How To Build Your Legacy, Bond Your Family With Traditions, Rituals & Routines, Rites Of Passage & Much More With Rich Christiansen of Legado Family Founder.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, if you don't know what your values are, even all the bloods and the crypts have values, but what's your family values? I believe every son must kill their father. I just want to in the form of basketball games or frisbee golf, and that's really stupid, throwing thousands of years of wisdom and tradition was not a good idea, but we do need to selectively extract the values that are not serving our families well away. Well, we all want to give our kids a step up when it comes to giving them the micronutrients, the nutrients, the vitamins, the vitamins, the minerals that they need, but a lot of children's vitamins on the market today contain up to seven grams of sugar per serving, not to mention all the artificial additives and petroleum-based dyes, enter Haya. Haya took the opposite approach. There are kids multi that has zero sugar, zero gummy junk, just clean nutrition, and kids really like the taste. I like the taste, right? 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Well, when it comes to to passing on important family values and in beliefs and and legacy to future generations, I believe and I've said this on podcasts before that family traditions are this powerful legacy building and family bonding tool in any parents and families toolbox like traditions and habits and rituals and routines. These are kind of like the glue that sticks and the threads that bind and the the clasps that hold a family together through the best and worst of times that I recently in a podcast that I did with my whole family and I'll link to that in the show notes for this podcast. We recently worked with with a guy named Rich Christensen. Rich has a company called Legato, L-E-G-A-D-O and he specializes in helping families not just identify their core values but create everything from like memorabilia and traditions and rituals and routines and comings and goings based around all those values. So we worked with Rich last well several months ago and kind of in the past several months leading up to this podcast and as a result like we have a Greenfield family playbook which is a special guide that we can pass on to all of our future generations where our values and our traditions are listed. We have a family mission statement. We just I'm super stoked about this because I got the final design and the video and the photos of it today this morning just a couple of hours ago we have this giant family crest that's going to hang above our fireplace. We have our family mission statement posted in our living room and in the dining room. We have like hats and shirts and bugs and stickers with our family logo on them. We've got like spirit animals and colors for each member of our family is really cool and if you're not already weaving things like traditions and rituals and routines and an emphasis on legacy into your own family whether you have a family or plan on having a family I encourage you to do it or to start down the road of doing it. You know preferably with the help of a professional because I thought I could do all this on my own that I'm at Rich and I was like holy cow I'm an amateur and he has taught me a ton so I decided I wanted to get Rich on my podcast and Rich is not just a big family and legacy guy he's a super successful entrepreneur like in the business world he has founded and co founded 51 different businesses and technology and SEO and real estate and imports exports and online sales and lead gen and I think he even has a business based around Wormpoop which maybe we can talk about more in this show because it doesn't want to know more about a business based on Wormpoop. He's written books, ton of books including the Bootsstrap Business, a step-by-step business survival guide. He wrote a really good book that I enjoyed called the Zigzag Principle. He co wrote a book with his sons which is called Toes Turn Purple which is actually really good it's about raising teenagers that are confident and happy and stand out and are self-actualized and impactful and what Rich does now is exactly what I've just been describing. He upgrades family's relationships through this special program called Legato. So we're going to talk all about this Rich has five sons and a daughter that they sponsor from Nepal he's got eight beautiful grandchildren and after spending a few days with Rich at his cabin in Utah I can tell you right now he's a real deal. So all the show notes for everything we talk about today you can find at bengreenfieldfitness.com/legatopodcast that's L-E-G-A-D-O Legato podcast, L-E-G-A-D-O Rich welcome to the show man. Man it's great to visit with you, Ben I've just wanted to like to spend a few minutes with you and I just got to tell you you're like one of the craziest implementers I've ever seen. So what we just want a privilege to get to know you River Terran and Jess and just thanks for letting me share this most important message with with your audience. Well I think when you say crazy as implementer what you mean by that is that I am stubborn and relentless and I tend to ruminate on tasks so I just I I try to pardon the experience. Expression get shit done in a timely and thorough fashion and so I just so those you're listening in though You know you you leave your work with rich with all sorts of assignments You know like like working on the family mission statement and the crest and the logos and I just I have had so much fun Diving into all of this along with my family So so the implementation piece on this has just been absolutely Bonding for us as a family really special for me and and I think it would be really cool to just hear How this kind of evolved rich because I like I've been in business branding workshops before and when we went and worked with you And I know you work with people physically one-on-one and you also work with families like online and via your online programs It felt like a business branding workshop that had been Kind of adjusted and evolved to be a family branding workshop instead. So I'm curious how this all came to evolve for you Going from being a business guy to a family branding expert Well, I think articulated pretty darn well actually what happened But the reality is this is I never intended to share this framework this legato family framework that we've outlined Ben and then a couple of three years ago. I just had a profoundly deep spiritual experience where I just knew that I had to do it The reality of this the situation is this this didn't happen three or four years ago I've been working on this content now the last couple of three years ago, but it actually happened some Seven years ago when my wife and I we we we were married Had five hundred dollars a Dodge cult that had been total three times our weekly food budget was $13 a week and we lived on potatoes and love I was gonna say I would have chosen rice and beans, but potatoes and love sounds pretty good to Well, yeah, Ryan's pretty good, but we hit a point where I starting to have some breaks in my career band It became very apparent that we we're going to do pretty well financially and at what point early in my career I was earning more than my father and my father-in-law combined It was apparent we were going to have success and it scared that tar out of us been so much that we actually moved to a very poor neighborhood and Our plan was to never tell our kids had money because one of our key values is we didn't want our kids to go up and Titled and we saw so many individuals with wealth that were just decimating their family and so my wife and I stupid Ants are as it was moved to a poor neighborhood and just lived very humbly and We got about two or three years into that exercise and had a dear friend that came to me and says rich This is the stupidest thing we've ever heard of if you don't manage to completely destroy your children Let's say you play this out successfully which you won't be able to but they'll be 40 45 You're going to pass away. There's going to be a bunch of wealth and if you don't destroy your children You'll most certainly destroy your grandchildren What were you doing that they thought would destroy your children or your grandchildren? You mean just like the way that you guys were we're living your life? Well, we were living