You Are Not Stuck

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I don't think humanity is static. So whatever you think you were, you're not stuck at being that. You can be something else. Like each day is a new day for a reason. No matter how much today looked like yesterday, it's not the same day. And no matter how much you think you're the same person that looked in the mirror yesterday, you can be somebody completely different. You just have to ask yourself, what is it that I want to be?

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Welcome to this Empty Nest Life, the podcast dedicated to helping you embrace this transformative season with purpose, passion, and joy. In each episode, we explore stories, strategies, and insights to help turn your empty nest into an exciting new chapter. Whether you're redefining your identity, pursuing new passions, or finding peace in the pause, you're in the right place. Here's your host, the Empty Nest Coach, Jay Ramsden.

SPEAKER_02 0:45

Hey there, my emptiness friends. I believe it's never too late to gain some wisdom and insights into parenting, even when the kids have already headed out on their own, while also finding time to unlock our own true potential. That's why I'm delighted to have in studio today Nathaniel Turner. He's a dynamic speaker, author, and coach. He's also the creator of the Life Template. And he easily blends humor, honesty, and actionable advice, all while challenging conventional parenting wisdom and inspiring people to raise the bar on their own aspirations. We're going to get into all of that and more right now. Nathaniel, welcome to this emptiness life.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Thanks, Jay, for having me. And you can just call me Nate, because if you call me Nathaniel, it means that I'm in trouble. Well, who knows?

SPEAKER_02 1:31

If you're blending humor and honesty, you could very well get yourself into trouble, I would imagine, from time.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

It's usually the case.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

All right. Nate, well, we're going to get into it a little bit. I am curious about how you blend humor and honesty with trying to get people to ha live into their best aspirations or own aspirations and raising that bar because sometimes humor and honesty don't always go together, but I imagine you make it work.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Well, usually I start with the self-deprecating humor. Okay. So you make fun of yourself. Okay. English standing makes people realize that you're not intending to say anything that's harmful because you're recognizing your own faults and flaws and foibles, and you're just trying to encourage people sometimes through humor to be a better person of yourself.

SPEAKER_02 2:15

I like that. You know what? There is something to be said for some doubt. I know some people say don't do self-deprecating humor, but you know what? It does. It puts people at ease. Be like, hey, I'm human too. So I'm interested to see how this is going to play out for us. Especially when I know you describe the saying, let kids be kids, is a myth. Like you say that's a myth. So I know people right now are like, oh, okay, this is where we could get into some trouble. But what insights like what insights led you to that conclusion?

Humor That Lowers Defenses

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Because, okay, so I would say this. As a child, we grew up. I'm gonna assume you're probably in the same age range that I am. I am, I just I turned 60 in July. So you may be younger. Stop that.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

There's no way that you're 60. I can see that right now and can't.

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Yes, sir. July 15, 1965.

SPEAKER_02 3:04

I turned 60 this year.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

But we grew up and we said lots of nursery rhymes like O McDonald. And we talked about O McDonald has a farm, EIO. And when we talk about Owen McDonald, what we never talk about with O McDonald is that O McDonald is raising the child version of whatever it is that he's he's raised. We don't say McDonald is raising piglets. We say O McDonald's are raised raising pigs. We don't say O McDonald is raising kids. We say O McDonald is raising goats. But adults talk about raising children. And so that's part of the myth. You're not raising a child, you're raising an adult. Oh. So why would you ever talk about raising children? And thus letting kids be kids seems futile because animals are smart enough to not let the baby animal be a baby animal. They're raising that thing that will become the full-grown version of themselves.

SPEAKER_02 4:01

I like that. That is such a powerful way to look at it. When I saw that kind of in your bio, I was like, all right, what does this actually mean? Don't let kids be kids. But it's spot on. We are raising adults and they have to learn lessons all the way through. Right. And I think that's sometimes where we get stuck in life. It's like we want to teach them everything we know. Sure. Yeah, no, you're right.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

But the thing is, if I I'm a guy who believes in doing things with the end in mind. Ironically, I have a son who is a PhD in electrical computer engineering. So he is a true engineer. His dad is a play humanity propulsion engineer. But the goal of engineering is to, and in some cases, is to reverse engineer the thing that you want to create. I don't think we think enough about the kind of humans that we want to create. So if I'm thinking about the kind of human that I want to create, I'm not thinking about a child. I'm thinking about an adult. And so then all my efforts should be lended towards getting that child to be the kind of adult that I'd like them to be when they become recognized by the rest of the world as an adult.

