The Family Flywheel: Business Principles for Successful Families and Sustained Wealth with Aaron Shelly

[00:00:00] If you say one thing to them, what is it? I think too many people are ignoring their social resources, and a lot of that's through their community service or through a church or through sports groups. They're not investing in those social connections. And it would be the same as if a business ignored marketing and sales.

It's so obvious when you look at it and so painful when you see it happening. But without those social connections, life is, life's gonna suck. You know? Like you're gonna have problems, you're gonna break. Thi I broke a collarbone skiing, my daughter broke a leg skiing. You know, like I've had all sorts of, you just have bad things, you'll have financial problems.

And if you don't have those social connections, those, those direct relationships that you're investing in, It's really hard to get through some of those bad experiences and I think it can be difficult to stay married when you don't have it. I think it can be difficult to, in some cases, stay alive. I think this whole loneliness epidemic is because [00:01:00] people are not investing into and other people and building those relationships, so, and especially men.

Here's the million dollar question. How do men like us reach our full potential? Growing to the men we dream of being while taking care of our responsibilities, working, being good husbands, fathers, and still take care of ourselves? Well, that's the big question In this podcast, we'll help you answer those questions and more.

My name is Brent and welcome to the Album Man podcast.

Welcome to the Fallible Man Podcast, your home for all things, man, husband, and father. Big shout out to Alible Nation. You guys keep the show rolling. And a warm welcome to our first time listeners. Hey, thanks for giving us a chance. I hope you enjoy the show. My name is Brent, and today my special guest is author, entrepreneur, and executive.

Aaron Shelly. Aaron, welcome to the Fallible Man Podcast. Thanks a lot, [00:02:00] Brett. I'm excited to be here. It's gonna be a lot of fun. It is. I'm looking forward to it. Now, Aaron, you wrote a book and we're gonna get into that later in the show that I have my copy right here, family Flywell. Guys, I will have links for this book.

You need to read this book. This is a really great book. Uh, you know, I don't promote things that I don't believe in. And so guys, I, I highly recommend it. And there will be links in the show notes, and of course, on my website, on the library page, you can find it there as well. But before we dive into that, Aaron, we wanna know who you are and get to know you a little bit.

So we'd like to start the show off a little lighter, and that means we start with a silly question. So I hope you're on your pointless trivia. All right, let's see it. Who sang the title song for the latest bond film? No Time to Die. Is it a Adele B Sam Smith, c Billy Eilish, or d Kesha? She is, [00:03:00] they're not Adell.

Okay, guys, you know the rules don't cheat. We'll get back to that later. I know you guys are dying to know that, but don't look it up. Ride the show out. Make your guests, see how you did. Don't worry, Aaron. I had to look that up too. 'cause I, I, I told my wife, I said, does it mean I'm getting old when I don't recognize half the names of popular singers anymore?

Yeah. No, it's the same for me. I've been, I just am like, I either like it or I don't, and I don't really cache all that information in my head just. Hold on for later use. I generally find something I like and I just stay there. I don't introduce like new music very often. I, I'm still listening to the same music I was listening to as a teenager in the nineties.

Uh, that's when there was great music. I mean, they have Dave Matthews band that I still listen to. We heard that at the restaurant yesterday and my wife and I were like, this is so good. We haven't heard this for so long. Right. I, I turned stuff on and, and my kids were like, I've never heard of that. [00:04:00] That's okay.

And you know, half music I listen to you aren't gonna listen to it for a few more years anyway, so I, I tend to listen to a little heavier stuff when I work out. But other than that, yeah, a lot of my play relentless basically come out of the nineties, some, the eighties. Oh, there were such good times, such good music.

I don't know. Even, I mean, I listen to a whole bunch of different genres and I'm just like, it was so much better than for some reason. No, Aaron, I don't do giant introductions. So in your own words, today, Who is Aaron Shelley? Um, I'd say the big thing, I mean, I'm a father of four kids. I've been married for 25 ish years.

Um, I kind of started as an engineer. I mean, I was always into athletics and I've done a lot of engineering, got went into business and I just really liked to understand how things work. And so that's really been the course of my life. I love psychology. I just love learning generally and understanding how I can take the pieces that I learn and then [00:05:00] integrate 'em into my life.

And so I've kind of gone through business, been through some smaller companies, um, just got through with a company that we helped go from about 20 people to 180. We got some private equity for $50 million and I was the C E O O. So kind of on this business journey. But then I've kind of done an entrepreneur route.

My wife and I run an Irish dance school and have for the past a. 25 years, our whole marriage. And so that's kind of always run in the background. And so I kind of have this perpetual business and family and I just love creating new things. So the book was kind of a random happenstance that just the right things converged at the right time.

I never planned to write it, but I just kind of follow, you know, where life leads me. I think that's, that's quite a half happenstance. It's, it's an effort. My friend just released his first book, it came out yesterday and it's like, I'm, I'm just like, you actually did it. Like, writing a book is an undertaking, so well [00:06:00] done.

Yeah, it's, it's fun To me it was a lot around the, it's a lot around this principle of if I can do something, it'll help other people and I'm not doing it. Am I a good person? Like, what is the definition of, you know, good and evil? If good people don't do good things, then are they really good? It was kind of a moral push for me personally.

Okay. No, that, that makes perfect sense to me. Why I do this show. So I, I gotta ask the Irish Dance School. Yeah. So it River Dance, we're talking about river dance. Yeah. My wife, it just kind of was this weird thing where, uh, my wife and I got married when we were both still in school. She kind of had her own little business teaching dance and then also, uh, teaching at the university we were at.

And then it just so happened that when I graduated with my M B A it was, well, what do we just follow the normal trajectory and go get jobs at big companies? Like I had an opportunity at Intel in, uh, Portland, and then I was like, [00:07:00] well, but I don't wanna lose the asset because I'd read Rich Dad, poor Dad.

So it's like, no, let's, let's start to build up our assets. So we bought a house with a studio behind it, and I run all the technical stuff. I've never done any Irish stance. I don't know how to do it. I've watched a lot of performances. All my kids do it. But I'm just like, it's this whole specialization. My wife takes care of the dancing, the parents, the, that type of stuff.

And I take care of most of the technical, salesy marketing type things. I tell you, rich Dad, poor Dad, was a game changer for a lot of us who read it. It's like totally, you, you change views on so many things. Yeah, exactly. That's, that's actually one of the big, that's one of my favorite books in his game.

Cashflow was amazing because that was the first time I understood how money worked. I didn't understand, I'm like, it was always like, get rich. And I grew up, my, my mom was a farmer, a potato farmer in Idaho, and it was like, I knew how to save, but I had no idea how to make money beyond just, you know, you being the asset.

And so when I read that, I was like, and [00:08:00] played the game. I was like, wow, this is how it worked. And, and I played it with my wife. So we had this common language. So everything in our marriage became is that a doda, is that a asset, is a liability. And so that's kind of why we went through and did the investing we did with our business is.

I think from the game. I think otherwise I would've been like, well, the normal track is, you know, get an N B A, try to climb this corporate ladder and bounce around. Yeah, I, I think that's the way a lot of us would go. Now, Aaron, if you could have any superpower, what would it be and why? Oh, any superpower.

Geez, I don't know. The, uh, one that comes to mind is professor like Xavier X, where he can just connect with all the people. Humans find all the people. Also understand what people are thinking. I just think there's such a value in understanding other people and connecting with other people. But then there's also the knowledge, like, I just wanna learn so much.

That's why I love listening to podcasts, uh, listening to books. It's just like the amount of information that's out there [00:09:00] is always astounding. And the more you dig, the more you find. You don't know. Okay, you could learn any new skill instantly. What would it be and why?

Any new skill?

Uh, I would, there, it's, it's kind of a tie. I like, I love the AI space and I just haven't gone super deep in there. And then there's like Juujitsu, you know, Joe Rogan and Lex Friedman. Some of these podcasters, they talk about it. Robert Downey Jr. Talks about it. I mean, I've, I have my own method. I play sports and stuff like volleyball.