very humbly We weren't telling our children we had wealth We weren't building a platform to manage the wealth We were just hiding it and so they weren't getting the skills and he was dead straight up right Ben So that actually spawned a very very interesting sequence of events of Me going and looking for a model How do I entrench these key values that my wife and I had of non-entitlement of hard work ethic of bonding family of not you know Being entitled and all these these things and what we discovered Ben was a ton of financial models I found a bunch of really interesting financial models, but I couldn't find anything that deeply entrenched Values into the family so through to all entrepreneurs I Created my own dang model and then was very very secretive about it my wife and I together formulated this model that that will share with you today so that was the starting of it and we we put this infrastructure in place and began raising our sons and family and In all honesty and exceeded any of my wildest imaginations. It's crazy because you hear about this stuff You know you hear about like everything from family trust to a family constitution to the idea of a mission statement Or maybe you see some people walking around whatever Walmart and they happened to have designed a family logo, but you know It seemed to me at least it seemed kind of Lucy Goosey until I met you and started working with you and had it all Sistimized and and laid out, you know in a really well organized binder and via all the exercises that you brought me my family through But before we kind of explain You know what what the actual Steps are and and how to how to structure building legacy and weaving into your family you said something a few minutes ago That I wanted to ask you about you said that wealth can decimate a family I think is the way that you phrased it. What do you mean we say wealth could decimate a family? Well, I think it's an accelerant to to fuel the cracks and I think that if you're not careful and you stop producing value as a family Then it can spawn to a death and destruction of the family and tragically I get to see a fair amount of it now in this new role of Helping families really build I've I mean you hear that Wealth will only last within three generations the family just I don't think that's true, Ben I don't think that has to be the case you mean you mean like like regs to riches to regs like that that that whole deal self entitled kids So you said they quit producing values so basically Your kids get wealth you pass it on to them. Maybe don't even have a family trust where you're kind of maybe maybe Bleeding out the family wealth over a very long period of time so the chosen to learn to use it responsibly or maybe you're not willing Any wealth to your to your kids at all, but Basically that this idea that you know like like if I'm a successful entrepreneur and My kids grow up super comfortable and able to afford anything then their own work ethic and their own I guess incentive to Develop their own wealth is going to be Hampered or at least has a very high likelihood of being hampered. That's a very well articulated I would add to other things though because I think actually investment into dark things putting money into dark things actually lowers the energy and lowers the contribution of the wealth also and You know so many people talk about it's all the kids didn't get it, but I think oftentimes Kids of wealthy families they fell intentionally going lose it because they know it's not serving their family well It's been surprising to me how many you know billionaires I've talked to and they they make the comment the the wealth did not Serve our family well. I think in some way she'll almost have to have a death to then have a rebirth to climb back out of that destructive cycle and I think that that's the primary thing the legato is about Ben is this it doesn't have to be that way We can operate I love I'm although I'm not Buddhist. I'm devout Christian But I love the concept of the Buddhist principle of operating in the middle way within balance and harmony and stop going to these extremes of Lean early start up entrepreneurship that then drops into excessive wealth that then drops into abuses and and taking advantage of Indigenous situations and just Then having to have a death that occurs and tragically oftentimes wealth can lead to that if it's not handled properly So I really think that what this can do This legato family or these type of concepts is normalize tipping over that out of balance infinity symbol and putting in the middle of way so there's balance in personal development and health which you talk a lot about mental physical spiritual health that then fuels the family with in balance that then fuels business and then that wealth fuels and and we operate in flow Rather than these dropping off a cliff Rags to riches in three generation nightmare that we've got ourselves into yeah, what was you mean when you said putting money into dark things? Well, I think I truthfully believe investing in just dark things tobacco is a great example of it in what world Does that serve well you can get a great return on investment? But what point you're fueling investing? I think it's part of the reasons why you know some wealthy individuals get then or the life part of it Just wanting to not mess their family up, but part of it is also Just wanting to restore some of the damage that's been done. We can invest in dark things and crazy and who deflued is that sounds I think it carries negative energy. No, I totally agree I mean like our our families 2022 New Year's resolution is to basically not purchase any products for our house That were used mean like food products or or beauty products or personal home products or anything that was derived from research on Aborted human babies, right? That's not that that's that's more of a of a of a commission or an omission than a commission right? We're we're not only not investing in companies like you know cigarette companies for example But now we're also basically not going to be using any Pepsi products because Pepsi developed a lot of this stuff on On fetal cell lines from aborted human babies or Nestle or crafts or or Cadbury or you know even even a lot of the vaccines like like there's There's and there's a ton of of medications as well and it's gonna be kind of a pain in the butt during 2022 but what the way I view this and it's kind of relevant to the entire discussion is Not only this idea that how we live our days is is how we live our lives. And so little purchases here and there each day that might support unethical companies or things that your family might not agree with from a family value standpoint eventually winds up being the way that you live your entire life. And furthermore, I told my wife this yesterday, I'm like, yeah, this is gonna be a big pain in the butt to like not use any Pepsi or Nestle or craft products at all and just like, you know, go through our pantry and start to audit everything. But we have to decide at what point we say, okay, the buck stops here. Like, 'cause if we don't do this as parents, then our kids are never gonna do it and their kids are never gonna do it. And eventually the cycle just continues, but at some point if a couple of parents that in one generation say, okay, we're gonna start whatever, meditating in the morning as a family and praying together. The whole family starts doing that. And then my kids start doing that with their kids and all their kids start doing that with all their kids. And thinking about this concept and I think you and I were even throwing around this idea when I was down there in Utah with you, the way you raise your children is the way you raise your grandchildren, right? Or you're not raising your children, you're raising your grandchildren, right? - The fruits bear generationally, the most valuable thing we pass on, and I know everyone says this, but who really does, is our values, it's not our money. I love the Eric Queen Nation. Have a dear friend named Scott Ford that kind of occludes me up on this, but the Eric Queen Nation have this concept of seven generations looking three generations back of the impact that they had, looking at where you stand and then any decision you make, look three generations forward, seven generations perspective rather than a media quick little consumer by now. And I think that this settles right on the