Ep 001 | The Smart Dad Mindset

Welcome to Episode 1 of The Smart Dad Podcast. Fatherhood today isn’t what it used to be. Kids are different. The world is different. And most dads are left wondering—am I doing this right?

I don’t have all the answers, but after raising 15 kids, I have battle-tested wisdom and the scars to prove it. I’ve lived through the late nights, tough conversations, big wins, and painful failures. I know what works, what doesn’t, and how to adapt timeless truths to lead in a constantly changing culture.

On The Smart Dad Podcast, we skip the feel-good fluff and get real about fatherhood. Each episode gives you practical strategies, honest direction, and stories that hit home—so you can lead your family with confidence.

No theory. No clichés. Just real talk from a dad who’s been in the trenches.

Today's episode is about what it means to be a Smart Dad and the mindset behind being a Smart Dad. So, let’s get to work.

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Transcript

Welcome to The Smart Dad Podcast, where we help you lead well, at home, in business, and in life. I'm your host, Derek Moore. Smart dads are intentional, engaged, and ever learning.

Whether you're a seasoned dad who's been through it all, a new dad still figuring it out, a supported dad with a great woman at your side, or a solo dad carrying the load alone. This podcast is for you. No matter your background, your challenges, or your goals, fatherhood is a journey of growth, and we're here to do it together.

Each week, I'll share insights that I've garnered throughout my life of raising kids, building businesses, and leading others. I'll definitely share some failures, some successes, and I'll even be able to show you tools and strategies that you can use to become a smart dad in your own life. Today's episode is about what it means to be a smart dad and the mindset behind being a smart dad. Let's get to work.

Welcome to the first episode of The Smart Dad Podcast. Today, we'll be answering the following question. What does it mean to be a smart dad? I'm your host, Derek Moore. Here's a little bit about my life. I have 15 kids. Yes, 15 kids. All single births.

The oldest is 30 this year. The youngest is still one. I've always loved school.

I still love school. I love kids. I've been tutoring, training, and coaching 40 years now. I'm an entrepreneur who built a tutoring business to high net worth and ultra high net worth families, and then retired in 2017. I earned my bachelor's degree in biomedical science because I was sure I was going to be a pediatrician. I never did that. I have an MBA, which I earned after failures in business, after retiring from business, and now I'm pursuing my PhD in education. Like I said, I love school. I love learning, but I really love doing life with other people. In business right now, I focus on coaching executive functioning for students. I also focus on coaching executives, aspiring executives, and entrepreneurs. I have a wonderful wife named Kelly.

We have four girls together, and she's helping me raise my last four for my first marriage as their bonus mom. I love being a dad. I've wanted to be a dad since I was a sophomore in high school. And in that vein, I've actually been reading parenting books, leadership books, and really how to have a positive mental attitude since I was a kid. My constant desire to learn is actually surpassed by my greater desire to share what I learn with others, and to have them share what they learn with me. I love to inspire. I love to challenge myself, and I love to challenge other people. Which leads us to The Smart Dad Podcast.

Here's what I believe a smart dad is.

Being a smart dad means leading your life and your family with purpose in eight key dimensions. I call it eight dimensional living.

