Jeremy Pryor on Multi-Generational Family Leadership and the Greatest Business Book of All Time

In this episode of the L3 Leadership Podcast, host Doug Smith interviews Jeremy Pryor, founder of Family Teams. They discuss the influence of the traditional fairy tale 'Jack and the Beanstalk,' offering surprising insights into business and asset building. Jeremy explains the concept of Family Inc., which guides families in creating businesses to secure financial and relational freedom.

The conversation explores how to raise and manage a large, multigenerational family, focusing on integrating family members into collective business ventures. 

Various success stories from the program highlight the efficacy of this approach, and Jeremy offers practical advice for families looking to start their own journey towards financial independence within a multigenerational framework. The episode also emphasizes the importance of transferring family assets and wisdom across generations to ensure continued prosperity.

00:00 Welcome to the L3 Leadership Podcast
00:25 Introducing Jeremy Pryor and Family Teams
00:49 Sponsor Message: Andocia Marketing Solutions
01:56 Diving into the Conversation with Jeremy Pryor
02:46 Jack and the Beanstalk: The Greatest Business Book
06:49 The Concept of Family Inc.
07:29 The Importance of Family Integration
15:27 Historical Context and Asset Building
25:44 Scaling a Pool Service Business
26:20 Opportunities in the Pickleball Industry
28:18 The Importance of Multi-Generational Families
31:22 Biblical Foundations of Family Mission
33:03 Raising the Next Generation of Leaders
45:10 Practical Tips for Large Families
48:58 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Jeremy's books 'Family Revision', '31 Creative Ways to Build Your Family Team', and 'Father's Compass' are available for purchase:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jeremy-Pryor/author/B07ZFVX5QB?

The L3 Leadership Podcast is sponsored by Andocia Marketing Solutions. Andocia exists to bring leaders' visions to life. Visit https://andocia.com to learn more.

To find more leadership resources and helpful content for your leadership journey, check out our website at https://l3leadership.org/ today.

Transcript

Doug Smith: Hey, leader, and welcome to another episode of the L3 leadership podcast where we're obsessed with helping you grow to your maximum potential and to maximize the impact of your leadership. My name is Doug Smith and I am your host and we recorded this episode from our Virgo Realty Studios. If you're new to the podcast, welcome.

I'm so glad that you're here and I hope that you enjoy our content and become a subscriber. If you've been listening for a while, it would mean the world to me if you'd leave us a rating and review. That helps us to grow our audience. So thank you in advance for that. And in this week's episode, you're going to hear a returning guest.

One of my favorites, Jeremy Pryor. He's the founder of family teams, which is an organization that literally revolutionized the way that my wife and I lead our family team. And this is Jeremy's second time on the podcast and it did not disappoint. We talk about all things family, uh, and the title probably got you, but we talk about why Jack and the Beanstalk is the greatest business book of all time.

So hopefully that hooked you and you're going to love this conversation. But before we dive into it, here's a word from our sponsor and Dosha marketing solutions.

Andocia: At Andocia, we help transform visions into results. What does that mean? We often work with companies who are doing amazing things that have incredible products and services, but fail to communicate what they do properly and market themselves effectively.

We passionately serve entrepreneurs, business leaders, and visionaries What's in their heart and their visions for the future come to life. We do that by providing fractional marketing leadership and creative execution all in one. That's what we call VCMO. With VCMO, you get a marketing director and a team of creative professionals to help execute all of your marketing needs all for one monthly cost.

How do we do all this? We do it three ways. Number one, we get your vision. We get excited about your mission and your trajectory as a company and come alongside to see you go further, faster too. We have a team of talented strategists and creatives to get all of the work done in three. We flat out work freaking hard for you and your company.

Reach out today. Let's start a conversation.

Doug Smith: And with that being said, let's dive right in. Here's my conversation with Jeremy Pryor,

Jeremy Pryor. Welcome back to the L3 leadership podcast. It has been a while. Um, but I have been, as I've mentioned, uh, uh, consuming. Pretty much all of your content and I'm so grateful for your voice in my life. So just want to first start with a heart of gratitude and just say thank you for all the content you put out and for just following what God's put in your heart.

It's making a massive difference in my life and I know impacting so many. So thank you. 

Jeremy Pryor: Awesome, man. Thank you. Praise God. Yeah. Glad to be back and excited to chat, Doug, and all the things that God's doing with your life and what's going on there in Pittsburgh. And yeah, I'd love to hear, hear the latest.

Doug Smith: Yeah, well, a lot. I want to cover. I know. I just went over that with you. Uh, and first I want to talk a little bit about one of your newest endeavors, which is called family Inc. And, uh, I was really inspired. You just did a podcast not too long ago called the best business book ever. I don't know if that was the actual title.

Uh, but you said the best business book of all time is the, is Jack and the beanstalk. And I guess I'll just start with that and say, what does Jack and the beanstalk have to do with this new endeavor family that you have started? Okay. 

Jeremy Pryor: Yeah, it's a fascinating fairy tale. And I think that a lot of people oftentimes struggle interpreting symbols.

Um, and so I, I kind of try to go into detail. Uh, the podcast is with my kids where I'm walking them through the fairy tale, but what's really crazy. There's, there's several elements of the fairy tale that are just shocking, um, to me in terms of the level of insight. It really describes the entire journey out of poverty.

So you start with, you know, this kid who's got his fatherless, um, and they're about to starve, you know, he goes to the market to sell their, their cow that no one can produce milk, um, meet a wizard essentially who hands him these magic beans. So we go into detail on, on, on the whole. Necessity of getting a guide, the magic beans go through the window, the mom gets upset and it creates this portal into this other place, right?

Sort of the asset building world. And, but up there is two forces. There's like this kindly mother, but there's a giant that wants to literally eat him. So in order to get the assets, he's got to go through this giant and he ends up taking these three things. And what's really interesting is, um, you know, probably the, one of the most.