SPEAKER_02 5:09

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And for people who listen to this show, their kids are already launched or they're about to launch. And so they may be thinking, oh crap, I'm behind. I'm not where I'm supposed to be yet in helping my kids because oftentimes we maybe do too much for them in today's world as opposed to actually preparing them to be adults. So I'm just wondering like for the people who are like, my kids are already who they are. How do we make this work?

SPEAKER_01 5:35

Well, I don't think humanity is static. So whatever you think you were, you're not stuck at being that. You can be something else. Like each day is a new day for a reason. No matter how much today looked like yesterday, it's not the same day. And no matter how much you think you're the same person that looked in the mirror yesterday, you can be somebody completely different. Same case with your children. Again, you just have to ask yourself, what is it that I want to be? See, I got the advice from a 16-year-old when I was 46. A 16-year-old told me, Dad, it's not too late. You can do more. You still have time. Wow. Wow. And that's the reason that I'm talking to you today, because a child told me that it wasn't too late. That I could do more.

SPEAKER_02 6:22

Yeah. Yeah. And he did a lot, right? At uh at 16, right? Most people are like 16 or maybe a sophomore in high school, but he was already well on his way to doing some amazing things.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Packed his bags and was about to move to Brazil. He left high school as at the end of his junior year for his c for his class. And his class was getting ready to start their senior year in high school, and he had already earned 33 college credits and sent you to his Delhi high school and packed his bags and went to Brazil to chase a dream of playing professional soccer.

SPEAKER_02 6:54

Wow. Okay, so how did that? I'm curious. Okay, let's run this in parallel. He did that, and then he probably didn't do this running out the door, but it sounds like hey dad, you can do more too. I'll see you later. No, tell about that.

Stop Raising Kids Start Raising Adults

SPEAKER_01 7:08

So I'm gonna I'm gonna go back a little bit because I want to give the full context to the story. My family and I, it every holiday season, we would try to go somewhere to together, the three of us. It's just Latanya, my wife's Latanya, Naeem, my son, and I. And so it was December of 2011, and we we went to Vegas. It was a cheap flight, and the hotels as you know in Vegas are probably pretty cheap, and they were trying to get people to come and gamble. We don't gamble, so we went to Vegas. And after about two or three days in Vegas, we were bored to death and we had to be there a week. So we had never been out to the Grand Canyon, so we rented a car and we drove to the Grand Canyon. And while Naeem and I are running around the canyon and standing close to the edge of the canyon, and my wife Latanya is yelling and screaming at us about getting away from the edge, I said to Naeem, like, don't you feel alive? And he said, Yeah, man, this is great. And we had just finished reading the book, The Alchemist. And I'd also read Timothy Ferris's book, The Four-Hour Work Week. And so we were both standing on the edge, and he said, And by the way, like this whole idea of living your best life and living on the edge, this is great. And that's why I'm not going back to high school for my senior year.

SPEAKER_02 8:19

Oh, he dropped the bottom right there.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

Yes. So you need to figure out how to get me out of the country because I need to go figure out how to make my to chase my dream. I want to play professional soccer and I'm running out of town. I said, okay. So now I got to figure out how to get him out of the country. I have no idea, but I got Timothy Ferris's book, and Timothy Ferris says, hey, everybody needs a virtual assistant. So I hire a virtual assistant. So the company was called Your Man in India. And I'm making it up. It's not a great name, but that was the name of it. So I reached out to them. They connected me with a guy named Ethan, and Neathan became our personal virtual assistant. And Neathan shopped names, soccer, career, videos, etc., and found 11 clubs throughout the country, throughout the world, who invited him in for tryouts. And one of those places was Brazil. That was his favorite national team. All the great, the greatest of greats came from Brazil. So he said, hey, I want to go to Brazil. So we fly to Brazil. And he tries out for a couple teams while he's there. And he says, Great, I'm staying. And on our way back, we come back. His birthday is June 27th, and we arrive on June, we come back on June 26th. And so June 27th, he and I, I remember just like yesterday, we go to Best Buy to buy new computers. He and I are going to get matching computers. And we get the computers, and we're sitting in the car and we're in the driveway, and he's in the passenger seat, and I'm in the driver's seat in the garage, and he says, Are you okay? And I said, No, I'm not. He said, What's wrong? I said, Man, like I had plans for you, and you've gotten here way faster than I ever imagined. And that's when he said, Well, Dad, but you tell me to chase my dream, right? And I said, Yeah, man, I'm not telling you not to do it. You're absolutely right. And he says, Dad, what are your dreams? Oh I said, I don't have it. And I'm gonna try to say it to you, Jay, without crying, because that's what I did then. Like I said, I don't have any dreams. Like you, you're my dream. And and now you're you're here and you're like ready to leave. And I'm not telling you not to go, you gotta go. I get it. To do what you want to do is there's a time limit to being a professional anything, especially an athlete. He says, Well, dad, like it's not too late. You still have time, you can do more. And I looked at him and I was like, and I wanted to cuss at him because honestly, what the heck do you think I could do more? What like what? I said, what? He said, Dad, do everything you've been doing for me for other families. Oh, there's power in that. He said, Dad, think about what you've helped me to do. I'm fluent in four languages. I've finished high school early. I've been a national finalist in track and field, I've been a four-time track and field all-american. Like I made the National Honor Society. Do I've tested in the Taiwan percent, do for me, do for other families what you've done for me. I'm like, okay, I'm not quite sure what that means, but all right. I'll I'll that's what I'll do. And so that's that I've been trying to do that ever since June 27th of 2012.