Um, but Juujitsu I think would be really cool to learn and know. It's, I love that conflict. The healthy conflict is so much fun. I agree entirely. Now, what purchase of a hundred dollars or less you made in the last year that's had the most profound impact on your life? Oh, a hundred dollars or less? Hmm.

That is very, that is a [00:10:00] challenging one. I'm trying to think. It's probably a book that I read. I'm just trying to think through which books I usually read about, I don't know, 10 or 20 books a, a quarter. So it's, it's, I'm just like, I read which one did I like? I would say walking with or uh, talking with strangers.

Malcolm Gladwell's book, I think had a, it's a very interesting approach to how to, how people mis assume what other people are thinking and therefore you end up with problems and how, you know, determine people are lying and the truth and the cost of certain biases. I think that would probably be one of my favorites.

I, I've heard of it. I haven't read that one yet. My, my business coach get got after me about reading too many books. He's like, look, I'm all for reading, but let me ask you, you, you read a lot of business books. Have you mastered everything you learned in the last book yet? Like, we'll know, he said, then stop, just like [00:11:00] you're, you're just, you know, having diarrhea.

Marketing and business information, but you aren't actually mastering anything. You're not actually learning. So I, I'm a little torn on that because I think there's a point where you can learn, because I've felt the same. There's a point when I've personally felt like I've read too much and I'm like, I need to now operationalize this information.

I can't just keep shoving in. But I think there's also a point if you're a creative person where you need new ideas, like Laurie Sutherland has a book called Alchemy on Marketing, and it's just like marketing principles and different marketing techniques and all these things. And so I think there's this point where it's depending on what you're trying to focus on, I could see it, but I don't know, I don't see a lot of value in some ways, like just trying to master everything in every book.

'cause sometimes things hit you and you're like, ah, okay, moving on. Like, do I care or, nah, it's not useful. So that's, I'm a little torn on that. I, because I, I feel the same way sometimes. I'm like, I love books. I just love the learning process, and I think can be problematic. Yeah. I, I don't think, like I said, he [00:12:00] doesn't want me to stop reading so much.

This is like, okay. Take the big concepts out of those and see which ones are gonna work for your business and try a couple out and play with it a little bit to see if there was value outta there. Take good stuff. Then you can move on to the next book. Yeah. And uh, I, I have a, like, bad habit of just one book to the next and it's, it's always me trying to make up for my weak points.

Right? So it, it is business books because that's not my background, it's marketing books because I don't have much experience in that. So he's like, yeah, but actually try a couple of the ideas out before you read the next book. Right. Because I get really bad about, just for me, it became a game. Right.

Checking 'em off. It's like, how many books did I read last year? Okay. I'm gonna read at least one and a half times that this year. Right. It started becoming a game just knocking off titles. It's like weightlifting where you're like, I just keep that a max out. Oh, right, right. I got five more pounds. Five more pounds.[00:13:00]

Yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah, you definitely have to balance the doing with the, the learning. But I, I think, at least for me, I, I say I kind of hit a point where I can kind of feel in my brain, like I gotta implement now. Like I'll, if I just keep getting more knowledge without using it, it's not useful. What are you most proud of, Erin?

Ooh, most proud of? Honestly, I'd say probably my, like my relationship with my wife. It's one of those things that's, you know, there's really amazing times, but then I've had the sequence, I call it my three hells. At one point I had difficulty getting a job in my early career when we were doing the entrepreneurial thing, and then I had a point when I made a bad investment in real estate during the 2008 crunch.

Then there was a time when I got audited by the I r s and it's kinda like going through those things and with my wife and her sticking with me and you know, then we've done really well. It's just been this like journey [00:14:00] and it's, there's been conflict like, like I think there always has to be when you're learning and growing, but when I look at that relationship, I'm like, it's one I know I can rely on and I know that she's gonna keep pushing me.

So I think that's probably, it's one of those harder things I think to kind of quantify, but I don't know that I'd give it up for much. No, that, that's a good thing to be proud of as a relationship coach. I'm, I'm all on board on that one, so, yeah. Glad that's big in your life. What is something everyone should know about you before we dig into the subject matter today, show, uh, what should someone know?

Um, I would say that I'm, I'm more interested in just how do I help people like. I'm much more, you know, if you do the color code test, I'm in this blue. Like, I love helping people, but then I've learned if you don't have the power, the red side, then you don't get to. So it's like I look at people, I'm like, if you need help, let me [00:15:00] know.

You know, send me an email. I, I, it's more, I've looked at some of those times that I had difficulties in my own life. It was when I reached out that I finally was able to get through the problem. I think we get stuck in these endless loops. So if I can help anyone, I'd, I'd love to help 'em. Uh, you know, I, that's really what my priority in life is and that's kind where I've moved at this stage.

Alright, now guys, we've been spending a little time just getting to know Aaron and in the next part of the show we're gonna dig into business and family, why they're not really as far apart as you might think they are. We're enrolled, they're sponsor, and we will be right back with more from Aaron Shelley.

Now, before we go any further, I wanted to share with you guys, I don't always tell you how much I love doing my podcast. Like I passionately love what I'm doing and one of the things that makes my life better as a podcaster is to work with a company like Grow Your Show. Grow Your Show is a one-stop podcast.

Do it all. Now I use Grow Your Show for my marketing, but Grow Your Show is [00:16:00] literally a one stop shop. You can record your episode and just drop it off with them and they take it from there. It's amazing. If you are interested in picking up podcasting as a hobby or maybe you're looking to expand your business and use podcasting in that aspect, talk to my friends over at Grow Your Show.

Adam will take care of you. I guarantee it. I trust him. He's my friend, he's my business colleague, and I wouldn't trust anybody else with my show. Guys, welcome back. In the first part of the show, we spent some time just getting to know who Aaron Shelley is and a little bit about him and where he is coming from, because I want you to know our guest.

He is invested in helping people, which we're always a huge fan of on this show. And in this part of the show, we're gonna dig into business and family and why they're not necessarily as separate or as different of things as you might be thinking, uh, and how they might actually be a lot more alike. Now, Aaron, I wanted to start off this portion of the show.

Uh, in the platform that you and I connected on, you share a story about kind of how this book came to [00:17:00] be and like, it just, it connected with my head instantly. I was like, I know this story. A, a book hasn't come out of it yet, but I know this story 'cause I've, I've asked the same questions along the way.

I wanted to know, would you share that with our audience today? How do we get to here as far as you writing this book? Sure. Yeah. So when I was. The point I was writing this book, I was doing some research with a guy on entrepreneurship and family at a university for his book. And then I was also doing consulting kind of as a C O O for this other book and then my, or for this other company.

And then my, my mom sent me this email and it was from, I don't know, the local network, in the local news. And it said this person is being, uh, sentenced for rape and attempted murder. And I thought, well, a guy's getting to, you know, sent to jail for rape and attempted murder, you know, those type of people need to be in prison.

And then I looked at the name and it was somebody who I grew up with. [00:18:00] And I just, at that point I had my four kids and I was thinking to myself, well, do I understand what happened? This is a guy I went to church with. I went to the same high school with, we played football together. We grew up, I don't know, 10 houses away from each other.

We were so close. We were in Boy Scouts together. We were so close to each other in so many ways. You know, people will talk about, well, socioeconomically or all these different factors that come in and this multi-variate analysis, but all those factors essentially had been leveled. And now I see this guy who, you know, I'm on my, in a career doing well and I've got my kids that I'm worried about and this guy's now going to prison for the rest of his life.

And I just was like it. It just kind of started my brain churning on, if I don't understand what happened then how the freak can I protect my children? Because I feel like that's one of my big roles as a father is to protect my children from all the weird stuff that's happening in the world. And you know, if one of my children ended up in prison for rape and attempted murder, I'd be like, I'm a failure as a father.[00:19:00]

I realize I can't control everything, but there's some things that you should be able to avoid. So it was really this like perpetual churning of what happened, what were the factors, what, how can I understand this? And it's, a lot of this comes speak to that, back to the fact that I'm an engineer and I'm like, you know, you have to understand lift and you have to understand air pressure, all these different things in order to make a jet.

