The Lessons Our Kids Are Watching

In today’s episode, I sit down with Casey Jacox to talk about fatherhood, resilience, faith, and the lessons that have shaped the way I raise my four children. We discuss why kids watch what we do more than they listen to what we say, how failure can build strength, and why vulnerability creates stronger relationships. I also share the importance of non-negotiable time, prioritizing your own health, and learning from mistakes instead of hiding them. We talk about forgiveness, self-image, and giving children the freedom to pursue their own direction while still providing the guidance, values, and example they need to grow. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Thank you again, David, for joining me. We always start out each episode, The Quarterback Dadcast, with gratitude. So tell me, what are you most grateful for as a dad today?

• 0:09Speaker 01

  The health of my children, obviously. I have four children and I, very simple in my life, being a parent and being a child myself is, I want to know my kids are happy, healthy, they love me and appreciate me. I don't care what they do, what else is going on. If I know those four things, I'm fine, but health is number one.

• 0:32Speaker 00

  So good. Say what I'm grateful for is I'm about to become an empty nester and which is still surreal to say out loud. My daughter, my son's a junior in college, plays golf down at a school called Southern Oregon, and my, my daughter's getting ready to go off to Central Washington where I played football a long time ago. And I'm just grateful for the time I have with them before. The noise is gonna be just me, my wife and the dogs.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  You'll have to mentor me. I have a, my last one is a junior in high school, and so I got two years to prepare and I'm getting as much advice as I can, but I'm certainly enjoying my three daughters who, two in New York and one in Chicago, I get to see often, but it'll be interesting to have an empty house.

• 1:18Speaker 00

  Well, it's, and it's funny, I was talking to somebody recently, it's, you know, as a parent, you want, you want to be wanted. It feels good to be wanted, but if you're needed too often, you've done something wrong.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, great point. And, and that empowerment is so interesting because I, it, it's faith that, that changed my perspective of this is if God is here to protect me, promote me, love and perfect me, and he knows everything, that is why I don't understand the evidence today that's presented to me. It's usually contrary, or it's not there to put me to where I want to be or better, you know, and if you look at my life, I would have never imagined that I'd be here but for God. But as parents, especially dads, we're here to do the same thing, to protect, promote,

• 2:08Speaker 01

  love and perfect our children, but we're not omniscient and all powerful. And so, we don't have the strength to put struggle in front of our children very often, especially the amount of struggle that God puts us through to perfect us. And I have found my faith in being a parent through the responsibility, the accountability, my gratitude, my empathy, my forgiveness and my inspiration, that this nuance of one, knowing I'm protected, promoted, loved and perfected by God, but knowing I'm incapable of actually doing so for my own children because I am, to be honest,

• 2:52Speaker 01

  too afraid to hurt my children or to put them through too much struggle. And I think that's the deficiency of being a dad, a good dad at least.

• 3:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, I think it's, it's helping, it's meeting, meeting your kids where they are, but it's also finding, finding what they want to do and help it then just ignite it and then be there to support them. And failure is okay. Like, some of my best moments in life were failure and struggle. And I know that you, you talked about, I, you know, just doing some research, you talk about a pivotal 5:30 AM wake up call that, that shaped you as a dad, or shaped you as a dad.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, my most popular ironically, video, over 55 million views.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  I, I woke up at four, actually, and, and it was a Saturday and I went outside and my daughter, my 16-year-old daughter's car was gone. And I panicked. And I called, and I called, and I called, and eventually, my daughter picked up. And by that time, I was so afraid, I became angry.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  And so, I still get choked up because it was terrifying. I was so angry, so I, where the F are you? Huh? I'm in bed. You're in bed? Where, where, where's your car? Oh, Dad, you told me if kids are drinking, to leave my car and to Uber everyone home. So that's what I did, what you asked me to do. I'm so sorry that I scared you. And I was, it took me for a while to figure out what had happened, but I wanted to understand the clues and the patterns of being a father,

• 4:42Speaker 01

  of how many times do I interfere with the success of my children because of my fear, because of my anger that results in that fear, instead of truly trusting what I taught them, you know? I tell my kids every day, three things, whatever they want to do. They could play Fortnite, they can study golf, you know, I don't care what they do. But I just ask them, are you doing your best at it? You know, are you learning lessons and having fun? And I don't anymore think that I can control going to law school, business school, you know, my mom's favorite

• 5:24Speaker 01

  lines, doctor, lawyer, failure. And my mom loved me as much as I love my own children, but boy, she put a great number on me and my siblings about trying to predetermine out of keeping us safe and stable, her expectations, instead of truly empowering us to do our best, learn lessons and have fun.