SPEAKER_02 11:30

Wow. It sounds like to me, right? Somebody may say that and go, Oh, that must have been stressful for him to do all of those things, right? Sometimes people get in that trap of learn four languages, national honor society, run be an all-American. It sounds like he was really grounded in that process, though.

The Grand Canyon Dream Detour

SPEAKER_01 11:46

Yeah, so I think when people unpack it, you say if you look at it just in terms of outcomes, you say, that's a lie. And it is, I but it's all relative. But if you look at it in terms of process and you say, this man and this woman agreed to have a child and they sat down and structured what it was that they would like the child's outcome to. Now, honestly, Jay, the only thing that Latani and I were thinking in the beginning is how do we get a child to Boston, to Harvard specifically? Like, is it possible to get a child to meet the academic qualifications of Harvard? And the reason that I wanted to do that is because I had gone to law school and I was in my last semester of law school and I was unemployed. And everything, and I'm originally from Gary, Indiana. So everything that I thought I was running from, and all the things I thought was gonna be better than my father, and everything, I've I found myself getting ready to graduate from law school, unemployed. And the very criticism, the main criticism I had of my father was his inability to maintain a job. And here I am with a law degree and dual master's degree and an accounting degree, and I am just like my father, unemployed. And that is that's a kind of a rude awakening. And I'm like, well, what how did I get here and what could I have done differently? And I said, well, if I go to Harvard or Yale or somewhere, then I'd have a job because who doesn't hire Harvard attorneys? And so, like, okay, why aren't you at Harvard? You didn't score well enough on the LSAT. Well, why didn't you score well enough on the LSAT? Because in undergrad you were working trying to figure out how to work and go to school. Why is that the case? Well, because you make you just backtrack and eventually find you get to your point and you say, Well, your parents really didn't know how to prepare you. You're a statistical anomaly. What you've done is phenomenal. You're from Gare, Indiana, and no one expected you to do any of this, but it's not good enough. And now that you know that, what do you do for a child? So Latani and I ordered, we we sent off that back then, you know, you sent off the little postcard. That's right. You sent the postcard to Harvard for an application, and we got the application from Harvard to then design backward design the child's life. So when the child is later on, people say, look at all the stuff he's done, he doesn't know anything else. This is just the norm for him. He's got a process, and the process says, I just keep doing more stuff. Like it's based on three elements. I'm going to be intellectually ambitious. Yes, I'm going to get a good grade and test scores, but my parents are also going to teach me how to think critically. I'm going to be globally or culturally competent because at the time Harvard said they wanted world citizens. So, like, okay, well, that means you got to probably learn another language or two. And so we enrolled him in international school and he starts to pick up various languages. The third part was that Harvard said they wanted students who care for something greater than themselves. So we're like, well, that's a humanitarian. So we want him to have the drive of a humanitarian. So everything we do is gonna be the places he's gonna see us at. He's gonna see us giving to people who don't have as much as us. He's gonna form his own foundation at 14. He started his own foundation called the Social Justice League because he had a teammate whose father put him out the home and he was homeless. He said, so now he's concerned about homeless teens. But yeah, it was just a little bit here and there just built to be something much bigger.

