Transcript

Welcome to the Hundredfold Business Podcast, where Christian men learn the principles, strategies, and tactics to grow their businesses top line, bottom line, and finish line. I want you to discover the secret to applying Biblical truth to business growth for the greatest kingdom impact. So in the end, you hear from your Heavenly Father, well done.

Welcome to the Hundredfold Business Podcast. I'm Josh Fonger, founder of 4th Soil Ventures, and today we have a special guest. We have Kent Evans.

Kent is the executive director and co-founder of Manhood Journey, a ministry that helps dads become disciple makers. Kent's authored four books, Wise Guys, Unlocking Hidden Wisdom from the Men Around You, The Manhood Journey, Charting a Course to Biblical Fatherhood, Bring Your Hammer, 28 Tools Dads Can Grab from the Book of Nehemiah, and Don't Bent Yourself, How to Stay in the Game Even When You Want to Quit. All right.

Welcome, Kent. Thanks for being on the show. Josh, it's a pleasure, man.

Thanks for having me. Yeah. Super excited about this.

Kent and I met, I want to say almost a year ago, I was going through some of his material for Trail Life. For those of you who don't know, Trail Life is like Boy Scouts, only it's for dads and boys, and it's Biblically based. But going through some of the material, it's really good, and we decided to connect and thought it would be a great interview for the men who typically are hearing about how to grow their top line, their sales, their bottom line, their profit, and all that business stuff.

But ultimately, a big push for me when I'm doing my executive coaching and consulting advising is the finish line, making sure you're making that kingdom impact along the way, because that's what's going to matter for eternity. And a big part of that is going to be being a good dad, a good father. And Kent, that's what he teaches about, that's what he talks about.

He's done it. He's lived it. And so excited to have you here, Kent.

The first question I'd like to kick off, everybody, is with really sharing your journey with God, as in how has God brought you to where you are right now? What's that story? What's the backstory? Yeah, the backstory is April, my wife and I just celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary, and that's important because, A, it tells you how old I am, getting up there. About when my walk with the Lord started, because I chased April basically into church. When we met at college, there was this beautiful young lady, and I wanted to date her.

And she said, I'm not going to date a guy who doesn't go to church. So 35 years ago, I walked into a church, basically because I was trying to spend time with her. And God knew how to bait the hook.

And I got her and Jesus all in one fell swoop. In fact, I remember going to see my college age pastor, Monty, and I said, hey, man, I'm basically coming here because April's pretty. Is that okay? And his response was hilarious on the spot with no warning.

Monty goes, well, I'm not going to lie to you, Kent. There are higher motives, which I thought was a great answer. That is hilarious.

And he goes, but I don't care. Just keep coming back. Whatever brings you here is whatever brings you here.

See you next Wednesday kind of thing. So yeah, that's where it all started, man. Back when I was in my around 21, started walking into a church in Lexington, Kentucky.

And here we are about 35 years later. Wow. Yeah.

Great story and similar. I won't go through my whole story, but yeah, my wife was a big part of it and just the right timing. God's timing is perfect.

Now, in terms of your business, your career, I mean, obviously you've been involved in business for quite some time and then you made a dramatic shift to, you know, entrepreneurially start your own nonprofit. Tell me about that. Yeah.

Basically in my twenties and thirties, I worked in sales and marketing and advertising type jobs. I would either be doing marketing programs or ad campaigns or carrying the bag for some product, you know, trying to sell some of it. And that was up until I was about 40.

And then in my early forties, my brother-in-law and a few other guys at our church said, Hey, let's do something for dads around here. So basically at our church, we started doing studies, one night events, that kind of thing, trying to get dads engaged in the discipleship sort of play. And me and two other guys who knew each other pretty well in that group decided to write some Bible studies for dads to do with their sons specifically, very niche, very narrow product, because we felt like the issue was fathers and the fathers of tomorrow, like the fathers of today and the fathers of tomorrow.

And all those guys are, you know, 10 year old boys or 15 year old boys. That's the fathers of tomorrow. And so we just felt like that's what God was leading us to do.

And then you kind of fast forward to today and we've reached a couple million dads somewhere in the world to have a nonprofit. And I lead that from our home base here in Louisville, Kentucky. Okay.