And you can then make these amazing things like we see with Elon Musk, you know, making rockets. But then I look at family and I'm like, I don't know what all the pieces are. And it seems like it's just a crapshoot. So that's really where this, this desire to learn. And that's where I feel like the book is really kind of my, um, boiling everything down so that I could understand it.

And that's really why I wanted to share it. It's not like I'm like, it's been fairly effective for me. My kids are 22, 20, you know, 18 and 16 right now. But I just look at this like, ah, I gotta avoid this for my kids. Right. And I think all of us can connect with that on some [00:20:00] level because all of us have those friends we grew up with.

And I mean, some of 'em didn't take quite as an extreme turn as in that case. Right. We all knew those people who you're looking at the life choices 10 years later, 20 years later as an adult. 'cause you've, you know, kept in touch via Facebook or whatever ever at this point. And you're like, how did you end up here?

Like, how, how did this happen? I, I look at families I grew up with who, you know, they're divorced or on their third marriage and their kids hate them. And it's like, you know, you're just trying to, it's like, wait, we, we were, I mean, all but the same person. Yeah. And that's, and that's really the thing you start to look at is you're like, why?

What, what are these crossroads that we hit? You know, that's what I got. I started worrying about is it like a single crossroad? Because I mean, I played football in high [00:21:00] school, I played my ninth grade year, then I kind of got injured, and then I was like, I really, is this how I'm gonna make my money? I mean, I'm six four, I was pretty good size back then.

And then I went, I love football so much. My senior year I went back for the team and just, everyone had been injured. Their legs had been hit. You know, there's like, and you start to get into, you know, painkillers and that type of stuff, just so you can keep playing. And I'm like, is that, is that a little bit where things went off?

And that's kind of where I noticed it's like, what's the culture of these places that you're around and that you're, uh, you're involved with? And that's gonna have a big effect on how you think about the world. And, you know, in the case of some of these sports and things that actually hurt your body, then it can get you onto drugs and some other things.

Right? Yeah. That's, uh, and, and once you start down that road, man, it's a, it's a quick hurricane down too. Yeah. For all of us who are not, uh, business people, right? You, you obviously do a lot of consulting for businesses as well as your [00:22:00] entrepreneurial, uh, endeavors. You work, consult for other companies and help them.

Not all of us are brilliant business people. And so for a lot of it's this concept of family health versus business. How, how can they really be that same, so can break down what does a successful business look like? I mean, we all can go, well, duh Tesla, that's a successful business. Or Amazon that's a right.

Those of those global monsters that we just go, oh, that's success. But realistically, there are a lot of smaller businesses that are very successful that we don't know their names necessarily, right? And they share a lot of commonalities. But what does a successful business look like? What are those markers?

Um, I would say a successful business is one that's on the financial side. You have to be generating more money than you're spending at some point. You know, in your early days you're usually investing, but you, if you run out of investment money, your burn rate, right? If your burn rate gets too high and you [00:23:00] run outta runway, that's, you know, you crash and burn.

So a lot of this is like, you have to be producing wealth at some point, but if you look at it, you also need to be investing in people as a business. Right. You know, you talked about how your wife helps you with some of the editing. You know, you kind of do this specialization thing. So a successful business is one in which you have, everyone's getting paid what they, you know, their market rate and the business still has some leftover, making some profit.

But then I would also say it has a good reputation. There's a social resource side. It's got a good reputation, it's got good relationships, and then it's the people inside of it are healthy and. Fulfilled, right? So it's, it's this combination of, it's not just the financial, it has to be these social connections and, and the human resources as well.

And that's, that's, that's kind of the sides of success because if you look at a, a business, it has a business model and that business model is what drives those resources. And just like in our family, like if we [00:24:00] run out of money in our family, we have problems. I don't, you know, you can, you can then leverage maybe your relationship with your, your in-laws or you can leverage some of those other relationships for money or maybe to go live with them.

But that's really one of the cores is you have to have enough money in the bank. But then, you know, if you don't have good relationships and you screw your wife over and you're like, you treat her poorly, that's not a good business. And you see that with a lot of families. And then the families essentially, as I see it, they get divorced, which would be a dissolution of the business.

And then all of a sudden you have this massive loss of wealth, both in terms of financial, social, and human resources. What does the successful family look like? Then? What does the healthy, successful family look like? Because you've already waded into it a little bit. So yeah, it's, there's not really, that's kind of the thing.

When I started to look at these things next to each other, I don't really see this big difference. I mean, if I drop you off on a desert island, you're not sitting there like, well, I need to set up a business. You're like, no, I'm in the business of staying [00:25:00] alive, getting food, getting shelter, getting water, and those are really your products.

There's no money to exchange. And it's like you're gonna have to be exchanging your work to do those things. And we've come up with this new money currency thing in our society that then makes it more complicated. But it's really the same thing, like you're trying to stay alive, build up resources. As I see it, a lot of people will talk about, you know, saving financially.

So you have a rainy day fund, but I think you need to invest in your relationship. So you have a rainy day fund there too. You know, or your, you have a good relationship with your wife. Things can get rough at business. You may have some problems, you know, you may have some stress and then you have a rainy day fund there.

And same with your health. You know, if, if you have very poor health and then you have some further challenge, then you can actually die. So it's like you need to kind of be investing in those three areas all the time, otherwise you're not gonna have a successful business. So I think it's really looking at the holistic picture of the family and not just being like, I'm only investing for money.

Look, I'm a [00:26:00] doctor making tons of money. Then your wife divorces you, your kids hate you 'cause you never spent time with them. And you're like, well this sucks. Like this was not a great life even though I had the money. Yeah, and you see those stories all the time. I actually interviewed a therapist who works with generally like Fortune 500 level CEOs and stuff like that, COOs, who have climbed the corporate BA banner and just totally ignored their relationships.

And now they, they've hit this really apex, right? What we would call an apex. White collar position of just, they're making good money, they're successful in business, their family life is hanging on by a thread, if at all. And she, she works with a lot of them. She's like, it's amazing how many guys I've seen who have climbed this letter.

And they're like, but my wife hates me. My kids don't speak to me. You know, uh, some of 'em are divorced, some of 'em are, you know, one step from divorce. And so you, you can, [00:27:00] you can go to extreme either way, right? Yeah. Well, and that's the thing. The same thing happens in business. I think when you look at it and you're like, if you only are focused on, well, we gotta make money.

Well, are you investing in your team? You know, if you're just trying to maximize profit on the bottom line, and I think some men do this in the family too. If you're just trying to be like, I just need the bank account number to go up. You're like, but your kids are only gonna be around for so long. And so if you're not investing back into your kids and into your relationship with your wife, Then you're gonna have problems.

And so I think in a business you, you do the same thing. Like, Hey, we have this much money. Do we hire, like, I mean in your case, like if we're just like the podcast example, oh, you're spending all this time doing post-production stuff. Oh man, if you hire someone here to do that work for you, now you can invest your time in a different area.

But that's where you're investing, in my opinion, and I'd call it the human resource, you're, you're hiring these additional resources, then you're investing in other areas. Maybe you're investing more in the relationships or the social relations, so the [00:28:00] social resources. So that's where I used, you start to see in a business where it's like, well, what do we specialize in so that we can together be amazing?

And that's where I think a lot of people and families, it seems like a lot of the, you know, coming outta college, there's a lot of women who are thinking, I'm gonna be the. Bread winner, and I'm gonna do the money. And then it's like the, the husband's like, well, I'm gonna do that too. And you're like, well, who's doing the rest of the family stuff?

Who's gonna do the social connections? Who's gonna take care of the logistics? The kids get sick. Who's taking care of 'em then? And I've seen so many, there's a lot of women I've talked with, they're like, searching for a guy what? They wanna be like an Alpha vp and then they want a vp. And I'm like, do you understand that logistically this isn't gonna work?

