Transcript: #44 – Eighteen Summers: How to Create Lasting Connecting with your Children?
We discuss:
Ways to make the most of the 18 summers you’ll have with your kids.
Instead of trying to find work-life balance, how to find integration.
Focus on accountability, not on perfection.
How to create those meaningful moments with each child?
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast platform. Like this episode? Check out more of our Dad Podcasts.
Will Braunstein, A Dad’s Path:
Hi, and welcome to another episode of A Dad’s Path podcast. I’m Will Braunstein. Today I’m here with Jim Shields. Jim is the host of the 18 Summers podcast, the co-host with his wife, and the co-author of the Family Board Meeting book, which we’re going to talk about in-depth, and has some great tips, but first welcome, Jim.
Jim Shields, 18 Summers:
Thanks, Will. Good to be here.
Will Braunstein, A Dad’s Path:
Awesome. And you can find the 18 Summers podcast on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen, and the Family Board Meeting book on all the major book sites, so you should be in good shape. First, I want to talk about the 18 Summers podcast, if we could here, Jim. Refers, presumably, to the 18 Summers you have with your kids before they’re leaving home. Is that the idea? Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Jim Shields, 18 Summers:
Yeah. When I first started doing family talks, a mentor of mine said that to me, and it hit so hard, and when I started to share it with audiences, it hit them so hard, that simple math equation of those 18 Summers. You have only 18 Summers till most kids move away or go on to the next stage in life. And then there was actually a study that showed the average person will spend about 85% of the time they ever have with their children by the end of the 18th summer. And that makes sense when you really think about it because time minimizes after that 18th year, a lot of the times, if they’re going on, they’re going off. So I really wanted to make the most of that time. I run another investment company as well with our parent education. So it’s something that I took really seriously, and it’s a simple math equation that so many people need to understand.
Jim Shields, 18 Summers:
How do we make the most of those 18 Summers? How do we make sure our kids want to come back after they’re 18? That’s kind of what our podcast is about. And we try to bring in experts who are well known a lot of the time but don’t always talk about their family life. But I knew from behind the scenes they had successful family lives, even running big businesses or being involved in different ventures, and so I always want to get their take, and that’s what the podcast is about.
Will Braunstein, A Dad’s Path:
I like that a lot. And I think 18 is, depending on the family, even stretching it. Because at some point, the teenage years, the kids are maybe they’re home, but they’re less engaged, or it’s harder to keep them engaged.
Jim Shields, 18 Summers:
Yeah. My seven-year-old wants to hang out with me a lot more than my 16-year-old. That’s just the way it is. So yeah, time really does diminish. And I think it was a friend of mine, David Bach, he’s a popular financial author. He said to me, “Jim, the years are not all equal. Just remember that.” And so that’s something really to take hold of. Because a lot of information out there in entrepreneurship and building businesses says, put your head down for five or 10 years and go for it. And your family will understand, and you’ll be able to enjoy them later. That’s really bad advice. You have to join them along the way and nurture along the way, or it’s a very bad recipe for disaster if you don’t.
Will Braunstein, A Dad’s Path:
Totally agreed. Though, in my shoes, it’s easy to agree and harder, sometimes, in practice. You’re a successful entrepreneur. You run companies, with a successful podcast, and you have a successful family where you’re working. It sounds like you do. So, I guess I’d be curious, how do you have that work-life balance, knowing that… How old are your kids?
Jim Shields, 18 Summers:
We range from four months to 18, so four months, 5, 7, 16, and 18, so we got quite a range.
Will Braunstein, A Dad’s Path:
So you have the whole range. So some you should be spending, to your point, a lot more time with and others, the older ones you want to be, but maybe don’t have as much, and you’re balancing successful businesses and keeping your businesses afloat. So what have you found that works for that work-life balance, or is balance the right word? I mean, how would you describe it?
Jim Shields, 18 Summers:
Yeah, I used to use the word balance, and a friend of mine, Dan Martell, who was just on our podcast, introduced me to the word integration. I really like that work-life integration. How to make sure your business ties in with your lifestyle and how your lifestyle ties in with your business. And that made a lot of sense to me because balance, those old scales that we had in school, you’d put the little cube on the one side, and you had to… I mean, it has to be exactly right, or it just goes off. So that makes it really difficult.