I guess surprising insights that when people join family, Inc, we talk about is that that family, that businesses come in threes, that we were spending years in here in Cincinnati, coaching families about how to kind of get out of poverty and begin to build asset based income. We began to see that we, and so many of their families started three different businesses, not one.

And so, um, and those three businesses, We're a service based business where they could pull all the money out every single month without hurting the business that's allowed them to basically no longer be employed, but allow them to get control of their time. And so, in the Jacqueline Beanstalk story, we kind of say that's analogous to the 1st thing jackets from the giant, which is the, you know, the chest of gold.

And then the 2nd thing that we always coach families to do after they've really developed some business skills is to create some kind of scale business, something that's not completely tied to their time, but that generates income at a higher level. And we talk about that in the, in the story, Jack, the second thing Jack gets is the goose that lays the golden eggs, which is a perfect analogy, actually, for a scale business.

And then the craziest thing, I love this. The third thing he gets is this golden harp and the whole point. And what we talk about, the third entity is a legacy business, but we talk about the reason for the legacy businesses is really to create a certain kind of family culture. And so the harp is really a symbol of that kind of culture that you're bringing into the family And so when you you begin to to get to a level of affluence Um that primarily is is indicative of just having access to your time and being able to live life more collectively more Integrated with your kids with your spouse Um, there's a there's a whole world of culture that you can then Dive into.

So all of that and probably 10 other lessons are all packed into this tiny story. Um, and I just love concentrated truth. You know, this is why Jesus taught in parables. Um, I, I think that we just underestimate, we, we think we read these, you know, 2, 3, 400 page books. We remember like 2% of it. Um, and I think that so often concentrated truth and symbolic form is, is, uh, it's so much easier to remember it.

You can, it makes sense to a five year old. Um, and so, yeah, I, I'm a huge fan of trying to figure that stuff out. So we're going to go through probably at least 10 fairy tales on a different podcast. We've already done two others that haven't been released yet, but I, I love that whole process of trying to, yeah, dive into symbolic truth.

Doug Smith: Yeah. Well, I love that. And again, just the idea of listening to audio books. So I was mentioning before we started, uh, instantly went and bought the book on audible, played it for my kids. And literally, I think yesterday my three year old son was running around the house saying fee five, Oh, and so, uh, but to be able to talk to them about that is beautiful.

Um, but with family, you talked about starting, you help families start three different businesses, uh, and basically to provide freedom. A concept that my wife and I've been pursuing, I guess, for a while now is Dan Sullivan. I don't know if you've heard of strategic coach, uh, follow a lot of his content, but he talks a lot about entrepreneurs, uh, pursuing for freedoms, freedom of time, freedom of money, freedom of purpose and freedom of relationship.

And that's what we all want. The compelling argument I hear, and I would love to hear you expand as most families have a corporate job and when their family needs the most, their job demands the most out of them. Can you talk about them and kind of the compelling reason for a family wanting to do something like you do with family?

Jeremy Pryor: Yeah. Yeah. That fourth category you did, you mentioned the freedom of relationship. Um, that's something that I really want to, I wanted to be in a kind of. situation where that was increasing. And I think one of the things that's very surprising for a lot of folks on a career journey is that while their freedom of money might be going up their financial freedom, because they're at their peak earning potential, maybe when they turn 50 or something, um, oftentimes they're, they're in their least amount of, uh, relational freedom.

In other words, that they're bearing so much responsibility in order to, Enjoy that, uh, peak earning potential that they are, their time is just getting more and more locked up. And so they're being forced into a relational dynamic at work. That's so intense that they don't really have time to spend time with their kids or their spouse.

And I think that one of the things that's really difficult. about the one generation, uh, version of family that is popular in the West is that, you know, we kind of expect that around 18, we're, you know, we're kind of done parenting and the kids are off and, you know, we're, we're hoping the best for them and they come home for holidays and maybe we support them in various ways financially to get through education and, you know, all those things, but that like our family, we don't live that way at all.

Like we see that, um, that basically from 18 to 22, there is a. a period of differentiation that I think kids go through and all of our kids have gone through that are in that stage or been through that stage where they're not spending a lot of time with us. But then when they get married and start having kids, we started working together even more intensely than than we did.

when they were Children, or at least as intensely like so. But my son, he's here almost every day. My daughter is here. You know, she's 24. Um, we're doing all kinds of things together. We're helping them, you know, with their child care needs and and being integrated with their family. We're helping them launch businesses.

Um, they're integrated into our businesses. Oftentimes are they're helping us do it. Our family assets. And so there's so much integration that is so possible when your kids get married, start having kids. That I wanted to live a kind of lifestyle where that was possible, where we could be with them. If I were, you know, getting up at 7, 8, 8 a.

m. and driving off to a corporate job until 5, 6, 7, and then being kind of consumed with that during the evening even and the weekends, I mean, I couldn't do what I, the level of sort of integration that we're experiencing with our kids. So, and I, I came across this because I actually saw a man when I was in my late 20s, um, one of our investors in one of our first companies who, Who was spending, I realized he was spending more time with his sons in their 30s than most men spend with their sons when they're like 7, 8, 9 years old.

Um, and I was just shocked by that. Cause I'm like, I never even realized that was a possibility. Um, and so I think that a lot of times when people hear this, they're like, Oh, are you kind of controlling your kids? It's like, no, no, no, we're not. We all have the same philosophy, which is that we want to have lots of kids.

We want to have lots of assets. And so we're all, let's just all help each other do that. You know, let's be available. Let's live a lifestyle that makes. us available to, to help each other do that. And, and the by product of that is that you get to spend the most, um, the best parts of your day with the people that are most, most important in your life, like you have that option, right?