So it started small, it's grown. And were you noticing, I mean, you knew it was a problem in your own church. Have you noticed this is a nationwide or worldwide issue where dads are not engaged in discipling their sons? Is that what you've noticed or realized? Yeah, it's true, both inside and outside the church.

In fact, as far as it goes inside the church, we might accidentally have become one of the better resources for that in that we just released a product called the state of biblical fatherhood based on more than 6,000 survey responses from dads, mostly in America, probably 90 plus percent in America, but all around the world. And we've noticed a bunch of patterns across the seven dimensions of a godly dad. And we've published a lot of work now on those patterns.

But separately from that, if you go back, yeah, the U.S. Census Bureau has, if you want more of a secular view or more of a governmental or scientific view, for at least 50 years, fatherhood has been on a decline in our country, both in the home as well as staying married, as well as being engaged. So if you go back to, say, the 1960s, about 50 years ago, it was about one in nine or 10 kids who would grow up in a home without a dad in the home. Now that number is one out of three.

So just let that soak in for a minute. We've gotten three or four times, three or four hundred percent, three or four times more likely to have a child grow up in a home with no dad present than we were 50 years ago. The U.S. Census Bureau would say that the United States leads the world in fatherlessness.

That's not Kent talking. That's not manhood journey. That's not the church talking.

That's the U.S. Census Bureau. It would seem that affluence and success is a negative correlator to staying home and being a godly dad is all is one of the conclusions you could draw from some of that data. But yeah, dads, when they're gone, their kids are four and five and eight times more likely to be in prison, be in gangs, commit violent crime, do drug use, become pregnant as a teen.

It is an epidemic and not one that I discovered. And it's well documented, unfortunately. Wow.

So the problem is huge. And, you know, that seems overwhelming. Probably not going to solve that in the next 15 minutes.

But what about for the guys who are listening? What do your materials tend to work with them on as they're listening here? They want to be engaged. They're likely busy with their business. What are some of the steps you usually take them through? Yeah, one of the steps we take them through, and it's actually not too dissimilar from how you discuss your top line, your bottom line and your finish line, is asking yourself, you know, what do you want to be holding in 20 or 30 years? Do you want to be holding a really high net worth and very low relational equity with your own family? Or not that you have to pick between those necessarily, although I do know a lot of guys, a couple in my email inbox this very week who are holding that exact inverse correlation, right? They're looking for a way to save their marriage while they're making, you know, seven figures a year.

And that's not a random example. That's an example I could, if it weren't for, you know, me not wanting to disclose things, I can show you that email from 48 hours ago in my email inbox. This guy is a high earner, but he doesn't know how to keep his marriage or his home together.

And so what happens is often, you know, we just fall into the traps of success and comparison and chase. And we tell ourselves a lie. This is the lie that we tell ourselves.

We tell ourselves that our primary job as the dad is to go make the money and earn the income. I'm not saying don't do that. Let's not sit at home and eat Cheetos and get good at FIFA, right? Let's not do that.

However, our primary job, spiritually speaking, is to disciple our families, our primary job. I don't care what you do for a living. You can be a dentist.

You can be a construction worker. You can be a lawyer. You can be a teacher.

I don't care what you do for a day job. If you are a dad, one of your primary jobs, primary job number one is stay married to your first wife. If you can, if you still have her, stay married to your wife.

Marriage is a picture of the gospel. Secondly, disciple your children. And we can't disciple them if we're gone all the time.

That's just the reality. Wow. So simple, so plain, obvious.

And most people are missing that. Why would you say they're missing that? Because it seems very clear and obvious. There's Christians as well.

So why are they chasing other things first? And then anything that's left over in the tank, if there's anything, then those scraps go to their wife and their kids. Why is that? Yeah. I think for the most part, it's just that we kind of bought the lie.

In other words, if I walk up to, and again, I'm primarily, Josh, only speaking to the guy who is a dad who would claim to have some version of a Judeo-Christian view on the world. But if you don't love the Lord or you think the Bible's a bunch of fairy tales, that's a whole different set of issues that I won't dive into necessarily. But if you're the guy who says, no, I'm a Christian dad, that's kind of, I want my faith to bleed through everything that I do.

