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Connect with Brad Zude on LinkedIn:

linkedin.com/in/bradzude

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linkedin.com/in/nextstepnext

For more information visit his other websites:

russjohns.com/

thepiratesyndicate.com/

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​Russ Johns 0:03
Welcome to the #piratebroadcast, where we interview #interestingpeople doing #interestingthings where you can expand your connections, your community. #Kindnessiscool and #smilesarefree. Let's get this party started.

Today's a wonderful day for the #piratebroadcasts. I just want to bring #interestingpeople doing #interestingthings and talk about life int what is going on and how to navigate this thing we call life. I just wanted to introduce you today to a gentleman that has some amazing skills. Brad is here to share with us about parenting. Now parenting is not normally something that you hear a lot about, however, Brad's family He's been doing some amazing things. You've been a speaker, an author, and a father, obviously. Brad, good morning and welcome to the #Piratebroadcast

Brad Zude 1:10
Man.

Russ Johns 1:11
Thank you for Being a pirate.

Brad Zude 1:12
Yeah. Hey, thanks for having me. This morning. I'm excited to be here. And boy, parenting is the Wild Wild West. That's for sure. It's a good time. You're a parent. I mean, we've all been there.

Russ Johns 1:26
Oh, yeah, I survived parenting. Here's the thing is, is right now, in this day and age. I think it's the reason I wanted to highlight you today, Brad, is the fact that I think it's really important that we kind of share some ideas and techniques about what we need to think about as a parent growing up having kids and, and having kids grow up in this type of arena because there's a lot of challenge Right now there's a lot of things that are going on and a lot of questions that are wide open and not answered. I want to talk a little bit about that and how you're navigating this. Talk through the backstory of what you're doing and why you're doing it.

Brad Zude 2:17
Yeah. Well, so it's fun as a perfect team. One of the one of the things that we teach in influencer parenting right, so what is influencer parenting? Right? Well, the goal, after it's all said and done, right, when you can't put them in timeout anymore, you can't ground them. You can't take the iPhone away. You can't take the car keys away, you're gonna be left with one single thing. That's your influence, right? You just hope that you have the type of relationship with your child to where they love you. They respect you, they care about what you have to say. They think about it and they let it affect their lives, right? We have eight kids, they're 12 and under, and you're probably a little bit more you guys. A little bit more gray.

Russ Johns 3:01
I'm a little more vintage

Brad Zude 3:03
It's a little I got the gray going. I can talk a little smack.

Russ Johns 3:07
You can't get out without getting some gray.

Brad Zude 3:10
It's not the year it's the miles, right? It's the miles ha, but like you're to the point where it's like, Hey, you just are kind of depending on your relationship with your children and hope they like you. Many parents they want to do good for their children, but they end up blowing up a relationship because they desperately want to make their kids responsible and all this kind of stuff, and they're willing to sacrifice the relationship almost to make it happen. Then they grow up in there, like, what was all that for? What was that good for?

The strongest influence in the life of your child wins. The only question is that you right, so that's the core thesis of everything that we do, the strongest influence wins. It has to be you right it To be you. My wife and I were fortunate enough to go to Hawaii a couple years back, and we wanted to go on a tour and like jump off waterfalls and do like all the stuff you see on Instagram, right? You know, it's like, it's not the other minute Hawaii unless you like jumped off a waterfall with a selfie.

Russ Johns 4:20
Yeah.

Brad Zude 4:22
We're at this tour company, and we pull up and they're all these tour guides walking around and I'm like, Is he gonna be my guide? Oh, he seems cool. I hope he's my guide. Oh, I hope he's my guide. Someone is gonna be your child's guide through life. Right? Just check. I'm standing there wondering and we want parents we want that to be you. Not the kids at school. Not the other agenda. You don't stand for not the group of people you don't like not whoever needs to be you mom and dad.

Russ Johns 4:52
Yeah, I think that's perfect analogy because I was raised in a family of six And we had a very strong influence my parents were very strong influence on our lives and actually, for the last two years, I've been a caregiver for my parents now. dad passed away on Father's Day. I'm here, caring for my mom, my sister's here as well. It's one of those things that full circle. The thing that you want to do is raise your children up to be amazing adults that are willing to give back to the community willing to support willing to share their experience and their understanding. like yourself, you and your wife have been doing an amazing job at sharing and guiding and helping others in the community as an influencer, not only to your children, but to your community.