Integration was more, more fluid. And I really enjoyed that concept more because the one thing I can tell you is I feel I have a great family life. No family life is perfect. Whoever started that silly saying, the perfect family, did a horrible justice to families worldwide because I haven’t met one in 10 years working with thousands of families. It’s not about perfection. It’s about, all right, let’s look at our imperfections. How do we bridge them and make the most of the time we have together? When you start to take perfection off the table, that helps.
That’s probably the number one step I’d say for everyone out there, oh, I want to have a better family life. Great, well, strive for better, but not perfection. Perfection puts a lot of pressure on you, your spouse, and your kids, and that’s no good. And also, balance, again, if you’re one cube off, then the other one is out of whack. Think about integration. How do I integrate my family life to work with my business and my business to work with my family life? That might give you a better yin-yang of how to approach it.
Will Braunstein, A Dad’s Path:
That absolutely resonates more. Balance is sort of delicate, whereas integration is, hey, this is life. It needs to be part of life. We need to have family in our life. We need to have a job in our life. Our business needs to be integrated. So can you give an example of how you’ve been able to integrate the two?
Jim Shields, 18 Summers:
Yeah. For my real estate investment company, for example, I was at an investor meetup in Dallas, Texas, last week, and my two oldest sons went with me. The man who runs it works with a lot of these investors was inviting families, and I joined the organization because it had a focus on strong family bonds. So I pick trips where my family can attend with me, I try to schedule around my priorities, where I give flexibility to myself, where if I have to work extra, I can work extra. But if I need to stop in the middle of the day to go to something for an activity or school, I have no guilt and no hesitation to do so. I don’t travel that much anymore unless my family’s invited. I don’t have a far away office. I normally work from home most of the time now. So there’s things that I’ve been able to do to integrate it, to keep it closer to home.
Will Braunstein, A Dad’s Path:
That’s smart. I like that a lot. You know, you also talked about perfection, which resonated, because I mean I run a parenting website. I want to be the perfect dad. I want to have a perfect family and I don’t, Jim.
Jim Shields, 18 Summers:
You’re not alone, Will. I told you would be alone if you did have a perfect family, because I haven’t met one yet.
Will Braunstein, A Dad’s Path:
Absolutely. I mean, and I appreciate hearing that, and again, I certainly feel that I know our audience struggles with, specifically making mistakes. When you do something you know is not how you want to be as a dad or as a family, that’s a challenge that I personally have, I know other people that listen have had. I’d be curious in your experience, how do you accept those mistakes, either from your clients or yourself where you’ve lost your temper, you’ve done something you’re not proud of? Are you communicating that to your kids, to your partner? What do you find works there?
Jim Shields, 18 Summers:
First and foremost is careful of perfection there, because when we put perfection on… this happened to me a lot. Oh man, I have this family education company and hosting events and giving talks. If I get in an argument, I would get really down like, oh my gosh, who am I? I shouldn’t be talking about family. And whether you’re like us, running your own podcast on family or that, you’re still hard on yourself. And I’m not saying not to hold yourself accountable, but to over beat yourself on possibly a small mistake, which I watch a lot of people do, including myself back in the day, then you also lead yourself to bigger mistakes and it just doesn’t serve. You’re not holding yourself accountable. You’re holding yourself to extreme criticism and that’s not going to help you develop and grow.
So I always say, hold yourself accountable, but don’t be too hard on yourself. Know that whether you’re a community leader or a school teacher or like us with your own family podcast, you’re not going to be perfect. And one of the best things you can do is just apologize fast and sincerely. Apologies, I’ve learned for a lot of entrepreneurs I work with, are not easy. They’re usually very fire red, go-getters and they’re good negotiators or salesmen, and so it’d be easier to negotiate or just take almost the authority role of, well, I get immunity because I’ve been working so hard. I’m running this business. Don’t create yourself immunity over a six-year old. That’s just a bad idea. Admit you’re wrong or you’re that and give a sincere apology. It’ll really recharge the relationship quick. Like I’ve said an apology within 10 minutes can save a four day debacle and we all know how things can spiral down.
So that’d be my best advice is, don’t be too hard on yourself and don’t be afraid to give a sincere apology because they go a long way and we’re not immune. We should never try to grant ourselves immunity.
Will Braunstein, A Dad’s Path:
Absolutely. I think the distinction you just made between accountability and perfection/criticism is really, really important.
Jim Shields, 18 Summers:
Yeah, absolutely. Extreme criticism, really when you think about it, is no accountability. You’re not truly holding yourself accountable when you’re overly critical of yourself. You’re actually doing the opposite. You’re creating more troubles for yourself in effecting true accountability.