I want it to bleed through my work. I want it to bleed through my marriage or bleed through my fathering. If that's you, then what we're going to have to come to grips with is, is that what we've prioritized? Is that what we've prioritized? So, for example, a common kind of trope amongst dads is we work hard, we pay the bills so we can get our kids into some educational institution.

I'll just say that is sometimes a very common set of circumstances. However, here's the reality. Go look at the data on what happens to highly educated people.

On balance, in mass, they deny the Lord. They deny the Lord. High education, statistically speaking, this is not an opinion, statistically speaking, high education trends toward apostasy and abandonment of their faith.

Okay, so if that's the case, which it is, I don't have time to unpack it, but just the facts will back me up. If that's the case, then why are we chasing a high education? I don't want my kids to be fools. I don't want them to be uneducated, but what's the primary thing? What's the primary thing? Will they go to school or their character? Ah, if I am at that fork in the road where I go, well, the primary thing is I really want my kids to have every shot at choosing Jesus as their Savior.

I want my kids to have every shot at developing godly character. Well, then that will determine whether we take that 80-hour-a-week job where we got to be gone 95% of the time. No offense to people who have to travel a lot.

I get it. If you're a pilot or your work involves being gone a lot, I'm not judging that line of work. I'm simply saying you're going to find that you're going to work much harder to build the kind of spiritual depth and roots with your family if you're not physically present to some degree.

Sometimes, we buy into this lie that more stuff, more money, more success, we're going to somehow cash that in one day for more relationships. We're probably not. That's probably not how that's going to end.

So, what are some practical things? So, for the dad hearing this who is busy, maybe it's not. Mentally, it's a high priority, but if you count the time, maybe it actually isn't a high priority. What are some steps they can start to take? And maybe it might feel awkward or weird at first, but like, well, I don't know what I'm doing or how to do this.

What would you tell them? Yeah, some simple things. One, steal back the little moments of time where you're doing relatively mundane or simple things. So, for example, if you have young kids and you're going to run to the grocery, take somebody with you.

It's one of the easiest ways. Years ago in 1990s, 93, 95, Steve Farrar came out with one of the best men's books I've ever read called Point Man. He's been dead a few years, but his book Point Man is still worth a great read.

And he talks in the book about the difference between quality time and quantity time. And he says you can't script or manufacture quality time. You trip across it accidentally in the midst of quantity time.

So, you just try to dial that knob as best you can. So, if you're going to run to Lowe's or run to the grocery store, take one of your kids with you. Amazing what can happen when you're parking the car or you're out shopping for pasta noodles, right? That's one very practical thing.

Secondly, to the extent that you can, be with them at the ends of their day. So, you may have a really busy day, but you could send them off to school or you can pray with them at bedtime. There may be ways where you can carve out the ends of the day.

Also, third, leverage technology if you can, right? When I would travel quite a bit, and I've had some jobs where I had to travel more or less, when I would be gone more, I'd be using FaceTime. I'd be using texting, using other means to stay in touch with my kids. Even now, as some of my boys have become adults and young adults, I can stay in touch with them through texting or playing a Bible verse game on the phone or something, like some way of just keeping a relational thread connected to my kids and harvesting those little moments of time.

You don't necessarily need a four-hour Saturday, which would be great if you got it. But if you don't, take a 15-hour trip to the grocery. Sorry, I meant 15-minute.

I got lost there. Not a 15-hour trip to the grocery, unless you're going really far away for some specialty items, feel free. But carve out those five and 10 and 15-minute notches, and they do aggregate over time really well.

Okay. You're making me feel good because I went to the bank today, and I brought my four-year-old and my 16-year-old. Didn't have to bring them, but they were like, why are we going to the bank? I'm like, it's going to be fun.

I don't know if they had fun or not. Well, good. I love that.

Quantity time, essential if you're going to have the quality time, those moments you can't script. But you talk even deeper about discipleship. Would you say that discipleship happens in those moments throughout the day, or is there something structured and rigorous that is a part of this manhood journey? I think it's more about mindset over methodology.

What I mean by that is, if I were to say to the dad listening, how many kids you got? What do you hope for them? What do you want for their future? And those kinds of things. A lot of us would discuss our children and our goals for them and even their future in mechanical terms or economic terms or even relational terms. I want them to be married, or I want them to be happy, or I want them to fulfill their dreams.

