

Relationship Capital And Loss

SPEAKER_00

You know, here's the thing. Intellectually, I know those things. Yeah. But pragmatically, when it gets into it, I'm very ambitious. Uh, I'm very goal-driven. Uh, I love to have great aspirations and accomplish things. I feel like as I'm moving the ball forward, we're scaling our businesses, we're having success in regards to the financial aspirations that we have. But when I look back at the relationship capital that's being spent to accomplish that, I'm like, do I really end up being a winner overall? And the answer is no. Yeah. Because I may come home financially and be very successful. But if I've lost in the relationship side of it, I still go home a loser. So how do we temper that? How do we tame that? How do we uh get into a place to where there's a good rhythm, where there's good balance, where there's guardrails? And one of the things that I see that we have to do that I 20 years ago didn't do was to have a clear written vision. It would be in my head and I wouldn't have to be held accountable to it because no one could see it. But now when I have trusted advisors around me and they say, Big A, if you want to do that, how does that align with your goals? How does that align with your vision? Scott Beebe really got me into uh, he's the founder of My Business on Purpose. And he helped me understand the value of sharing the vision, casting the vision. And then we have something to measure by. And so then we know that we're tracking if that we're really accomplishing the goals in the first place. I wrote a document years ago and we'll put it in the show notes. It's called What Do I Want? And in this document, it helps you identify the things that you want so that you do know when you're winning. And so I encourage you to download that for free. Take that work through it. Hopefully, it will help you to understand when you are winning. So, what about you? How do you set those guardrails, those boundaries? Uh, how do you know when it's time to stop working and be present?

Vision, Accountability, And Wins

SPEAKER_01

You know, I think there's the point of diminishing returns as you get further into the evenings and you're working and you realize your brain's really not there anyhow. So you're just going through the motions. I mean, even the science says is that if, you know, it it falls off fast. If you're not in the in the good working zone, anyhow, in some ways it's just, it's just habit, it's procrastination. Uh, it's it's it's avoiding some of those things we say we want. We want relationship, we want intimacy, we want friendship. And it's like, then what's the deal with checking your email at eight o'clock at night? Right. So some of it is just setting up those boundaries. I I recommend having a conversation with your spouse about what are our rules with our phone? I mean, just start there. Um, I just watched a video yesterday, Harvard professor, I've mentioned him, Arthur C. Brooks. He basically said, uh, part of the reason we don't have happiness is it takes boredom for us to get clear on what really matters. And we just don't let ourselves be bored anymore. We either work so hard or we entertain ourselves so hard for our through our smartphones, we're never letting our brain be bored enough to say, what really matters in this life? Like, what do I want my relationship with my kids and my wife to look like? So, you know, that was that was that was convicting. And so, um, and I mean, I think they always say that awareness is curative. Just having these conversations honestly with yourself first and with your spouse, you're gonna move the ball. You know, um, you know, your spouse loves you and wants the best for you. And so give them some permission to um correct you in this area.

Boundaries, Phones, And Boredom

SPEAKER_00

Here's the thing that Robin and I've had many discussions around and used to when I was much more immature, I would make bone-headed comments about, well, hey, you don't mind enjoying this beautiful house we've got, and you don't even mind going to the vacation house and taking these nice trips. That didn't get me very far. It got me to the couch a couple of times, but we we can't use that as leverage. We can't say, hey, look what I'm providing, look what I'm doing. Uh, that's not gonna serve you well in the long term. It's open communication. Where are the boundaries? The reason hints back to the vision. When you work in tandem with your spouse and you're on the same track and you know what the vision is, and you know what the boundaries are, you know what the rules of engagement are. It's like, this is where we're gonna go, this is what we're gonna do, and here's how we're gonna get there.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, big A, the the next two ideas around this, this, this, you know, your role as a provision becoming a prison if you're not careful is, you know, responsibility is a, you know, we attract responsibility as leaders, as people that are responsible. And so we just go through life, particularly when the time we get to middle age and we've got all of these obligations and expectations and stuff we started, and we're we keep adding to, but we never subtract, right? And so at some point we you got to put your foot down and say, I just can't do that anymore, or it's not for this season of life. When was the last time you asked somebody, or you you just said, listen, I'm done with that. That fit me for last season. It's not going to fit me for this season. Or in order to go forward into this new season, I need to let go of some of these things. And if we're not careful, all of that responsibility, particularly external responsibility, creates resentment at home. Where the people that need us, do they just feel like, you know, you know, pastors are infamous for this, frankly. Is that, you know, good old pastor Bob served everybody and went to every funeral and preached every ma wedding, but, you know, none of his kids are serving the Lord because they're embittered that they didn't get the best part of their dad, right? That would that's not that's not winning, right? That's not winning.