• 5:49Speaker 00

  So good. You, you grew up a single mom. Talk, and, and some of the, some of the research I did, obviously ambition and drive, and you, you've achieved great things, you, you had, you, you went through some adversity, now you're on a path to, to empower a billion people to be happy, which I think is fantastic. And, but one of the, of course, I always love asking people who've, who've had a lot of successes, is how do you go, how do you transition from, or think about, you know, growing up with not a lot, whatever that means, to maybe having a lot more now? But how, how do you, how do you instill those, those same values that shaped the guy that you are, the dad, the leader, like around resiliency, that maybe I might speak to another dad at home?

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I think that's a great question, right? That our success can also be a hindrance to our children. And as you know, I had to go through it twice. So I lost everything over a hundred million dollars and went bankrupt in 2008. So I had to reestablish the resilience that I had. And it was my wife and my mom who led me and taught me about faith and wisdom, and how to utilize my values. And the one thing that really resonated with me, with my wife, when I was a mess, was what would your mom say if she knew who and what you were doing? Who, who you were and what you were doing? What would your mom really say? You know, I, I never

• 7:15Speaker 01

  listened to my mom for 58 years. She passed last year, but I watched her every day. And that's what created the values, the daily practices, the execution on those values and practices, and the inspiration that got me twice to more than I, I believe. And so, I think the first thing to do is to admit, like I do when I speak around the world, the first thing I say in a speech about this topic is, who here grew up poor? And half the audience always raises their hand. It's amazing. And then I look at the crowd and I always say, I feel sorry for the rest of

• 7:55Speaker 01

  you. Cause I can't teach what being poor teaches you. And I can't teach my children what it's like not to have a safety net, right? No matter, no matter what, I, I give or don't give to my children, they have one thing that I never had, a safety net. And that's the difference. You, you don't necessarily have to entitle your children, you know, my kids get what they need, and they need different things. The bookend kids don't ever want anything. My youngest daughter, she is good for the GMP, let's just tell you, let me just tell you that, you know, she has no problem

• 8:35Speaker 01

  receiving, you know? So I think it's really interesting, as a dad, just to realize that you cannot teach them certain things. You can't teach them what it's like to be married, you can't teach them what it's like to have kids, you certainly can't teach them what it's like to get old. And most of the time, your kids are not going to listen to you. But like myself, they will watch you. They will watch you when you don't think they're, they're looking. So you are truly a living lesson for your children. And the higher I live to my highest self, the better I live to pursue my potential, that's what I think has driven my children to do the same. Not my

• 9:20Speaker 01

  advice, there's plenty of it on the internet, they don't listen to it, trust me. But they watch me, they see me get up every day and try to be kind.

• 9:31Speaker 00

  How, how much do you, have you openly talked to your kids about the, the, the challenge you went through in 2000, 2009?

• 9:40Speaker 01

  Well, it's hard not to be open about it because there's so many videos and speeches and content out there. And, uh, you know, I was not as open early on when they they were young.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  But, you know, the youngest one got it early, obviously. Um, so I've been talking about it for 13 years, uh, went bankrupt 18 years ago. So it took me about five years, uh, to feel comfortable elevating, uh, the awareness in my vulnerability to my kids. Um, and so I think it's the best thing that I've done. You know, my mom had a great quote, you're either humble or you're about to be. And so in the process, you know, for you dads out there, I, I, I truly believe there's three stages of childhood with a dad's child relationship. You go from idolization

• 10:31Speaker 01

  to demonization to humanization. And these are the three stages. And it's very difficult, no matter how much you mess up, to go from the idolization to the demonization. These are called teenagers, uh, no offense to anyone, but I truly believe that teenagers are the stupidest, stupidest species on earth. No matter how intelligent they seem to be, they are the stupidest species on earth. I also believe that I don't know what people do with bad kids because good kids are hard enough to raise. I don't know how you raise a bad kid because at times I'm a pretty sophisticated, capable human being, and I find it one of the greatest challenges

• 11:11Speaker 01

  on earth, especially when they're teenagers. So, uh, in that realm, you know, to be able to be vulnerable, to tell the truth, to make your kids comfortable that, you know, it's not the mistakes that dad made. It's how I responded to them. It's taking accountability and asking myself, what did I do to be responsible? What did I do to attract this? What did I do to participate in this perception? And what am I supposed to learn from it? And if you're interested, I'd be happy to tell you the lessons that I've learned from the mistakes that I've been made from.