Um, and, and so who wouldn't want that? Um, but we're, for some reason, not considering that when it comes to the way we think about career pathing or, um, how we make our incomes. 

Doug Smith: And this is huge and I love you always post or it seems like consistently post. Uh, I think you say unpopular opinion, you know, your kids need you more from 18 to 25 or, you know, older than they do, you know, zero seven.

And I would agree with that as someone who's been a beneficiary. Uh, I would say my, my wife's first. Family kind of adopted me and I'd say her dad really raised me from 17 to 30 and that includes several years into my wife and I's marriage And I would just say if he wasn't involved in able to give me the time I needed for him to help me grow in That season I I probably would have never married his wife and we certainly wouldn't be where we are And I'm so grateful so Same thing when you when you say like when I see people just kind of check out of parenting when their kids turn 18 I'm like your work's just beginning like you're crazy 

but 

Doug Smith: I To go back to what you're saying, though, this is the way our culture tells us we need to live.

And what you're saying, most people hear a compelling vision that you just cast in saying, like my wife and I, it's part of the reason I want to have this conversation. It's like, yes, that's what we want, but I don't even know that's possible. So how is that possible? 

Jeremy Pryor: Well, you do have to decide and look at, and this is, this is, it starts with what I kind of first described, which is making the observation that when you look, look at people in their late forties, early fifties, late fifties, And look at their lifestyle.

Look around. If you go to church, like, look at, look at people at church that are, you know, that are ahead of you. Let's say you're in your twenties or thirties and start this observation. I just wanted, I think a lot of people, we don't, we don't actually look at the trajectory of the paths we're on. You know, nobody, when we showed up at the career counselor's office, uh, said, Hey, can you just please like direct me into the career where I get to spend more and more time with my kids when they become adults?

Like that doesn't happen, right? I wish it would, but. But we didn't generally do that. So I think, I think you have to be open to making that those observations, um, and finding mentors who are living the kind of lifestyle that you want to be living in 15 to 20 years. Like that should be just basic. Um, so I think you have to make those observations.

Now, when I've made those observations, um, I look around for, for pathways that make that possible. It's just, the repeated answer is that you have to begin to trans sort of have a long term strategy to transfer. The income that your family is making more into the asset category, things that are owned by your family.

Because the reason for that is really basic. That obviously when you own something, integrating family members into it becomes, um, just a, a family value decision. You decide, do we want to do that or not? Is this good for the business? Or, you know, do we want to open these doors? How do we want to compensate?

Um, and how does all that, all that going to work? If, if you are having to report to somebody and, and that you see that continuing into, uh, the season of your life when your kids are becoming adults. then that means that you're going to have to ask their permission to integrate those important hours or times in your life with your children.

And of course, you know, that, that's unlikely. So I think, I think that that's why I'm such a fan of, if you want to live a kind of hyper integrated family lifestyle, you need to think about. Income production differently. Um, and this, this, by the way, was, I think one of the things that, that was really encouraging for me to understand is that this is the way everyone used to think, right?

Um, and, and a lot of times, and I think one of the biggest things we have to get over somehow is I don't think about, Entrepreneurship or asset building as a career path. I think that's one of the biggest mistakes, category of mistakes people make. And so anytime I say anything about, you know, owning a business or whatever, people are like, that's not for everyone.

That's not for everyone. Um, you know, like some people, some people are meant to do this. So I'm just like, You're misunderstanding that you're bringing a career category to something that's not a career category, like in my opinion. So this is my i'm not at least when I write I don't write about it in that in that regards I think lots of people are called to do lots of various career things in order to produce money or to pursue callings Um, but I think everyone every family and this is a basic family thing Should be pursuing the building up of assets.

That's that's not a career decision Yeah Um, and those assets could be income generating in various ways. It could be through things that are more passive, you know, like real estate or, um, or paper assets or whatever. Or it could be more active, you know, actually owning, you know, a part of a business. But, but I think this, this mindset is killing families when they think about, Oh, well, there's different career paths and that's just not for me.

And they just write off everything that has to do with asset building as some kind of career decision that they made when they were 21, it didn't know anything. Um, I, I don't think that's a, that's a healthy or reasonable way to think about it. So I think another, and what I mean by the fact that everyone used to think this way is that, you know, when you, when you look back in history, so at the turn of the 20th century from the 19th century, about 70 percent of people in the U.

S. lived on farms, right? And most of those people, they were coming from the old world. And the old world, one of the weird things about what happened in Europe in particular, was that it was complete, all the land was basically owned. By a small number of families, right? And this is what generally happens over hundreds of years is that what's called an aristocracy starts to develop in that culture where these wealthy families take over everything.

And so, because everybody wanted to own assets and everybody knew that being a wage slave for these wealthy families was not going to work. It was not in the best interest of their family, their children, their grandchildren. They're like, well, what do we do? Like, we're totally trapped in this sort of class based system.

And so what they decided to do was to go to America oftentimes, because the Homestead Act just said, hey, just go out. And we got, we got too much land and not enough people, like go and grab some land and do farming, right? And so people lived on farms during that time. And, um, and my point there is, I know there's lots of complicated elements to that.

There's lots of stories that were happening with slavery and Native Americans. And, um, but the point was that everyone who was trying to build a family, Um, at that, at that season, they all kind of had the same general philosophy of like what thriving look like, which was it included owning land. And at that time, that's how they thought about assets.

And this is, by the way, the same way that God really talks to Israel when, when the promised land, when, when he, they begin to take over more and more of the promised land. It was this, this vision that every single family would own their own land, right? Even the Levites own land. A lot of people haven't looked into this with enough detail.

There wasn't a single exception. Levites. There was no clergy that didn't own assets. Everyone owned assets. You can see that there's several chapters in the book of Joshua that actually goes through the Levitical lands and pasture lands given to the priestly class within Israel. Um, why, why, why did God do that?