Like companies don't have two CEOs for a reason until they get, you know, some of 'em do at huge levels, but it's like, no, you need to have specialization in roles to be effective in a business. And you need to do the same thing in a family. Now that all has to start at the ground floor, guys. So we're actually gonna take a slight divergent in, in the path we're [00:29:00] on right here because, uh, in researching for the show you, you make a statement that I really, I wanna start with because you have to set up for success, right?

You have to build from the ground up and you talk about how to hire a spouse. Where most men miss the mark in the dating scene. Right. And I'm so grateful. My wife and I have been married for 22 years now. I, I've talked to a couple, uh, men's dating coaches and I'm so grateful to not be on that scene, but it, it's a terrifying thing these days.

Dating is a very crazy thing, but a lot of us as men are like, Ooh, she's pretty right. That's that, that's our go-to mark. Like, oh, she's, she's attractive. I should date her. And then we wonder why we don't have healthy relationship, and lemme get this, there's nothing wrong with dating attractive women, but if that is the sole marker of what she brings to the relationship, I, [00:30:00] I think that's where a lot of us get steered wrong.

So can you talk about that just a little bit? Because I, I saw that, that statement, I'm like, I gotta touch on this just, just for all of my listeners that are single out there, guys, this, this is important. Well, yeah. So a lot of this came when I was the c o o of this last company. I was interviewing a ton of people and a core component of that that I did, 'cause I didn't have all the technical skills in every area to do the technical stuff.

It was, I would do what we'd call the culture interview. So we had identified the five attributes in our company culture that we thought were important. And then I could go through and ask specific questions that were targeting those. And that's where I think a lot of people haven't identified their own culture and their own core values and beliefs that they want in their family.

And if you don't do that, and you don't filter for culture, you know, like you could, if you're looking at a, a, an attractive girl, most of the time you look at it, it's saying, this woman is going to be able to have children. You know, if you look at women's curves and [00:31:00] their softness, all those things are geared towards how good they're gonna be at having children.

And so that's really where we're doing this. Yeah. Is she gonna be good at that aspect? Yeah. But is she going to be good at complimenting you and is she gonna have the same values and direction you're at? I think historically a lot of people did this through religious groups that they were always, that was kind of the group they were picking from.

So it'd be like, oh, let's choose the most attractive girl from my group. But now we have this very broad brush. You have people who are just like selecting for just that. So I think it's figuring out what are your values and then once you know what your values are and also your strategy, what, what are you gonna do in the relationship?

Then you can filter. I mean, there's a number of people that I interviewed for different jobs that had great skill sets, but it wasn't, they didn't even fit our culture or they didn't want the job that we had to offer. And that's where I think there's this piece where, you know, if you, if you're looking at hiring someone, you're like, what job do they need to do?

And do they fit our culture? And logistically can they do what we want 'em to do? [00:32:00] And if you're not filtering for that strategy, structure, culture piece in an interview, it's gonna be bad. And it's the same in a family. If you're like, I wanna have a family and I wanna have, you know, four kids, let's say, and then you go and date this girl, she's super attractive.

She's like, I want a job corporation. I don't want any kids. Or I want two kids. You're like, this isn't the same value system. And you're like, and I want someone who's gonna stay home, take care of the kids, raise them. 'cause that's super important to me. And she goes, well, I want to have someone else raise my kids.

I'll hire that out. That's the stuff where you get into these, like you're a very cool person. You may be super attractive. However, that's not the right fit for me. And you know, you see this in companies all the time where you pass on people, you're like, person's great, but just not great for what we're the job.

And we need to have the discipline when we're looking at spouses the same way. Like she's attractive, she's, she's great, but she's not fitting you. Those other things. And I actually think if you get it more honed in on your culture and what you're looking for in terms of your strategy and structure. I [00:33:00] think you're more attractive to women.

You know what I mean? If you went to a company and you said, Hey, uh, I'm interviewing for this position, so what do you guys do? And you're like, I don't know. Well, we just kind of try to make money. You'd be like, Ooh, that doesn't sound very cool. But if it's like, no, we are trying to do this in the market.

Here's how we're trying to help people. Here's our mission. Do you like our mission? Are you on board? And if they're like, dude, this is a great company. I've seen a lot of people who just because of our mission and what we were doing, they wanted to get on board. Right? And that's where I think a lot of people now, a lot of men, Seem to not have as clear of direction.

And then the women are kinda like, well, you look like a crap. This isn't a great company to join. I don't wanna join this. So that's a little bit where I see this relationship of being clear on what you're looking for. It's, it's not saying these people are bad, that you're filtering out. I mean, I at one point interviewed the CEO's brother and went through this culture interview, asked him some questions, and I'm like, he is not a good fit.

And I told his, I mean, this is my [00:34:00] good friend, right? He's the C C E O. And I'm like, he's just not a good fit. And then about a month later, he was having lunch with his brother and his brother's. Like, I don't think I was a good fit for that company. You guys just have a different culture. And I think people realize it once they have time to step away.

But so often when you're in the game, like in a company, you're like, please hire me. Please hire me. I want this job. It's only in retrospect, you can say like, I'm so glad I didn't get that job. It would've been horrible. And I think the same, I've had the same thing with, you know, women that I've dated where I'm like, I'm so glad I didn't marry her.

It would've been a disaster. I, I think you're right. The, you know, times have changed. We used to, I think that's where the ma honestly, the majority of relationships used to come from was religious organizations, like people you went to church with, or people who were a bigger part of the community organization that you're a part of, uh, family, friends, kids, right.

That you connected with over the years where it was coming from that same belief systems and cultures and ideals. [00:35:00] And so that was a lot more common than it is these days. Now we have like online dating and Oh my gosh, and things like that. Right. Swipe right. Uh, I don't even understand how all that works, but good lord, no.

Well, when it's all the stuff, imagine if it's just like in a company. Imagine if you hired just based on their picture, you know, oh, she's hot. Cool. Now she's our vp. Oh, she's hot. These guy looks, it would be a disaster. So it's like we just need to be a little more thoughtful and intentional about these things so that we can be more successful.

Because, I mean, my whole thing is when you get married, this is the coming together. If you get married young, it's often like starting a startup business. Mm-hmm. You know, like we got nothing. I got married when I was 21. I had no money in the bank. I spent it on a ring. You know, I was still in college. We started from nothing.

It was very much a startup. And I see some of the challenges with some of these people who are waiting into their mid thirties and then you're going, you guys have your own successful [00:36:00] business. You know, you have your making your income, you have a home, you have all these things. You have structure figured out.

Now you're doing what's called a merger. You know, and those are hard, you know, now you're trying to put all those, you know, like most mergers don't work out very well. So that's where I think a lot of people don't realize the longer they wait. It's kinda like the more set and the more structure you get in place and the more difficult, it actually, in my opinion, becomes to get married.

I, I used to be part of the hiring process at the last company I worked for before I stopped doing that. And I, I used to frustrate my boss so bad because I, I was the culture piece on it. Like I, that was, I was also the lead trainer and so, you know, whoever we hired, they were my responsibility. Mm-hmm. So when I went into an interview, my question was always like, 'cause we have this small, deeply connected team there, there were only seven of us, and their personality and their ability to mesh [00:37:00] with our team and be a part of that culture was so much more important to me.

And my boss would be like, this person, he, he hired somebody that I, I went net one time. He's like, he is so qualified and has all these qualifications. Like, and he'll be gone in two months. He, he's not, he is not. Going to meld with us. His ambitions are out here. You know, he's just trying to fill his pockets at the moment.

He's not gonna stick around. And my boss is like, oh, but he's great and I'm not arguing. The guy's got skills. He's more than qualified to do the job. That is not in question. The question is, is he gonna be here in a couple months because he still fits with the team. I was like, it's not gonna ha the dude walked out two months into the job, like one morning he just got pissed off.