Will Braunstein, A Dad’s Path:
That’s right. That’s right. That makes a lot of sense. And it’s a little counterintuitive if you’re not really thinking about it. But again, if you’re not accountable, you can’t really apologize. You can’t really improve. You can’t really be the best dad that you can be. Again, best is probably not the… I use best as the best you can be, not as a best dad or a perfect dad, because, again, we can get in that language. We’re like, oh, would a best dad do this? But if you take it and say, hey, a best dad would not lose his temper, and I did. It’s not means I’m a bad dad. It means I need to hold myself accountable and figure out why I lost my temper and how I can be more patient and how next time that doesn’t happen. I like that.
So let’s talk about creating meaningful moments with your family. And specifically, I want to start with your book about family board meetings. I think it’s such a great concept and would love to dig in a little more, if you don’t mind.
Jim Shields, 18 Summers:
Yeah. The time goes fast and you want to mark the moments. There’s too much passing time. Not that kind of junk time of, hanging out at the table or watching a favorite show together or driving them to school is not great. Those are, but you want to have more in depth time of stronger memory makers, I believe. So what I started doing many years ago with each of my children, I spend a half-day every quarter with each of my children. One-on-one, no phones allowed and I let them build the day, choose the day, create the day. And I go all in.
That’s really what my book’s about, this simple rhythm of reconnecting with my children every 90 days on a personal one-on-one level, doing something fun and having some meaningful conversation with full focus, no distractions, no emails, no texts, no other friends or even your spouse. And it had some profound effects in my life. So as I started to say the story, and now it’s been well, 12 years, there’s been a decade of proof that this one strategy has helped a lot of entrepreneurs stay grounded at home.
Will Braunstein, A Dad’s Path:
I love that. First of all, does your spouse also do the board meetings individually?
Jim Shields, 18 Summers:
She does, but it’s very important one-on-one time with all the family, what we learned was it was very important for me, especially to do it. Because I’m the busy entrepreneur. My wife was already pretty grounded at home and I was the more missing link, if you will, because I was working more. I was away more. And also, my two oldest sons I adopted when they were seven and five. So I was stepping in from behind my wife who was married in a terrible, terrible situation and got out, stood up for herself, got full custody. And I met her a short time later. And my two now oldest sons asked me to adopt them at seven and five. Great experience, but I was stepping in… Talk about 18 summers, I had already missed seven and five of them, or I was going in the seventh and fifth. And so it was important for them to get to know me and I was already working. There were trust issues, as you can imagine, going through a hard time like that. So it was important for me.
I do like to see both parents do it, but there’s probably a parent who’s less close to the children. There’s probably a parent that’s probably working more and less attentive and that would’ve have been me. So that parent, it’s absolutely pinnacle that they get these in.
Will Braunstein, A Dad’s Path:
That makes a lot of sense. To your point, you can sense it in the relationship or you or the spouse to talk about it and say, hey, I would like to do this too. And that’s great. That’s more bonding experiences. Or, depending on the situation, they might spend all their time with the kids and they might want to get out while you do that or whatever it is.
So when you start planning those meaningful moments, or I understand the kids plan them, plan that half-day and it’s a very special bonding experience, I’d be curious at a high level, what you found in common with the days or moments or events that are most meaningful and then the ones that maybe don’t land as well?
Jim Shields, 18 Summers:
I really think they all land well. I mean, honestly if you schedule a half a day or a day with your child where you’re one-on-one, there’s no electronic distractions and they’ve created the day and you’re going all in and there’s going to be possibly the opportunity for some meaningful conversation at the end, it’s almost like an unfair advantage for building the relationship. Because it just rarely happens. I didn’t have that with my father, I know that, or parents. So there might be times where there’s a deeper conversation or more conversation, but I don’t think any of them are a failure.
Sometimes I think some of the most memorable, people are like, oh wow, get my kid to open up to me. 15 second conversation. And you say something that’s overdue. Maybe it’s an apology. Maybe it’s sincere or compliment, and I talk about this in the book, and that’s all that needed to be said. That said a million words. So for what was memorable for you, you’re not sure what will be memorable from them. And I know I’ve had some reflections back from my sons, now my daughter, ones that I didn’t remember as so potent of a moment that they did. There are ones that might be a little more high scale, but all of them will have merit.