I think it's important for people to understand and differentiate because I think we can all right now get a little more empathy in our lives. Little more understanding. We listen and I think one thing that I've noticed in the years past, compared to when I grew up versus parenting now is there's difference and there's a lot of different opportunities. I mean, my parents would, when I was growing up, and I was, young kid, they would send me out in the yard say, hey, come home, when the streetlights Come on.

I was on my bike, I was running around with other kids I was out and building forts in the forest and digging holes and, just playing and nowadays, it's a much different environment. I think it's dealt with a lot more caution. How do you manage through that kind of environment today, and still instill that empathy and that kindness and that generosity that we can as parents,

Brad Zude 7:04
Boy, that's the name of the game. That's what it's all about. I mean look at the end of the day, myself as dad and my eight children look we're a couple of people stuck on a blue and green ball. Just trying to make the best of it until it's all over. Right and that's what we have in common. Now we're Christians and we believe the Bible kind of stuff. Just a short disclaimer, but at the end of the day, look, no matter what age you are, it's hard being that age.

If you were to ask me like, Hey, I would tell you Hey, man, it's hard being 37 with eight small kids and all this kind of stuff and you'd say, oh, man, we'll wait till you're 50 years old man is it gets tough. Let me tell you, you ain't seen tough yet. Wherever we are in life. It's our heart. This age, right? Whether you're two years old or five years old or seven years old with a bunch of brothers and sisters, constantly stealing your iPad or your Cheerios, or whatever the deal is,

Russ Johns 8:10
I'm taking the last cookie.

Brad Zude 8:13
You know what life is tough and we have to help each other out, navigate our way through this world in an empathetic kind of way. Children lack children lack a couple main things, they lack life experience. They lack a more warehouse of resources to go to to figure out thoughts and how they're going to compute things and what they're going to do in life. They lack experience, right life experience, they haven't been burned several times. They haven't whatever, and all the dumb things that we've done as parents and so we we have to step in to try to fill that gap for them as best we can. But that doesn't make us better or it doesn't make it it just makes us more experienced. We're then even more obligated to share our experience just to help help them get along with where we're getting along. And continue the circle on.

Russ Johns 9:10
Yeah. It always amazes me because I see, there's the sense of prayer parents always would like their children to do better than them, or they would like to achieve results. I think one of the things that you can actually instill in children or even adults is, is this idea and this concept that you have to consider what what is going on around you. You have to with eight children that there's going to be conflict, you understand that they're going to be given take, and they're going to be compromises. I think right now there's a lot of things that we could use in the in our toolbox for empathy.Patience, compassion, and give and take.

I think, as young adults as these children grow up into the world, and they go out, and if they can actually share that with the rest of the world we can actually create a better environment for a lot of people and planting that seed in your children, and the best possible outcome for them. It's not necessarily that you want them to do a certain thing or be a certain way. There's a lot of expectations that a parent can drop on them. How do you navigate this idea that whatever the child wants to do, because they don't have enough life experience to know, I want to be a doctor, I want to be a lawyer. I want to be a physician. All right, whatever it is. I want to be a scientist, right?

Brad Zude 10:46
Sure.

Russ Johns 10:48
You have to have enough experience to understand what you don't like to do versus having enough experience to understand what you do you like to share?

Brad Zude 10:55
Sure,

Russ Johns 10:55
How do you expose your children to different experience is in different adventures in their life to allow them the exposure to some of these things because I mean, it kids is, it's busy, it's gerontology. What do you recommend to parents think about how do they think about this as they go through this life?

Brad Zude 11:19
This is such a good question. I have a great answer for this. One of the things that we teach our kids is that, hey, you can be anything in life that you want to be. However, the goal is that you just be the best at whatever you want to be. If you want to be a violinist, okay, no offense to all the violinists out there who are watching your show, but if you want to be a violinist fantastic, just be the best violinist make it your craft study and put a picture of Carnegie Hall on your wall right.

Like my son, I have an eight year olds Son, he loves fortnight and of course he wants to be a streamer when he grows up and all this kind of stuff. I told him, I said, Okay, do you want to be a streamer, you can be a streamer. I'm 100 support. I'm 100% in support of you being a streamer, however, I'm gonna teach you what it would mean to be a streamer. After we get all the gear set up, and all this kind of stuff, so a streamer is someone that shows you playing yourself video games, for those of you don't know.

Russ Johns 12:29
Actually, it's an incredibly popular platform.

Brad Zude 12:32
It's like the biggest platform in the world right now.

Russ Johns 12:34
Yeah.