SPEAKER_02 15:02

Yeah. So I I spent a lot 30 years in education. My wife is still in it, and so is my daughter now. And so when I hear that story, some people are gonna be like, oh, that's just too much pressure to put on the kid. But what I'm hearing you say is, no, we weren't saying, oh, Harvard was the V-all and the end all. It was if you want to go there, right? You have to be strong in academics, you have to be a good person, and you have to have a view of the world.

SPEAKER_01 15:29

Absolutely. But here's the thing the Harvard piece, initially, Jay, honestly, like I told people, it was an ego. This is ego. Like the dad has an ego. The dad says, Man, I'm not good enough, and dang on it, nobody is going to tell my son that he's not good enough. Or daughter, because we didn't know at the time, but we were having. But one day you realize that this is not even about me anymore. This is essentially about a buffet table and recognizing that that's what life is. That life affords some people, if you will, an opportunity to be at the part of the buffet table where there's peanut butter and jelly and cheese and crackers. And then some people can go all the way to the other end where there's filet me on and done period and caviar and whatever. And the thing was, in my maturation, I was always relegated to the side of the table where there was balloon and cheese and cheese and crackers and peanut butter and jelly. And I'm like, I don't want a child, if he wants to eat, if he wants those things, that's great. But I don't want him to think that the other stuff, stuff at the other end of the table is not for him. And that's really what it was about, like giving people the sort of richness of life's full buffet so you can know what it is that you do or don't want because you can't know. I grew up in Gary, I never got on the plane, J Tal of 17. And that was simply the fly to St. Louis. I love to fly, I'm always traveling now. But as a child, like traveling for us was getting the car and making some cheese, some sandwiches, and getting some sodas that didn't were off-brand, and you drive to Detroit. That was which was essentially a version of Gary to me. So there was a bigger version, yeah, bigger version.

SPEAKER_02 17:05

Bigger version of Gary.

SPEAKER_01 17:06

There was not a whole lot of variety in my life. You know, like I want a child to be able to have those kind of things where he or she can make a decision for themselves.

SPEAKER_02 17:13

Okay. So bring us up to speed. Where is he now? What is he doing? And then compare that to your journey too. After he dropped the mic in the car.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

Sure. So he went to Brazil, he stayed there for about 18 months, he traveled a number of places in Europe for tryouts. Then, of course, he got a concussion, but then he told us that he had enough of playing. It was good. He didn't want to live by himself anymore. That was a little bit stressful. People weren't necessarily happy for him to be there. There's a whole nother, there's a conversation we could have around that. But then he came home and decided, he said, I know exactly what I want to do now. I'm like, okay, what's that? He says, I want to be an engineer and I want to use technology to enhance the lives of people who have been historically and geographically underserved and underrepresented. Okay. All right. Because he lived with teammates who lived in Brazilian favelas and they didn't often didn't have running water and those kind of things. He said, Dad, this isn't making any sense. And our academy, the energy and electricity is on and off, and Wi-Fi works and doesn't work. And I think that's it's appalling. I should do something about that. So he went to school, he applied to 31 of America's some of the top engineering programs. He got accepted to 27 of them. Went to Santa Clara University for his undergrad, said he needed to go to get his PhD from a world-class institution. So he applied and was accepted by seven of America's top engineering graduate programs. And he chose to go to Carnegie Mellon, it was one of his offers. Went to Carnegie Mellon, finished there, got his PhD in electrical computer engineering, said he wanted to start his own company. So, but he needed to get an MBA from an elite from a top institution because he didn't want someone to come along later on and say he didn't know how to run his company. He applied to some of America's best business schools, he accepted at four of them, and one of the one he chose to attend, um, also on a full ride, was NYU Stern. So he went to NYU Stern. He finished in May, this past May, with an MBA in quantitative finance and entrepreneurship or something, innovation, or something like that. So he's now running a startup called Latimer Enterprises, named after the late great scientist Lewis Latimer. Wow. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 19:23

All right, so I've lost track. My math skills are off. How old is he? He's 30 now. 30. Okay, that's what I thought. It was like in that neighborhood of being 30. Yep. Okay. And I just I think of all the things that he's accomplished at that point, where folks who maybe listen to the show is like, okay, I became a parent, I raised them, I never got to do what I wanted to do. I don't even know where to start now. Now it's my I've got my emptiness life ahead of me. Where do I even begin? So, how do you help people with that elevation of okay, your aspirations can be so much bigger than what you're thinking about right now?