Why, why did we do that a hundred years ago? Because this is just a basic family thing. This isn't, this isn't something that is a career path. Career pathing is a very new idea. Yeah. That was created by the hyper specialization forced upon us through the industrial revolution, and it's very anti family.

And so we have to be careful. You can exploit industrialization. You can exploit, um, hyper specialization for the sake of your family. But what most people have done is they've allowed it to redefine their own identity, which is devastating to families who cares about what, like, like creating some kind of work based identity.

Yeah. I think it's really important that you get good at things. You create a ton of value in the world. But how you do that is very open. And most people change careers. Even, even in a career society, the average person changes careers four times over their lifetime. And so we get these opportunities, these transition moments in our lives.

Where we can figure out, okay, what's really in the best interest of my family. I've learned some more wisdom. And so I'm going to make some transitions. And so a lot of what we do, like a family Inc is we coach about a hundred families a year that are in one of those transition moments where they're like, able to ask some deep questions.

They're like, I think I'm going to leave the pathway I've been on. And it's worked out for a certain amount of time, but I think it's time for a transition. And so they're beginning to think about, okay, maybe the next, uh, season of our family. We should really investigate, you know, this asset thing. And again, I don't see it as them becoming entrepreneurs, um, in the traditional sense, like shark tank or tech startups, um, the vast majority of business owners in our country are not what you would call, um, these creative problem solvers that entrepreneurs, they don't have that superpower, they're just hard workers.

Right. And they need a basic strategy for how to create a simple service based regional business, um, that will allow them to. To have this, this very integrated life, it also will allow them a great deal of all the other kind of kinds of freedom that you listed, right? That relational freedom, that time, freedom, that purpose, freedom, and I just love that framework.

That's so that is exactly what we need people to be thinking about. And if that is so in the interest of of multi generational family life, which is really what. Yeah.

Doug Smith: So if someone's listening to this, I mean, walk us through, you know, you said you coached about a hundred families. I know my wife and I are interested. That's part of the reason I reached out to you. Like, what, what does that process look like? How do we get connected? 

Jeremy Pryor: Join the wait list. And so about three times a year, we open it up to about 20 to 30 families at a time.

What I like to really make sure we can serve families. Um, and so, uh, and that usually sells out, you know, pretty quickly. So you can jump on there. And if you, you know, join the wait list, you'll be able to, uh, I think we're going to probably open it up sometime early in, uh, in the school year, September ish, um, for another cohort of folks to jump into and what you're, what you're, what you're jumping into is, is a year worth of coaching.

So we do eight coaching calls every month. Um, so I'm, I'm on almost all of those. Um, then I have a team of other coaches that helped me all with successful businesses, get a whole library of business ideas that are working for other families. A lot of people come in like, well, do I have to come up with an idea?

No, I actually like it when people don't have an idea because their ideas are some kind of invention or, you know, some kind of scale businesses too. That's premature. They don't know anything about it. You need to do something a lot safer, um, for your family, especially if you have, Kids that you're trying to provide for.

So, um, so we love coaching families for that, that year. And you can re up and do it for multiple years if you'd like. Um, so, but that's, that's the process. And then we have about about 30 or 40 videos as well that just take you through what we call the family freedom path. There's about seven steps that, you know, starts from just completely shifting the mindset of a family and thinking about assets.

The way I'm describing, you have to go through those shifts initially in order for this to succeed. And then you, we begin to show you how to find the right kind of, uh, opportunity for your area. What does it look like to do this in a rural area versus a suburban area versus an urban area? Very different opportunities, different ways to evaluate, um, what kinds of businesses are likely to succeed very quickly, what kind of services.

Um, what, you know, and, and a lot of people oftentimes also just have this other assumption with that, you need all kinds of technical skills to launch a service based business. There are so many kinds of businesses where the technical skills are either not necessary. You can hire those out or very easy to develop over just a few months or maybe in a few weeks.

And so, um, anyway, there's so much opportunity. Um, and, uh, and we love getting to show families how to do this, but it's, it's not risk free, right? I mean, anytime you try to build an asset. Like one of the things I love about Beanstalk is that giant, what your, you know, your son fee five. He's coming for you.

Like, like these, these opportunities are protected by giants who oftentimes are very sleepy, but very hungry. They're happy to munch on you. Um, if you try to, you know, get it, get up there and take some of, Some of those assets get that golden goose, that goose that lays the golden eggs or whatever you're trying to do.

So, um, so that part of what we want to do is make sure we're being as helpful as possible for how to get control of, of this opportunity, but also like work out, you know, in a very, in a competitive world, capitalism is competitive, um, it's in, there's a lot of creative destruction happening right now with AI.

And, and so you need the kinds of like. Insights and in coaching that will help you navigate through all the challenges that are that are a part of trying to do something that is a little risky at first. I mean, there is, I think, ultimately, it's less risky in a novel who's a famous kind of entrepreneurial champion.

He's always saying, look, you only have to be right once when you take this path. So I've told you a lot of times if I if I knew I had to fail nine times. And the 10th time I would succeed, I probably would do still take this path. Like it's worth that the, what you get at the other side of, of this kind of trajectory is so worth it.

Um, and I don't think people need to fail over and over again, necessarily. That's why we want to give you good coaching. Um, but I think that it's important to say, like, you have to take the risk. You have to take financial risk. You have to take time risk. You have to do this really uncomfortable thing that's called work for free.

A lot of people with an employee mindset, they can't handle that. They're like, wait, I just put 10 hours into this asset and I just made zero money. I even paid a thousand dollars to like get an LLC started and build a website. And yeah, welcome to asset building. Um, So, you know, there's a lot of things that people are uncomfortable with initially that we need to work through.