That's the kind of language sometimes we might use. And I think for the guy who wants to disciple his children in the Lord, there's just a mindset shift, and it is, I want my kids to be like Jesus. That's what I want.

And if they have a great job or a high-paying job or a low-paying job, if they live in my town or they don't live in my town, they go to my church, they don't go to my church, they're married, they're single, they have kids, they don't have kids. All those are other on-off switches that, frankly, are secondary. If your primary motive is, I want my kids to be like Jesus, then let me just tell you how that plays out practically.

I'll give you one specific example. I really don't want to be my kid's hero. I'm not trying to create little miniature Kent Evanses.

I don't want to create even necessarily Evans family people. Well, that's not how we do it in the Evans family. You got to wear the family name.

No, not really, not really, because my family name won't save them for all eternity. One name saves them for all eternity. That's the name of Jesus Christ.

So in the end, I try not to egoify something else, money, our name, where they live, whether they get tattoos or don't, or have a body piercing or not. I try not to make those the issue. The issue is, do they love Jesus? Now, I can't make them love Jesus.

I can't force it, but I can set the table. I can set the table. For me, it just comes back to mindset.

Should you take them on that road trip? Should you do that Bible study? Should you take them on a 13-year-old trip through the woods with their uncles and get the letter and the sword? Maybe, maybe. I'm not saying don't do those things. I'm simply saying the mindset, the mindset is, I want to be more like Christ.

If that's our mindset, then the methods will be, Josh will have a certain set of methods. You'll have a certain set of tools. You'll have a certain set of kids.

I'll have a certain set of methods and tools and kids. I don't have to do it like you. You don't have to do it like me.

We've got a bunch of methods at Manhood Journey, a lot of tools you can use, but frankly, they're all designed to alter your parenting mindset so that you're parenting from a position of discipleship, not a position of just creating successful young children. I love that. It gives each family an opportunity to have the freedom.

Each dad had an opportunity to be free to lead, free to commune with God and to be directed and say, okay, based on my family, based on my kids, based on what the Holy Spirit's telling me, this is how I'm going to do it for this season. It can change. That gives you a lot of flexibility.

It's going to require a lot of prayer because it's not just follow Kent's one, two, three, four step formula. It always works great. It's not like that.

I wanted to dive into some of your books. I know that each one has got amazing content. The last one you just recently wrote was Don't Bent Yourself.

So what are some highlights from that book that you think are really important? Maybe that's a reaction to men who are, you know. Yeah, that book is born out of the Bible verse Galatians 6, 9 says, Do not grow weary in doing well, for in due season you will reap if you do not give up. Do not grow weary in doing well, for in due season you will reap if you do not give up.

The one thing I would say that is from that book, which really is just me quoting the Bible, in due season means that a time specifically tailored for you by the God of the universe. For us, we want to not grow weary in doing well. Most dads are actually doing their best.

It's very rare that I go, man, you just got to get this dad completely off the couch because he's doing nothing at all. No, usually we're all in motion. We're attempting to do the dad life best we can.

We need to be encouraged to keep going, to keep going. In the book of Hebrews, it says, For the joy set before him, Jesus endured the cross. And so for the joy set before me, that is me serving God faithfully until I die.

That's the joy set before me. I'm not going to save the world through my sinless death, right? That was Jesus's job, not mine. The joy set before me is, can I finish this race faithfully? And that book, Don't Vent Yourself, is just about that.

Don't pull yourself out of the game because of fear, shame, criticism, guilt, any of these things that tend to pull guys out of the game. Don't let those things sideline you because I got news for you, right? And you already know this, but your wife doesn't want you to be sidelined. Your kids don't want you to be sidelined.

Your mother-in-law doesn't want you to be sidelined. We do that to ourselves. And that's why we decided to call the book, Don't Vent Yourself, because often we just self-select.

We have an error. And so we think, you know what? I'm just going to go sit down. I'm no good at this fatherhood game, so I'll go be better at something else.

Dad, don't do it. Don't give in. Don't give up.

We're in due season. You will reap if you don't faint. So what are the, and what would you say, I have my own thoughts about this.