very stability of if you don't know what your values are, you know what your values are, most people know in business, we know what is in university, you know football clubs, you know, a basketball team, jeesh, even all the bloods and the crisps have values, but what's your family values? I tell you do that until you really clearly understand what are your values, then how you can make any decision, how can your brand anything? I think that's really where it has to start so many people are so, "Oh, I want to cry, I want to do a logo, "Oh, I want to do a family-ishing statement." But until you put the effort into defining exactly and clearly in our particularly understand what your values are, and then, then equally, what values are not serving your family well? In our family, we use guilt and shame, like peanut butter for generations to get any desired behavior. Guess what? We've carefully and surgically extracted guilt and shame. So every family has that, whether it's scarcity or whether it's, whatever it is, carefully extracting those values that don't serve you well rather than throwing the whole caboonle away like so many millennials are doing. That's really stupid. Throwing thousands of years of wisdom and tradition was not a good idea, but we do need to selectively extract the values that are not serving our families well away. - So it starts with values, and I remember being at your cabin there in Utah, and that was like one of the first things we did, but refresh my memory and tell my audience, like where do you even start identifying family values? Like how's the process go? - Yeah, we actually kind of run through it, so I've been doing the last couple of years, a bunch of exercises with some great ways to look at it, look what your ancestors did for. Who are the people in your life that you really respect and honor and want to look up to? Well, when you combined as your family or non-traditional family, what were the things that just popped out immediately? We have this little word cloud with all the different values, and then we had, if you recall Ben, you and Jess says, well, as the boys go circle the key values, and that was a great starting point. And then it's just a matter of collating and betting until you get values that really deeply resolve with what you stand for. - Yeah, that was a trickiest part, 'cause you gave us a binder to work with, and I know that people would go through your workshop, they get this big binder, and there's so many values in there. There's gotta be 300 values, an alphabetical order to choose from, and it's like, dude, all these are good. We love all these values, but we wound up with, I've actually got them hanging on my wall here. We got faith, love, creativity, intelligence, honesty, joy, gratitude, endurance, and interdependence. Like those were the key values that we wound up really honing in on as being the ones that we wanted to stick with as a family, and those were the values that we wound up kind of weaving into our mission statement and into our family logo and into our crest eventually. But basically, it sounds like what you're saying is first, just step back and look at family history, and what your own family seems to really prize as values or tendencies or characteristics within the household. - Yeah, that's exactly right. And then you did such a beautiful job, but that is very self-evident, like creativity, was one of your key values. It isn't in our family, thank heavens. Some of my drawings would not be very good, but we have passion and we have righteousness, we have adventure. And so if you attempt to copy someone else's values, how stupid is that? I think self-articuate and understanding very clearly what your values are has to be the starting point. You're right, it's hard work. I think through this process that I've kind of collated, we've made it a lot easier so there is starting points 'cause it's a lot to just jump up and say, "Hey, what are your top 10 values?" But you have to start with values. If you don't start with values, when you get to get creative simple, what does it really mean? Anything that endures, whether it's a religious institution, whether it's educational institution, whether it's a government, they always start with values. And so, similarly, we as a family, we've got to get really clear on what our values are. Yeah, and granted, a lot of our values, like those major values I listed, other values, we woven to those. As we went through and we wrote all of our values, I think we're using just markers on your window there at the cabin. I started to figure out which values were kind of like sub-values of our main values, like love. So, we had other values like sacrifice and service and generosity and stewardship, but we decided, you know what? Those all fall under the category of love. So as long as love is woven into our mission statement and our family crest and our family logo, that's gonna cover a lot of those other values I feel like we should have written down or paid attention to. So, I actually wrote a sentence as we created each value, like for love, I wrote, we value sacrifice, service, generosity, stewardship and sharing all that God has gracefully loans to us. We care for our women as queens of our household, and we believe that love and forgiveness covers all. Or for like, you know, for other values, there was like perseverance and strength and dependability, and we didn't list any of those, our core values yet under our main family value of endurance, I wrote, we prize perseverance and strength in body, mind and spirit. We are dependable leaders. We stick through thick and thin. We stand by our word and we let our SBS and our NoB know. And so, you know, I think that even though you might have hundreds of values to start off with, and this was helpful for me, kind of that mental frame set of recognizing that a lot of values kind of like fall under what you might identify as major values as kind of like sub-values if that makes sense. - Yeah, and you just articulate so well, by the way, everyone what he was reading there is this once you have those values, you do create a mission statement. And so you were reading those frame mission statements of what your family stands for. And I recall as Reverend Terran were there, they also threw in some really fun words. And I really believe strongly that, you know, this is the core of the family unit, which is you and Jessa, you need to establish those. I encourage people eight to 10 just key core values. And that doesn't mean it has to stop there 'cause you can't embed all these others, but you can then have your family bold on it, like I'm holding up our little word cloud here. You can't see it on the podcast, but my son Timmy added goofy and my son Nathan added classy and Matthew added navigation. And great, we put that down as part of the word cloud to additionally express, but you've got to start with eight to 10 core key values. Obviously, non entitlement was a key win for my wife and I. And that's what drove a lot of this early discussion on early story that jumpstarted this whole little band-angle, if you will. - Yeah, yeah, and that whole idea of non entitlement, that reminds me of something really cool that I think probably is gonna allow us to rabbit hole a little bit here, but the concept of non entitlement is something that you've actually woven into these key comings and goings for each age of your children. And this idea of having specific ages at which you've identified, you're gonna have key conversations or key adventures or key, you know, what you call comings and goings or defining events. I think is really cool. And I think it's so cool and was one of my favorite parts of the whole process that I would love to talk a little bit more about that. And maybe have you walked through what you do with each of your own kids at a specific age 'cause I think it's super cool. - No, love to do that, Ben, yeah, it does get a lot of attention. So can I just fly by quickly what the model is and then we'll dig deep into that one? Can I just in like one minute fly the key components? - Let's do it, go through it. - Okay, so you get your values on your platform, you stabilize then you throw away the yucky values. Then on top of that, you plant logos and symbols and spirit animals and colors. So everyone in the family manifests and shows up and you know your position and your crest, the big crest you did. So simple, Then