• 11:48Speaker 00

  I love that you have talked about vulnerability. There's, that's one of my favorite words. It's, um, there's three values that drive me in my life, which is being humble, vulnerable, and curious. Uh, I think they're superpowers that remove ego. I talked about these things often to my kids, and I love what you did. I mean, if you really, I'm sure you know you did it, but like you asked a question before they wanted, you made it their idea. If you want, if you want to hear that, I'm more than happy to share. And even like my daughter, who's going through a torn ACL, I, I lost my senior year of high school, uh, ended up lucky enough to play quarterback in college. My, my daughter, she played nine games into her senior year. She lost, she blew her knee out, ACL, MCL, meniscus. And a lot of times people will say, oh, I know, I know what it's like to go through. No, you don't. You don't. Those

• 12:33Speaker 00

  are just a figure of speech, but I can say, honey, dad knows what it's like to go through an injury when you lose everything and you think your life's over. If you ever want to hear those stories, I'm more than happy to talk to you through it when you're ready.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:46Speaker 00

  I want it to be her idea, not mine, you know?

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's interesting, right? Questions and suggestions is something I learned from my mom. You know, it's so nice to just continually ask questions and then offer suggestions. Would it help you if? So the suggestions that I ask are also question based, right? Would it help you if? Or do you know anyone that can help you? Um, the, these are the transitions that I look for when I'm trying to play a role of advisor, um, through, I love the humility, vulnerability, and curiosity components can characteristics that truly bond, uh, us with our children. And, um, you know, there's nothing greater, uh, than that bond. When,

• 13:33Speaker 01

  when, when you know your kids aren't listening to you but watching you, uh, when you know that you're pushing them, uh, to be better, uh, and you know they're happy, healthy, wealthy, and worthy when they're happy, healthy, love and appreciate you. Man, what a great feeling that is. The best.

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• 14:22Speaker 00

  And I joke often, I always tell my kids, dad has zero eligibility left. So I, I can't, I can't play anymore. Um, I'm more than happy to help and support, but I'm not going to do the work for you. I've yet to, in all my years playing sports, I've never seen someone go into weight room and just stare at their weight, stare at the weights. They would just stare them. They don't get stronger. You gotta lift.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  You, you know, it's great and, um, blessed to have played for a really good Division III football team. And I was a below average college football player. Uh, and I used to say I was average until my coach from college was on an interview with me. And he said, let's be honest, you know, most college athletes aren't honest. Fifty percent of the players are below average, Dave. You are below average. But the lesson that I learned that I can, you know, help my kids with, because they all play, you know, my son's a very good football player, much better than I was, was the most valuable lesson that I learned for football was one for life, which is I love football at the time more than anything. That, that,

• 15:26Speaker 01

  that's why I played in college. I was born with a very low basement when it came to skills, uh, in genetics, but I love football. But I had to learn to love what I didn't like or love about football. And to, to have the capability of learning to love what you don't like or love about what you love, that's the secret to life. And it's also, by the way, the secret to marriage. If you can teach your spouse to learn to love what she doesn't like or love about what she loves, meaning you and I, you're going to be married a long time.

• 16:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, it's falling in love with the fundamentals. You know, that's what I, as, as I joke, sometimes when I work with sales teams, I always say, you know, you're here to learn about AI. I'm the wrong guy. I'm not going to talk about AI. I, because I joke with my kids, if I'm talking to you about AI, I can't like have a conversation and say, hold on, David, it said I should say this. Like, there's so many things that AI is great about, but you still got to be able to listen, ask questions, um, be present, um, make eye contact, follow up with people. Like, I, these are things I always ask, ask my kids if they want to know, and then I try to reinforce it and then celebrate the small wins when I have them versus the, you know, this out, whatever outcome they want, but just the fundamentals along the way. Cause I think that's what separates most people in life.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  So true. Your advice is so sage. And it's interesting because people ask me all the time, what would you teach your children? What are the things that are most important today? And I, I give advice about what I believe to be three things that I know that will separate our kids in the future. One is reading. Uh, not only does it develop curiosity and creativity, but it actually helps to, uh, determine what's real and what's fake. And I, I think that that's an area that will really, uh, separate your child if they can know how to develop curiosity and creativity through reading, but also develop a sense of what's real and what's imagination. Uh, two is practice AI. You know, don't fool

• 17:29Speaker 01

  yourself. If, if your kid is not using AI, knowledge, knowledge is no longer power. Uh, knowledge is a commodity. You know, I went to law school, business school. I did very well academically. You could ask me a legal question today and ChatGPT will come up with a much better answer in two seconds. Um, I promise you, knowledge is a commodity, but wisdom. So wisdom, uh, is what AI, uh, can separate with when you know that knowledge is a commodity. And then the third one just comes from my personal beliefs. I believe we, uh, to separate our children, they need to know how to either pitch or cold call,

