Stepping Out Of Dad's Shadow with Chad Hagle

Josh (00:00:02) - Hey, good day, fellas. Welcome to Uncensored Advice for Men. On today's show, we're going to have a conversation with my new friend Chad. And if you're looking at the background watching this on YouTube, you see the Empire State Building behind him and he's recording live from from New York. But I've had some great conversations with this guy. And I said, hey, next time we chat, we should hop on a call and record it to share with other men, because you have a lot of wisdom to share from your life experience, from your family experience. So that's the goal here today. So with that, Mr. Chad, welcome to the show.

Chad (00:00:33) - Josh Thank you. Yeah, it's this is not an AI artificially generated backdrop. That is the real Empire State Building behind me.

Josh (00:00:41) - Yeah, super cool. So when any when anytime someone introduces me to a new friend, I always like to get them shout out. So big shout out to Heather for making this connection. She's like, Hey, you're in podcasting and you talk a lot about men's health and and I want to introduce you to my friend Chad.

Josh (00:00:56) - So, Heather, we love you. Big shout out to you. So, Chad, let's go to you. Why don't you tell us a little bit about, you know, high level overview of who you are and what you do?

Chad (00:01:07) - Sure, absolutely. So in terms of my day job, I guess you could say I'm a second generation commercial real estate developer. I focus almost entirely in retail and within retail, I have what would be considered a fairly unique business model. We're a programmatic real estate development firm. And what that means is that I align myself, myself and my company and I've done so for my entire career with prominent regional and national retailers Walmart, Walgreens, AutoZone and others. And we don't just go out and say, Oh, well, we like this piece of land, will go buy it, try to make it into something. We take assignments based upon these relationships. And I work a very small territory that starts in Alaska and ends in Florida. And I've worked everywhere across the country and everywhere in between those states.

Chad (00:01:59) - And it's been a very fulfilling career for me. It's been sort of a continuation of what I don't necessarily consider a business for my family. It's really a way of life. I've grown up around real estate. It's kind of second nature and logic to me. And even if I weren't a developer, real estate would still be a fundamental part of my life because it is part of our family's legacy and and part of our lifestyle, as I said. So I've really parlayed my experience in retail, the success it has afforded me into finding other areas of my life that I'm very passionate about and pursuing other things alongside of my day job. As I said, a lot of my time has been devoted to philanthropy. A lot of that is within the realm of education and a lot of that is associated with my alma mater, Stanford. And I am very dedicated to the university and highly involved, especially over the last 15 years or so in what goes on there. So if I were to give a full description of what it is I do, I really build organizations.

Chad (00:03:11) - And whether it's building an organization around a professional pursuit or building an organization around philanthropic opportunities, that's really what I specialize in. And now, just like you, I've parlayed that into a public facing presence and have a podcast platform called Dadages. And that's my next adventure and something that I've been very much enjoying being a part of as well.

Josh (00:03:41) - Yeah, so I love to do this. Anytime someone mentions a podcast, fellow listeners, as you are listening to Uncensored Advice for men, take out your phone, whatever app you're using to listen to this and go to Dadages by Chad. Click subscribe, listen, give an awesome review. Uh, but Dadages, let's, let's, let's understand like, why did you start Dadages? Just because we're going to talk about family legacy. We're going to talk about some of the cool things and the challenges you face growing up in a highly successful family. But why do outages like, what is what's the meaning behind it?

Chad (00:04:14) - Well, first of all, I appreciate that shout out.