you have the doctrine, family mission statement, family mantra, family slogan. You have all this verbal kind of rules or guidance systems of how you behave and operate. Then the third one is actually traditions. Cadence is a quick tradition. Like we both have family prayer. You do that beautiful meditative practice with your family that I so enjoyed participating in. Very sacred special traditions that are rare and unique that deeply bond the family together. Then the fourth one, the one you reference is what we're calling life defining events or there really rights of passage, rights of passage which was a lost art. That's the fourth one that maybe we'll wrap whole into. Then the last one is just the structural piece of putting it all together like family, thinking, family, constitution, how you build the structure so the wealth endures supporting the values. That's the framework, platform of values and then those five pillars planted on top of it. I love it. And then by the way, the whole family constitution, family bank, wealth management piece, that's like a whole different ball game. We probably won't spend a lot of time on that on this podcast, but you mentioned Scott Ford who you graciously connected me to after I worked with you and he's actually kind of coming on board as our families wealth manager which I'm super excited about. We're kicking that off for 2022. He's going to help us out with even though we've had a family trust for a while at kind of revamping the family trust and developing the family constitution and the whole wealth management, family banking side of things. So I'm super excited about that. 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Try joy mode dot com slash green filled or enter code green filled at checkout for 20% off of what is basically the electrolyte packet for your dick. Enjoy. Back to the green filled family defining events like like we've we've developed like what we're going to do at age eight, age 12 and age 13, 14, 15, 16, etc. But but for for illustrative purposes, I'd love to hear you talk about like what you've done with each of your kids at specific ages. Yeah, thanks for asking that. This is really a fun one and this was the part that we never intended to share, but it was yielding such fruit that people always wanted to talk about it. So when our kids turned eight, my wife and I decided to take them on eight is great date. Take them to let them pick the place of dinner, which was something terribly awful most of the time. But then we'd go to a private location and after that, we would open the dialogue of discussion and never ended of sex of technology of bullying. All the pitfalls that teenagers seem to follow into we just had the open dialogue and discussion that was just completely open. The result being when my kids, you know, they hit their puberty and had their first but dream was just an open discussion dialogue, very private and very careful, but started and open that dialogue at eight. Eight is great date was the first and I think that's a critical age because that's when cognitive function shifts, you know, the childhood of making a conscious choice. Okay, got it. So so eight years old, that's where you have the kind of like the ask me anything, all cards on the table, discussion with the child where I actually talked to you about this when we're out there working with you. I think that you mentioned how you will you'll you'll take your eight year old child once they're ready for for that type of discussion out somewhere and just have like this dedicated one on one time for them. And I love this idea and one thing that I thought about and I commented to you was that it doesn't mean that there won't be questions that your kid asks about the birds and the bees or sex or masturbation or any question that a young growing human might have about the more delicate or touchy subjects of life that they're curious about. But basically you you identify and systematically formally, almost ceremonially weave in an actual time and actual age and actual date and actual location where you know all those things that inevitably maybe your kid didn't ask about yet and you feel needs to be addressed or something that didn't come up yet in their life that needs to be addressed. You've actually carved out intentional time for that to happen. The deliberate intentional no scarcity, no fear, no hiding from it. You know, eight, that's pretty young age to do it. But I mean, it's actually the proper age because I think the most of the time by parents they call it now the time it's probably like a year or two late. They've probably already heard and seen things. So I just love to be able to control the narrative right on the frame and I have to give a lot of the credit to this to my beautiful wife. She's a registered nurse and a punitary farm and boy she just went there. I mean, I'm blushing half the time. My wife just she went downtown. The Roy Brown. She went there all the way. Yeah. For me, it was dad's old anatomy textbooks, you know, just going through everything. It's hard core. Here's exactly what everything looks like. Here's the hole. This one goes in. Here's the hole. that you don't put stuff in and just the whole discussion, I guess, pun intended with whole there. But basically, yeah, that idea of open communication at age eight and I would imagine every parent is going to know their kid and know if maybe at age eight they're not ready or maybe at age seven you're already realizing that their friends are talking to them about porn or sex or masturbation or something. So maybe you got to have that discussion earlier. But yeah, that idea of controlling the narrative and ensuring that your child's initial education into subjects like sex, for example, isn't something they first learned from say, you to where the website they happen to stumble upon and go down the rabbit hole of when they're supposed to be researching stuff for school, which unfortunately is how a lot of kids discover that stuff these days. It's not intentional, it's accidental, but then they get sucked down and all of a sudden they're learning about that stuff from sources other than you that might be presenting it in a manner that isn't the healthiest way to present it. I even have an app installed on all of our computers and devices. It's called canopy and it's great because it allows a kid to be able to really be able to explore the internet and all the wonders that the internet has, but it does a really, really good job at also controlling what they may either intentionally or accidentally see that could kind of shape their mindset early in life in a manner that could be detrimental. So age 8 is open communication, then what comes next? Age 12 was what we called the non-entitlement trip and keeping in mind I had five boys, all boys, so I didn't have a young woman, but I alone would take my sons on a three week trip and it was typically to a third world country. The first week we would go explore and have a grand adventure. We'd ride the camels or climb on the Great Wall of China or go to the Pokemon Center or go see the Taj Mahal, just have a blowout life adventure that these kids were looking forward to the time they could even talk knowing they're going to do it with me. The first week we have the adventure in deeply bond. The second week we would go into a mother tree snorfnich or we'd go into Catman-Dew and hold the little rescue girls that had been rescued out of like 100,000 little girls that have been rescued out of sexually slave sexual slavery or even killed and their organs being harvested for India and China, just horrific and just hold those little girls, touch humanity on a deep level and see the plight of humanity at 12 years old. So the second week we would touch humanity deeply and the third week traveling home, we would talk the context of what it meant to be a Christianson man. And again, knowing what our values were, it was protecting, providing and providing safe space for women and fixing a lot of stuff. So that then become the metaphor of what it meant to be a man or a Christianson man. So I'd go on a trip and my son says, providing dead, providing dead or the lawn wars broken there to say, fixing dead, fixing dead. But we had a framework at that point. Ask me how much entitlement has been in my sons. Ask me zero, squada and having seen River and Taran, we already know the outcome of that one. By setting these values