Doug Smith: Yeah. Well, definitely join the wait list. Uh, and I'm just curious. I don't know when you guys exactly launched that, but out of the a hundred families, you guys have been coaching, do any stories stick out to you? It's like, wow, this family came to us, didn't think they could do it. And we're starting to get a lot of success 

Jeremy Pryor: stories is.

is actually make videos of the different success stories that that people have that we can put up there because a lot of times those businesses and those successes are are replicatable. And some of those guys even are are making themselves available to be private coaches for Family Inc. Members, um, I mean this, this is my ultimate dream, right?

Is to create a whole ecosystem of setting families, you know, free that, that are, that are believing and following Jesus. Like we need to work together as a community to help families do this. So, yeah. Um, there's a bunch of stories we just just highlighted. One family. That, that joined family Inc about 18 months ago.

And, um, they started, you know, I love the progression he describes in the video. It's on the family Inc library, but they started a, they live in Georgia and they started a pool, um, um, you know, pool, basically maintenance business and what he described, and it's very consistent with sort of the Jack and the beanstalk.

He didn't, you know, he was, he was just working some kind of sales job, I think, for roofing company. Then he just completely from scratch started this pool maintenance business. And so step one was he began to do the kind of the labor. He just was watching YouTube videos, um, and then found a really good supplier of, of chemicals so that he got wholesale accounts set up all of that.

It's very simple in some ways, but he did the hard work of, of, uh, Of getting those initial customers. Right. Um, and so he was out there doing the, doing the heavy lifting and just like, you know, figuring out how to clean pools. Um, and then once he got more pools to clean, then he had time for, he got to hire his first employee.

And then what he started to do is he transitioned and started leveling up his skill. Now, now I've got these 40, 50, 60 customers or however many he had. Um, and he's like, now I start to say, okay, I will start doing repairs. Right. And so I'll just send out my one employee and then I'll do the repairs. Well, that's a much higher margin and much higher skill things.

So he's just watching YouTube videos, getting out there, doing repairs, figuring out all the different pool systems, you know, and, and so it's a general, he's able to level up now. Now it's like, okay, I've got, I've got a couple of employees down doing that. Now I can. Now I'm going to start to train somebody on the repairs and I'm going to start doing installations, you know, I'll start to build pool, like you can see the trajectory.

And so there's a lot of businesses like that, where you can start with a very basic service, you know, and then you can see where it could head into something that could be a multi million dollar pool installation business in five years. Um, and there are some families, several families and family actually have done that in a, in the pickleball industry.

So sometimes you jump on crazy, like trends that just explode. And there's just, there, there are these services that just are not, they're so underserved, right. And in a particular region. And so people were just like desperately wanting, you know, to, to, you have municipalities that want to trans transform their tennis courts into pickleball courts, or our backyard pickleball courts are becoming a thing.

And so they just like, bam, jumped in there. And, and, and in some cases, whether vendors who provide a lot of the materials will give you all the training you need, they're just desperate to find, please, somebody in this area, start this business. It happens all the time that people can't believe it. Then you start handing them leads.

I mean, here's a, here's a 5, 000 lead. Here's a 10, 000 lead. Here's a 20, 000 lead. Please like use our product and install these things. Um, and so there's so much of that going on in the service based world. And in that world, you know, it's the learning curve for figuring out how to resurface a court or paint a court or whatever is very low from a technical perspective.

You don't go to school for that. It's something you have to learn, but it's, it doesn't take long. Um, so yeah, there's so many success stories and what I always want to be. What I love the most though is these success stories where you can see sort of the progression, um, getting better and better and better over time as they're kind of leveling up into more and more value, their assets able to increase so that they can take that freedom business, you know, their cleaning pools into the scale business.

We're becoming the number one, you know, swimming pool installer in our city. I mean, imagine that vision in 10 years, um, companies that are like that are worth a lot of money. And it can provide a tremendous freedom for a family. So, um, yeah, those are, those are a few examples, but there's, there's, you know, many, many more.

Doug Smith: Yeah. Well, I had mentioned, uh, I think when I first interviewed you, I was telling you about this earlier. I just got exposed to family teams. My wife and I love everything that you guys produce. And we're like, yes, this is the way we want to run. I told you if we ever have a fourth kid, we'd thank you on their behalf because, uh, you gave us a vision for having a large family.

And here we are. And this may be a surprise by the time some people are listening to this, but my wife and I are now expecting our fifth child, uh, which is crazy to us. Um, yeah, but we're super excited. So, uh, I would love to hear you talk about, well, I guess. What I would want to go into even before tactical things on how to handle big families.

You also wrote an article recently and did a podcast on it that I love called five generations, the role in rain. I think that's the way it was titled just for context, for people who don't have maybe not been exposed to family teams yet, can you kind of give us this vision of leading beyond just one generation when it comes to leading our family teams, 

Jeremy Pryor: families were multi generational teams.

They were designed to work together across generations. And so people didn't. like leave their families. Um, they, they tended to stay within family units and we take people to the Middle East. This is where I first started learning this. I saw Jewish and Arab families in the Middle East. They all live this way pretty much.

I mean, it's very common. Um, and in Arab families, for example, you, you drive through an Arab neighborhood in Israel and the every, every floor of the house is a different generation. So, and so they just all live together. It's just expected. You know, I have a friend who's, um, Palestinian who lives here in our city.

He always laughs because we have four generations living in our house. I'm like, I know. I'm he's like, this is, he's like, I feel so at home, it's your house. Like, um, and, uh, yeah, it's, it's, it's what, it's what we believe in. Um, but it's important to say, okay, that's the way most people lived historically because they had to, they had to, because, um, you know, it was too dangerous to just launch out on your own.