SPEAKER_01 19:55

I just take what he told me. Like I'm really, like, I tell parents, I am having this conversation with you, with you, Jay, simply because I loved a child, and then that child loved me enough to be honest with me. And he told me it wasn't too late. I still have time. But he asked me what my dreams were. And then I didn't have any dreams. So I always tell people that that's the first place you have to start. The first way you have to start is let's just talk about dreaming. I know that as an adult, we the older we get, the less we dream. Well, we're children, we dream of all kinds of stuff. It's sometimes our children's dreams are so outlaid that you'd be like, man, come on. Like you're gonna fly to the moon or what? And you the moon's gonna have what? You're gonna eat cheese from the moon and the moon's cheese. Like they come up with all kinds of outrageous stuff. But the older they get, or older we get, that ability to imagine like that, we lose it. So that's the first thing I say to people. Like you have to find an ability to sit still and imagine a life far beyond a woman. That's that's the very first thing. And then how do you do that? Sometimes you start with asking yourself if today was your last day on the planet and whatever it is that you believed in, whispered in your ear and said, unless you can come up with something really fascinating to do, they won't be able to tomorrow for you. And my suspicion is that you would start listing some things you thought you used to want to do that you didn't do so that you could get some more time. And that's where I would start.

SPEAKER_02 21:19

Okay, so that's where you start. And I want to imagine, like, we envision where we want to be, right? And then backward design that right? So you're not saying I've got to go from point A to point Z in one big step.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

No, it's a process. And you can't, and now I would say you can't focus on the outcome. Like to focus on the outcome is maddening. Um every day, I won't say every day, but virtually every day, Jay, I write my life what I call forward. So I I journal each day. I used to start, I started with eight minutes. First, I was that was maddening to do. I couldn't figure out how to get quiet my mind for eight minutes to imagine anything. Then I've got to eight and I went to four. And then now I'm at 20. And I just think 20 is enough. But each day I write my life, not how it is, but how I imagine it to be. So, for example, I once wrote like about wanting to do a TED talk. And then I got an opportunity to do a TED talk. And I didn't write that I wanted a million plus people to watch the TED Talk. I just wrote, I want to get an opportunity to do a TED talk. I wrote once that I wanted to be able to speak in front of 10,000 people. And then one day I got a chance to speak in front of 10,000 people. I wrote, you know, I want to be able to speak and earn a five-figure income from being able to speak at one engagement. But I just started to imagine sort of I could write my own Wikipedia page, because I don't want to be if people are afraid of the morbidity of the finality of saying write your eulogy or your obituary. That's what I would do. I'd say, okay, if my life could be anything I wanted it to be, what would it say that I did? And then those are the things that I'm going to chase doing. Okay. So what are you doing right now and what are you chasing right now? So the two things that I'm chasing is I want to be a serial, best-selling, award-winning author, and I want to be a renowned global public intellectual. Those are the two things that I'm chasing. East Day, I mention that probably in my writing all the time, but that's about me and that's ego. What do I want to do? Really, I want to lead a planet better than it was when I arrived. And I always tell people I want to I'm going to do that by helping, serving, and making sure that all the people I come in contact with know that their lives matter. That I can do. I can help, I can serve, and I can make sure that when I'm in Jay's presence, if Jay is the last person that I have a conversation with, that who I want to be when I am no more, that I hopefully am that person with Jay. Because Jay could be the last person who says who Nate was. And it won't matter who I say I am. It'll matter when they say, Jay, did you meet Nate? What did you think of him? And Jay will tell people who Nate was.

Dream Again Then Write It Forward

SPEAKER_02 24:02

That's such a powerful way to frame that conversation for ourselves internally. So for people like tip typically are saying, Oh, okay, I've wasted valuable time in my life listening to this conversation based upon Nate's son and what Nate's doing. What would be a piece of advice you could give them and be like, okay, what's the very first step? You talked about like having a dream, but hey, that's great. Let's have a dream, let's fear that. We've done that. What's step number two?