Brad Zude 12:35
I said, Okay, so here's what you're gonna do. But in order to do this, here are the basic skills that you need to learn how to speak. How to broadcast things, how to have personality, how to come across well over camera, all this kind of stuff. If you want to be this, here's the recipe. You work on these things now, and we'll eventually get there. I have a daughter that came to me the other day and said, I want to be a cowgirl dad. I said, That's fantastic. It would be so cool to live on a ranch and have horses and all that kind of stuff. But then I begin to point out to her like, Hey, you hate doing the cat litter. If you're gonna be a cowgirl horse poop is like 10 times the size of cat litter if you can't clean cat litter.

yeah, if you can't do cat litter, I hate to tell you, you're not going to be a cowgirl, you know, so it's helping them connect the dots of Okay, your dream is fine dream, anything you want to dream. Let's now back into it with the steps that are going to get us there and help them think through like, oh, if you hate this, you're gonna hate this. I understand you think this is cool. If you hate the steps along the way, you're going to hate the end result as well. That may not be the path for you.

Russ Johns 13:43
I think that's because right now there's a big debate over. For myself, this is just myself I've been a lifelong learner. I've had A lot of titles I've explored different activities in different endeavors throughout my life. The list is long from farmer to fireman. The reality is you have to kind of understand what the entire job and the entire environment actually brings to the table like you said you can't necessarily be a cowgirl, if you're unwilling to clean stalls, and if you're not willing to clean stalls and that's not something you enjoy. Then you maybe need to be a horse owner I don't know. But at some point in time, they're gonna collect they're gonna come in and coincide.

Brad Zude 14:50
Yeah, I've been into, you know, helping kids put things into perspective. We do this cool trick and to teach our kids the value of $1 right. We would say hey, if you go out in the yard, and you pick up 100 sticks, I'm gonna pay you $1 then what that does is that helps a child put the value of $1 into some type of small perspective, they can handle right so far at the store, and then they're like, Oh, well, I want this thing and it's $5 I would say $5 that would be 200 and or 500 sticks it would have to pick up in the end. We help our kids put things into perspective that Nick they can only kind of see the end they don't see the journey. As we can help them connect those dots. It that's what a parent does.

Russ Johns 15:46
The framework that they can, they can attach a reality to correct because they're not they're not punching a time clock yet it at, McDonald's or some fast food, restaurant or office building. They're not interning at a legal office.

Brad Zude 16:02
Sure.

Russ Johns 16:04
They don't have a perception of what $1 means to earn.

Brad Zude 16:08
Right.

Russ Johns 16:09
I think that's a great strategy,

Brad Zude 16:12
We as adults failed to do this today, right? I'm growing a YouTube channel, you can find us at the zoo ads on YouTube. We went through the stats and it's like the average the average YouTube channel that has a million followers, I can't remember the statistic but it has like on average, like 400 videos. Then we back into the math, it's like, well, if I did two videos a week for a year and took two weeks off, that'd be 100 videos a year so I have to be willing to commit to make two solid good videos twice a week or two videos a week with only taking two weeks off for the next four years if I want to be at a million subscribers. Is that an undertaking that I want to undertake right.

Russ Johns 16:51
I did that backwards. I completely did that backwards. I think I have over 500 videos.

Brad Zude 16:57
Nice.

Russ Johns 16:58
I'm still waiting for the the Millions subscribers.

Brad Zude 17:01
Yeah, I don't know what the metric is.

Russ Johns 17:06
I think it goes back to also what do you want to focus your time and energy into?

Brad Zude 17:10
Sure.

Russ Johns 17:11
Because the outcome may be something that you are required to do to actually get the results in some other area of your life. You want to work to support your hobby if your hobby doesn't support income, right?

Brad Zude 17:25
Yep.

Russ Johns 17:26
There's also all these nuances around that. Brad, I want to shout out to a couple of the people in the room today that are really awesome. Wendy, she's amazing. Some of the things she's talking about. She actually helps authors write children's books, so you guys would be a good connection. There are challenges parenting adults to COVID Absolutely. In this day and age Wendy. Hey, Russ, Brad, do you see over parenting like helicopter parent Left kids with the necessary tools to take initiative and responsibility needed to be self starters. Well, I want to get into that in a little bit. I love that question, Andrew, because I think it's important that we talk about a question, Andrew, a Gabriel. He's another streamer. That is one of my favorites.

Brad Zude 18:22
What's going on Gabriel?

Russ Johns 18:24
He's in the room. Michelle. Love you, Michelle. How are you doing today? parenting is also more than what we say. But what we do and how we treat others. Good morning, gentlemen, pirates. Thank you so much.

Brad Zude 18:37
Wow. Yes. Yeah.