So like, let's say you do mess up as a dad, whatever those things that make you want to vent yourself. You failed, moral failure, whatever the failure is, you're kind of like, I'm no good at this. I'm going to go to the office.

I'm going to go wherever. What does, what is the Christian response to these failures to get you back in the game? Yeah. One of the things that we talk about in the book is a four-step process for those who are either sidelined or tempted to be sidelined.

The first step, I often compare it to a base path because I live in America and I played a lot of baseball. Uh, so if you're a baseball fan or even just understand how the game works, first base is you've got to learn how to call out your sin. We say, call it out.

The reason is, um, a bad, a bad diagnosis will absolutely lead to the wrong remedy. So for example, for example, uh, recently I yelled at one of my kids. He's 19 or 21 years old.

Uh, 23 years old. Sorry. Um, at the time, it's a few months ago.

And the reason I yelled at him is because I chose to. The end. The end It doesn't matter what he did. It doesn't matter what happened right before that. It doesn't matter whether he was disrespectful or appropriate or I chose to sin against my child And I had to say wait a minute time out I should not be talking to you like this.

I am wrong. Will you forgive me? Because i've learned That that is not the language of guilt and condemnation That's the language of liberation For the dad who believes there's a dad listening to us today josh who believes That his responses to his children are controlled by his children Hey dad, you're acting like a child You're acting like an 11 year old Okay, they're not they're not step one own your response. Like I am I have agency over my choices For if for no other reason I have the holy spirit living inside me I have the power to choose right and wrong and I often choose wrong So knowing that man for me, it's step one.

I'm dealing with a guy in my life right now who um would cite his marriage problems And he would compare those to the train wrecks of marriages around him and then he would say we're doing better than most Oh my word, man, what is going on? No, no, we're not going to give into the trap of comparison what we're going to do is we're going to say wait a minute What what am I doing as a husband? That is contributing to the problems in my marriage not is my marriage better off than the one two doors down Come on, we talk about calling it out. We talk about making it right There may be something you need to do to repair the situation. We talk about Leaving things behind like I can't solve all the problems I created last week or last year or last decade So i've got to live in the moment.

I got to live in today. I got to accept god's grace For today and then we're going to let things transform us, right? We don't have a fixed mindset. We got a growth mindset.

And so I see failure as fuel and failure as information Uh, it's not an indictment. It's information and so when I fail which I often do which my wife and I are currently walking through a Week this week where we I made some some bad choices, uh, and it was not as diligent as I could be So i'm right in the middle of just diagnosing man. What could I have done better? And then i'm going to try to get to a really clear accurate diagnosis because I know accurate diagnosis always proceed precedes effective remedy Okay, that's a great a great plan.

I'm gonna go back and listen to that again because Um, it's not just I messed up i'm gonna ignore it. I'm gonna keep moving forward. There's actually some ownership.

There's some action here there's a process to Get back into the game and it's not just Oh moving on. Let's just keep going. I don't know.

There's actually You've got to address it like and um, and if if you're like me the sin is happening regularly And so you you got to be in the game and addressing on a regular basis Otherwise, you're continuing to to fracture those relationships and you're continuing to to put that wedge in day after day after day and Um, you got to wake up. Uh, so that's great um, I know that um, I recently just did a a study on nehemiah and I see you've got a book all about Uh nehemiah called bring your hammer uh, we're not gonna go be able to go through all of the Actions in the book, but what are some some of the practical? Uh steps you found in the book of nehemiah that you think yeah are important for dads I think an easy one early in the book of nehemiah chapter one or two It says nehemiah learned some bad information like like he gets a bad report, you know Israel's and our jerusalem's in all kinds of trouble Uh, and then look at the things nehemiah does really early in the book of nehemiah You could go read chapter one or two And and get a giant armload of lessons, but basically one or two of them are these one nehemiah when he is presented with the problem in jerusalem Is one of his very very first steps it ties to what we said a minute ago is to confess his own sin Which is crazy when you think about it, right? Like like if you're if your child comes to you and goes dad I have a major problem at school and there's this bully and there's this teacher, you know We've got teenager kid problems, right and you just go. Hang on a second timmy or sarah Dear god, I know i'm a sinner And I know i've sinned against you Would you would you continue to give me wisdom, you know, like you is your starting point ever To take an external problem and then go man.