Golden Handcuffs Of Responsibility

SPEAKER_00

Tommy Burns, a friend of mine, would go every Monday night to visitation for years, uh, leave his own family. He worked hard at a local company here. And one night he came home and he was all excited about all the people he'd shared the gospel with. And Laura, his wife, looked at him and said, Well, I'm really glad that you're ministering to the community. While you were absent tonight, I led your daughter to the Lord. And it really made him set up and take note that he was putting other people ahead of his own family when he probably not that he was doing something bad, it was something good, but it was in place of his own family. And so I think we've got to evaluate and not really have what we call the golden handcuffs of responsibility. And oftentimes we could really stop having to do some of the things that we do by making good decisions currently, because every decision that you make today is going to affect tomorrow. So be mindful of the responsibility that you place on yourself. We have a mutual friend, Daryl Lines, out in San Antonio, Texas. And I love this because he's got an app on his phone, and every month he quits something. And I'm like, that's pretty cool because he always has to be evaluating the things that he's doing so that he doesn't have these golden handcuffs of more responsibility, but it's less. So just think through the team that you've got now, the debt that you've got, your clients, all these are good things that can honestly trap you into a cycle if left unchecked. And so we have to constantly be taking an evaluation. And I think for all of us, including myself and you, Seth, and the listeners, it's really a good time to audit your obligations, to really sit down and look at your obligations and say, what is it that I can give up? What is it I can replace so that I can be present when I'm present?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and they and doing that formally, you you you hit on the word the other day, uh a minute ago, intention. It takes intention. It takes getting away, not trying to jam this into a 12-minute conversation before bedtime. It's like, you know, you gotta, you gotta put some energy into it, get away, let your mind clear a little bit, detox to ask those those questions.

The Power Of No

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, if you haven't listened to last week's or the week before podcast, go back and listen to it. It's somewhat on time management, it's talking about rest, it's talking about taking a sabbatical. I think it could be helpful to you in context of this uh podcast as all uh as well. What about resentment, unspoken resentment at home? This is something that we've had to deal with. I'm just really laying it all out there. I'm bearing it all today. After 45 years of marriage, you go through these trials. And there's been times where Robin has been a little bit resentful, not for what I do. She loves, she's a huge advocate. She loves what I do. We've owned a number of businesses over the years. She's always been my biggest supporter. But Robin's also been the biggest defender of our family. She she wants our family to be first place. She wants to be first place in my life, right? And then my kids, and then my grandkids, and then the business. But your wife really isn't asking for perfection. Robin always says, I'm not asking you to be perfect. What I'm asking for is you to be my partner, and it's what you signed up for. So what do you say to that? How are you, Helen's partner?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Uh well, I think it starts with the other person, is like what's important to them? Like, what do they need? You know, I tend to be a little bit a squeaky wheel gets the grease, right? Because I'm I'm self-absorbed if I'm not careful. And you and I have to step back and say, all right, what are they experiencing from from this marriage? What are they experiencing for me? Do I genuinely show and demonstrate that that I care right about what's important you know to her? And obviously there's a ton of And how do you do that?

FOMO And Momentum Myths

SPEAKER_00

How do you do that practically, pragmatically? How do you how do you do that?