Chad (00:04:15) - I thank you and my producer thanks you. Yeah. And it's important that those of us in the podcast universe stick together and help build the the the platform for for all of us. So data is is a fusion of two words. I call it lingua synthesis dad and adage. Throughout my life I've been a great consumer of advice. I have had the opportunity. I have some phenomenal mentors in my life. My own father obviously laid the groundwork for me in understanding my profession and commercial development, but it doesn't end there. I've had some amazing mentors and I think that mentorship is something. That is really a lost art in today's society. I know that you really focus on this heavily, Josh, and I commend you for creating this platform for men to talk to men. Fellowship is such a strong and powerful force, and the idea of having a mentor, someone who's come before you and some walk of life that is important to you, and being able to pass down that knowledge that they've accumulated. And then for you to take that knowledge and what you've built up over the years and pass that on to others, pay it forward, so to speak, that's really what we're all about at Dadages.

Chad (00:05:35) - And it sounds a little heady to say it this way, but it's the generational transference, transference of knowledge and wisdom. And and that's really what we're all about. Where do you learn from? How have you gotten where you are and how do you then pass that on to others?

Josh (00:05:52) - Man, it's brilliant. I love it. That's a I when when we discuss this as, as men, right? Typically, men don't talk about their failures. Right? If you if you look at a guy, you'll see here's my success reel right on my LinkedIn you'll have like, you know, commercial real estate guy investor and boom, boom and you'll you'll throw all your your wins out there. But a lot of times the the best lessons are learned from our failures and the reflection on our failures. And if that doesn't get shared between my father or my mentor to me or from Chad to Josh, what happens is I'm doomed to make the same mistakes that you did if you're not willing to share. So I'd love the platform you're building.

Josh (00:06:34) - Really good job, Chad.

Chad (00:06:36) - Absolutely. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. And I love your focus on failure. To me, failure is the most important first step in success. And so many people are afraid of failure. I've embraced failure throughout my life, and I try to pass that on to my sons. I try to pass that on to people in my company. It's almost a four letter word in a lot of circles. You don't use the word failure. You try to come up with something more gentle to describe when things don't go exactly the way you want. But I try to tell everyone that I work with use it. Use the word failure. Focus on your failure. Understand your failure, and help use that to power you towards success. So I'll often confront people on my team and confront my boys with, Hey, you failed and just throw it out there. You failed. And then that's the starting point. That's not the end of the story. That's the beginning of the story.

Chad (00:07:37) - And so many people, like I said, especially as you look at Gen Z and the kids coming along, they really struggle with that notion of I can't fail. There's no such thing as failure. You know, I've gotten a participation trophy for everything I've done in my life. But really getting kids, kids and people in this next generation professionally as well to embrace failure is one of the things I'm all about.

Josh (00:08:00) - Man, that's so good. How how we show up when we win is important, right? Humble swag is good, right? You win, you crush it, right? You can, you know, celebrate that. That's good. But when you when you fail, how do you show up after you had a public failure, after you lost an investor money, after you had to close down another business? I just had to close one of my business lines like this past month. And it hurts and it's public. And I just got off the phone with a client who paid us money and I'm working it out to pay them back.

Josh (00:08:31) - And he's like, Josh, don't worry about it. I was like, No, my words, my bond. I'm going to figure a way to bless you. You know, like, God got to work that through. But it's hard. It hurts, right?

Chad (00:08:41) - Absolutely. Absolutely. And as you said, those of us that have that strong moral compass, it really hurts when we take a loss ourselves. But I think it hurts us even more if we feel like we're exposing someone else that trusted us to a loss. And as you said, how you respond in those situations when things go badly is really what sets you up for your next round of successes. I've never lost a penny of an investor's money. I've had to fight really hard sometimes to break even so that I could pay them back their money on deals that haven't gone the way that I hoped. But for me, maintaining that track record to to embrace the relationships and then follow through with performance in a reliable way, that's really what builds a career trajectory and what sets you up to succeed in any environment when others around you are failing and giving up rather than failing and leveraging that failure toward their next success.

Josh (00:09:42) - Yeah, so good. So, Chad, let's let's go. How old are you? Give us a rough estimate of how old you are.

Chad (00:09:49) - I'm closer to 50 than I am to 40. I just turned 47, so.