He was working night shift and he literally just walked out, was out saying boot to anybody. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen that. I've seen that same thing. And you look at it [00:38:00] going, it's, it's so obvious once you find the right metrics, you know what I mean? It's once you're kind of start to think through things and you're like, what are we looking through?

What are the values? Then you look at some of these people and you're like, like whatever you were able to see in this person, you're like, it just doesn't fit. And for other people, they're like, but all these other things. I mean, it's the same as like, but she's so hot. Come on. And you're just like, it doesn't matter.

It's, it's the long term things that are going to make a difference and hold the relationship together. And that's, that's where it's like, if you get alignment in your mission and in your culture and in your kind of, your structure, what, where people wanna be, it becomes, life becomes much more easy. Like, it would be so much more difficult if my, if I was like, I wanna go gyr stance, I'm gonna be the Irish stance teacher, my wife, like, you don't know Jack about this.

No, I want it, I want the, I want the acclaim. I want to be the person. It would just, then she'd be like, well, I don't know how to do your technical stuff now. This is a disaster. Now I'm doing everything. You know, there's all these weird places when you start to, when you don't understand how you're gonna [00:39:00] structurally and just logistically work through things.

'cause it seems like in my mind, like 90% of marriage is logistics. It's all the frustrations are just, well, why did we spend money here? Not here. And, and, and some of that strategic decision making is, we think it's so important, but most of it's like we love each other day in, day out. And are we doing the things on a weekly and a monthly basis that reinforce the relationship?

If not, we're gonna have problems in the long term. Oh yeah. I was always looking for how are, how are you going to engage and fix issues that come up? My boss would get so mad at some of the questions I ask. I asked one guy, it's like, I've been told I'm a complete pain in the butt. I've been compared to hugging a cactus.

So if you and I have a disagreement about, you know, how this event went down or this issue is being handled, how are you gonna work with me? 'cause I'm difficult to work with. And like the dude was just like, uh, uh. I was like, no, I'm, I'm looking for those interpersonal [00:40:00] communication skills. 'cause you don't always see eye to eye with your coworkers.

I wanna see that you can bridge a difficult situation. I wanna see that we're going to have the tenacity to ride this out and to work through even when that person is a pain to work with. And, uh, well, and that I haven't seen, I guess there are some people that I've seen that way I've worked with. I've like warehouse jobs and those type of things.

To me, it's just a lot about do you understand them and do they understand how to do conflict. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? It's like, can we get in, I mean, that's where, going back to football and all these competitions, can you fight against each other and know that it's not about hurting, it's not about me trying to win, it's about me trying to come to the best solution.

Mm-hmm. To me, if it, if it ever gets to, I'm just trying to beat you and show I'm superior and I have an ego involved, then it's bad. But if it's, I'm not doing this for the business or I'm not doing this for the family. Like, I've had to, and there's been a number of cases with my wife where I'm like, I do not think this is good for the family.

I think it's gonna hurt us. You know, at one point we were looking at, [00:41:00] she's teaching and then we have these, my kids wanna do stuff in the evenings. And I'm like, I can't be doing chauffeuring. This is going to, we're not, we're gonna have no family cohesion. She was like, but I did dance. I, I'm like, we can't do it.

I'm sorry, but we, we are, we can't do this and it's gonna hurt our family more than it's gonna give this one kid a benefit. And so there's places where you kind of have to go, like, how do we deal with conflict and do we stick by our principles and do we have good principles? But I think that's one of the things where that, you know, the fighting, I actually love, I don't know how you are, but most of the men I've had the biggest fights with are also the ones that I've have the best relationships with.

Right. I, I actually asked a guy one time that I worked with, was like, dude, if you had a problem with me, why do you come straight at me? He's like, what do you mean you're, you've been here longer than you. I said, yeah, but you went and told Daddy. You went to the boss over something stupid. I said, honestly, we, you could have pulled me into the conference room and there, there are no cameras and punched me in the face and I would've respected you for it [00:42:00] if you felt like that was the extremity we needed to go to, to settle, whatever this is.

But instead you went and told Daddy, that's, that's not, I can respect a man for putting his foot down behind his beliefs. Mm-hmm. I can't respect man, who looks the easy out. Well, and yeah, it's like, and be direct. I mean that's where I think for me personally, it's been useful to have my Irish dance business as kind of the stabilizing income because then I've been in business situations and I've been able to say, here, I don't understand why this is happening.

I don't think it's the right thing. And even if it's gonna cost me my job, I'm willing to do whatever need I feel like needs to happen. And I feel like a lot of people get caught up in this, well, I need this job so I'm not gonna do what needs to happen. But then that kind of ends up into this place where people underneath realize, I know he is not gonna do the hard thing.

I know he's in it not for the right, there's something underneath this. And so then I think that actually hurts their ability to get promoted and become more valuable. Like speaking truth [00:43:00] in hard times is worth a lot to a business owner. 'cause we all get into spaces. The higher you get up in an organization, the more you're like, I just need good information, otherwise I make poor decisions.

And when you have people who aren't giving you the information, it just becomes a horrible environment. Now this actually kind of segues into my next question, which is in chapter 10, you talk about external and internal influences that can impact your family business model. Uh, I want to dig into that just a little bit before we go into the next segment of the show where guys, we're gonna share with you how to build into your family with using a business ish model, uh, and how that can help you build the family org structure that you want and have the relationships that you want.

But I wanna talk about some of these external internal influences because inevitably we're going to run into them. So yeah, any any particular, 'cause there's a bunch of 'em in there. Yeah. Yeah. I, sorry. I used [00:44:00] a broad stroke on that one as like, because there, there's a lot to dive into. So which ones do you feel way lay people the most?

Um, I feel like a lot of people don't even understand their own bodies and biology. Uh, for men, we look at it and we're like, well, my test, you know, my, my test, how's my testosterone doing? What's gonna happen to my body? And then with women, they're not understanding that once they have kids, their brain is literally gonna change.

And so there's a lot of these biological factors that I think we should understand. It's kinda like a user's manual for our own bodies. And there's a book called The Female Brain, another one called The Male Brain, where it just talks about here's what's gonna happen in your body at certain points in life.

And you go, oh, that's, that's interesting. Like males, testosterone goes down when you get married. It goes down a little more when you have children, which is probably a good thing that you're not jacked up when you have small children around. Right. You're, you're trying to, like, that's just human nature and that's nature's way of kind of getting used to you can be a good dad.[00:45:00]

And with women once you have a baby. I've had so many women who are like, I'm gonna be a career woman. I don't care. I'm just gonna stay with my job. And then they have a baby and they're like, screw this. I'm out. Like, I wanna stay with my baby. So there's this, and or, and they'll, they'll be like, I just never want to have children.

And I've seen, there was one girl who my nephew was dating and she was, I think 24, and she was just like, I'm never wanna have children. Then she went and got herself sterilized, and I was like, w wow. Did you ch I, I guess I, I look at it like, we need to understand that we're biological, biological creatures and we don't get to choose.

I don't think any man was like, you know, I wanna go through puberty now. Let's, let's bring on the puberty. And neither were women. And so there's like these life stages that we as biological beings are going to go through and we need to be aware of them. So I think in the biology front, that's one of 'em.

Another front that I think's really important is demographics, right? Like if you look and you have an over, there's a book called Omics, um, where it talks about if you have too many men in an environment, [00:46:00] then the men will actually treat theri women really well. The women have control of the relationships, right?

Like if you have 10 women and a hundred men, I. Those hundred men are like, I'm competing for a very scar supply. I gotta treat this girl well, once I get a girl we're dating. Like she doesn't wanna have sex. All these things happen in that context. And then if there's too many women, you end up with the men having control of the relationships.

And you see this in certain environments. Um, college is one of them actually, where you have like 60 40 split in most cases. And so now you have one third of the women, there's literally not a guy at college for, so then you see the girls like being super aggressive, sexting, sleeping with guys really early, just in an attempt to do that.