Will Braunstein, A Dad’s Path:
Love that. That makes a lot of sense. And what you’re saying about what hits. You don’t know what memories your kids are going to have, if you think back to your childhood or when I think back to mine, I have very specific moments of joy with my parents and different events, but I bet they would be surprised to hear about some of them or might have forgotten about some of them as being really, really meaningful to me. Not because it’s not important to them, but because they didn’t even realize. Just that little throwaway, gosh, you’re so special. Gosh, I love you, whatever it is can, like you say, 15 seconds can just heal everything and just get you guys in a great place and continue the relationship.
I’d be curious, the board meetings, it’s a planned event with your child. In terms of more spontaneous, meaningful moments, so not around a board meeting, just getting up breakfast, the day to day, are you finding things that translate from the big meeting to the little ones? Does that make sense?
Jim Shields, 18 Summers:
What I’ve found is when you take this one on one time with your children, the in between times seem more personable, they seem more connected. You seem closer. And so all the times in between these one day meetings seem to bridge us closer. And so spontaneity is a good thing. Once in a while, I’ll say, you know what? Yeah, I’ll take you to school today and let’s stop here. And I’ll postpone a meeting and I’ll do it. I’m all about spontaneity. But I think rhythmizing is so important. People talk about spontaneity, they don’t schedule things like date night. Every Wednesday, 5:30 to 8:30 with my wife is date night. We have it on whether we have a new baby or things going on. We keep real sacred that date night and rarely miss it. I used to mess it up all the time till we had a set day and time.
I’m so busy. I’m an ADD entrepreneur, so I think spontaneity is good, but rhythmizing and locking something down in a schedule, man, that’s super powerful. Because it holds that space sacred, it doesn’t get trampled over. And then those few hours, man, that’s where the fun happens. I’m all for spontaneity. But I think the first thing people have to do is really start to rhythmize, where I’m saying a day a quarter, make sure you schedule that day or it’s not going to happen. If you haven’t gone on a date with your spouse in several months, and this happens when I speak at a lot of events and ask that, say, holy cow, but the next one on the calendar and try to see if you can match that one every week or every other week, consistently.
If you’re always changing and say, well, let’s try to go out Friday or maybe we’ll do it this Wednesday, it gets confusing. We’re all moving fast. So for my simple ADD brain, I can just say Wednesday, 5:30 to 8:30, Wednesday, 5:30 to 8:30. So keep it spontaneity out there, but I think you’ll have the opportunity for more spontaneity when you rhythmize certain really powerful things in your life.
Will Braunstein, A Dad’s Path:
Absolutely. And that’s the direction I was about to go. The family board meetings is such an innovative idea, yet simple, I mean in a really, really good way. As you say, you implement it and now you’ve built-in bonding time. And it’s not fake, it works. You’re creating these real moments and another challenge that my audience is consistently talking about is the relationship with our wives or our partner, our spouse. And like you’re saying, hey, you got to create the space, like you’re doing with your kids. If you don’t create the formal time and space, it’s really easy for that relationship to kind of go by the wayside. There’s just so much to do when you … I mean, you have more kids than I do. Just with two kids, it’s a lot.
It’s really hard. I mean, something always has to give. I mean, before I had kids, I could work out all the time. I could do, da, da, whatever it is. I still work out all the time, I’m more productive about it. You have to just plan your time. On a personal level, it’s fairly easy to do that. And you’re thinking to yourself, oh, you know, working out and my business, da, da, da. And then family, I have to, again, your innovative family board meeting idea. But then on the spouse side, I think that’s the same thing. If you don’t create those date nights… And are those always, without kids. You’re always out of the house or how does…
Jim Shields, 18 Summers:
There were a few times that we put our newborn in the sling and the newborn came with us and just slept in the sling with my wife. But yeah, it’s just us. Again, I think it’s really important to be separating the parts to strengthen the whole. My wife and I need time, just the two of us, to have a healthy marriage.
And that can be a really tricky thing. It can be on both spouses, but sometimes the mom can have a lot of mom guilt where they almost feel like, oh, I feel terrible leaving our children. And I always say to them, what kind of example are you setting for your son or daughter for them when they grow up? If you’re saying, oh, I feel terrible about, then they’re going to follow the same thing. And you want your daughter to be treated well, respected and courted. And they say, “Oh absolutely.” I said, “Well, you deserve the same thing. And you’re setting a good example when you do that.” So it’s really important for that buy-in, to realize that you’re actually strengthening the family. You’re not taking away from it by honoring that one-on-one time together.