early at that point, 12 is such a critical age where you enter puberty and start to become a man or a woman. And so setting that context and again controlling the narrative, not allowing someone else's values to impose it upon you, but us controlling the narrative of the framework of what we valued and setting proper context online. So that was our 12 year old trip. Non-intitlement. And it's not as though you aren't weaving into because we do this with our kids. You weave non-entitlement into just your daily life as a family, whether it's when you go out to a restaurant at night and there's leftover food on the table and you box it, going out and find some homeless people to give it to before you go home. And I tell my kids, this is great. We get to go on a post-prandial stroll to control our blood sugar and also give people food that we would wound up taking home and having breakfast with scrambled eggs, but somebody else is going to get a nice warm meal tonight instead. Or going on a Sunday evening and cooking dinner for someone in church and bringing that out to them and delivering to them. It's not as though the age 12 non-entitlement adventure or journey or trip or right of passage is something that is a once in a lifetime occurrence. But again, you dedicate intentionally that time age 12 boom. It's time, son or daughter for this non-entitlement trip. I think that these rights of passage or life-defining events, it just so deeply semantics it cannot be. And I saw what you did with River Intentant. I saw how you meditated and your gratitude prayers and I saw the interaction. So you had the values already and we're operating on this paradigm. You're just not doing it without a structure. I'd argue now you're using the structure of values. Your symbology supports it now. Your doctrine supports it. Your tradition support it and life-defining events. Sementse is so stinking, solid. You just can't undo it. Okay. So we've got age 12 non-entitlement. At age 8, you have the open communication. What about the next kind of defining event? 14. 14 was the next one for us. And again, everyone's got to pick their own. But for us, we wanted private victories, not public victories. I wanted, I wish you could see me now because I'm reaching my chest and just bursting it out. But we want the power inside going out rather than external, the lads of man coming in, the permeate that then you get your image defined on the external events. So at age 14, each one of my sons have climbed a major world mountain peak. We've had three stare up the throat of Mount Everest. We've had Mount Blanc. We've had Kilimanjaro. And those young men go to the top of the mountain. I mean, there's no pain like the exquisite pain over 16,000 feet. Those young men go up the mountain as boys, bawling. My youngest son passed out three times going up the Kilimanjaro and guess who caught him. That would be me. But they come down, man. So private victories, not public victories. And I can do hard things. I can do hard things in private without the world watching me and not having to get the lads of men. That's for our sons at age. We did it at age 13, but basically it was a right of passage into adolescence. And then we worked with Tim Corcoran, who's been a previous podcast guest of mine with twin Eagles wilderness school where my sons do wilderness survival camps. And we do father sun camps together out there in North Idaho, but they also facilitate rights of passage into adolescence and rights of passage into adulthood. So when my sons were 13, they prepared for several months. They went out into the wilderness, you know, backpack, we'll blanket knife. They had solo time in the wilderness, Native American sweat lodge, you know, a fire ceremony in which they gave their coming of age speech, a post ceremony gathering feast where family and friends came and my sons in the form out of a traditional Native American right of passage, gave out gifts to each member of the family and friends who came to their coming of age party. But that idea of going out and facing their fears and being in a state of ego dissolution in the wilderness was how we wound up doing the age 13, 14 kind of a kind of courage adventure. And then when they're 15, they'll do this again, but it will be a right of passage into adulthood where it will be a longer period of time in the wilderness and a little bit more of an intensive journey, so to speak. So so we've got courage at around age 13 to 14. And again, knowing river in Terran, I mean, how much fear do you have of them going forward into the dark? I mean, that developed such courage to go, I mean, what 12 year old and people say, man, you really do that. That's so hard. And it's like, well, easy harder, hard easy because it just you're never going to have issues with river in Terran and so many of the stupid things that teenagers get caught up because they know how to go out in the wilderness and survive on their own in the dark. And I mean, most of you haven't met river in Terran. I'm very fortunate to have done it, but these young men, I mean, oh my heavens, I don't have enough words to describe the gravity of these amazing young men and the maturity of their souls based on your right of passage. Yeah. And Grand, I'm a little bit biased, but I think that part of it too, like it doesn't, it doesn't have to necessarily be wilderness survival, so to speak as much as, for example, you've illustrated rich, you can be climbing a mountain with your parents. It can be doing anything that allows you to face your fears and develop that courage at a young age. And I just love weaving that concept into those early teenage years. Now what about the next milestone? I'm going to jump to that before I got a comment on that. My biggest fear is I go through this as people think they've got to do what we did or me or you or whoever else, please don't do that. I beg you don't do that. You got to get your values and build this around what you're valuing. Otherwise, you're just, you know, supporting something you really don't want to prop up in the first place. So it's just vital that you pick your values before you engage this stuff. Makes sense. Okay. 16. 16 is when my sons take accountability for their own future. And they basically shake my hand. Now I'm a hardcore entrepreneur. And so in our home, we're talking not about the sport scores. We're talking about how to dissect markets and structure companies. And so we had a little bit of a cheat code here. But my sons come. it to me that they weren't asked for anything anymore. I helped them build a business. And from that point forward, my sons pay for our family vacations. Yes, they pay for family vacations and family dinner. They pay for their own college. They pay for their own mission service. They pay for their car when they get done. And, Ben, you're aware of it, but my three oldest sons all built million dollar businesses when they were in high school. My second son built a little bit of a, I think he's called a rat hole. I'm going to go with a, like, a cuter animal and call it a rat hole. But what, what, how is it that, like, to tell me, tell me about one of these businesses that your children launched and, and how you actually foster the development of them being able to fricking, like, pay for their own college, which in many cases is unheard of these days. And, and so is, you know, like, a teenager having a million dollar business. So tell me a little bit more about that. So I guess the first comment I'd make is, is everyone has opportunities available to spend their sons into this stuff. If you're a chiropractor, there's things that are taking place that you can actually have your kids get into and enable it. And yes, the reality is I did cheat code it. And, uh, I bet my kids have been building businesses since they were like kids. My, my youngest son had built like seven or eight of them. He had his college and mission paid for by the age of nine years old. And so he didn't want to build another business. Actually, the studio I mean, that was his project as a 18 year old kid. He was charging a couple hundred dollars an hour to like 40 year olds to do studio stuff. The, the concept is to get a, a life skill. So I think that as parents, we do get to hand hold that and bring that along. And so I, yeah, I did. I was involved and engaged. I think you'd ask me what one of them was. Is that what you were asking? Like, when are, what is one