EP7 – Winning The Parenting Lottery

Hey everybody, welcome to episode seven of the, I don't know, Jack about parenting podcast. Today I'm going to talk about how I just won the lottery.

I just won the parenting lottery

So this is really awesome guys. I just won the parenting lottery even though I don't know Jack about parenting.

So let me preface this with... This happens to be the week that I'm recording this that in the United States, the mega millions lottery happened to be $1,600,000,000. Yes. That is b billion dollars. Yes. That is not six zeros, nine Zeros, instant billionaire by buying a $2 lottery ticket. Now I'll let you know that I'm not much of a lottery player if that's, if that's a word, but there was a buzz around school and my seven year old said, dad, can we play the lottery? How much money is $1,600,000,000. Can I buy all the gaming systems I want? And I was like, yeah, you could buy the big gaming system company, you could have your own designers, you can build your own stuff and you can play everybody else's stuff and never have to worry about it. Again. Like that is not an issue.

So being someone who wants to educate my child and let him understand from my perspective, this is, you know, not knocking anybody else's choices out there. If you play lottery, that's your choice. For me, I believe in creating my own lottery and putting funds towards that lottery is not going to serve my ultimate purpose of financial freedom for my family. I'd rather invest that money and make sure that it grows as the boys as opposed to gambling that money. And that's what we talked about and I said, hey, we don't gamble our money in this family, but we can't win if we don't play. And because the odds, right? We started talking numbers because the odds and the upside of this is so great. It's never happened before in history. We'll put a few dollars towards it. He got all excited. I'm going to become a billionaire. I'm going to be rich. I'm going to be famous, and it was actually kind of comical and I let him know that we're going to lose.

I want him to feel the pain of losing

We're not going to win this thing, but I just want him to know because I want him to feel the pain of losing. But I know when things that are not good at or I don't have good odds are that I can't win. There's no control in a lottery of, of winning or having an opportunity to win. I just don't want to play. Why do I want to play a game? I cannot win. Or the that the odds are so stacked against me that I'm not capable of winning. But seeing this thing we call parenting, we could stack the odds in our favor and we actually can win. So I asked my son, you know, if we win the lottery and hear what I'm about to see here, we have the ability to allow our kids to dream and dream big and we don't want to shatter their dreams.

I actually just heard a podcast on, on brainstorming what they send in a brainstorm session. You just come with the most outlandish, crazy ideas and if anybody knocks or says, is not going to work you. You kicked them out of the room because that's not what a brainstorm session is. A brainstorm is about dreaming and dreaming big. And at the end of the session when things have calmed and the ideas afloat, if you throw out those really outrageous ideas, you still end up with a really amazing brainstorm session with a lot of fantastic ideas that you can implement. But it's the energy of all of that that allows you to dream big and to come up with amazing ideas, not limited beliefs.

I just buy every game

So if you were to win the lottery, what would you do? So at first he was like, I just buy every game, the system I can right because he's, he's seven years old, he likes video games and, and I started saying what do you want to like buy an existing video game company or create our own so that we could have some amazing people in a team around us to just build it. And then that money creates a business which makes more money because a lot of people like video games and that's a way for us to reinvest the money. I said, but more importantly than that, let me ask you this question because our needs will be met. Whatever you want or dream or desire or could even think about is taken care of.

Okay.

Let me ask you this. There are some needs in the world and there are some people who need some help. Who would we help if we were to do this? If we were to win the lottery and we had a whole lot of money, who would we help?

He says dad there's homeless people out there. I'm going to share with you why he knows there's homeless people simply because we've gone to the shelters and fed them. We've gone to downtown in fend them. Uh, I actually do a campaign called the sock it to 'em campaign and that's ​Sock It To Them Campaign. If you guys want to become an ambassador and anybody in any city can become an ambassador and you collect socks, and distribute them to the homeless in your communities.