Let's look at my own heart first Like I I don't hardly ever do that and then gonna set that aside And then one of the things nehemiah does early in that book is pray He prays for wisdom. He prays for wisdom. So practically speaking a dad is listening to this And he's got a child who's 6 8 10 15 20 and in the next day or week that child's going to bring you a problem Either he's beating up his little brother or he stole the cookie or he's mad at his mom or whatever the problem du jour is Will you have a penitent heart And will you acknowledge You two are a sinner And will you pray for wisdom? And frankly, there's a bunch of other lessons we can learn from the book of nehemiah.

That's all we learn Man, that's a great trajectory to be on as a dad He's one who takes problems and goes first to my knees before I go to my strategy on how to solve it Yeah, that's a great Again all these things seem so simple to talk about very difficult to do And um when I was looking through it just the time period between him praying And repenting and asking for wisdom and then actually getting a chance to talk to the king. It's like a four month lag there Yeah, so sometimes action doesn't need to happen the next day some or next moment sometimes that really God's working right god's hearing your prayers and there's movement happening Um, I think that's the most important thing a dad could be doing um which Which brings me and I told you ahead of time when I get to all these books because I know they're all they're all good And I want the audience to hear about them um the manhood journey And I noticed in the the subtitle of that I haven't read it Has to do with becoming a godly father And uh, I was just curious. Why did you choose? Because I think a lot of men wouldn't say I want to be I want to be a good dad I want to be a good father.

They wouldn't say I want to be a godly father Yeah, um, why did you choose that word? And what is what is the distinction? There yeah um I the reason we chose it is because uh, wow, it's so much there josh that I just want to go on this 20 minute Um rant i'm pulling myself back from the rant. Um, you have five minutes The idea the idea right good better best good better best which we teach in business schools, right? um You got a good product. You got a better product.

You got a best product um presumes presumes a point of comparison so so psychologically and uh, Theologically and philosophically if I say I want to be good At anything and anything forget it golf. Um preaching, you know, whatever it might be There's a basis for comparison But Because then i'm saying i'm good as opposed to what as opposed to bad As a or effective as opposed to ineffective well If our starting point as a dad Or a leader of any kind is that I want to be a good leader Well, then all we're saying is i'll be better than those other suckers. That's what we're saying That's what we're saying or if I say I want to be better.

Well, then i'm now i'm really on the train right now I'm not that i'm not that loser who's good. I'm better than the good loser if I want to be best Wow, now i'm in a it's a pyramid. It's a race.

It's a game of comparison The christian walk is not a game of comparison If it is We've all lost All of us have fallen short of the glory of god romans 3 23. There's no sense in comparing yourself to you To josh to kent to even the you you used to be i'm better than I was 10 years ago. You're still Not good enough on your own apart from christ You are not good enough.

And so just these this language we have in our in our western kind of consumer culture good better best more successful effective all that language Presumes that point of comparison to which we are looking down And going well, at least i'm not that guy, right? All it is is it's the parable that jesus told about the the arrogant Law-keeping person looking down on the ashamed broken man. It's just a repeat process So I want to be I don't want to be a good dad. I don't want to be a great dad I want to be a godly dad and what that means is i'm in submission to christ and it means that All the weight is not on me All the weight is not on me.

I want to be faithful, but I don't need to be perfect I love that answer and what what is that? So what does the godly dad look like other than submission to christ? Are there like do you go through a series of virtues in the book or is it? Yeah, um, More of a mindset. What is what does that look like? We talk about seven things that all godly dads do and it'll sound like nothing brand new under the sun, right? A godly dad trusts god knows scripture prays fervently Builds relationships serves others i'm going from memory i'm missing one or two, but it's those kinds of things Yeah, where it's it's the habit patterns. It's the habit patterns of a godly father Um, and for us that's what we wanted to focus on in that book or just what are these habit patterns? What are these habit patterns? So for example, um, take a godly father prays fervently What does that mean? Is it twice a day once a day 10 times a day you decide? You decide right i'm not going to overlay kent's ideas above scripture What does the bible tell us? It says pray without ceasing It says present all your requests to god not some all And so as we look at that, we just try to pull out scripture to help dads orient their view of god of fatherhood Toward a godward view and not toward a performance view I think well now that you're explaining this I think this probably correlates almost identically With the study that I did with my my kids at trail life when we were leading the group and uh I mean just a plug for trail light because the whole program is designed to you know, help these boys grow into men right, but Simultaneously the dads are growing into into men not better men, but godly men through the process And so it's a great study and that's the one that we're on right now the manhood journey uh with our boys and so that's been that's been really powerful because just for me and for my kids and and i've noticed to the program it's not Do this this this this this there's a lot of discussion there's a lot of freedom to express How that manifests in your family in in your life? and um, you know again the community interaction, uh, which is a great segue to uh, the last book I wanted to touch and touch base with is that This journey this manhood journey this idea of being a better father.