SPEAKER_01 24:30

So you see behind me there's a vision board. And so I tell people maybe you just put what you want to see in a place that you can see it. I think part of the reason why we feel like it's too late is because we don't see it. Jay, I'm a I'm not a, I don't should say I'm a fan. I am a fan of Harriet Tubman. And I'm a fan of Harry Tubman and my ancestors who found their way to freedom in this respect. They follow the North Star. And too infrequently, I believe, people don't have a North Star. And without something, some direction of where you're going, then you're gonna go nowhere. So you and I we decided to meet. You're in Boston, I'm in Indianapolis, we decide to meet, I don't know, halfway. Let's say we're gonna meet in Cleveland. I don't know why we want to meet in Cleveland, but maybe we want to meet in Cleveland. And if we were both driving, I don't know how to get to Cleveland, maybe to where we were going without a GPS. And maybe you don't know exactly where we're going either without a GPS. So you and I will both plug in our GPS to where we want where that exact destination is, and it would take us there. But in life, we could ask people where they want to go, and they don't have a desk, they don't have a GPS. And so I'm like, well, where do you want to go? No one can help you to get to wherever you want to go until you've decided what that destination is. And then we can map out a process like the GPS to get there. So the first thing is, where do you want to go? Like, where do you want to go?

SPEAKER_02 25:53

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

Who do you want to be having a destination in mind? Yeah. Who do you want to be? And when you're when this time, when you're on this planet is over, like who do you want to be? I'm I'm very clear about who I want to be when my life is over. I'm absolutely certain about that. And I am primarily concerned about who I am to my son more than anybody else. Now my wife, I love her dear, my mom and my sister, but the person that I helped create, I am very concerned about who I am to him when I'm no more.

SPEAKER_02 26:30

I can see that with that question he even asked you. To have the gumption to say to your dad at 16, you could be more.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

Right? You could do, yeah, exactly. Then he tells me when I'm in Brazil, because I've written him letters as a child. And so I pack some of those letters up and I give them to him. So I'm like, we're, you know, 6,000 miles apart. You're not gonna call me. You're grown now. Like you're grown. And he says, I leave him for a few days and I go to Rio, and my wife calls me and says, You're gonna have to go back to the academy where he is. And I go back to the academy, and there he is. And I'm like, Are you okay? Because your mom said I need to come back. He said, Yeah, no, I'm fine. Can I ask you a question? I said, sure. He said, Um, did you put the letters in any particular order? And I said, No. He said, I said, why? He said, because I reread the first three of them in the in the binder, and I remember my purpose. And I'm gonna be fine. But here's what we're gonna do, Dad. Whenever I return, we're gonna publish these letters. And I said, But son, these are letters from me to you. He said, No. He said, I want to share them. Because, Dad, when you tell me I can do something, not only do I know I can do it, I know it's gonna happen. And so it because of him, I published the first book that I published. And had I not published that book, there's no question, I am not having the conversation with you today.

unknown 28:15

Oh.

SPEAKER_02 28:15

Well, I'm getting chills over here. Literally, your son sounds amazing, but that's a testament to you and your wife to set him up to think that way. Right.

SPEAKER_01 28:26

Well, it's a it's a testament, uh, Jay, if I'm honest, it's a testament to Disney. It's a testament to Mafasa. Because had I not, like, all jokes aside, if I had my wife took me to go see The Lion King in June of 1994. And she had been trying to tell me that we got married in July of '93, and she had just turned 30, and she was like, My biological clock is ticking. I was like, it's it's digital. You can't hear it. Relax. And she was like, I'm having no parts of that. Nate. And I'm like, I don't want to be a parent. I don't want to be a father. I've got this terrible relationship with my dad. I'm just gonna be like my dad and his dad before him. I don't want to do this. And then I saw The Lion King, and I wanted to be a father. And everything that I believe I know about being a father, I learned in that an hour and 30-some-minute animated film called The Lion King. I wanted to be Mufasa and I wanted to have a simple. Oof.

SPEAKER_02 29:20

That's oh, that's just so strong. That's so strong. And it's it sounds like you have he set the world on fire because of the opportunities that you've given him. You both have, right? That you and your wife have both given him, and that's just wow. But you talk to let's shift this into a like of a broader conversation. You talk a little bit about how adults have set up challenges for their kids, but not in a good way. We've made mistakes along the way, and so let's talk about that a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