Um, and there was the real risk of starvation or real, you know, Risk of war. There, there was just poverty was something that, that was so common that to just ask every single family to hit the reset button, go, go find yourself. Good luck, uh, launching people out. Um, that, that was just not a thing and it's become a thing really recently.

Um, and, and it's, I don't think it's, it's, it's really what families were ultimately designed to do or be. So we assume, and this is the way I think about our culture is we love the analogy of the nest because the nest. Is really the perfect analogy for the way that we think about family just hits a reset button every generation And so families in our culture tend to have about an 80 year memory, right if you ask most people To name their great grandparents, right?

They wouldn't be able to do it because they're irrelevant to them Like who cares who they were like, they don't have anything to do with my life as an individual. I didn't I never met them Um, or if I did maybe I met one of them. Um, that's incredibly weird Um, from a historical perspective to suggest that the generations have no impact on you.

Um, that's really the result of sort of this liberal experiment we've been running for the last, you know, 100 plus years and this liberal experiment has been devastating to families. So our family where it's like we're opting out 100 percent We don't want anything to do with that. We don't believe that that's the way God designed family and why what is the theology of?

Family we have in the bible Well, it's right in the first chapter of the bible Which is in genesis 1 where when god created the first family, he actually told us why he created the family, which is incredibly Important for us to study. And he says to the first family, be fruitful, multiply, fail, subdue, and rule.

He gave them this five part mission. And even in that mission, you can see that it's not a nest. It's, it's a multi generational team on mission, right? It has to be multi generational because he tells them to subdue the earth. And I don't think Adam and Eve could do that all alone. Like it, like it would take a lot of generations to accomplish the mission that God gave the family.

And so we know that the essence of a family is multi generational. He also said he gave them the mission. He used the word them. It's not to one person. It's not to an individual. He designed the family to be a team. He told them, I want you to all collectively. Be fruitful, multiply, feel some due in rule.

Of course, you can't multiply by yourself anyway. But, um, but yeah, that's, that's the, that's the way God designed the family. Of course he gave the family a mission, um, which is this five part mission. So, so what we described in that article was we tried to tease out, and this is just part of by way of vision casting for our future Children, grandchildren, great grandchildren.

Um, what, what is our family's mission? How do we do these five things? How do we be fruitful, multiply, fill, subdue and rule? And so we try to try to just imagine together like what, what it would look like if every generation we tried to really level up in one of these areas. Look, we're all trying to do all five, but that's a lot, you know, in one generation, we need a multi generational vision to accomplish these things that God's called us to do.

So what is, what is being fruitful look like? In our family, what does multiplication look like? What is filling look like? So doing and what is ruling look like? Um, you know, it's interesting when you think about ruling, uh, you know, we, we have such a, I think leadership crisis in our culture because, um, because of this one generation mindset, I think it really, it really sort of decapitates leadership because what we really need in a ruling environment, in other words, for people that are actually taking positions of leadership.

You know, mayors and governors and senators and leaders of nonprofits and leaders of leaders in the church and in the kingdom, elders, um, in the, in the, in the kingdom, all of these positions, I think, are really, um, best filled by people that are 2nd, 3rd, 4th generation members of the church. very, um, healthy, thriving, uh, families.

Um, and so if you're, uh, in a, and you can do this as a, in the first generation, but for the, for the most part, if you come from a really broken family, so much of your energy in gen one is spent trying to heal and trying to give your kids, you know, a much different experience. In, in terms of your family life than you experienced so that they can what they can hit the reset button or just take advantage of the money or experience the comforts and be destroyed by your success.

Or, you know, like, there's so many pitfalls that 2nd generation children experience from. from that because of the confusion, because we don't, we're just hitting this reset button instead of saying, Hey guys, I'm going to give you what I didn't have. Not so that you can sit and enjoy a cushy life. Like I want you to rule or I want you to subdue or I want you to fill.

Um, I want you to accomplish the missions given to the family by God. Um, and when you raise the bar for kids, Um, about what it means to be a part of a 2nd, 3rd, 4th generation in a thriving family, then this is really part of what helps children not become destroyed by either success or even destroyed by stability.

I think that we have right now in our culture, a crisis of stability. Kids are growing up with just enough stability that they can ask ridiculous questions about the nature of reality because they don't actually have to deal with hard things. Um, and and so part of that is that when you give kids comfort and stability, don't raise the bar for what's expected of them because of that comfort and stability.

Um, they end up Becoming incredibly entitled and then very strange things come out of that.

Doug Smith: Yeah, I, I, I would love to hear. So I think we talked about this last time too, because you hear some people argument of like, okay, if I'm gen one and I can set my family up for success, you know, I've talked to several people who own businesses. I actually, I think I, I, Kevin O'Leary on chart tank for an example that everyone would use.

I'm pretty sure he said, you 18, my mom, basically I was on my own financially and basically his mindset, obviously independently wealthy. Is Hey, I'll pay for my kids to go to college. But after that, they're on their own. And the mindset is it's good for them to learn how to build on their own, where I've heard you argue, and I think about Dave Ramsey and your example, if you raise the standard, the way you're speaking about for the next generation, why would you do that and not enable them to, in your words, rule and reign.

When you have the opportunity and have to start all over 

Jeremy Pryor: as a generation, this is a, can you kind of take that and speak to it? Live in a, uh, in a. Idea family. That's one generational. It's so difficult for us to figure out what gen two, gen three, gen four could might should look like. Right. So I understand the confusion and, and, you know, we all get one shot at this.

So it's also really difficult to run multiple experiments and see which one works. Um, when we all basically, you know, are trying to raise our kids and then we're like, Oh, whoops. Um, you know, I probably could have done that better. And there's a lot of areas, by the way, where I, I feel that that's true for me.

Like I I'm learning a lot of this stuff and trying to implement it as best I can with my kids, my family, but there's all kinds of things I would have done differently if I didn't own this five years ago or this 10 years ago. And, um, and so, but it's such a, that's why it's such a worthwhile conversation.