Will Braunstein, A Dad’s Path:
Absolutely. Yeah. I think that’s a really wise statement. That’s what a lot of moms and dads deal with, frankly, because as you said, when you’re at this age with the young kids, you understand, hey, they want to be with me. They’re sad when I leave. There’s going to be a point where they say, “Thank you for leaving, dad. I got the house to myself.” That’s probably helpful and one way to kind of see both sides. But again, I personally have that guilt sometimes going out, because my kids are saying, “Hey, why aren’t you here for bedtime.” Babysitter putting us to bed, who they love, but it’s still, it’s not mom and dad. And so, well this is mom and dad going on a date and we go out.
Jim Shields, 18 Summers:
If you’re going out six nights a week, yeah, I don’t agree with that. Once a week, I think it’s a very… I’ve seen it now enough. If the marriage is stronger, I think the family dynamic is stronger and that’s good for the kids. And the simplicity of a rhythmized weekly date night, it’s not going to get you all the way there, but I’ve seen it give people 80% of the way they’re coming back for some real disconnection.
Will Braunstein, A Dad’s Path:
I love that. Yep. It forces you to go back to, hey, we were bonding over things before we had kids, in a lot of cases. Or who were we before? Because we have kids, things have changed a lot in our day to day and almost every way, but still we’re who we are. And we need to build this relationship to build the family. I loved what you said about, you separate the part to strengthen the whole.
I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about giving your kids medicine, I think, you talked about on one of your podcasts, decisions you have to do that your kids don’t like, but help them. So I just went through this with a bicycle camp with my son. He did not want to go. And it was a boom, boom, boom fighting. Fighting’s not quite the right word, but it wasn’t easy getting him there.
Jim Shields, 18 Summers:
Did he not want to attend the camp or he was…
Will Braunstein, A Dad’s Path:
That’s right. He didn’t want to attend. And I think there was fear, as kind of an underlying… he hadn’t been able to ride his bike. He learned, so it was really a huge success and he loved the camp. He wants to go back at the end of the summer. But that’s just an example where I’d be curious how you draw that line and how that line changes as the kids get older?
Jim Shields, 18 Summers:
I think that you always hear about the nurturing, bringing them in and loving them, and the one who pushes from the nest. It’s very healthy to push them from the nest. The more business success I’ve had, it always required me to step out of my comfort zone, obviously responsibly and not putting your kids in a extremely dangerous situation, but things that are just like you just described. Where it’d probably be good for him. He likes it. He’s shown a real desire to be involved with it, but fear paralyzes him. I think that’s when as good parents, we have to not bring them in, but we have to push them a little. Obviously not into traffic or some huge downhill in Denver where you could go to, but you do want to push them and say, “No, you got this.” And show confidence and resolve, and that’s been a really important of the relationship I have with my teens, especially, for sure. Hey no, you can do this. You can try this.
Will Braunstein, A Dad’s Path:
Absolutely. And I think there’s something to embracing failure as well. Saying, Hey, I tried and I couldn’t do this, but I tried again, now I can.
Jim Shields, 18 Summers:
Yeah. My son, my oldest son, he’s always wanted to have a charter fishing business. Great fishermen. We have friends who have charter fishing businesses do very well. Through his senior year of high school, he took the rigorous classes to get his boat captain’s license. He had to go live in South Florida for a few weeks and some tough testing, very tough testing. Well, the first time around he failed. He had passed four of the five tests, but you have to retake it all, and he had missed the fifth test by two questions. I mean, it was so close. And he really, I remember we were driving home in complete silence and he was discouraged and bummed. He had worked really hard. He was like me, very initiative driven, but not the best student, and he was like, “Maybe this isn’t for me. Maybe I’m not cut out for this.”
And I just reminded him, I said, “Buddy, I’ve read time and time again, had mentors tell me that so many people are on the one yard line and they don’t even realize it, and they give up on the one yard line.” I said, “I think you might want to rethink that.” I said, “Every time that I thought about failing on something that I really wanted to do and stuck with it, it took me out at a whole new level.” And sure enough, a few months later he took and he passed all of them. And he felt that the amount of satisfaction and reassurance, again, it’s nothing that I was forcing him to do or saying, “I think you should do this career.” It’s what he wanted. He really enjoyed this. In fact, through our monthly quarterly meetings, this is what he wanted to do. He always wanted to go fishing or could we rent this boat and do that. So we saw this talent coming out of him and that did it.