• 18:08Speaker 01

  knock on doors, do something interpersonal, one-on-one, face-to-face. Uh, I, I think, you know, as much as we're in shortage of engineers, there's going to be a huge shortage of people that know how to sell, uh, and to stimulate interest. And those are the three areas that I, uh, suggest, as I say, uh, to my children. And I'm happy to say, uh, they love all three, um, all four of them, and they do real well at it. And they're already starting to see the success, uh, in differentiators in the marketplace today, especially the ones that have graduated college already, the three, three out of four.

• 18:48Speaker 00

  It's awesome, man. Well, what would you say is the hardest part of your father, fatherly journey that you, if you could go back in time to do over, what would it be?

• 18:58Speaker 01

  Non-negotiable time, you know, I teach people about 90% of my success comes from non-negotiable time. Non-negotiable time says, no matter what happens today, I'm assigning a minimum amount of time to these things. And if I should have to make an exception, I'm doubling down tomorrow as a super priority of this non-negotiable that I missed yesterday. So I never miss twice. I'm not doubling down on losses. Dave Meltzer has no losing streaks when it comes to just, I have losses, but I don't have losing streaks. And so for me, I had no non-negotiables. So I tried to have something

• 19:39Speaker 01

  that's impossible to have, which is balance. Today I have harmony with the assignment of time. So I spend a minimum amount of time every day, no matter what the circumstances are, on my sleep, on my health, on my family, on my finance, on my faith, on the study of time and the study of relativity or meaning of that time. And that equals about 12 hours of my day. The majority of it is sleep, yes. But nonetheless, 90% of my success. And if somebody would have instilled in me the idea of non-negotiable behavior, assigning time every day, you know, two minutes a day is where two hours on a Saturday. And some dad advice, if you don't believe me, you know, check out your kid who's taking Spanish.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  If you can get a kid to study 15 minutes a day of Spanish, every day, seven days a week, I guarantee they'll get an A. But most kids are like me. They study 15 hours before every test and they get a B. So for me, I started to spend a minimum amount of time every day with my kids, with my wife, with those people that were relative. But before I did that, I put myself first, sleep and health. And I can't tell you, you know, I almost made a huge mistake on my recovery by putting everyone else first because I felt so guilty about the poor behaviors that were interfering with my success of losing

• 21:06Speaker 01

  over a hundred million dollars and going bankrupt. I felt so guilty, I was taking care of everyone else until my wife said, Look, you've made it back. You've got to stop. If you don't take care of yourself and start serving from your saucer, you know, then you are not going to be able to take care of anyone. This is not going to end well, even though you have good intentions in what you're doing today, you need to prioritize self.

• 21:37Speaker 00

  That's gold. How, I'd love to talk about the word forgiveness. And how have you, how have you either forgive, I mean, to talk about what forgiveness means to you as a dad?

• 21:50Speaker 01

  So I was a huge gratitude guy my whole life, right? I teach people to say thank you before they go to bed and when they wake up and guarantee them it'll change their life if they can create behaviors consistently in that manner. But I never understood the power of forgiveness. You know, gratitude will give you perspective. It'll help you find the light, the love and the lessons in any circumstance, event, relationship, anything that may happen. But forgiveness, forgiveness and empathy, it brings ease. So it allows you to identify the dis-ease. See, it is the tool that I use to categorize is what I'm doing, saying, thinking, feeling and believing behaving in alignment with

• 22:32Speaker 01

  my divine direction? Is this devotional behavior? Or is it interfering with it? And you see, if we don't have a sense of forgiveness, you know, so many people seek revenge, especially today, they seek separation. And I tell them all the time, it's a cliche, but you know, if you think revenge is going to work for you, it is absolutely like taking poison and thinking the other person is going to get sick. You know, that's what revenge is. It's taking poison and thinking the other person is going to get sick. Forgiveness is as powerful, it's coordinated and reconciled with gratitude. It is your higher self that allows you to forgive yourself and give that forgiveness to others.