Russ Johns 18:38
It's like #smilesarefree. #Kindnessiscool. Grant, How are you this fine day? Grant is a golfer, an avid golfer that has a platform he's over in Atlanta. He's also an air traffic controller.

Brad Zude 18:55
Nice. What's going on? grant? You got a hard job, Grant. That's that's stressful.

Russ Johns 18:59
Yeah, that is stressful. That's what I said. He says it's not that stressful. It's like, I guess that's the difference between knowing what you're doing. And being competent is having that confidence that we're talking about Brad.

Brad Zude 19:13
Yeah, I guess.

Russ Johns 19:15
Lisa, there you go. Greetings pirates.

Brad Zude 19:18
What's up Felicia?

Russ Johns 19:19
Parenting two kids, how we put things into perspective life, long learning, living and loving.

Brad Zude 19:25
That's right, Grant.

Russ Johns 19:26
That's fantastic. Fantastic. I want to go back to Andrews question and talk about this a little bit because I see this. I see this a lot. I was helping a friend out and I was doing some I was managing his math tutorial, his tutoring company. I would see so many parents that would take their kids From one activity to the next activity was almost like they a program director as much as a parent in making sure their kids had some activity going on. It wasn't that the kids had to decide what was going to take place.

It was like, I, here's, here's this line of activities gymnastics, sports, a tutoring piano all of these activities, I'm thinking, how do you teach a child to play? How do you teach it? The creative process, how do you work them through the process of being bored and having to discover how to keep themselves entertained. The balance of that is really like I've said, when I was growing up, I had to take a stick out and make something out of it. It's like Mike was picking up sticks to play with. It's like, now it's a kind of a different environment that We're living in so how do you navigate this? Brad?

Brad Zude 21:02
Yeah,it's easy. The interesting answer is that it all boils down to dopa mean. Right? Dopamine is the chemical in our brain that gives us Oh, that was cool. It gives us the jolt of joy and electricity, right. It used to be like when you were a kid, it's like, you had to do a lot of work to get a little bit of dopamine, right? Now with social media and our phones, like, I can get a huge hit of dopamine. Super, super easy, right? I mean, it's why Tick tock it's funny, it's becoming, a hot social platform, because it's like, they're quick, and they're videos, and it's harder. Boom. That's kind of the interesting answer, but the regular answer is that, there's nothing wrong with you sports or gymnastics, or any of those sorts of things. However you have to know what your goal is in parenting.

I think what a lot of parents by default do is they think like, Okay, I'm a parent now and I guess this is what parents do. So I'm going to do that too. Again, so it's only bad or wrong if you either don't know why you're doing it or you're doing it for the wrong reasons or something like that which, which unfortunately, I think falls into the category of of too many parents. I'll say that they're just like, oh, you're eight years old. It's time for t ball. It's time for this and it's time for this and it's and it's like we as Americans, unfortunately, measure measure success, and I'm stealing this from a great pastor named vodi. balcom? No. Humans are measured by three things, the billfold, the ball, Diamond, and the bedroom, right? Those are the three measuring sticks. If that's what you believe, to, then you go out and say, Well, I clearly have to make sure my son excels at one of those three things and you know, whatever.

Russ Johns 23:06
One or two of those things right

Brad Zude 23:08
Yeah, yeah so it's um again nothing bad but look good good parenting. Okay the definition of good parenting is not just waking up and hoping every day whether it's your activities or anything else

Russ Johns 23:20
Hoping is not a strategy

Brad Zude 23:21
Hoping is not a strategy in business in life and parenting and a marriage whatever so, like you got to plan in a time of non conflict you got to get along with your spouse go out my wife and I we preach working date night we go out we literally take blank sheets of paper and notes and we'll go out and get whether it's a cheeseburger and fries or a fancy steak dinner and we're like, Alright, Andrew, like, Where's he at? How's he doing? What's he good at? What's his struggles? Okay, what's the consequence when he hits his sister? Then we wake up and execute the plan right? Just like an NFL team or anything else. Every play that they do is they get in a huddle. They say, here's what we're gonna do, they go out, and they try to do it. Then when they get all smashed and bruised, they regroup, go back to them and be like, Alright, that one didn't work. Let's try another one, you know, and that's good parenting.

Russ Johns 24:13
I like that idea. I like that concept. I think it's so important to be able to share that information. Because, and thank you for being a pirate. Thank you for being here to Brad

Brad Zude 24:25
Pleasure to be here, because

Russ Johns 24:26
I think it's the diversity in our ideas and our collection and our exposure to different circumstances, allows us to think through, it's like, okay, I've done this, and I don't really like it, so I'm going to try something else. Just like you're saying, you have to have a strategy around parenting, just like any other thing that you do in life. If your goal is to raise good kids that can think clearly make decisions on their own. Navigate through complex issues. and grow up and be healthy adults. I mean, that's, that's a great strategy. It's amazing to be able to do that and say hopefully, this will work. All of our efforts will be provided fruit in and it's like a positive outcome. They'll still talk to me when they're adults.