Um It's not supposed to be done alone. You wrote a book called wise guys. What what are your opinions? i'm assuming it's based on scripture to to becoming more godly dad and um excelling in this uh Finish line thing that we're talking about today How do you go by doing that? Yeah The easiest way to understand the book wise guys is for me just to pose a question And let your listener kind of wrestle with the question for a second when you think about Having godly counsel in your life when you think about having godly counsel in your life How amply supplied are you? How amply supplied are you? So so dad the guy you're listening to this show and you're hearing me and josh talk about all these ideas I just want you to mentally think for a second If if if uh, if your life were a company were a company who's sitting at your board table Who's on your board of directors? If if your life were a company who's on your board of directors and if you think man nobody Exactly and and that's that's the case a lot of guys find themselves in Is they find themselves on like isolation island where they have no real wisdom sources? I mean god's word and prayer great.

That's amazing. Go for it worship music your wife My wife april's a tremendous source of wisdom for me Having said that I want to surround myself with godly counsel With godly counsel. I want to be able to be able to reach out to guys say hey, man I'm really wrestling with this situation with my 10 year old son What would you do if you were in my shoes or what do you think god would have me do? I want to have access to these men.

I call them wise guys, right? It's it's I want to have Wisdom surrounding my life and it goes back to when I was a teenager My parents got divorced and the counselor told me, you know Get around guys who have what you want They might be better at business better at golf better at marriage. Whatever it is get around guys who have a Some kind of perspective on life That you don't yet have fully locked in and it'll it'll rub off on you. It's osmotic.

And so for me um, I want to encourage men if you find yourself isolated, uh, You live in a time and era when that just shouldn't be the case like we got starbucks on every corner We got text messaging we got you know You've got access to ways to communicate with people that people 100 years ago didn't have let's go surround yourself with godly counsel So then the next question for her men who are like, okay, my bench is empty don't have any uh, maybe their their own dad wasn't one that they can look to And they're thinking okay. Well How am I going to go about finding these men and also maybe a secondary question would be do I need to find? One that just kind of has the whole package or am I finding? like five different ones and one is good at this area one's good at that area and i'm trying to Isolate them by skill set Yeah, I I would say something that I would preface with this is just my opinion Like i'm not sure that I think I can defend it biblically. I think I have a solid rationale.

However I'll just give kind of kent's two cents on this one I think rather than start to look for mentors Instead start here start here Where and how do you want to improve? So for example If you want to get really physically fit Or if you want to stop blowing your top and being angry or if you want to be not in so much Money debt, whatever whatever those issues are that you go, man I really want to grow in this way in this way. I think when you start with your growth area It makes finding a mentor or a coach a hundred times easier Because you know what you're looking for, you know, you're looking for Um secondly, I like a collection of mentors not one Sage guru life giver mentor on the mountain. That's just me now.

That's not necessarily You know, i'm not i'm not saying that's not relevant or What i'm saying is Probably josh if we talk long enough I could find 10 ways. You are smarter than me Uh Or more experienced than me sure or just more Insightful than me or more patient than me or more disciplined than me, right? It's not just like iq it's man Josh's whole life is this collection of stuff that I could learn from But but if you're really really great at molecular physics That's cool. But you know what? I Thought a molecular physics help right now, right? So I would say hey josh, let's not talk about that Unless you're just itching to tell me your cool molecular physics stories Instead if if you go man, i've really walked through some difficult seasons with teenage kids Oh Now i'm in i'm in because I still got two kids I got a 14 year old and a 10 year old and i've raised three, you know Now I want to know what josh knows and so for me I like the idea of multiple mentors not just one and I like the idea of some degree of Speciality or areas of focus with one caveat one caveat.