But I think the whole point is failure… We just say, I don’t know anyone. I just had a billionaire on my podcast or he’s close to a billionaire, Brian Scudamore from 1-800-GOT-JUNK. I’m sure you’ve seen those around. And Brian said, “Jim, through the people that we’ve met, do you know one person that hasn’t had severe failures in entrepreneurship?” And the answer was no, no one, no one. So the more that we can encourage and say, “Oh, that’s part of the process. That’s part of going.” Instead of again, that dang word, perfection, I think it does justice.
Will Braunstein, A Dad’s Path:
I love that’s right on and such an important lesson. I mean, it’s the lesson of grit. You have to keep trying. Nothing comes easy, as you said. I mean, everyone, everyone fails.
I have one last question. It’s a two part one for you here. I want to know, based on all your experience working with families, what commonalities you see in successful families, and then what commonalities do you see in families that are still trying to grow or get to a point they’re happier at?
Jim Shields, 18 Summers:
Commonalities of success are they’re involved. They’re involved. I mean, there’s, I forget the stat, where it was really sad that if a parent is away too much, the odds of the child suffering harm were extreme. So this means anyone who has no money, a lot of money, because some people can still do that. It’s not the money, it’s the involvement. Involvement is really important. And so I encourage involvement, not helicopter parenting, but involvement. Know your kids’ friends. Get involved. talk to them and question. Spend quality time together. I mean pretty simple recipe. Eat dinner together. This involvement is absolute key.
Three things I’d say involvement, rhythms. The most successful families have rhythms, and family dinner. They do our quarterly board meeting. They do a date night. They have a meeting on Sunday. They have two vacations they plan a year. They’re involved with a service organization that they volunteer with twice a year. They have rhythm set, and those are the guideposts to their family values and life and leaves plenty of time for other things, but those hold them together.
And the last thing that a lot of people don’t talk about, or want to talk about is, that the most successful families don’t try to pick the path for their children. And that’s something where we get overbearing on, and sometimes it’s for protection, sometimes it’s to make them live out the dreams that we had, sometimes it’s because we want to brag to the neighbor. None of those are really good reasons to try to pick the path for your children. When you do, you might be stifling something you haven’t seen that’s just under the surface, their own gifts, talents that are unique to them. When we try to pick the path for them, I always warn people, if you try to pick the path for your children, be prepared to carry it because they’re going to run out of steam and the odds of them developing resentment come pretty high. So those are the three best things that I could say is just make sure you involved, you have rhythms, and you don’t try to pick their path in life. That’s a really bad idea.
It’s pretty easy. Saying the ones that are still struggling, and again, no one’s perfect, but there’s some that struggle more than others. Well the opposite, they are not involved. They’re trying to delegate completely to a spouse or a grandparent or a nanny or a babysitter or the school, so they’re not involved. And then they’re the opposite of everything that we just talked about. That’s the problem with that, when you’re the opposite, they don’t have rhythms in their life. There’s no cohesion. And then they’re saying, we know what’s best for our kids and they try to pick their path for them and force them to follow it. Entrepreneurs do that a lot. I tell them, “I say, just realize you can teach the values of entrepreneurship, but your child might not be an entrepreneur, and that’s okay. They can still have a great successful life, one of the resource and happiness and impact.” So people struggling to do the opposite of what I tell are the most three powerful, to be honest.
Will Braunstein, A Dad’s Path:
That makes a lot of sense. And with your number one, commonality and success is involvement, and what I tell my audience and I think is true is if you’re on my website, if you’re on A Dad’s Path, you’re on the right path, because you’re trying to improve. If you have your book, Jim, the Family Board Meeting, and it’s not collecting dust, you read it or you’re listening to your podcast, 18 Summers, you’re involved. You’re trying to be involved. Doesn’t mean you’re going to be successful.
Jim Shields, 18 Summers:
And that’s the first step, so that means people are taking the first step. So like, ah, I’m so far away. I’m like, you’re probably further along than, if you’re doing that. So that’s a good sign. The ones that scare me, and I say this, are the ones who say, “No, I’m fine. I got family life down. I got it figured out.” That’s normally a pretty big blind spot.
Will Braunstein, A Dad’s Path:
Oh, I believe it. Well, there’s a lot we went through here today, Jim. I really appreciate you joining me. Again, you can listen to Jim on the 18 Summers podcast. You can find his book, the Family Board Meeting on their website, 18Summers.com. And thanks for joining us here, Jim.
Jim Shields, 18 Summers:
It was good being here, Will. Thanks for having me.