Josh (00:09:53) - Yeah. Happy birthday. All right, let's go back let's go back to your early childhood. Give us an idea of the the lifestyle. Dial in the life that you grew up in because you have a very unique upbringing?

Chad (00:10:05) - Yeah. You know, a lot of people who know me and who know my family would really be way off target if they tried to understand the way that I grew up. I always had everything I needed growing up, and my father was fantastic at providing for our family. But he was an entrepreneur. Self-made. Made a lot of sacrifices along the way, and we as a family had to acknowledge some of those sacrifices along the way, too. I remember times when I was, and I'm guessing this was around 7 to 9 years old, somewhere in that time window, there were times when we all we'd have for dinner was rice and hot dogs, and we fed the same thing to the family dog.

Chad (00:10:48) - I mean, there were lean times in there when my dad was reinvesting every penny that he had into his business and helping to grow it towards success. And those times were tough, not just for him, but for all of us in the family. And so I learned very early on the lessons of sacrifice, of commitment for professional pursuit and what it really took to grow a business over the long term and not be focused on profit, but be focused on long term growth of net worth, which is really how our family measures financial success. Obviously there are lots of other measures of success in life, but I was taught that that was the metric for financial success. My father has gone on to really tremendously benefit from that focus and that compromise and that sacrifice early in life. The reinvestment to get to the end of a phenomenal growth cycle. And he was a developer in the 80s and 90s. He was a Walmart developer when it was a great time to be a Walmart developer and you could just go out and do projects and do projects and do projects and it was seemingly no limit and no end to the growth.

Chad (00:12:00) - One of the things I've learned to recognize, particularly in the last 5 to 10 years of our economy now that we're adults and our generation, is that that potential for growth doesn't exist for us anymore. My father has always said growth makes up for a lot of mistakes. But the other thing is that growth really propels success. If you're in an economy where there is strong, steady, explosive growth, you can not only be successful, you can be wildly successful and be extraordinarily financially profitable from your successes. I know that no matter how hard I work and no matter how many right choices I make, the slowdown in the growth in our economy in this decade versus what it was happening in the 80s and 90s is such that I could never be as financially successful as my father, and I've learned to acknowledge that and learn to appreciate my own successes in my business and to evaluate them on a different level and using a different metric in a different scale than what I saw from from his business and his success. And I think that that's something that we all have to be really understanding of, is that there's so much outside of our control and there's much more outside of our control than there is in our control that dictates the nature of our success.

Chad (00:13:25) - You still have to define your own success along the way, but you have to understand that you have to cater that definition to what's going on around you that's not in your control.

Josh (00:13:35) - Yeah, one of the things that I've seen after interviewing 1500 dudes and and talking with them about relationships with Father, having a very successful father, your dad has a awesome resume, right? Like, before we go on to my next thing, name some of the things that your dad has accomplished. Right. Kick ass resume. This guy has.

Chad (00:13:58) - Absolutely. My dad's very well educated. He graduated with an undergrad degree and a degree in electrical engineering and a business degree from Purdue University. He's very, very heavily involved philanthropically at his university, his alma mater, Purdue, and definitely laid a great example for me there. He was a member of the band, and the reason why that's important is that's a lot of his focus and a lot of his experience and his positive memories of college are tied to that that experience set.

Chad (00:14:29) - And so he just opened last year, Hegel Hall at Purdue, which houses the band and houses. If you know anything about Purdue, they have the biggest drum in the world and there's this great focal atrium area in the new building where this biggest drum in the world is displayed. And all of that was my father's vision. He really had his hands on what was going on there in the university, and he's now teaching at Purdue as well. So he's giving back from an educational. Standpoint and passing along to the next generation of leaders at his alma mater. My father, outside of work, is a phenomenal world traveler and adventurer. He has been heavily involved in aerospace. He's close friends with Richard Branson, has been part of Virgin Galactic and the development of that organization over the last decade. And he's participated in both SpaceX and Blue Origin. And in fact, he and his wife are now astronauts and were part of a Blue Origin launch and went above the Karman line into space. And someday they will be the answer to a Jeopardy! Question, which is who is the first husband and wife to ever become astronauts together? And that is Mark and Sharon Hagel.