Delegate To Lead Without You

SPEAKER_01

I sit down and we do a little devotion and I say, How can I pray for you today? Right. Or we talk about a sermon or a conversation or an issue. And it's it's it's the myth of uh quality time versus quantity time. It's like nobody pays at I don't know. I don't pay attention to that. It's just literally keeping short accounts, don't let the you can tell when you're out of out of sorts, do not let that last very long, and just just have heart-to-heart conversations. Um, you know, my wife is very family-oriented, and uh, she'll let me know if she thinks I'm either playing too much and not being available or working too much, not being available, and and I have a choice at that point to either resist it or listen. I had an interesting thing that happened the other day, and this this was a profound thing. It was it was one of my nephews was speaking at my son's wedding. It was the it was actually in the building I'm in right now, and um he was saying, It took me a while, he's he's relatively new married, to realize that our role is to confront the other person for the benefit of making them better. And that that's not that's not conflict in the negative sense, it's conflict in the good sense, is that because she knows I love her, I can confront her because I want her to get better, and that's doing my job. And this is what he was saying, and and I that hit me. That was profound wisdom for a young guy to say, all right. Well, that wasn't my son, it was my nephew. So, yes, you're gonna be able to do it. Oh, okay, I'm with you. But it was it was a profound thing to think, okay, Helen is in my life because God will use her to confront me to make the changes that I need to make. And that that's a good thing. Like that's the purpose of marriage. And somewhere I think I've even heard that the very word marriage speaks to being in opposition. Not alignment, like opposition. And I should do a little research before I say that emphatically. But I kind of get the concept, which is no, no, no. You don't need somebody to pat you on the back and tell you you're doing everything, everything that you do naturally is perfect. You need somebody to say, hey, buddy, you're actually not on track. You're you're running off the rails here. How do we get you back on track?

SPEAKER_00

It's kind of the iron sharpens iron. Yes, sir. Proverbs 27, 17. Here's what the fear has been for me in the past 20 years is if really I don't listen now, one day I'm afraid she'll stop speaking altogether. And I know oftentimes in our disagreements over the years, if Robin becomes apathetic, that's a really dangerous spot for us to be in. Right. Right. She's lost interest because I keep defending my position rather than trying to communicate to get to a good place. Listen, there's a great resource out there called Choosing to Cheat. I don't know if you guys listening like Andy Stanley as much as I do. I think he's one of the greatest speakers out there. But I think it's a must-read for learning where to draw the line uh when you have time that is stretched. And so it's called Choosing to Cheat by Andy Stanley. Recommend it highly.

Lead At Home Like At Work

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, big A, there's some other things that people worry about. And that is, okay, if if I if I undertake this effort to create some more margin, you know, am I gonna lose momentum? Right? If I if I tap the brakes, is the world gonna pass me by? Am I gonna lose influence? Am I gonna lose relevance? Am I gonna lose money? Right? That's a that's a uh it's kind of a fear, you know, that people have to do that.

SPEAKER_00

Aren't you afraid of that some? Like if you do get a little margin as you get older, I understand, but some of our audience is younger. Take us back 20 years when you were in business and you had momentum going and you needed to create a little margin for your family. Take us back to that fear.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I I think I would call that FOMO. I had fear of missing out, fear of whatever achievement, fear of the the opportunities aren't gonna come, right? Definitely have have had that. So yeah.

unknown

Yeah.

Micro Moments That Matter

SPEAKER_00

Because your buddies are doing good, you're hanging out, the guys you went to college with are killing it, and you hear it, and you got a little momentum going right now, and you're watching almost take a break. Envy competition, right? It's on the horizon. Yeah, envy, right? Things are real. They are real. Yeah. So some of the things that you can do, though, to help is to build boundaries, kind of like you build budgets. Yeah. And we teach that in ISI. It's like, hey, if that's really important, you need to think about what the boundaries are. Like, I won't get into it today because it'll sidetrack us. But me as an individual, I have personal boundaries. Places I won't go, things I won't do, conversations I won't have, uh, in environments or venues I won't go to. Those are my personal boundaries. I used to tell my daughters, you know, you make a good decision here, not in the heat of the moment when you're out on a date, right? We're gonna have these boundaries established today so that you don't have to make the decision then. It's the same way in business. I think you've got to create these boundaries just like we do. Sit down and proactively build budgets. What what is another way that you think that we can reclaim margin without losing momentum?

SPEAKER_01

You know, I think part of it is you have to come to the belief that margin helps you perform better. Until you believe that rest helps you perform better, or until you get to an age when rest helps you perform better, you're you're probably not on the journey because you maybe don't see the upside. I remember years ago, before Dave Ramsey, there was a guy named Larry Burquette. And I remember him saying, Hey man, if you can't get your work done in eight hours, that's your problem. You're not doing it right. And I remember thinking, that guy's insane. I mean, I was just like, that was so foreign for me. So back to my son golfing with him this weekend. I asked him, How many hours are you working? He's like 70. And I'm like, you know, and so the conversation around our house right now, he's newly married, is his wife's like, Yeah, that guy's never sleeping. He's just working. And I'm gonna be having more heart to hearts with him. It's like, what's going on, man? You know, and he works for a great company. They've given him a sales rule where he gets paid what he eats. You know, you eat what you kill, so to speak, and he's doing quite well. And I'm like, okay, but are you setting patterns early? Are you building resentments? Like, what are these things? And so we'll we'll be having these conversations. I was a little surprised to hear it, but here we go.