of these businesses that your children started? Well, actually, it goes through a whole bunch of them. The first one was how to tie it. Well, not, first one, but one of the many was how to tie a tie. We were doing a word keyword research and realized that the fourth most how to typed in the world was how to tie a neck tie. And it wasn't that terribly competitive. So my sons gathered their resources. I required them to pay for it with their own money and build a website on how to tie neck ties. They ended up ranking number like two in the world on how to tie a neck tie, which yielded 30,000 pages a day. Another was just simply arbitraging coupons right in the middle of the crash of like 2008, 19, 10. They started building little coupon websites, pizza coupons and milk coupons. And all sorts of coupons would drive traffic to those websites. And then people would come in to get the coupon they would partner with living social or group on and take them out for five bucks a lead. So it was just basically a five buck machine. And that one, yeah, that one did a little too well, which does present its own set of problems. I'll tell you when your high school student is making more than the superintendent, the principal and half the faculty combined that creates a whole new stick. It is sticky wicked that probably is for another problem. But you do teach your kids about wealth management. Like I think you would use like a like a jar concept from an early age. Yeah. That's exactly right. We have them divide it into four and then all transparency. I didn't have entitlement problems with my kids, but some of their friends that were working for the company are they got a little bit too fancy pants. So at one point we decided that the company is not maintained. When they turn 18, the business gets killed, head cut off, shut down and donate all the excess resources back to charity, typically the first one that they went to when they were 12 so that they have to be their own man. They don't live off of that and they start over. So yeah, I kind of hit three threads there, but interesting. I am a reality is is the very thing we wanted to void. We could have created and I'm a strong believer. I want my sons to be their own man. I want them to be my peer. I just want to in the form of basketball games or Frisbee golf or something not in the form of a business. Shoulder they're equal man. Every son has the need to show their man. Hey, I'm my own man. And I think it's tremendous damage. Again, my value, my opinion, but I want my sons to walk in the door and hug me and kiss me and want to play my own craft with me and be my peer. I don't want to have my thumb over them when they're 21, 25, 30, 35 that can happen with wealth, if you don't care. Yeah. Yeah. You know, this idea of a business that that a child or an adolescent builds that can somewhat be informed by seeing what their own parents have done is often under emphasized because we no longer live in an era where let's say a son might accompany his father to work where he would help his father, whatever, you know, shoe horses or blacksmith, a sword or you know, the type of things that children used to go and accompany their parents on to learn a vocation because now the world is at your fingertips. You can be anything you want to be. You're often in school all day, you know, learning from an outdated educational system based on building little factory workers, but that's not really relevance to say carrying on the family name or carrying on the family business. And regardless of whether or not your kid is going to work in the family business, this idea of bringing your child to work with you or or carving out again intentional time because I do this once a month, each one of my sons gets to just follow me around for the day. And they can have, you know, they can have a comic book or something else to read and sit in the background. Well, dads, you know, recording a podcast or whatever so they're just kind of listening in or maybe they're going to help me record a few podcast commercials or they're going to help me do research for for a client who I'm going to help on the phone and walk along behind me on the farm road behind the house while I'm talking to the client. But basically, I really don't care if my kids wind up being whatever podcasters or personal trainers or the type of thing that I have done and built my business on. But being able to just go with dad to work and shadow that at work, I think it's something that a lot of parents don't weave in because it's weird. It's not accepted like who shows up to the office with their kid just so their kid can learn. And it is something that I think is undervalued. I mean, I just got booked to be the host of a like an online docu series. And as part of the agreement for that for me to go and record all these interviews with people and, you know, sit there in front of the camera, etc. I said, okay, on at least two of these trips to record this, I want my kids to be able to come with me to sit in the background and listen to dad interview all these people to soak it up to see how the cameras work, to see how the audio works. And it just go with dad to work. And, you know, and my sons have actually launched a cooking podcast. They've got a food podcast, you know, shameless plug and quick shout out to go greenfields.com their show. But they they learned a lot of that just from watching dad tool around the kitchen shooting some video about a super food smoothie or whatever. Why would we not cheat code it? Why does it have to be weird? It's weird that we don't do that. Why would we not take the skills and the insight? Let our kids be who they are the very best version of themselves. But why wouldn't we pass on the gray scene sites? That was exactly the comment I was going to make. You cheat code it. River and Terran have their own cooking podcast. And how powerful is that? You've actually done it much younger than I did. And I don't think so many people actually say, oh, well, they're telling me, "Milky, no business. Crazy, huh?" But you know what? There's not one of you out there, not one person listening there does not have the opportunity to plug their kids in on something that's being learned or done or exposed to and help them help them kind of make their own way and take accountability. I think the irresponsible thing to do is leave them in from a TV within a Tando for 24 hours. And then when they're 18, say, "Good luck with that kid. Good luck with that. Well, buy your own toilet paper and toothpaste." That's what's worth to me. Yeah, exactly. And for us for that age 15, 16-ish capability focus what we're planning on is because my sons are currently on track to probably be done with high school by the time they're around 15. And there's a little liberal arts institution called New St. Andrews College that they want to attend in Moscow, Idaho, down here. And I'm not that bullish on university education, but I do think that a well-constructed liberal arts education, which a child learns things like rhetoric and logic and persuasiveness and foreign languages and reading and writing and expressing one's thoughts clearly and being able to speak, etc. I think that that can serve a child well, no matter what career they wind up going into. So I'm totally cool if they want to go get a liberal arts education, but in between high school and their liberal arts education, for their adventure and capability is going to be in addition to their their right of passage into adulthood that they'll do out in the wilderness, they're going to do a gap year where they can go hike the Pacific Crest Trail to do a backpacking trip of Europe with hostels and hitchhiking, all self-supported, all paid for by the moan, the so-called gap year. And it's going to include some element of service and we're still in discussion about how they're going to weave service and helping others out, whether it's building a church or a school somewhere or whatever. But we definitely have planned on that age 15 to 16 focus on capability and be able to take care of oneself. So we've got age eight, the open communication age 12 is not entitlement, age 13 to 14-ish courage, age 15 to 16-ish capability. Then what comes after that? 18 years old, shut down the business, give all back to charity and go serve for two years, learning the foreign language and serving humanity in a very deep, meaningful, impactful way. That simple