So, yeah, I, I think that if a family is designed to be a team and you got, you, you really designing your family. Um, there's a couple of things that I think are really important to understand. One is that. that that the Kevin O'Leary story. Um, the kind of I'm going to, I was not given anything by my parents.

And so I'm going, I had, I had to learn from the school of hard knocks. And so I want my kids to learn from the school of hard knocks. Um, there's, it's a little bit tough on the second generation for a basic reason. And that is that it was true for you. It was 100 percent necessary, but most of your kids, are going to grow up in a loving family or a better family than maybe you came from.

And so they're not really, they don't really have a first gen mindset. They don't really have the hunger or maybe even the fear that you had. You didn't give them that you didn't give them that because you love them. But what that does mean is that where do they get the drive? Where does the drive come from in second, third generation?

I think this is going to be really, um, I think it's hard for people in our culture to hear. I think it comes from a patriarch. Um, I think that it comes from the father. I think the father himself in gen one situations, they get their motivation from reality. Gen two often gets their motivation from the expectations of their father.

Um, Yeah, that, that, and that's what I think that's, that's difficult because it puts a lot of responsibility. I resisted this a lot because I mean, it, I was like, you know, this idea that I can somehow like launch my kids out at 18 and then just be like free responsibility. And I did my job, you know, like that, that there's a lot of, that really is very attractive in a hyper consumer society where I can just get back to, you know, doing my thing.

Like, um, and so to think, oh, I'm gonna have to spend the rest of my life. Raising the bar, coaching my kids, say, Hey, that wasn't good. I mean, I, I had a conversation with my son last night. We were, he was building a website. I sat there over his shoulder for like an hour. It said, no, that's not good enough. No, that's not good.

Like that brand is not going to resonate. Like, um, you know, he's 23. He's he's, he's a smart guy. Um, but he doesn't have my experience. And, and part of what I. Now believe is that he needs that for his drive. He needs, he loves me. He, we, he and I have a really good relationship. He knows I absolutely want everything.

I, we are a hundred percent aligned in terms of like, I want what's best for him, his wife or his, he's got a, you know, a daughter on the way. Like, like he knows I want that for him. Um, and so, so we are totally aligned. And so he needs, he needs me to be present. And to be constantly, um, like looking like is like, how do I, how do I raise the bar generationally?

Um, now there is a season where we did want all of our kids from 18 before they were married, when they were single, there was a season of differentiation where I really didn't want my kids to. They all pretty much. Yeah, they all went in international in some way or Jackson was in California. Um, you know, Sydney, uh, our, our 3rd child.

She's in Korea now. She was in Norway. Um, Kelsey went to Israel. Um, there, there's a period where I think it's really important for your kids to, to really experience a lot of things on their own. I, this isn't, I think, I think there's some, there's a dip. Um, that I think is really necessary during that season, um, where they're trying to really understand exactly who they are, what they believe.

I think that's really healthy. Um, but I, I, but it's really, uh, this sort of coming back full circle where it's like, okay, when they get married, start having kids and want to build assets. Let's like, let's like, we're a team. Like I'm here to help. Let me invest. Like, let me coach. If I have something like mine, entire network is at your disposal.

Is there anybody I could call when Jackson wanted to start a business? I was like, I know the guy who owns the largest decking company in Alaska. Come on. And, and, uh, he was like, I would love to mentor Jackson. I'm like, okay, great. Let's do it. So he's been mentoring Jackson for, for months. And yeah, so it's like everything, this is, this is a second generation reality is that they, like, if they're, if my ceiling is going to be their floor.

Then I had to be very actively involved in that process in my kids, 20s and early thirties. Like that's when a lot of that leveling up happens. That's where a lot of like, like what's happening in many cases is, it's just they're saving time. Like I spent, there was a time where I spent like 10 years trying to figure this thing out, like trying to build a big enough network to even understand what it meant to own a business.

And you know, like I was just wandering. You know, down the dead ends over and over and over again, trying to figure out like, how does this work? How does that work? I didn't have a guide. I didn't, you know, I tried to find it, tried to read all the books and, you know, but it's difficult. It's difficult to do it on your own.

So if I, if Jackson get in two years instead of 10, great. Like that's part of what I, part of what it means to get to be an Isaac generation instead of Abraham generation. And so that's that, that kind of generational wisdom. Has been eradicated from Western culture because we're hitting the reset button every generation.

We don't know how to raise a second generation. And so what happens is you get this dynamic that is sort of famous. There's a old saying, um, and in the West, which is shirt sleeves shirt sleeves in 3 generations, which is basically, um, gen 1 makes the money. Gen 2 spends the money. Gen 3 starts over. Um, and so shirt sleeves was their way of saying kind of you're back into the laboring class.

And, um, and that, that, that, that inevitability comes from a particular philosophy of family that does not understand how to prepare gen two. It, the failure happens in the second generation, um, because you, you hand your kids resources without responsibility. And so they don't understand that they're called to create value in the world.

They think they're, they, they're entitled. And that's an absolute disaster. The more you have, the more is expected of you. But what I'm saying is part of that expectation has to come from the father. I think, I think that that, I think that the father has to be the one to communicate that because he has the one that can give the money.

And, and so, um, and so I think that, uh, you know, inheritance is, is really dangerous for kids at an early age. If your kids are doing incredible, like they've built multiple companies, they're serving in ministries, they have a thriving family, they have an amazing marriage. they're 45 years old and it's time for you to pass on your assets to them, who better to give your assets to, than that child, right.

Who can steward it for the kingdom of God, for all kinds of amazing, you know, amazing things. Um, like you want, that's what you want to create. That's sort of the moment in which I think it's safe to give somebody resources like that. Um, and, uh, but, but that's, that puts a lot of onus on what you're doing from 25 to 45, right.