• 23:16Speaker 00

  That's powerful. It's, I read, I read a book, I think it was by Richard Case called Forgiveness, which is forgiveness takes one reconciliation takes two. And it, I mean, it's one of those things in life that, you know, I'm ripe at the age of 50. And I think about my 30s, I went through some, some times where I'd like really forgive and someone was making me so mad. I'm like, but it's not that big. I mean, I was harboring it all and it was making me. So these are like stories I like to share with my, my kids with, as they're getting older is like, you can forgive, doesn't mean you have to be best friends, everybody, but like surround yourself with people that bring joy to your life, make you better, call you out when you need to be called out. And exactly, I want to talk about that because you got this new book out called, Don't Do Business With

• 23:59Speaker 00

  With Dicks, which I think is fantastic. I think being nice is never going to go out of style.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do think you need to recognize the difference between being nice and being kind. You know, a lot of times people are nice, but not kind to themselves or kind to others, because they feel as if they need to please other people or diminish their capacity to make other people feel better. A variety of different things that happen with the need to prove ourselves or defend ourselves or to control circumstances. So I think, you know, the idea of energy and being aware of, you know, what we're surrounding ourselves. Are we surrounding ourselves with things that are interfering with our success, our divine direction, as I call it? Or are we surrounding ourselves with the

• 24:46Speaker 01

  right energies, the right people, places, things, events and circumstances that are assisting us to turn the discipline into devotion? See, discipline, I see so many people, they're disciplined at working and they're so disciplined, they forget to make money. They're disciplined at working, they forget to spend time with their family. They're so disciplined working, they don't spend any time on their health. See, devotional people utilize that discipline with the correct behaviors aligned with their divine direction. So they're disciplined in a devotional way to take care of their sleep and their health and their family and their faith and their finance. And they study time to be productive, accessible and gracious. They study the meaning of time, knowing that the meaning that they

• 25:28Speaker 01

  give the failures, mistakes, setbacks, defining moments of their life, the historical relevance is even, the meaning they give it will determine their self-image. And I will continually tell my children one thing, I will guarantee you, you will never overachieve your own self-image. So if you want to work on something, then give the meaning of those mistakes, something that builds your self-image, not destroys it.

• 25:54Speaker 00

  Love it. As we get ready to wrap up, Dave, I want to make sure that we make it easy for people to find you. What's, what's the easiest way people can learn about you? And I can make sure that we send them your way.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  I really appreciate that. Cause I want to offer your entire community, I will pay for my book, I will sign my book, I will pay for shipping of my book. I am on a mission of empowering over a billion people. I'd love to share with everyone in your community, my book as a starting point to guide them as a great father and a great human being to empower others, to empower others, to be happy. So just email me. That's the easiest way directly. It's [email protected]. David means beloved, @D is my first initial, Meltzer means servant. Let me be your beloved servant, [email protected]. I will be happy

• 26:51Speaker 01

  to send you my book, sign it, pay for shipping and the book itself.

• 26:56Speaker 00

  Wow. That's awesome, man. Super kind. We'll make sure that we will put that in the show and let's everybody take advantage of that gold and the wisdom that he's gonna, he's gonna offer you. If you were to summarize everything we've talked about and call it two or three actionable themes that dads can take from our conversation to apply to their own life, become that ultimate quarterback or leader of their household, Dave, tell me what comes to mind.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  One, know your non-negotiables and have them prioritize self. Two, know that your children are watching you, not listening to you. And three, live with humility, vulnerability and curiosity so that you can empower your children to be successful in their divine direction. And remember, all you really need from your children is for them to be healthy, happy, love and appreciate you, regardless of what they're focused in on.

• 27:56Speaker 00

  So good. I love that you dropped my HVC into your, into your, and wise words. I appreciate you saying that. Okay, we're gonna do, we got two minutes left and I'll let you go. If there was to, this is called, I call it the lightning round. This is where I show you the negative hits and taking too many hits in college, not bong hits, but football hits. My job is to get you to giggle. Your job is to answer them as quickly as you can. Tell me your favorite moment as an Occidental football player.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Winning, going to the national playoffs and going to the quarterfinals and losing 77 nothing. But it was an amazing experience.

• 28:35Speaker 00

  What would be the one genre of music that would surprise people you listen to?

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Reggae.

• 28:40Speaker 00

  Oh, I love that. Favorite comedy movie?

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Anything by I'm Sandler.

• 28:46Speaker 00

  Okay. And then tell me two words that would, tell me that, two words that would describe your wife.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Wow. Beautiful, intelligent.

• 28:58Speaker 00

  Lightning round's complete. We're out of here with a minute to go, man. I'm so grateful for you. I'm so grateful for your time. I'll make sure that we get this book, Don't Do Business With Dicks, into people's hands. It's a book you gotta check out and make sure all of David's work is going to be easy to find, but appreciate you spending time with me today.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  Thank you. Please come on my podcast as well. We'd love to have you and learn more about all the wisdom that you can share. Thank you, everybody. [email protected].