And I think it's an interesting place to look at, like if you're looking for a certain relationship, if you're a guy or a girl, you kinda wanna look at that and be like, I don't wanna be in the environment that I'm in a, in a bad power position and have very few options. And so I think it's important to understand that and [00:47:00] go, how do I, how do I wanna run this based on the data?

'cause I think it's the environmental factors that we usually don't think of. Okay. That goes back to our discussion on, you know, the right spouse, right. Finding someone you're aligned with in those, in those demographics where the ratios are off, that becomes even more challenging because you aren't necessarily seeing the person.

Right. We put our, we put our best foot forward early on in the relationship. 'cause you, we want you to like us, you want us like you, but that can be skewed even more so than normal when those ratios are off. So that's, that's an interesting, I don't think people think about these things, right? I, there's just so much that's like happening so many inputs all the time in our lives and we're just like oblivious I think to a lot of things like that.

Mm-hmm. Well, and that, that's the other thing with the me me too movement. I think most men are like, okay, so I can't be [00:48:00] assertive now. And all the women are like, what? I want to assertive guy. Like that's one of the usual filters, like an assertive, aggressive guy. Now guys are like, I'm not screwing over my career for some chick at work.

You know? So then guys are really much a lot more hold backish. So then it becomes this interesting dance of, well, where are the environments where we can get together as you know, and actually date anyone? And are you putting yourself into those environments? That's one of the things that I think is important is, I mean, I was studying engineering, mechanical engineering.

There were three girls out of, I don't know, a hundred people in my major. So I was like, this is scarcity. So my mentality just because of that, was probably at a scarcity. My wife, on the other hand, she was in music, dance, theater, heavily weighted the other way. So she was like, oh, there's a scarcity of good guys.

So some of those places, when you even get into sub areas, like if you go to college and then you go to the chess club or you, those are gonna be higher men. And so if a girl wants to go into those, okay, she ha may have some good [00:49:00] choices and vice versa. So it's kind of more being a little more strategic and intentional about.

What are the opportunities? Opportunities and how do I exploit them? Hey guys, we've been discussing the relationship between business and family and how they're not actually that far apart. A lot of the things that it takes to build a successful business, to build a strong business are also required to actually establish a strong, healthy relationship and family.

And there's the, the overlap is actually, like I said, you guys need to read the book. The overlap is, is really incredible. We, we can only do a small snapshot during this episode, uh, of what's there. I, I will say there is just, there's a lot process in your book there. There really is. And as an engineer, like I, I could hear that coming through as you were explaining things.

I, I love reading people's books because like, you really get a snapshot into who they are, just by the tone in which they write the book. It's like, oh, I know how their [00:50:00] brain works. Okay? Mm-hmm. You guys we're, we're getting into just a little bit of it. In the next part of the show, we're gonna dive into building a fundamental family system.

We're in a role to our sponsor, and we will be right back with more from Aaron. Shelley, how well do you sleep at night? Do you toss and turn and wake up more tired than when you went to bed? Sleep is commonly one of the critical elements people fall short on in their life. The quality of sleep you get directly affects your ability to control your weight, your ability to add muscle, your stress levels, and your everyday job and life performance.

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Now let's go on to the show. Alright guys, welcome back. In the last part of the show, we were discussing business and family and how they're really not as far apart [00:51:00] as a lot of us would think. Just off the top of our head and how we can really apply some of that to our lives. And this part of the show, we're going to discuss building a fundamental family system.

It's a lot like a business model and based on a business model, but we're gonna dig into how building this fundamental family session. Family system can really help you build the family you're looking to build, right? How that can increase just your happiness and the wealth and prosperity of your family and success of your family overall.

Not just financially, but just the overall success of your family, nurturing that family. And you know, here we're really big into that. So let's, let's, we were, we were talking off camera, it's uh, how to break down Aaron's ideas is really complex situation, so I hope he's gonna do a better job than I do setting it up.

Aaron, let's talk about family resources and what those [00:52:00] are. Yeah, so when I say I break family resources into three categories, financial, which would be things like your money, your property, and then your tools. I. Whether that's a car, you know, those things, things that could be useful there. Then I break into the social resources.

Those are your individual relationships that you have with your family, friends. Then you have group relationships. If you're part of a sports team, you're part of a religious group, all of those could be leveraged. And then you have your reputation, usually in the community now in different environments.

There. Those are your social resources, and then you have your human resources. Those are your, as a family, it's your collective skills, it's your time, and then it's your health, mental, physical, spiritual, all those things would be included in that human resource. So those are mainly the main three categories I break them into.

And those apply both to business and to family, both the same. Where you know, you're looking at that saying, well, how is our business gonna use its money? How is our family gonna use the money? How are we gonna use those different resources? And [00:53:00] all those resources, as I say, they're just resources that can be used by the family business model.

It's like you look at different companies, they will take, Walmart will take those resources and buy land and build distribution centers and, and stores. Google will take that and buy computers and hire engineers, right? So it's, it's, the resources are not the determining factor of success. It is the business model that's using those resources and all of those things get cycled.

If you do use those resources correctly, then you'll get more of those resources. So that's really the, the system and the flow back through the business model. Okay. So would it be fair to say these are assets, right? These are the assets you're working with? Yeah. I, in, in the book, I actually. Looked at saying assets, but then most people associate that with financial assets.

And so then it became confusing. So I moved to resources specifically to avoid that confusion. But yes, you could definitely think of them as here's the different things you can play with and use. It's kinda like the different [00:54:00] fuels that can fuel the business model. You know, like take some jet fuel, you have some rocket fuel, you've got some gasoline.

Like can we mix these together and make some cool things? So that's kinda how I look at it. Okay. Well, well, I, I have a slightly broader view on assets sometimes because I think of like my strength, I, I'm a personal trainer as well, so I think in my strength as an asset, right? Yeah. I would, I would see that in your health, right?

My health, yeah, exactly. So some of those things click for me as assets. Some of 'em, I'm like, oh, okay. Yeah. But we, we've talked about Rich Dad poured out a lot, and that's, my brain is always, that's always in the back of my head going, what are my assets? What are my liabilities? When I'm looking at a lot of things in my life.

So that makes sense to me. But I understand, I, I would, that, that, that is a tricky, it's like, what word do I use here is Right. Resources, assets. Uh, like I said, writing a book is a lot of work. [00:55:00] Well, yeah. And the other, the other question I, the reason I call them resources. 'cause then I was like, do I wanna go into a whole discussion on assets and liabilities and the difference?

And can you have a liability in your health? Oh, you have cancer or you're smoking, you know, like there's all these things where I was just like, I wanna simplify it because I think you can get into that deeper discussion. But for the purposes of understanding the basic concepts, it's much more important to understand the resources and how they're used by the business model.

Okay. So let's move into what is a family business model? Yeah. So the core of a family business model is your strategy. Like what, what are you trying to do? Where are you, where's this family trying to go? What are we trying to achieve? Are we trying to have kids? Are we not trying to have kids? Do we wanna live?

Do we wanna travel? What is the long-term mission and goals that we're, we have involved there? Then there's a structural question, which is, how are we going to do this? Are we, like, what roles are people gonna have? Are we gonna do this [00:56:00] as a, as a single person? Are we gonna do this as a married person? Are we gonna do this in a living with our extended family?

Is this a group thing? So there's some structural elements there as well. Roles and responsibilities would be things like, who's gonna make the money? Who's gonna have the children? Who's gonna take care of the children? Who's going to educate the children? Who's going to invest in our, uh, in our community?

All of those things are, are part of that. And then you have the culture, which is what are our beliefs and values? Um, and how do those things all work together? You know, if you have a strategy of I want to be a doctor, but your culture is, doesn't include delayed gratification, good luck. 'cause it's 10 years of investing.

Before you become a doctor and can actually start to reap the value of the, all that education that you've learned. So that's really where you look at the business model. It needs to be aligned in, in terms of the strategy, structure and culture. Otherwise you just have perpetual friction. And then compounding that is once you get a spouse involved, [00:57:00] if they have a different mission, you know, like, oh I wanna be a marine biologist in, you know, Antarctica.