Each of these eight dimensions starts with the letter F, and I alphabetize these eight dimensions, because that's how I roll. So let's go over the eight dimensions first, then I'll go through them with you. Faith, family, finances, fitness, food, freedom, fun, and future. I believe that every decision a smart dad makes will have some hint, some taste of each of these eight dimensions. Let's talk about the first dimension, faith. Faith is building a strong foundation on what you believe. What you believe will come through in everything you do in your life. You're going to learn to lead with values, integrity, and wisdom. Being a smart dad means instilling principles that guide your family through life's challenges. These are principles that are bigger than you. Second F, family. Smart dads want to create a legacy of love. A couple of things here dads, being present matters. Your time matters more than your paycheck. Parenting in partnership with someone is really how you create a legacy of love. Don't just let your wife carry the full load. And finally, equipping your kids for life. Not just academics, not just a job, not just a career, but real world success. Okay, third, smart dads have to be smart with their money. Finances. You lead with your provision, providing for your family, and your discipline. Discipline with your money. We'll cover this in other areas, but you want to provide beyond money. Kids need emotional security, not just financial security. I've seen this first hand with high net worth and ultra high net worth dads. You also have the responsibility, as a smart dad, to teach your children financial literacy, financial responsibility, and get them in there with money. Get their hands dirty a little bit. Have them fail with $5 or $10, $500 or $1,000, and just keep raising the stakes so that they have a little bit of financial savvy as they grow. Fourth dimension is fitness. Now, I tend to think about physical fitness, so let's talk about taking care of your body. If your body goes, it's hard to step up. As Vince Lombardi said, fatigue makes cowards of us all. So having a strong fit body makes you a better leader. Modeling, discipline physically, but also mentally and relationally will build resilience. But you have to also have that physical body. The fifth dimension is food. Now, you'll find this out about me, but I love food. I love to eat food. I love to have others cook food for me. I really don't like to cook. I can, I've done it successfully a couple of times, but what I put into my body, I want it to taste good. I don't just want it to be a calorie transaction. I want you to know, Smart Dads, your job was to teach healthy eating habits, mindful decision making about food. That's one aspect. But the other thing about food, reminds me of Jesus. He broke bread and had meals with so many people in his three-year ministry. I like to use meals as a time to connect, as a time to share, as a time to strengthen and invest in relationships. My kids will sit down. We will often go around and say, what's your highest high for the day, or for the weekend, or for the week? What's your lowest low for the day, or for the weekend, or for the week? And around food, we can do these things that connect, and the memories and the consistency that are built there. All right, the sixth dimension of living is freedom.

Living with a purpose, and aiming for something bigger than yourself. I want smart dads to design a life that balances work, fatherhood, and personal growth. You are willing to give up some of your freedoms today, so that you can achieve greater freedom tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and the days after tomorrow is tomorrow. Just on and on into your future, which we'll cover later. And you do this by choosing systems over goals, daily habits over massive change. And these freedom-inducing and freedom-causing decisions will continue to grow the freedom you already have. I love freedom. I want to build that into everything I do as a smart dad. The seventh dimension I like to live and base my life on is fun.

This actually is very difficult for me. Maybe you can already tell, but I enjoy life, but actually, programming fun into my life is something I had to do on purpose. I had to build joy into being a dad. Tickling my kids, stopping to smell the roses, playing with them, walking the dog with them, talking to them, giggling, watching TV's and movies and shows and whatever they want, laughing, making memories. Those are habits that I've had to build into my life because it didn't come naturally to me. So as you do this journey of being a smart dad, keep in mind your sense of adventure will inspire your children, your partner, your spouse, and all those around you who you lead to have fun in life. Finally, the 8th dimension is future. As someone who believes in God, I believe in Jesus Christ, and always looking to the future. If I'm discouraged, I look to the future. If I'm hopeful, I look to the future. So it's not surprising that we have to have a vision for our children, a vision for our family that we have today, and a vision for our legacy that goes beyond us. The future will have you not there. The future will go on without you. Are you thinking about that today? In your future, there are others that show up. They need to have some things delegated, but not abdicated. I've done a lot of abdicating. Through a lot of work, I learned how to delegate. You want to teach responsibility. You want to stay involved. I have systems now, that I put into place, so that I can successfully delegate, and not simply abdicate. The future also has us focus on failing often. You say, wait, what did you say? Yeah, you need to learn to fail. School tells us failure is bad. Work tells us failure is bad. Speeding tickets, traffic tickets, parking tickets tell us failure is bad. I would argue failure small and failure frequently is what you need in life to get feedback and to build resilience. And this will carry you and your children into the future. So what is a smart dad? If you're listening this far, then you are a smart dad. Here you are. I've said for years now, showing up, clocking in, and having a good attitude is 90% of the battle. Maybe you've seen that, maybe you haven't. That's my observation. What if this podcast is the other 10% you need to go from being a dad who just shows up, or a dad who just clocks in, or a dad who has a good attitude into a smart dad? Remember, experience is a great teacher, but it can be a painful teacher. Wisdom is a better teacher. I like to say, wisdom is experience that you get at a discount. I didn't have to burn my fingers on the stove. I saw someone else do it. I didn't have to decide, do I jump out of a moving car going 40 miles an hour? I saw someone else do it. So, experience allows us to learn from somebody else's mistakes, from somebody else's lessons. So, as we talk about this, I want to come full circle. Eight dimensions of living, they're not separate, they're not untouchable. Faith, to me, is like an ingredient. If you're making a cake, faith is not one piece, the top piece or the bottom piece or the left piece or the right piece.