Yeah, well, I would say this. So it's interesting when you you're a parent, you mentioned I'm a parent, and when I I can remember we took a Lamas class, which taught us how to have her breathe and when to give her an ice chip and where to rub her on her back. And then the child is born, and then 36 hours or 44, 48 hours afterwards, they send you home. And I thought, I don't have any training for this. So the first thing that we set up, the first way we set parents up for failure, is that we don't give parents any tools, any strategies, any techniques to be a parent. We seem to think that because we were parented by somebody, that's enough. And that's that's not enough. Just because I saw someone change oil on the car, does not mean I know how to change the oil on the car. And so I'm like, that's the a larger failure. And I don't want to say it's just what parents are failure of parents. I'm gonna say it's a failure of our society, that we would give people the most incredible living, breathing organism with no strategy, no tools, no techniques to help that that entity 20 years from now. I think that's the that's the largest failure that we as a nation, or we just Latin and I just spoke at the International Congress on Shared Parony, and we and there were 34 countries represented. And that's what we said to the to them. And they all agree, like they don't do it either. Nowhere in the world are is anyone equipping parents beforehand so that they can raise great global citizens to help improve the planet. Wow. So I think that's the biggest failure of us.

SPEAKER_02 31:32

Yeah, is that what the life template does that you've created? Okay, tell me more about that.

A Life Template For Building Humans

SPEAKER_01 31:38

So the life template is simply a template for life and it's a template for human design. It is not to tell parents that you gotta get your kid to an elite college university. That's not what it is. But we do believe that what makes life exciting and gives maybe again provides the opportunity to have this buffet table, is that there's these three elements to life. If you and I are intellectually ambitious, which doesn't mean just I got a great IQ. No, it means that Jay is curious. He's always, he's when my we just celebrated my grandmother's hundredth birthday on Monday.

SPEAKER_02 32:17

Oh, congratulations, dude.

SPEAKER_01 32:18

And she's still intellectually curious. And it's like, that's what I mean. That you're still curious. No matter what you do in life, you're not stacked. And then there's the piece that's a global cultural competence piece. Like, we gotta figure out how to live together on this big old rock. And one of the better ways to do that is if I can go somewhere and I can speak your language. And if I can't speak your language, at least I know a little bit about your culture, so that I'm not going. We just I mentioned we were in Portugal. The worst thing that we do sometimes as Americans is we go somewhere else and we want we want the place that we go to to be America. Like, well, why even go? Like, well, one in Portugal, but we're Portugal to be America. I hear that. And the Portuguese don't want me coming to Portugal acting like they should be Americans, they're not. And so what do I foster or facilitate that kind of thought process? And then the last part is that to be someone who cares for something bigger than themselves, and that's what the life template is. So I'm not telling parents, so parents could tell me, well, I want my child to attend MIT. And I'm like, great, but we can look at what MIT requires academically. But you know what else is embedded in MIT's requirements? MIT is gonna tell you what kind of student that they're looking for, and they're gonna tell you what kind of human being they hope to produce in the end. So if you're looking to go to MIT, great, but don't just look at the grade part, look at the other aspects. Because if you follow those other aspects, you're gonna, if your child doesn't attend MIT and Naim didn't even want to apply to Harvard, you're gonna find something that you're gonna have given someone a template who's gonna be a great human being. I don't know what they're gonna do with their life. I didn't imagine my child would be an engineer, but I do know he's a really great human being. That much I'm more excited about than if you told me he's gonna be a great captain of industry. That's wonderful. He can make all the money in the world and be a human being who I can't stand. I'm I'd much prefer to have the guy have than have something different.

SPEAKER_02 34:20

Yeah. Okay. So what I heard you say was be intellectually curious, intellectual ambition. Okay, culturally competent, globally and culturally competent. Okay, and what was the third thing?

SPEAKER_01 34:31

And humanitarian driven. Okay. And the way you do that is that you take these three things you want to make sure that children or even adults have the jack-of-all trade philosophy that be familiar with as many things as you can be familiar with, because that facilitates conversation and interest from other people. Two, you want children or adults to master certain things. We're talking about children, reading, writing, math, and science, absolutely. But then you should also master civility. Like you and I should I think we should master civility. And then lastly, the third thing is the core. And so if you can imagine these three big circles, the biggest circle is familiarity, and inside of that is mastery, and inside of that is core. And core is your heart. Jay, what is it that when someone sees you will connect them to them? So good. You're in the elevator, you can give a 30-minute your 30-second elevator speech, or maybe it's 15 seconds, maybe it's seven seconds. Who is Jay?

SPEAKER_02 35:32

Yeah. Oh, at the heart. 100%. I get that. Yeah, I was at a at a like a networking event recently, and we're just introducing ourselves, having a conversation as one of the people across the table is like, oh, you know, I can see where you are a life coach. Like, I can look, you have really kind eyes, right? And that's me. Like, I believe kindness always wins, and they could see it in my eyes. And so that's what I want the world to see for me. So I get that 100%. I love it. Love it. Parallel that with you, right? Your son's journey, your journey. You talk about the things that you want to accomplish. What is that what motivates you right now, or is there something else? Is it really just making your son proud of you?