Brad Zude 25:21
Yeah, well, yeah. Real quick a broken equation is gonna produce broken results every single time. As we teach our kids the proper and right equations, then they'll be able to put anything that comes at them through life into the algorithm, and compute a reasonably good answer. We want to program and teach that equation into our children so that they can go out and use that equation anytime they want for any situation and it will serve them well.

Russ Johns 25:48
Yeah, yeah. I think critical thinking and creativity is a big part of what we can provide our children to because if you can think creatively, and you can put some critical thought and things, you can decide for yourself what you like to do at any point in time

Brad Zude 26:10
well, and that's why helicopter parents are so bad because they just focus on the outcome. It's watching over your kids, it's not so bad, but it's just like making sure that that outcome happens. I want to make sure that they're focusing on building their equation, not just getting the answer right all the time. How did you arrive there? Let's talk about that. That's what's important.

Russ Johns 26:31
Yeah. Tell me this brand. If you had a magic wand, and you could spread a little bit of insight across the community here. Leave this nugget of knowledge. As far as parenting and life in general goes it. There's no limit here. What would you want to leave with the community? What legacy would you want to leave with with people in your life and they are exposed exposed To your life.

Brad Zude 27:01
Yeah. Kind of a couple things that we talked about but the strongest influence in the life of your child wins. The only question is that you right, that's what you have to lay your head down. When you're laying your head down on the pillow and ask yourself, Am I the straw? Look, where would you rather have your children learn about the birds and the bees from you? Where you and I probably learned in the back of a pickup truck with the boys right?

Russ Johns 27:29
Yeah.

Brad Zude 27:30
We have to be that influence and if you're not the influence, if you find yourself in a position where Hey, that's not you. No problem.

Russ Johns 27:38
Yeah,

Brad Zude 27:39
but you've got a pivot and be like, Wow, I've blown it. You want to talk about humble you go ask a three year old for forgiveness, right? I mean look I'll get angry or something like that. I'll go up to Lisa my three and be like, Will you forgive me? Daddy was angry and that was not a no, yeah, you have to pivot. So it's all about What you do from this, this video on whoever's watching. It takes work like anything good in life, it takes work and invest in your family. Like, so many people invest in, like your most people watching this video are wearing. If you total up to the dollar amount of the clothes you have on, you're wearing more expensive clothes than it would cost to work with me and dramatically change the course of your life, your parenting and your relationships for the rest of your life. It so many people don't take the time to invest in your family invest in your family.

Russ Johns 28:35
Yeah. I love that. I love that. Brad, I just want to give a shout highlight out to Wendy here. She's asking on the first day of kindergarten, I asked my children if they wanted to win a lot of money. They said yes. I said it's called scholarship. You win by going through all your homework, the best you can and working hard every day. It worked for both.

Brad Zude 28:59
Yep, that's it. Great One, Wendy.

Russ Johns 29:00
That's a great one. I love that, Wendy. Thank you for sharing that. Renee Miller, Renee, how are you doing? Say hi to Ken, I really appreciate you guys miss Renee. interesting conversation kids also need to learn consequently, many parents take on consequences out of the equation which does not help them. Society. I have to say that I believe there are probably some people out there right now that are a direct result of that equation fail. Harder.

Brad Zude 29:37
Yeah, and agree.

Russ Johns 29:39
Anyway, Brad, I really appreciate you. I appreciate the fact that you're a pirate and thank you for bringing value and some insight to the world today. Thank you for raising some amazing kids I'm sure and being here for the rest of us to kind of navigate through these these treacherous things called life. And, Eric,

Brad Zude 30:01
thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Russ Johns 30:03
I look forward to everyone being out there. Thank you so much for being here. Because, as you know, and as you grow, #kindnessiscool. #smilesarefree, and you #enjoytheday. Take care, Brad.

Brad Zude 30:21
Thank you.

Russ Johns 30:22
Thank you for joining the #piratebroadcast. If you found this content valuable, please like, comment and share it across your social media channels. I would love the opportunity to help others grow in their business. #Thepiratesyndicate is a platform where you show up we produce the show. It's that easy. If you want to be seen, be heard and be talked about. Join #thepiratesyndicate today.

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