Faith goes into everything I decide because it's my framework. It's the structure I weigh everything against. Family, every bad decision I make, every good decision I make, every action I take, every action I don't take, affects my family. So as I go through life and succeed, and I go through life and fail, I'm gonna frame it for my children to see, hey, I was really upset when I came home, had nothing to do with you, I'm sorry I yelled, I'm sorry I did whatever I did. Will you forgive me? Let's reset. I'm gonna go out the door. Let's try this again. You know, I've heard for years, your values are not taught by your children. They're not, your values are not taught to your children, excuse me, your values are caught by your children. Your values are not taught, your values are caught. So your children will pick up on your priorities. And when you make a mistake, not if, but when you make a mistake, your faith and what you believe about your mistakes will bleed into your family. Finances, again, this is not on an island. Do you give, whether it's charitably, or a tithe, or a gift, or to a non-profit, your faith will drive your finances. Your family, are you preparing your family for financial success? That is inextricably linked to your money. Do you have self-discipline? Do you have delayed gratification? So, what I'm saying here is I go through each of these eight dimensions, and I say, is any of them disconnected from the others? No, but every decision I make, I will weigh in terms of these. So, a smart dad will weigh faith and family, finances and fitness, food, freedom, fun, and future.

So, who is this podcast for? Well, if you're a dad, obviously, it's for you. Now, am I a smart dad? Some would say yes. I would say I'm a battle-tested, beaten-up veteran dad who survived for 30 years of parenting in my 50s, and I'm here to tell you some of the mistakes I've made, some of the things I've seen, and maybe you can be a little bit encouraged to keep pressing on, to not give up. Maybe you're not technically anyone's dad, but you invest in somebody as if you are his dad or her dad. Maybe you're a coach, maybe you're an uncle, maybe you're a mentor. I hope something in here will help you, strengthen you, and give you maybe one insight. Maybe you're a mom, and you think, man, my husband needs to hear this. Well, let's not do it like that. But maybe we can say, I want to hear what smart dads do, and I want to empower my husband to do that. Maybe you're a single dad, maybe you're raising one girl or one boy, or like me, lots of girls and lots of boys. But we're going to go through this together. My goal is not to teach you something every time we do this podcast. My goal is to walk you through something I've seen, something I've experienced, and then we'll have a dialogue. I'm going to have questions, you're going to send me questions, and I'll be answering what you want to talk about. So, when we start as a dad, maybe we don't think we know anything. What we realize is, hey, I need to overcome all the things that my dad didn't do right. Or I need to overcome measuring myself against all the things my dad did do right. Some of you have a great dad, and you just think, I could never be that great. Some of you had a dad that was terrible, and you think, I will never do that. Well, a smart dad says, I know my gifts, I know my strengths, I know my weaknesses. I'm going to, on purpose, live my life out to try to find where I'm called to be. We're gonna talk about why I have so many kids. We're gonna talk about how I made so much money. We're gonna talk about how I lost so much money. We're gonna talk about all the things that have to do with being a dad. Buying a car, not buying a car. Paying for college, making them go to college. Paying for a coach or a tutor, doing it yourself. Coaching them for little leagues and T-balls are not doing that. We're gonna cover real life. Listen, this is not a bunch of fluff. This is not a bunch of feel good. Let's all sit around and sing kumbaya. I want you to be stronger when we're done. So, this is episode one. The idea is figure out how to be a smart dad. The fact that you're here says you're a smart dad. You have experiences that you can share with your child, your children, your kids. That's what I want to encourage you to do. Find one story today that your kid doesn't know about you. It could be a great, positive story that you're very proud of. It could be an embarrassing moment like when my pants got pulled down, and I was running back, and I got pantsed by a guy, and all the moms saw my bare butt on the football field, and they were telling me how great of a game I had. And we laugh when the kids think it's hilarious, right? They'd never heard that before. Why? Because I forgot that I haven't told it in 10 years or 15 years. These are things as a dad we want to do. Tell a story. Encourage them. Talk about a success. Talk about a failure. We're going to go through that together here. So check back in. These will be regular. I want to do this with you. Let's begin this journey. Let's make it happen. We're on the same team. You can do it. Thank you for joining us on the Smart Dad Podcast. Be sure to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. For resources, links, and more, check out the show notes. Also, if you like what you heard today, please leave us a five-star review so other dads can find the podcast and be the dad they are meant to be. Now go out and be a smart dad today.