SPEAKER_01 36:10

I don't, you know what it's interesting, Liv. I don't never, I never I try to never use the word proud. So I would say, if anything, I'm grateful for him. I don't know that he's I'm interested in making sure that who I am. Let me backtrack. It's just it's easier if I say it this way. So I believe in the power of who. And I call it there's these three dimensions of who. There's who you think you are, there's who you think other people believe you are, and there's who you actually are to those you're in a relationship with. Jay says, Nate, what kind of father you are? I said, Jay, I'm the greatest father in history of the world. You say, Yeah, what does your son, what does your son believe? You say, I believe my son. I said, believe my son thinks I'm the greatest father in history of the world. And then you meet my son, you say, Yeah, he's all right, jerk. Who am I? The only person that gets to define who I am as a father is the child. And the child says I'm a jerk. And that then must be who I am. So in relation to him, I would like to not be a jerk. I would like to be, because if you ask me who my father was, I would, my father was. I like, yeah, I could use a whole lot of other words to describe my dad. But that's, I mean, that is a motivation for me. Um, but I do want to live my life to the fullest. I do believe in something bigger and greater than me. And I do think I have a responsibility that when my time on the planet is up, that the planet is better after I'm gone. Not because I'm gone, but I've done something to make the planet better than it was in when I rock. That's that's that's my motivation. So, whatever that might be, today it's our not-for-profit, the League of Extraordinary Parents. 30 years ago was when I started out as a financial advisor. I was going to help families figure out how to get their finances in order and help parents be able to afford an opportunity to do stuff for their children they otherwise can do. And like I did some of that, but today it's the not-for-profit that we do, and hopefully the work I'll do as an author and a speaker the duration of my life.

Legacy Who You Are To Others

SPEAKER_02 38:02

So powerful. So powerful. Clearly, you have blended humor and honesty and actionable advice throughout this conversation today. It's been powerful for me to hear you have a conversation around your son and your wife and how you guys have focused on that, what he's accomplished, what you've accomplished. I hope people will be able to take a lot away from this. I'm curious, what's one thing you've learned about yourself in this journey?

SPEAKER_01 38:29

One thing I've learned about myself, the I guess the point with who is that that I'm not, that I'm not who I am is not solely up to me. It's I have a who I am and who I am now and who I want to be when I am no more. Like that's an everyday struggle to do that. I'm clear about what I want on my epithet, um, what I'd like from the final words to be on, like I know it again, it may sound morbid, but that's what I learned. I don't think I understood that before. Like how short, how frail, how temporary, like how finite life is. And then you get old enough and you say, Whoa, disc it all in. 175,000 people go to sleep every day and don't wake up. I mean, you could be one of those people. And if today is the last day, how do you want to be remembered? And that then that's what's something I've learned. And now I continually try to think about that on a routine basis.

SPEAKER_02 39:29

Yeah, that's it's a great way to look at everything. I appreciate that. I've loved this conversation. I do hope it's not the last one you ever have, as we talked about a little bit before. But if it is for some reason, and people say, Hey, did you have a chance to meet Nate Turner? I'm gonna say, Yeah, he's a hell of a human being that raised a heck of a kid.

SPEAKER_01 39:48

Thank you. If the kid raised it, and the kid raised me in reverse. Elevated me, elevated my thinking in repairs.

SPEAKER_02 39:57

Yeah, I think that's where life is, though, right? Is we if we can just elevate one other human being, that to me is what life is all about.

SPEAKER_01 40:06

Absolutely. Trees and fruit. If you pick a great piece of fruit off of a tree, and that they don't ever call the tree blue ribbon, they call a fruit blue ribbon.

SPEAKER_02 40:16

That's true.

SPEAKER_01 40:17

That is true. And they may say, hey, where's the tree to produce that? You're like, it's over there.

SPEAKER_02 40:22

It's over there. Oh, so good. Thank you so much for coming on this emptiness life. I did thoroughly enjoy the conversation. I wish you all the best as you move about life and work in the nonprofit with your son and all the things he's got going on.

SPEAKER_01 40:36

I appreciate it. Thank you for your time and continue doing what you're doing in blessings, my brother.