Chad (00:15:46) - So they're like I said, my father has led a very amazing life and continues in his 70s to be extremely active out there in the world and conquering new adventures every every day of his life.

Josh (00:16:02) - So I say this and I love you for sharing this. Right. And you and I've had conversations of this in the past is your dad casts a huge shadow, right? Your dad's resume kick ass. This guy's done it right. Made tons of money, has buildings named after him. It's been to space. Look at his friends. Right. You're the average of the people you hang out with. So, guys, do the math. Yeah. Your dad casts a huge shadow, and I find that a lot of guys struggle with that deeply of success. Dad success versus my success. And then getting the approval of Dad based on what we think we could accomplish. What are your thoughts? How does that impacted you?

Chad (00:16:44) - Yeah, it's it's powerful stuff and it's really something that you can harness as motivation or something you can allow to really undermine you every step of the way.

Chad (00:16:55) - I think I've done a pretty good job of doing the former, but I have to tell you, there have been times in my life when, you know, I've struggled with the sense that being the first born son setting, that the tone for the next generation, I have never there was never a point in time when I was growing up that I could just sit back and say, Oh, I have 100% approval rating from my dad. It just that's not something you'd ever find. You're never going to hit that point on the scale. But what he really did that I have a lot of gratitude for is there was a point in time when he really took a step back and said, Here are the keys. You're kind of on your own. Even when I got into real estate, he was there as an advisor and he was there to provide insight and wisdom and his experience, but he wasn't going to make it easy. And what he did was create an environment where I feel 100% accountable for 100% of my success.

Chad (00:17:58) - It's not that I'm a chip off the block. I'm building my own block. And he created the paradigm to allow me to do that. And as I said, I'm tremendously grateful for it. But there were times when it was a struggle and I look at, Gosh, it would be so easy if I just had access to this capital, if I just had access to this relationship, if I just had access to this that I see my dad has right over here, you know, just outside of my field of view. But it was not there and I had to make it on my own. And like I said, there were struggles. And anyone who tries to tell you that this idea of sort of escaping that shadow that you're talking about in a family where there is wealth in the previous generation, anyone who tries to tell you that you can do that and completely ignore finances is lying to you because there there is a point of independence that has to be achieved that does have a dollar sign attached to it.

Chad (00:18:58) - It's just a fact of life. This civilization in which we live requires that for you to have stability, freedom, flexibility, the opportunity to make your own decisions and do things that others might not have access to. There's a dollar sign attached to that. So I was never going to be on a quest, and I was certainly never going to succeed in trying to match what my father had done. But I can tell you there was a point in time when there was an arrival on my part financially. There was a point in time where I became financially independent, where not trying to compare myself to my father, as I said, but trying to free myself from any sense that I would ever need of him, that I would need something that he would be there to provide. When I arrived at that level of freedom and independence, which, as I said, does have a dollar sign attached to it, my life changed. I can tell you there was a conscious change in my life, my attitude, my vision of myself, my vision of my place within my own family that I'm now the the the focal patriarch of my family, that I'm not the son of my father and his family.

Chad (00:20:12) - Like I said, there's a dollar sign that allows those type of psychological changes to occur. And then from there, it is very psychological. It is how you perceive yourself, the permission you give yourself to be who you want to be, the ability to pursue things that are important to you, that allow you to measure yourself by a different standard, a different measuring stick than than your parents might be measured by. That's when it really is in your control to determine how you leverage that freedom, that flexibility, the independence you've established for yourself. And don't allow yourself to slide back into that mindset of comparison to to your own parents. And I think that's a really, really important piece of acknowledging your own success, embracing your own. Access and allowing it to be a platform to propel yourself to the remainder of your life of satisfaction and happiness.