And you're saying, well I want to be a tech person in Silicon Valley. Okay, you're gonna have problems. These like logistically just don't work out. So there's some of those mission, if you don't get the strategy structure and culture right for yourself and then for your, with your spouse, it's just going to be friction and more friction and more conflict.

And it's not conflict because anything's bad, it's just conflict. 'cause you're out of alignment, which is what you see in, again, I go back to the engineering side, you know, if things are out of alignment, you're having things rubbing on each other, you're having constant friction, constant problems. And it's not that it's bad, it's just there's alignment problem in the business or the family.

All right. Now guys, we're working through a model that you'll find in his book a couple times, uh, that we're trying to, how do we describe this, right? How do I put this visually in your head? So we've talked about family resources and we've talked about the family business [00:58:00] model. Can you flow us through those pieces and the rest of the model and what that looked like to actually build something?

Yeah. So let's, I mean, if we can a kind, a couple examples probably be useful. Like, let's say I wanna be a doctor, that's my piece, and I wanna also be married when I'm fairly young. Okay. Then I'm like, okay, I need to find a woman who's either gonna support me through that. And this is like our early structural stuff.

And I, and it also has that same, you know, delayed gratification. She can't be like, well, we gotta go on cruises every year. We gotta go do all this stuff. You're like, no, we gotta, this is an investment time in the early days, and then we're gonna have a reaping later on. So if I find that girl, then it becomes, okay, let's get, if we wanna get married, and that's the structure we choose, then it becomes, well, how are we gonna spend our money?

Well, we're gonna, whatever money we make, we're gonna pour back into my education. You know? So we're trading money for education and we're doing that for 10 years. And then once we built up that [00:59:00] education resource, that would be a human resource then, and I have my degree, then I'm going to exploit that and I'm gonna take that, and now I'm gonna work for money.

So now I'm taking my resources and my time, and now I'm running through my business model. It says I should work great. Now we have money. Now it's a question of what do we do with our money? And then, you know, if we're like, oh, I just wanna hoard my money, and your wife's like, no. The strategy was we're gonna reap and we're gonna start to travel the world or whatever.

Well then we're gonna have a problem. If we don't, we don't execute on that. Or if we have kids, okay, we're gonna have kids. So it's this early investment time. So we invest in those resources, get the certificate, then we get money. Great. Now what are we doing? Now we wanna move to such and such place. Now we have that property.

Now we wanna invest in our community, so we're gonna do community service, those type of things. Now we have those, um, social resources. So that's how I see it happening. Or if you were saying like a blue collar worker, you know, okay, I need money now. Maybe I got married when I was 18. A lot of times you see 'em getting married early.

They get married early, and then it's like, [01:00:00] okay, now she's gonna work part-time and have a flexible job and I'm gonna work as an apprentice. So I'm investing, but I'm getting money at the same time. Now I have some money. Now we're gonna, we're gonna try to build up those resources. Now we're gonna have to buy a house.

'cause we had kids. And so you're seeing this flow through of we're not just get trying to aggregate money. We're like, well, how do we get the social resources as well? And maybe one story I think is interesting about Bill Gates, mom, right? Where, so Mary Gates. Was a teacher, she got married, bill Gates dad was a lawyer, and then she had three kids dropped out of the workforce, was raising the kids.

And then, um, once her kids got older, she decided to invest in the community for social resources to build up those connections. Well, she happened to be on the board of University of Washington and the board of United Way. Well, the I B M C E O was also on the board of United Way, which was one of the important connections for Bill Gates [01:01:00] Microsoft Company to make, 'cause that's where he made the software for.

So you can kind of look at this and say, if Mary Gates had been just focused on money, she wouldn't have been in investing in the community work, which then may have stunted or made it. So Bill Gates did not become, you know, a multi-billionaire. And so that's the case where you see, like the dad was investing for money, the mom was investing for social resources, and the outcome for the family were spectacular.

All right. Now how do we create a family culture that leads to success? Because there's a lot of variables in the book. We talk about the different dynamics, right? And you say some, some are more effective, some are more, less effective. Uh, I know my wife and I definitely started in the, uh, blue collar, young, married, both of us working full-time jobs.

She was 19, I was 21. Uh, we, we had a lot of years of top ruminant hotdog and living in not so nice places. And, uh, it took a long time for us to [01:02:00] build some resources and moving into that. And there's nothing wrong with it, guys. You guys know I'm a fan of the trades. I'm a fan of the military. Uh, there's absolutely nothing wrong.

With those jobs. Those jobs are so important. You guys are so critical to the world. Mm-hmm. But there are definitely, you know, as we are looking forward to trying to plan an effective business model for our family, our, as you said, a fundamental family system, what are some of the more effective ways to create a family culture that leads a success?

Well, I go back to it needs, the culture has to be aligned, right? So you talk about the blue collar mentality and, and my brother-in-law, he is an arborist, right? So he does tree work, but, and he would, when he married my sister, he was 10 years older. And if, you know, blue collar workers in most blue collar jobs, you're, you only have a lifespan of about 20 or 30 years before you start to have some pretty serious physical problems.[01:03:00]

And so he was essentially 10 years into that 20 or 30 years cycle when they got married. But my sister, my dad was a professor at a university. And so she was used to this white collar and, and white collar jobs usually get more valuable as you go through your lifespan. And so usually what you see with blue collar, if they plan it out, right, they're like, I'm gonna get into this trade.

I'm gonna learn the trade and then I'm gonna become a blue collar entrepreneur. And those guys freaking crush it. You know what I mean? Like once they get it, I have a brother-in-law who did construction. I used to work at the company that we helped roofing people and they were just crushing it. So if you're kind of planning it out and looking strategically of like, how long can I do this?

And then what do I need to switch to, right? And that's where I see a lot of this success needs to look at. Like my sister called me at one point when her husband had just had an injury and was like, what do I do? Should I go back to college? Should I go get a nursing degree? Should I go get an education degree so I can teach in school?

Because his ability to earn is going down. [01:04:00] And they hadn't really thought about it or planned through it. So I think a little bit's like, and that's what I try to do in the book, looking at your career and saying, W how do you anticipate this working and for how long? You know, just like in business we'll be like, well, we can use this strategy and exploit it for X, but then we're gonna, that's gonna not have enough left for our growth.

So now we're gonna have to switch strategies or switch some things out. People need to do that as well. Like if you're in blue collar, make sure you're planning on moving into blue collar entrepreneur. Or like in your case, I guess you went to podcasting and some of this other stuff, like you need to be looking for some of these other opportunities because it's hard.

We're, we're just saving up so you can retire when, I mean, I know a lot of people who retire from the trades 'cause they're really good with, you know, real estate. They do build up an empire and then when they're 50 they're like, I'm out. So there's different things strategically, but all of them, you need to think about what is your long-term strategy and not, I think a lot of blue collar people often will be like, I'm just [01:05:00] indestructible, and you're like, Nope, you're human just like the rest of us.

So, A lot of it's that planning and making sure that your spouse has a culture that's aligned with you. My wife and I, very entrepreneurial culture. It's like we just do whatever we have to do whenever. I mean like this Saturday, I am right. I'm driving two parades, you know, I guess. And we're gonna do that.

And then I usually do audio stuff with my wife. Even though I was trained as an engineer, not as a audio person. It's just like, whatever we need to do, we make happen. And that's like an entrepreneurial mindset. And you can have people who go into the, you know, go into the post office, very stable, uh, standard jobs, but if you don't predict it long-term, you can find that you're doing this into your sixties and you're like, ah, I'm just getting tired.

So a lot of it's just making sure that that strategy, structure, and culture align. Um, and it's, it's a little bit difficult 'cause it's kind of, every single job has its own specifics. All right. I, I actually jumped from, uh, [01:06:00] from blue collar to white collar. I, I went from building data centers to running it in data centers.

How, but how did you do that? I, I had a friend who was smart enough to look at me and go, you're going to die doing this. Uh, he said, you, you cannot crawl up 20 foot ladders and subfloors and utility vaults for the rest of your life. I'm watching you break your body. You're smarter than that. And he, he literally threw a server on my couch, personal, like desktop server on my couch.