Um, and, That's what I'm sort of saying. Like, that's my growing edge. I, this is my theory. You know, how my kids are, are 24, 23, 20, you know, like they're in that, in that they're moving into that zone. And that's what I'm preparing myself and my wife, our family to be in that season. Um, but you know, like I said, part of the problem with this is that we all get one shot at this and so I'm trying to learn from the best examples I can find in history or in the Bible for how to do this, but I think it looks a lot different than we think in the West.

Doug Smith: Yeah, no, I'm so glad you share that because I'm very passionate about everything that you just shared. I'm definitely in line with you, but that's the argument that I'll hear as I cast this vision of family teams. Um, but to your point, I think the 1st time we talked, you know, you said most people have only seen 1 model of family, and it's usually not a good 1.

I just don't think we see this modeled well in our society. And I think I mentioned Dave Ramsey. You know, from a public plug with you, I believe he's doing this and doing it. Right. It seems like his, his kids seem to be taking over his organization. He's very clear with them of the standards much higher, even than on his.

Um, so make sure to see how that family tree rolls out. But, uh, thank you for sharing a different way. 

Jeremy Pryor: And, uh, you know, I think I'm God willing, like we'll together try to navigate this, uh, challenge of like, okay, yeah. How do we make sure that in this place of incredible affluence, it actually blesses our families.

Doug Smith: Yeah. Um, we have to wrap up. We don't have much time left. I guess I'll just leave it open ended because this could be a whole podcast in and of itself. Uh, we're now a team of seven, which is awesome. But what advice do you have for me with five kids 

Jeremy Pryor: and leading them? Well, really any tips, hacks. Um, I think that the optimal zone for the siblings feeling like we're a group is like 4 to 7.

That's kind of like the perfect number. You can do it with 8 or 9. You have to be a little more skilled, but 5 is a perfect a great number for for that. Um, and in other words, what happens oftentimes in families and sibling groups is that. Um, with one or two kids, it's, it's a little bit more difficult to cause them to feel like this is a, this is like a, we're, we're a unit, right?

Um, but man, with five kids, you can, you, it's, it's very simple at one level to cultivate that, but you have to be really careful, um, of, of, Raising your kids like you were raising one or two kids. And so in the Western world, we're obsessed with, okay, is each individual kid getting exactly what each individual needs that could create a sense of competition, sibling rivalry, and break down the one massive advantage you have with a larger family.

And that is to create this sense of team. And so you have to figure out how to cultivate that kind of. Um, you know, that kind of culture in your family, um, for us, it always starts with the firstborn. So there, there's a lot, there's, there's one of the things that again, this is anathema to Western culture.

We want to think about everyone as an individual. And so the idea that birth order actually gives predetermined positions in the family is like, Oh my gosh, this is like violating somebody's freedom, right? Um, I could care less about that. I don't believe in that, but, um, God's the one who decided you're our firstborn.

And so we're going to, there are all kinds of advantages to being the firstborn and all kinds of responsibilities to being the firstborn. Second born, third born, each, each part in the birth order. But one of the things you want to be really thoughtful of in a family of five is the firstborn has enormous influence over the culture of the sibling group.

So that you want to give them, you, you know, sometimes if it's too much responsibility without some kind of bonuses, you know, like for example, if I walk into a room with my kids, I've got five kids and there's a fight going on, I don't hold them equally responsible. Yeah. I always go to the firstborn say, Hey, come here, tell me what's going on.

Let me coach you how to like handle the situation. If I walk into a room and it's like the third born and the fourth born are fighting, I don't talk to, I talk to the third born. And then if I find out that the fourth born is disrespecting his older brother or sister, then they'll get, they'll get busted for that.

Um, but the third born, the older one, I always say, Hey, I expect you to lead. I hold you personally responsible for the culture that's going on in this. If there's something like, and so again, this is something we're like, You know, there's like, everyone thinks they're equal. No, no, no, nobody's equal in the family.

Um, different there. Every position is different. And when you equalize, you neutralize all of the strength that that position entails. Um, and so you want to make it amazing. It's so awesome to be a firstborn. So awesome to be a second born. So there are, there are things like being in the middle of a, of a sibling group is a beautiful thing.

Like Sydney, our middle list, we call it the middle list, right? She's got two older. Yeah. It's like, you're the middle list. Like, like you're, you were, I'll steal that. Like, and she is her connections, the way that she interacts with her siblings, you know, being the youngest has, has all kinds of advantages and, and.

And opportunities, but they're totally different. Kyra, our youngest, she's being raised or experienced something totally different than Kelsey, our oldest, right? Um, there is no equality in a family in that sense. Um, the experiences are just too radically different. And so, but, but part of what you're trying to do, just like in any team is to think about these roles.

And so you walk into a basketball team has five people and you're like, okay, you're the forward. You know, you're the center, you're the guard, there's just totally different roles. And so I'm going to hold you responsible or help you coach you to how to figure out how to, how to handle each of those roles.

Doug Smith: Hey leader, thank you so much for listening to my conversation with Jeremy Pryor. I hope that you enjoyed it as much as I did. You can find ways to connect with him and links to everything that we discussed in the show notes at l3leadership. org forward slash 417. As always, I want to thank our sponsor and dosha marketing solutions.

They are the producer of this podcast. And if you were looking for help with your organization's marketing, I cannot recommend them enough. They're friends and they do incredible work. You can check them out at and dosha. com. That's ANDOCIA.com. And as always, I like to end every episode with a quote.

And today I'll quote George Moore, who said this. A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it. Love that. Well, hey leader, that's going to wrap up today's podcast. As always, remember, don't quit. Keep leading. The world desperately needs your leadership. We'll talk to you next episode.