Josh (00:21:09) - Did you have that dollar amount set in your head, or was it a milestone that you passed? And you look back and you go, Wait a second, I made it.

Chad (00:21:17) - You know, there were a couple of thresholds and one of them I've hit and sustained. The other one is kind of like this It's not always there. The thresholds that I use is I look at what my individual cost of living is to support my household, myself, my wife, my children, my obligations to keep the family going. If I have enough passive income from all of the work I've done, from all of the growth of my own net worth, which, as I said, is the metric I was taught to use in my family when I could develop enough passive income to support my lifestyle. That was when I had that moment of independence. That was when there was flexibility and knowing that I could always put food on the table, I could always keep the lights on. I could always keep my kids in school. That was the moment that I could could transcend to that next level of flexibility. The second tier is when my passive income is enough to support not only my own family lifestyle, but to support my business pursuits and the baseline of what it costs to run my business on a day to day, week to week, month to month basis.

Chad (00:22:27) - And as I said, that comes and goes. There are times and I'm in one of them right now where my burn rate professionally exceeds what my income is. And so I'm divesting. I am actually reducing my net worth and having to sell assets into strong headwinds to keep the ship afloat and to keep things going in the right direction and to keep pursuing opportunities. And those times are hard. It's it's unnerving when you feel like I got there and then I'm not there anymore. But you've just got to learn to rise and fall with the tide and not condemn yourself, not judge yourself. When, as I said, those things that are outside of your control change where you are. There's no moment that you can get to and say, I've arrived and I can and I'm never leaving. You arrive, you come, you go. You know, you're always at different moments in that business cycle and the business cycle in terms of the overall economy and business cycle, in terms of your own business and what you're doing for yourself.

Josh (00:23:32) - So you measure financial metrics based on, you know, you gave me two steps so far. First step is where your passive income is greater than your expenses, right? For your wife, your kids, your your family unit. That's when Robert Kiyosaki would say you could escape the rat race. Then you said the second stage for you of determining success is when your passive income from that now can fuel future growth for your businesses. And you said that's kind of like a roller coaster. UPS and downs, but that's how you measure. Second, is there a third? Is it that I that I might not be thinking about?

Chad (00:24:07) - If there is, I haven't arrived there yet. And it's not even in my field of view and I don't necessarily aspire to it if it exists because I'm constantly reinvesting in my own business. I'm constantly divesting by investing in philanthropy. So I'm never allowing myself really to get outside of that next orbit and get to a different tier because I'm always taking my money and putting it to work for other things.

Chad (00:24:37) - Yeah, maybe there comes another phase in that stability cycle, you might call it that I haven't yet focused on and realized, but you'll have to ask me in another 20 years.

Josh (00:24:47) - I'll do that series, set a reminder 20 years to call. Chad. You said investing in philanthropy. That's a different way to look at it because, you know, a lot of people are like, hey, I make this money, okay? I have a little bit extra here. Goes over here. But you're looking at it as an investment and specifically staying within second stage of wealth to continue divesting your money and investing it into philanthropy. That's a unique mindset I'd love to learn about. Explain.

Chad (00:25:17) - Absolutely. And I have a whole miniseries within Outages for people that are interested in this topic and want to go deeper. It's called I Don't Believe in Charity. I believe in philanthropic investment. And it's an important distinction in my mind. And what I describe as the difference is charity is when you just give of yourself to do good and you think that you're giving your money to a cause or to an individual or to someone in need with really no strings attached, no expectations.