I'm like, what's that? He's like, that's the future. I'm like, why is it on my couch? He's like, 'cause you're gonna install it and you're gonna put it in an operating system and you're gonna build this. It's like, why would I do that? No. And I have no idea what that is. He's like, great. Here's a disc with an operating system.

Here's the book, learn something. Well, well, and that's the thing where you look at, so those are the social resources, right? Right. If you're, if you hadn't had that friend in that relationship, I don't know where it was from, but [01:07:00] somehow you had a friend that was willing to a, give you a server and then also say, here's these next pieces where you should go and have some foresight there.

Yeah. But a lot of times if you don't have those friends, you can be kind of screwed. Oh yeah. No, it radically changed my life. Uh, I'm, I'll be forever grateful. I, I spent the last 10 years in the IT industry, uh, working at, on, uh, enterprise level data centers. Now, I love section three of your book because I told you I'm really big into application.

And guys, it's one of the reasons I actually really like the book is he doesn't just like lay it out for you. He has an entire application section. This is how you take this information and actually apply it to your life. Uh, and, and to me, I, that that's just the hallmark of someone who is trying to actually give you usable information to improve your life.

We, I didn't just tell you about it. I, I laid it out for you. Here's how you can take everything I just showed you [01:08:00] and start to apply it. So thank you for that, just upfront. That's, that's an awesome, uh, foresight from you to go, not only here's this idea, but here's how you use it. But for someone listening to us right now, okay, other than going and buying your book, which I highly suggest, guys, this is a good book.

What are the first three steps our listeners can take to start applying these concepts in their life? Um, the first one I would say was look at, look around you and see if you have successful people. Who would you say are the successful people that you want to emulate? And are you close to them? And, and then you kind of look at them and say, can I.

Can I go talk and use those resources, talk with them and, and help them? I mean, most of the time in my experience, I'm guessing the same for you. If someone comes up to me and says, Hey, I want money. I'm like, you know, screw off. Like, but if they come up to me and they're like, I wanna understand how to do something, I wanna [01:09:00] understand how to be productive.

I'm super giving and I've seen all the wealthy people and successful people that I've known pretty much do the same. And so a lot of it's looking at your immediate social resources, whether it's your dad, your grandpa, your friends, friends from a, uh, sports groups friends from a church group, and looking at those social resources.

'cause those I think have the most importance and the easiest access to. And then you look at them and, and you're not saying, I want your money, I want this. What you're saying is, I want to understand how you did it and what you did. 'cause some of that's getting a mentor and some of it's getting someone to invest their time in you.

Once you, so once you have that, then you can kind of look through the model and say, wait, what do they do? How did they invest in the long term? Because a lot of times people see the outcome like, oh, go into technology. That's how Bill Gates and Elon Musk did it. But they're not looking at, well, what was the space, the time?

What was the thinking that they did that pushed them into that direction? Because I don't think there's [01:10:00] the same opportunities as there was in those speci, those same areas. So I'd say first one is try to exploit those social resources. The second one I'd say is like, do you financial resources, are they under control?

Are you, are you at least having some money? Are you overspending? There's some basic stuff, either you know, ki Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, poor Dad, or Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover. Those type of things, like get an understanding of how money works. If you don't understand, it's gonna be bad. And then the third one I would say is look at your.

Help human resources, your own abilities. A lot of times people will discount the fact that, well, I speak English and I understand technology and I understand all these Yeah. But I already know all that stuff. Yeah. But that's what companies will pay for. Those could be exploited and used for your, for your family.

So a lot of it's just trying to get an accurate assessment of your resources that you have available. Okay. What's next for Erin Shelley? Um, well, right now my big [01:11:00] thing is I'm, I'm doing all this myself too. So I'm building an app that's actually helping support my family culture. So it talks about what family values I've identified.

Then how do I reinforce those with my kids? How do I help them learn? And then how do I have certain structures? Like I have, this is another piece of that structural part of my business model where it's, I have a, an annual planning, like a business. I have a quarterly planning similar to a business. What am I trying to do?

What are my wife and my kids trying to do? How do we support each other in those? What did we learn? And so there's a lot of this like, um, how do we ex, how do we use this and make structure? I look at the stuff that I've been able to do with Google Sheets and all this stuff. I'm like, a normal person isn't gonna do this.

So I'm really focused on creating an app that can help people do this and do it with their kids and their family. Because I think a lot of men, especially, I think the reason we focus so much on financial resources is 'cause we don't normally know what to do [01:12:00] on the other side. Okay. Fair enough. Where's the best place for people to find you?

Well, so I've got my website, the family flywheel.com, where I've got resources, those type of things I can be found on LinkedIn and facebook@aaronkshelley.com or Aaron do, Aaron k Shelley at LinkedIn and Facebook and yeah, then you can find the book on Amazon. So those are the big ones. If you'd like to email me, it's aaron@thefamilyflywheel.com.

I'll respond, try to help you out. I love questions. I actually love being challenged on these things because it makes me think deeper about 'em. So if you have questions or issues, I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to help you. Okay, now I will have all of those resources listed in the show notes and the description, whether you're on YouTube or on the podcast platforms.

Also on my podcast website, you'll find all those links and resources, information. You'll also find his book, uh, in the library tab on my website where my authors have their books [01:13:00] forever, so that way you guys can just find them. I've been asked over and over again, Brent, you talk about books. So I just made a library page on my website, so if nothing else, you can find his book there.

I highly recommend you guys dig into this book. Guys, there's just a lot of incredible information. I'm gonna have to reread it again. I read it once. I'm gonna have to go through it again. Now, here's the big question. I know everybody's dying to know who's sang the title song for the latest bomb film? No Time To Die.

Your guess was Adele. The answer is Billy Eilish, which apparently is someone rather popular and I have no idea who that is either we, we talked about that earlier. Now I feel like a failure. That's why I pick random questions if I'm really trying to be mean. I go to like my Harry Potter trivia at the Harry Potter Trivial Pursuit, Uhhuh.

I read the books when they came out. I love the books. I rewatched the movies a dozen times. I get that Trivial [01:14:00] Pursuit edition out and oh my goodness, like I know nothing. I have to go back and read 'em all again Now. It's like you think you're a Harry Potter fan and then you play that game and it's like, I have no idea.

Did they even talk about that? Wow. Uh, so that, that's when I'm feeling really just mean. It's like a plug for your pursuit. Uh, guys, thank you for joining us today. Aaron, I want you to wrap us up. What is the most important takeaway you want people to hear today from this podcast? If you say one thing to them, what is it?

I think too many people are ignoring their social resources, and a lot of that's through their community service or through a church or through sports groups. They're not investing in those social connections. And it would be the same as if a business ignored marketing and sales. It's so obvious when you look at it and so painful when you see it happening, but without those social connections, [01:15:00] Life is, life's gonna suck.

You know, like you're gonna have problems, you're gonna break thi I broke a collarbone skiing, my daughter broke a leg skiing. You know, like I've had all sorts of, you just have bad things, you'll have financial problems. And if you don't have those social connections, those, those direct relationships that you're investing in, it's really hard to get through some of those bad experiences.

And I think it can be difficult to stay married when you don't have it. I think it can be difficult to, in some cases, stay alive. I think this whole loneliness epidemic is because people are not investing into and other people and building those relationships. So, and especially men. So I would say look at those social resources.

Look at serving in your community. And that I think will have huge payoffs that most people, just like in a business, if you were not investing in sales and marketing, I'd say, dude, why are you not like, let's just spend a little, and it would have huge returns. It's the same way in our families. If we invest in those areas, we'll have huge return.

Right [01:16:00] guys. You heard it right here. You better tomorrow because of what you do today, and we'll see on the next one. This has been the Ible Man Podcast. Your home for everything, man, husband, and father. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a show. Head over to www do the followable man.com for more content and get your own Fallible man gear.