So he says there's homeless people

The number one clothing need of the homeless, but the least donated clothing need to the homeless simply because nobody thinks of it. When we get holey socks, we throw them out. We obviously don't donate them and I don't know about you, but I know I usually wait until my socks have holes before I get rid of them. So we do that and he watches as we distribute to these people who are in need. So he says there's homeless people. So I started asking him questions. I said, so what will we do when we build a shelter where we could educate and house these people and get them back on their feet and he said something, and as adults we were just so we complicate things.

And he doesn't understand the world in the grand scheme, but it's this simple for a child, and this is why I think I hit the parenting lottery because my son said to me, well, dad, they don't have homes. Why would I build them a shelter? I want to build them homes and give them each a home. You said we had a lot of money that a billion dollars was a lot of money. Well, let's build a lot of homes and put these people in homes.

Wow.

So a homeless person needs a home. Sockless person needs a sock, a poor person. They need some money. It's that simple to a child.

Yeah, we have the money. We can do that

A hungry person needs a meal. My son, first of all, super proud of him for understanding and recognizing that there's needs, right? He wasn't completely selfish. He actually started. We started talking about it and he was getting really excited about helping homeless people in building homes because I started asking them, well, what kind of homes, what size families, what city do you want to do it and you want to do it in multiple cities is keep asking questions and, and yeah, we can. We do that. Yeah, we have the money. We can do that. We have the resources, we can do that. We know other people that want to help us with this, we can do that. And he was just like, we do that? I want to win the lottery. Well, why do you want to win the lottery? And his response after that was because I want to help a lot of people. In that moment as we were driving home yesterday and he shared that with me.

I share with myself internally, I've already won the lottery. I've won the parenting lottery. My kid gets life. My kid understands that it's not about him. It's about greater things. My kid cares for others greater than his own needs. I'm going to give one last demonstration on this because I jokingly said to him that the, the $10, we spent $10 and we did not win the actual mega millions, although somebody did. I say, hey, this is coming out of your college fund, and he kinda like looked at me and he's like, okay, I won a lottery ticket and he walked out proud with his lottery tickets.

Dad, can I pay you the $10?

So today he says me, says dad, and he has a business money jar. He, he has his own little business that we run over to summer as a lemonade stand. He's made, he's done well. And he says, Dad, can I pay you the $10 because we didn't win the lottery yesterday. So why would you pay me? Well, because I wanted lottery tickets. I should pay for it. I won the parenting lottery. People. I don't know Jack about parenting. I'm gonna tell you right now, but I feel blessed and fortunate that my son... not only did he lose, but when he wanted to win and he wanted to win to serve a lot of people.

That because he lost. And he lost my money is the way he saw it. He wanted to pay me back. That was some of the best $10 that I've ever spent because I got insight into how my son sees the world right now. Yes, he's seven years old. He loves video games, but when I started asking him and him prodding him about real questions about real life and exciting him and allowing him to dream about how many people... that's where his focus went. That to me is exciting. That to me is winning the lottery because my greatest and most important job on this planet is to be a father and to empower these kids to be the best that they can be and if the best they can be is to serve others at a high level and have that mindset of wanting to serve and showing excitement and dreaming big in that area.

Okay.

If you want to make a lot of money...

In business, at least the way I was taught, it says, if you want to make a lot of money, listen to this. If you want to make a lot of money, you got to serve a lot of people because all your money is in other people's pockets and if you can solve their problems, you are going to make a lot of money. So he understands the concept of helping others solve problems. Well the whether that's people in need and doing it out of the kindness of his heart and donating his time, or if there's people in need for profit. If he has a heart to serve people, he's going to be just fine and that's why I won the parenting lottery.

I hope you win the parenting lottery and I'm going to tell you that it took a lot of energy and effort to get him to think that way and I have shared with you in the past guys, and it's here at the end. My top 40 lessons within the first five years are all in my book. "Be The dad you wish you had". I bet you wish you had a dad who gave you the mindset of service in abundance and dreaming big and having the ability to do anything you put your mind to, and if you want your kid to have that or a foundation of that, go get the book. It's free at ​Be The Dad You Wish You Had.

We'll see you in the next episode.