and quite frankly, it's the hardest of all the rights of passage to see our kids go off and have to live incredibly humbly and basically get their own footing on humanity. And it's that simple. Truly, truly cutting the cord. And you know, we had a lot of family discussions as we learned from you. We didn't, you know, the trick here for those listening is, you know, you don't have to replicate exactly what Rich is doing or what I'm doing, but just being able to think in this way about the ages of your family and weave this in somehow is important. So for us, what we've decided is indeed a age 18, if they're not already fully financially self-supported, that's the age at which they no longer get any money from mom and dad for anything, for a car, for college, for business vocation. It is all self-supported starting at age 18. No ifs, ands or buts. In addition to that, we've decided that if for some reason, either of them, unless there's some serious health condition or random incident like that going on, that they, any of the 18 year old males who happen to be living in our house at age 18 must move out of the house at that point. They, they, they do not live under, under, you know, with mom and dad when they're 18 period. And I don't imagine they would be anyways, but we've decided that we just, like, that's the point at which they need to be fully independent. So that's what we've kind of woven into age 18 for when that arrives and gosh, kind of scary five, five years. It's terrifying, but how, how courageous is it that you do that because it sets context with them that they'll put parent, take control and plan their own life and, and they will go kill their own father in a beautiful harmonious way, rather than seizing them. I mean, I'm zero fear that river, Karen will ever end up as sure killers living in your basement. My kids, jeesh. I mean, it's, you know, how amazing it is that my son's now take me to lunch. Oh, my heavens. Yeah. I'm going to have my kids take control of their, my, my 28 year old son just sold his second company. How much do I have to worry about my, my, my sons now? Yeah, that's what I love about this is, is it's like a lot of people say, oh, you're going to mess up your kids by me and like, your kids are amazing. Like, like, they're way ahead as humans and, and, and accomplishing things that I think we've, we've sadly settled with the idea that human beings at the age of 25 or 28 or whatever are still often, you know, just getting done drinking beer in college and your sons are selling a business. They started when they were, you know, when, when, when they were teenagers or, or have already sold a business when they were teenagers. And so again, this, this is stuff that actually flushes itself out and demonstrably produces fruits for a family. Demonstrably, demonstrably, demonstrably, my kids come back from that two years of serving humanity. They're not 2325. They're not backpacking through Europe, smoking weed and just hanging out and seeing what they can get there. And they come back 40 years old, contributing, meaningful, impactful and bringing me grand babies that are beautiful. And the only thing that gives me more, I was so hesitant to share any of this until I started seeing how my kids were raising my grandkids. They're lapping us three times, babe. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's, that's the idea is every generation in, in small steps and even leaps and bounds gets gradually better so that each generation becomes more impactful rather than again, that, that rags to riches to rag story that, that is so much more common. Now, there's, there was one other that kind of surprised me because obviously your kids aren't really kids anymore when you do this, but, but you have another thing that you woven that I wound up borrowing from and weaving into our own family playbook. Tell me about the last, the last defining event. Yeah, this one is actually interesting. And it's kind of a apology blended with the charter. When I, my sons are now young adults, so they're 2324, I take them to a level four security prison. And we spend two days in the level four security prison with, with oftentimes individuals who even take in life or been in, in gangs and really live tough lives with the context of this. Son, none of us want to be held accountable for the worst things that we've done. You don't want to be, I don't want to be, we all deserve second chances. And most of these individuals never had even a first chance. And so the plight of humanity coupled with this apology, it's my generation that dorked all this up. We massage, he's running, wrapping, divisiveness in politics, abuse of the environment, the big social problems. And I'm sorry, my generation messed it up. Now it's very responsible to go fix a lot of these hot messes that my generation created. So touching humanity on a visceral level and seeing some of those tricky situations where you haven't incarcerated individuals that oftentimes never even had a first chance. Yeah, that idea of going out and really in a very, in a very explicit and remarkable manner, being given a chance to understand forgiveness and grace. And I don't know what it's going to look like for our family, but I want to do something like you've done, I want to do a prison visit or even like a church build or a school build, whether in our community or even in a different city or different state or different country. But I really want to do that with my own sons as well when they're around that age, that whole idea of contribution and understanding forgiveness and grace that when paired with for example that non entitlement trip that occurred over a decade earlier at age 12, I think is just wonderful in terms of a human going into the ladder, three quarters of their life with a real awareness of the fact that so many people are in need, so many people need help and so many people need forgiveness. And again, systematically leaving that in, I just think is so, so cool. So I'm hoping that people are kind of getting an idea of just a tiny flavor of what this type of legato work actually looks like and I did want to ask you here shortly like how people could actually do this, like whether it's like an online program they do or whether they work with you physically on site. But before we do that, you know, is there any other kind of like like key tradition or ritual routine you have so many. I mean, you spent three days with us and I've done some million stories. But in terms of maybe something that hasn't been brought up yet, are there any other like key traditions or rituals or routines that you just think are so cool. You would, you think would be really beneficial for my audience to hear about to give them their own ideas. You know, I, I think maybe just too really quickly. The first is getting a cadence, a frequent cadence of something that gives comfort. As a human beings, we love like kind of our tradition, tradition, we love our traditions. And so if you can get a cadence, I know even I was deeply touched then as I saw your prayer and meditative practice with your family daily, how much comfort and nerve settling does that give. And so I think this concept of getting the daily touchstone, it can be really fun. It doesn't have to be even really hard, but the concept of asking what's the peach and the pit of the day? What was the good thing of the bad thing every day? And just getting in that little cadence of doing that would be something that's so healing and so powerful. I now got an insert one other and if I really could quickly too, is there so many individuals I talked to say, I've got a strange man, I've already got, you know, I've already got my kids kind of at odds or whatever else and as it too late for me. And it's like, oh, heavens, no, actually, oh, it can be so healing. So the tip I give you in that situation is, is taking interest in whatever your kids doing. If they're into my my four son was so into Pokemon, I wasn't so much, but guess who played? I'm like a level 39 Pokemon Go trainer. So take an interest if they're into my second son wanted to be Mcjagger. So he was playing a guitar like crazy. So enable and move it towards, rather than resist and try bringing our kids to our thing, go do what they're doing and take an interest in what they're doing. It'll shock you what happens as they come back to you and then want to take an interest in your so often we get that so