SPEAKER_00

You need to point him to this episode, let him listen to it.

Pray With Your Family, Not Just For Them

SPEAKER_01

I didn't call him out by name, so nobody knows which one I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_00

That's right. That's right. Hey, you know, I think one of the things that's really helpful, and I've learned this over time. I used to think I had to do everything because I didn't think anybody was gonna do it as good as me.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And I think we've got to learn to empower your team to lead without you. And this is something that's scary for people. It's like, ah, they don't know what I know, they don't have product knowledge, or they don't have the culture down, and they don't really understand how I would do it, and I can perform in that arena best. You're never gonna scale a business if you're doing everything. I think delegation isn't a weakness. I think quite honestly, it's wisdom.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And what systems or people can you use to elevate uh your company with your oversight, but delegate it to other people. So you're really big on this. I know that you're a big delegator, you believe in that. So, what is one or two things that you would suggest to people to do to empower them to lead without you, without you as the leader? Yeah.

From Balance To Alignment

SPEAKER_01

And there's a couple things that come to thought. One is a philosophical statement. It's Dan Martell that I heard it from. He said, 80% done by somebody else is a hundred percent freaking awesome. Like 80% done by somebody else is a hundred percent awesome. And I like that because he gets honest about there is a concession here. Yeah, you probably can do it better. But so what? Right? You know, it's not going to serve you well in the long run. So you might as well just bite the bullet now, pay that 20% discount or premium for having something done not perfectly, but at least getting done and not on your plate. But coming to grips with the fact that that's what matters. What matters most is you're you're valuing and protecting um your own sanity, you're you're setting your business up for future success. You're giving other people the opportunity to fail and to grow. Like there's all of this upside around delegation. And you know, my I I just kind of come back to the intentionality. Have a conversation, frame it as an opportunity for the person, let them know you're there to help, but give them enough, you know, rope, so to speak, to do what they need to do. Right.

SPEAKER_00

A guy told me a long time ago, he said, you really need to learn the power of no. Yeah. No is a complete sentence, right? And it's something that we don't like to say. We want to serve everybody, we want to be there, we want to say yes to everything. Yeah. But every yes to a late-night proposal that you give or some new client, it's a no, maybe, to your son's basketball game. And you're like, oh, well, that's stung. People that are listening right now, you should be probably tonight taking your little boy to basketball practice or being at your little girl's recital, but you got this proposal you got to finish. And I just want to tell you, you've only got one opportunity with those kids. You got multiple opportunities at making money. We can make more money, but you don't get a do-over raising those kids again. And so I just want to encourage you to think through when you say yes to someone else, what are you saying no to relationally? You need to really filter these decisions through your values and not just your wallet. If you want to win in every area of your life, you've got to do that. Hey, uh, Michael Hyatt's got another really good resource, uh, free to focus. It's a framework that he's created and it's kind of a not-to-do list, and it helps you really reclaim multiple hours a week as you work. So Michael's a friend of mine. He lives here in Nashville. He's done a great job with a lot of things, but he's done an exceptional job with this free-to-focus framework. So reach out uh to Michael Hyatt and get a copy of that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. You know, Big A, I think part of what I'm I'm thinking about as we're talking is um is really kind of catching a vision for what your ideal of what do you want relative to these relationships. And what what I mean by that is your kids are probably gonna give you the grace to tell you that you're a great dad. With whatever you do. If you're if you if you're even making a nominal attempt and you're being faithful to the wife and you're, you know, you're you're there occasionally, kids are gonna give you the grace and they're gonna say, Oh, dad, you're great. But you know in your heart you you could do better and it could be more meaningful. And that's the question is like, are you going for excellent, are you going for real depth and real relationships? Or are you just kind of doing enough that everybody thinks you're you're you're you know, you're you're you're doing as good as the next guy? And I think that's a that's a that's something between me and the Lord that I got to get clear on, right?