Chad (00:25:46) - If you see someone homeless on the side of the road in need of their next meal and you give them some money, you're probably not asking them for an investment prospectus on how they're going to go. Be accountable for the five bucks that you handed them. You're. You're just giving and knowing that you did the right thing in your heart and leaving it at that. Philanthropic investment is, in my mind, using money more strategically in a nonprofit setting, usually focused around institutions or focused around particular organizations that are pursuing an objective. And I believe it comes with a lot of accountability. And I for me, I'm an activist investor in anything I invest in, whether it's for profit or not for profit. When I invest in a not for profit realm, I'm putting my money to work where I put my time to work the things that I want to work on that I want to be a part of, that I want to help grow and develop and pursue and contribute my expertise. That's where my dollars flow as well.

Chad (00:26:47) - And so I'm constantly supporting these initiatives and these endeavors that I want to focus on, not just saying, Well, I really believe in the mission of the American Red Cross, and so I'm going to give them a large donation and just let them put it in their discretionary fund and do whatever they want with it. It's not that I don't trust these organizations. It's just that I've come to have a thorough and deep understanding of the inefficiencies of these organizations, and I believe you can do much more even working within an established institution in the nonprofit realm by really following your dollars carefully and inserting yourself into the process of managing those dollars. And so that's philanthropic investment, and that's what the difference is from my perspective.

Josh (00:27:33) - So the return on investment or return on gift or return on that, like what does that look like for you? Right? So you do that for a nonprofit, Fill in the blank, right? For me, it's men, right? I'm investing in men's ministry at the jail, investing in men's ministry outside of jail.

Josh (00:27:50) - I'm invested in the chaplaincy programs, military police, fire for people who are frontline. You know, they take the the first hits in whatever happens in this world. So I could just give them money. But how do you approach it differently? So you're giving your money, you give your time. What's the return? You said that there's a return. What's the return?

Chad (00:28:12) - Yeah. And it's really for each individual, I think, to define for themselves there's something that's important to you and those you're focusing on. People, obviously those people that you're talking about are very important to you. Now the question is, what can you attach to those individuals? If that's what you're supporting, that helps you measure the impact of the support that you're giving them. Is it just you're close to them, you understand them, you have the opportunity to interact with them and you can get intrinsic qualitative feedback to say they're healthier, they're happier, their families are provided for their being more successful and for fulfilling their own missions.

Chad (00:28:55) - Or are you giving to something where they're there are other metrics, other things that you can keep track of. A lot of my philanthropy is in the realm of education, and so when I'm looking for a return on investment, I'm looking at a circumstance where I can say, okay, how many undergraduate students that are part of this program are being positively impacted by the program? Were we able to expand the reach and expand the impact of that program and increase the number of people that were able to benefit from it? Or were we able to bring the benefits to a different group who would not otherwise be able to benefit from it without some subsidy and some support to give them that same opportunity that others have? These are the kinds of metrics that in a not for profit educational realm, you can look at and look to see the impact of the investment. As we were talking about.

Josh (00:29:48) - Yeah, for your dad, it was music. For you. It's education. Is there a specific part of the education track that's important to you and why?

Chad (00:30:00) - Yeah, absolutely.

Chad (00:30:00) - I. And again, this is about where I've spent my time and what I've been a part of and what I've learned by being a part of it. And I'm not going to say that. What I prioritize is the most important thing in the universe. It's a priority to me because I've touched it and it's touched me. And that for me is humanities and sciences. I'm a part of the Humanities and Sciences Council at Stanford, and what we do is we are an advisory board that directly advises the Dean of Humanities and Sciences, which is the largest school at the university. It's the true liberal Arts Foundation of Stanford University, which prides itself on being a comprehensive liberal arts institution, which really means and and again, I have a podcast episode on this as well. It's entitled The Only the most important Thing to Learn is Learning itself. And it's all about the fundamental nature of a liberal arts education, that learning how to learn is the most fundamental thing that higher education can teach us. Because if you've learned how to learn, you can take that skill set and apply it to anything in life, whether you're working in a corporate setting, a nonprofit setting, anywhere you go.