wrong. It's like I, I love to use the knowledge that we got this beautiful big cup of water and a hair ball or snot ball drops into the water and what most of us try doing is pick, pick, pick, pick at it and then the water gets black, gets all gross and disgusting and all we have to do is it's just taking more, more love, more water, more love, more water and most of the time it just kind of naturally floats out. So man, if we just pour a little bit more love in and take interest in particularly teenagers, you can cheat code it every time with taking interest what they're doing and cook their favorite meals. I love it. Well, you guys even have that little song that you sing. What's the song? The Johnny Appleseed song that you would, oh Lord, Lord's been good to me. Oh, the Lord's been good to me. And so I thank the Lord. Thank the Lord for everything. Thank you for singing with me, you're in the number. But that's like a song that you guys go out like every evening and sing that song as the sunset. And again, like a lot of people think that kind of stuff is silly but kids try it like my sons, they thrive on our dinner time games. They thrive on our story time after dinner. They're 13 years old. Their feet are almost as big as mine now. And yet they still, they crave that bedtime story. You know, I asked them, I'm like, do you guys get tired of dad reading you a bedtime story? Is it like, I was very straightforward with them. I said, is this something that you're just doing now with me because you know, dad wants to read a story? Do you guys really want to hear the story? They're like, we want to hear the story. We want to hear the story. So I told him, okay, look guys, when we get to the point where you guys don't want to hear the bedtime story anymore because you feel like dad's just reading it, but you'd rather be reading your own book or whatever. You just tell me, but you know, whether you're 14 or 30 years old, you know, I'll read bedtime stories to you until you tell me to stop. You know, and the morning meditation and the journaling and the evening meditation journaling, like kids just thrive on this type of systematic tradition and ritual and routine, whether it's a holiday or whether it's an every day. And so when you go out on your porch and you sing the Johnny Eppel C. God's been good to me song to the sunset I just know how much that means to your kids and how much you know it meant to my kids to see oh hey other families Have these weird things that they do you know at certain times of the day But it's so so good for families. I think more families need that type of tradition woven in Every family does it is just are you being deliberate and thoughtful about it because if not you're passing junk along and I mean you just hit it I mean what does it mean to River and Terran that you know that they're a fox or a bear or how they're showing up in the color They are I mean that spirit animal thing lit them up man I watched their eyes go as big as saucers as they got to dry draw their little spirit animal And I think that's the only real thing we hadn't talked about I do want to mention is this man Do you have a family symbol? Do you have a family logo your business does your favorite sports team does the United States has when your college has one I mean But I mean the bloods have one the bloods and the crypts have symbols and colors and you don't stand a freaking I mean if you knew half the logos and brands that you're wearing you'd vomit you'd right now you'd wretch over this podcast knowing what their values are So the power of just getting logo and symbology to bond you yet I I got this beautiful logo that so meaningful in my little three-year-old granddad well my two-year-old grandson When they touched the chickens after we pick the eggs they want to sit there and touch every Every day. Oh Sam you know Sam you uncle They know right where they fit and so band just so important I just if you take nothing else out of that just these last little key hints of you know get a family symbol get really deliberate on your Logos and for heaven's sakes plant your values and you're gonna be just you know miles ahead and Families on a lot of salt right now families non-traditional families and tribes are just getting their head Handed them and it's because we're not doing this basic stuff That was the fun part the spirit animal identification and each of our unique logos and symbols and shapes And then you hooked us up with Jacob who we've been working with for the past two months for this glorious crest That's gonna hang above our fireplace and our mission statement which I mentioned in the introduction is Is framed and posted in our living room and in our dining room and we got our family logo on our freaking mailbox and on Coffee mugs in the kitchen and on our t-shirts and on our on our hats and we even have a special Secret places in the crests were on little tiny rocks each symbol of our family is each of the individual family member symbol is pictured and Every time a new family member like one of my grandchildren is added to the family Their little symbol will get added to that crest There's all these cool little artistic things too that are just so much fun And I'll tell you what if you're listening in and you go to the show notes at Ben Greenfield fitness.com/legado Podcasts L.E.G. A.D. O podcast I'll not only link to you know riches legato family foundation and all of his books and everything But all all throwing some cool photos there So you guys can see some photos of what our family logo looks like what our family crest looks like What our mission statement looks like to maybe get your own wheels turning Rich how can people if they want to hook up with you and Just have all this systematized and work with you to do this like what are the options for people to do that? It's really simple. It's just go to legato family L.A.G. A.D. O family.com and There's there's even some great free resources in their band that they can start with I think we actually have in the resources page we have a a cheat sheet for this life-defining advance And there's if you do want to engage we just love to get to know you and have the impact this it really is It's the most important thought leadership I've created to this point in my life And I'm just so excited to see what does to families, but there are multiple ways you can engage There's a digital online program that walks you through there's digital online with coaching groups There will be a couple of key events and in rare Rare situations. I'm willing to actually do similar to what I did the band of do a personal event So there are multiple plug-in options for you and I just I swear man this rocks your family like you can't even believe it Well, it's pretty cool and I know I'll hunt it down and put it in the show notes at Ben Greenfield fitness comm slash legato podcast We have we have like a special discount code for you guys and some extra goodies thrown in so if you go to the show notes All all linked to all of riches a legacy building stuff there as well And I have to recommend for any of you business folks out there read riches book the zigzag principle as well and if you have Adolescents or kids who are interested in starting a business his toes turn purple book is really good too So check all that out and then I'll probably do a follow-up podcast Those you listening in about the whole wealth management piece of this because like I mentioned I'm gonna be working with Scott Ford who rich hooked me up with and I will likely at some point during 2022 interview him and chat a little bit more about the wealth management piece But in the meantime rich I think we've probably filled people's heads with plenty of ideas and resources to get started on their own legacy building as a family So I want to thank you for for coming on the show today and sharing all this with us and Ben just such love and respect for for you and Jess and River and Terran and just how much I honor you man I said earlier you implement and you really do but you actually are living it and it's just such a such an honor to get to Count you as a friend and just know anyway. I can support you by the right here for that. I appreciate that and Again, the show notes are at Ben Greenfield fitness comm slash legato podcast ledg ADO Podcast and until next time on Ben Greenfield along with rich Chris. 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