SPEAKER_00

You really gotta dive deep into that, Seth, because your children at a young age don't want to hurt your feelings. Right. But at the end of the day, I my daughter's 42 and 39. There is and has been a point in time where they did come back after they've matured and was honest and candid with me and said, there are some things that I recognize now that maybe could have been different. See, the problem is then it's too late. I can't go back and fix it. And it's it's been influential in their life and the way they raise their children. So, yes, you can get a pass, but you need to do the deep work and you need to go ask other seasoned veterans, how can I do this differently and better so that I don't impact my children in a negative perspective? And so we say that leading at home like you lead at work. Yeah. Like be just as intentional, whether it's with date night or uh do that as intentional as you go to those boards that you serve on, or that you have those client meetings. Like put it on your calendar, kind of give it a budget. Those that are really conscious with your budget right now, you need to show up prepared. You need to show your spouse, like, hey, I'm here and this is important to me. And uh, I think if you do that just like you do business meetings, it'll set uh a real good precedence for your future and it will really show your wife that she matters.

SPEAKER_01

You know, I love that. And another thing to do is to be just as intentional about the kids and schedule these micro moments with them, these little special things that you do with each of your kids. Each of your kids has different interests, right? And as they get older, that becomes a little bit clearer. And often it can be these special little trips. Like I have my youngest son loves to ski. So I so I can just say, if I can get a ski trip with him or a day on the mountain just with him, you know, it's a big deal. My middle son loves motorcycles. We go riding together. My older son loves golf, right? So these are all happen to be things that I enjoy too. But they're special when you when you walk and load. Now, my daughter, who's a little older, she's got two kids and one on the way. That's where I struggle at this point. Is like, or how do I at this age, like, how do I create those micro moments for her? But it's, you know, it's worth the conversation. It's worth the effort.

SPEAKER_00

You know, I'll tell you what's really beneficial in that relationship, because I've been confronted with that now for 23 years with grandchildren, a little ahead of you in regards to the age, is when you love their children well, your grandchildren, it is a special moment for the daughter. Well, that's easy work. I love that action.

SPEAKER_01

So I can I think I can I can win that. I can win that.

SPEAKER_00

You're creating that. I talked to Brett Barnhart this week, another mutual friend of ours that's been in the mastermind for about 12 years. And he told me something that he started about five years ago that's really been impactful in his family, and I'll share it here. Maybe others can do it. He's got a son named Cole, and Cole gets to pick the first Friday night of every month what activity the family's gonna do. Addie's his little girl, she's eight years old. She gets to pick the second Friday night. The third Friday night is family night, and the fourth Friday night is date night for Crystal and Brett. And so they go through that rotation every single month, and they've done this for about five years. So those micro moments are for a couple of hours. They had a shaving cream fight in their backyard last Friday night. I thought that was pretty cool. Brett said he'd taken three showers and he still smelt like an old man. But that's gonna go down as a memory for those children that are unbelievable. So you don't need hours and hours to do this. You just need to be very intentional, whether it's a 15-minute bike ride or taking your eight-year-old daughter out for, you know, uh a little ice cream or something, just those micro moments will be good.

SPEAKER_01

Very good. Um, big A, you got a you got a resource for our listeners on on that one?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, there's uh the the last point I wanted to say before we move on. We're gonna jump out of here, is really if you spend some time praying with your family, not just for them, it will create an indelible impression on your family. And a lot of guys are nervous about that. They're like, that feels uncomfortable. And I agree. Yeah, I agree, it can feel uncomfortable until you get comfortable with doing that. Because leadership at home really starts with your spiritual presence. That's where it all begins. And if you model dependence on God with your wife and your kids watching, it will have an impact on them like nothing else. And if you want to really learn how to do this, Michael Smith came up with uh a prayer app called Lead Me, L-E-A-D, Lead Me. And if you want consistent spiritual leadership at home, follow that principle that Michael W. Smith has set out. I think it could be helpful. But let me tell you, this is not an easy topic, Seth. As we end today, I know firsthand that I've really struggled with this along the way because I love to work, but you're not alone in this tension. I'm just gonna be honest with you. There's many business owners out there today that feel stuck between the demands of their work and their desire to be present at home. But staying stuck is a choice, and we don't want you to stay stuck. And it's not about balance, it's about alignment. And when your calendar starts to reflect your convictions, then things begin to shift. It's not going to happen overnight, but over time, I promise you, it's gonna work out.