Chad (00:31:12) - If you've learned how to work with people, how to communicate with people, how to analyze problems and apply an analytical thought process to problem solving and coming up with solutions, you can have a positive impact on your world and the world around you. And so to me, one of the most fundamental things about higher education is infusing it with this notion of liberal arts. And my son, who's going to Stanford now, he's a freshman getting ready to start there. He's going to pursue an engineering degree. He's going to pursue mechanical engineering. And he's following in his grandfather's footsteps. And I was heavily involved in the aerospace industry as well. He's probably going to be a rocket geek here at some point. And and that's what he's passionate about. But for me, I've made sure that as he continues through his educational journey, he's also picking up these liberal arts fundamental life skills along the way.

Josh (00:32:07) - Yeah. So this is really cool, man, because you're investing in something and your kids are benefiting from it, right? So you're investing in the school and education now they get to be the beneficiaries of your investment.

Josh (00:32:21) - And I think that's so important when guys are choosing well to invest, are not invest in philanthropic events. I think it's one question, but let's just say they choose to give, which I have. Yeah. Then you go where and how. And okay, I'm going to pour myself into that and you're doing that and your kid is benefiting from that. That's cool. That's the real goal of why I'm working so hard. So my kids could benefit, right?

Chad (00:32:46) - Absolutely. Absolutely. And in my case, that benefit is very direct and tangible, but it wasn't really part of the master plan. There was never a moment in his journey when there was a certainty about him going to Stanford. He got into Stanford on the last day of the admissions cycle when he was probably in a category where there's a less than 1% chance of him getting in. And it happened to be on his birthday, March 30th. And he walked in to the living room where I was sitting, pale as a ghost holding his laptop.

Chad (00:33:19) - He turns around and shows it to me. And at the top of the screen it says, Congratulations, You've been admitted to Stanford University. And for him and me, it was just this. Moment of silence because not because we were experiencing any particular set of emotions. It was just complete shock and awe and inability to even come up with any words. But what I can tell you is while there was never a master plan to have that finite level of direct relationship and correlation between, Oh, I'm going to invest in this specific program at Stanford in the hopes that he becomes part of that program and can benefit from that directly. The fact that we ended up there is not a total accident because the way I spend my time and the way I invest of myself is based upon a notion that I have thrown out the window completely work life balance. And I focus just on one thing that is life. Life encompasses work, philanthropy, family, the household. Everything fits together. And I've been really, really blessed in my life that it has come together in that way and that everything I do doesn't pull me away from something else of importance in my life.

Chad (00:34:41) - It just builds on top of what's important in my life so that everything benefits from every investment of time and energy that I make across the board. So to have this come full circle and end up with him at Stanford benefiting from time and effort and energy that I've put in at the university. As I said, it wasn't by design, but it certainly wasn't by accident either.

Josh (00:35:08) - That's cool, man. So, Chad, I think that you and I are going to create more content, create more things for dudes in the future. But one of the questions that keeps plaguing me in my brain that I got to share is the growing up in a family where there's yes, there were some hard times, but also levels of massive success. Very public. Very. They've done some great things even, you know, even still doing it in their 70s. Right. They're doing good to now you're building stuff and you've learned to define your own success and you've created your own shadows and now your son. Right? So we have three generations that we could talk to about success and defining your own success.

Josh (00:35:51) - So what what what advice do you have for entrepreneurs like me who are out there? Right. I run multiple businesses. I'm hustling. I want to create a great future for my wife and my kids and for their kids. But I also don't want to do that at the expense of my kids. So what advice have you learned? Because you've seen three generations now. What advice do you have to help entrepreneurs like me who are massively driven by pain, by fears, but also towards this carrot that I'm chasing? What advice you have for me?

Chad (00:36:22) - Yeah, and this is a work in progress for me, to be candid, because, you know, my my boys are arriving at young adulthood. They're 19 and 17 now, but they have much of their lives ahead of them, their adult formative years. And who's to say how all of this turns out and what the right answer is? Again, this is one you're going to have to ask me in ten, 15, 20 years. But I'll tell you what my experience has been to date as a work in progress.