Let's say you were the smartest financial guy in the world Uh, and I could learn a lot about finances for you However, you're on your fifth marriage. You're a raging alcoholic and your own children hate you I wouldn't really care what you have to teach me about finances. Sorry Because because I want to go find the person who's developed expertise while maintaining A godward view of their life and has kept their life relatively in balance.

I'm not looking for perfect people I'm not looking for perfect people looking for faithful men Faithful men from whom I can learn and I can't normally learn that if they're you know Really good at one thing and just a complete train wreck at 10 others So that's just kent's opinion run it through scripture pray about it. That's just how I thought Yeah, no, I that's a great um And we can talk about it for a long time. I think it's great wisdom and uh, I like how you put in there That they might be good at certain things But if they don't have relationship with god if they're not, you know, if they have no fear of the lord what you're getting um, it's going to be worldly wisdom which might have led to some Tactical gain but right likely that's going to lead you astray in other areas of your life to be really careful um really careful and i've learned this the hard way really careful what advice you get and who you get it from because If you if you get off track when they don't have a relationship with god and they're actually um mixing in Worldly ways to get that.

Uh, absolutely that thing. So definitely Well, well kent this has been a great interview. I wanted to finish off with with a final question.

I asked all my guests which is to um What would you say to a christian man who's running the business, but he's been keeping his faith uh for the most part private his employees his customers probably don't know that he's a christian and uh, but you know, what would you say to him in terms of encouraging him to get his uh You know the name of jesus out Yeah, I would say go back to what you said earlier josh top line bottom line finish line What are you after? What are you after and if the only thing that you're after? Is net worth or getting your business to a certain multiple so you can sell it Or having a certain amount of influence or notoriety or fame We we just know man. We know from scripture that all those roads are dead ends And it's not that we should not necessarily have Economic success or not necessarily be more worse better known, you know I'd rather my books sell millions than than dozens. I get it.

But but but That's not the finish line for me. That's not the finish line for me the finish line for me is I want to be married to april until the day one of us dies. I want to be a faithful husband I want to be a godly father Um, not perfect right not perfect at either of those things not perfect at either of those things But I want to be a faithful husband and a godly father and if that's my finish line It just helps me orient my business life And if and if you're if you're if you're believing this lie that you can somehow compartmentalize your life I I don't think it's necessarily evil or broken.

However, I do think you're missing opportunities Missing opportunities. I have a friend who's about to embark on a on a career pivot. This person was a ceo of well-known company And they would embark on a career pivot um, and they want to basically become Relatively famous in the platform world for speaking and teaching and writing and I just encourage this person who is a believer keep Jesus at the center of your teaching Keep jesus the center of teaching even though even though the world will tell you water it down Share platitudes and principles Be nice to your neighbor.

Just say that Don't say jesus said in matthew, you know Skip the jesus part and just quote the golden rule and you'll sell more books that way You'll have bigger following on youtube that way. That's actually probably true However, is that what you want? Back to what you said earlier man top line bottom line finish line Is that your finish line followers on youtube book sales if it is great go that path However for believers that shouldn't be our finish line. Our finish line should be more interesting more complex than that And mainly for me.

I just want to be faithful. I want to be faithful till the day I die Yeah, that's a great way to finish and uh, what's going to matter a million years from now, you know A few more followers from our book sales, uh, not you know, so don't deny the name of jesus when you're when you're quoting jesus Right at a minimum Make sure you do that All right, well ken thanks again for sharing your wisdom on the show today this has been a very important message I hope the men listening today have really um listened to what you said and took some notes and not just took them but actually are going to apply some of these because Whether your company grows or not in the end what's going to matter is uh the things you mentioned, you know You as a husband you as a father that's going to last generationally And if you need more information ken, where should they go to find more information from you? Yeah, they can find us at manhoodjourney.org. That's manhoodjourney.org And josh, thanks a ton for what you do And thank you for the opportunity to come on your show today, man. This has been a blast and a really fun conversation Yeah, no, it's been great.

And if people need help with their business 4thsoilventures.com And again, thanks ken until next time grace be with you