Chad (00:36:51) - My father has been heavily focused since the time that he arrived at a certain level of wealth. I can't define exactly what that is, but it's been, at least for the last couple of decades, that he is. I would have to say almost obsessed with the notion that is out there in the universe. And there's a lot of literature on this and a lot of studies and a lot of research. So I can't say it's fanciful that when you look at family wealth and you look at it generationally, the first generation creates the wealth, the second generation sustains the wealth, and the third generation squanders the wealth. Yeah, my children are that third generation in this story. And for me, one of the things that I've been the most concerned about is breaking that cycle and trying to step out of a circumstance where they're almost it's etched in stone that they're going to be this generation that squanders that wealth. I don't want them to have that burden. I don't want them to feel a sense of guilt for something that hasn't even happened, that they could be held accountable for.

Chad (00:38:05) - And I think that one of the things that my father has done that may help to break that cycle and I try to do the same thing myself is what I talked about earlier, giving me the opportunity to create and define and realize my own success by not stepping in and creating a platform for me to achieve that success. And I really try to do the same thing with my boys. I am always there to help them. I'm always there to advise them. I'm always there to counsel to them. I'm always in their corner. When they need something they know they can come to me, but I don't pave the way for them. And both of my boys are on very different journeys from one another. And my older son Brayden, is probably more in line with what my journey was in those years of my life. He's also a firstborn son and following a similar path, my younger son Camden is on a very different journey and there was a time in his life when I maybe tried to course correct him a little too much and tried to get him on the same path that I went on and the same path that his brother's going on.

Chad (00:39:08) - And I've come to realize that not everyone walks the same path. We have to understand our children and we have to embrace what's important to them. We have to embrace the way that they look at the world, the way they think of the world, and the way that they chart their own course and support them in the course that they're pursuing and allow them to be independent in pursuit of that course. And I think that those are the things that so far I've seen in my own life being important and that I'm trying to apply to the lives of my boys. And I'm seeing positive results in that regard so far and the journey that they've taken to this point. But there's a lot more for them to learn and a lot more for me to learn as their father as that journey continues.

Josh (00:39:51) - Man, it's so good The next time we chat, we got to talk about family structure and and being married to a guy like you or to a guy like me. And, you know, what advice do you have there? But we're at a time, Chad.

Josh (00:40:05) - So if for guys want to connect with you, listen to your podcast. Where could they find your podcast? Give it a shout out.

Chad (00:40:13) - Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. So we're on YouTube. We have shifted our focus to doing full video and made it a part of our production plan. So YouTube adages advice and they're on all of the other audio podcasting platforms as well. Wherever you consume your podcasts, you'll find Dadages.

Josh (00:40:34) - Yeah. What's one question that I probably should have asked you that I screwed up and did not ask you?

Chad (00:40:40) - You know what's funny is that that's a question I ask every job interviewee that I have, but I didn't come ready to answer that question. So I think one of the things that we didn't really delve into and as you said, there's, there's a lot of opportunity for, for future interaction is, you know, now that I've arrived at this certain point. In my life. What's next? Like, what am I looking forward to in the next round of successes for myself? And how am I going to define success for myself on a going forward basis? But I'm not going to answer the question here.

Chad (00:41:18) - I'm just going to put the question out there and leave it as a cliffhanger for you and for the audience.

Josh (00:41:22) - Awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome fellows listening in. And we got some ladies listening into this podcast, which is super cool. Thank you guys for listening in. As always, reach out to our guests, follow their work, subscribe to their podcast. Like if you like this content, you'll like the content you'll you'll see through our guest. Reach out to them, say thank you, Follow their work. If you have some advice for men that you'd like to share here, head over to uncensored advice for men. Fill out a quick form and we'll get you on the show next. Till then, we will talk to you all on the next episode. Love you guys. Bye bye.