Welcome to the Present Fathers podcast.
This is the show that focuses on climbing the mountain of fatherhood
together.
We believe that dads matter.
That's why this show is for you.
So gear up, dads. Get ready.
It's time to start climbing.
Welcome to the Present Fathers podcast.
Our guest tonight is Barton Ramsay.
Barton is a close friend of the twins and backstage
we just remind ourselves that we have actually met before also.
And Barton is a father of three.
He's a proud husband, is the owner of the Southern Oak Kennels, successful
dog trainer, former rock band member and an associate youth pastor.
Did I miss anything there?
Barton Yeah, we have a tech company.
Tech company.
All right.
We own a dog training company that teaches people how to train their own dogs.
It's an online learning platform, so that's the only thing you miss that
super cool. All right. Well, sorry I missed that one.
That's that sounds awesome.
So, Barton,
why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your family and kind of
just let the audience get to know you a little bit?
Yeah, for sure.
I grew up in Tupelo, Mississippi, along with the twins,
graduated from high school here
and played metal and in a
I hate to call it a Christian metal band, but it was a
it was a bunch of metal heads that believed in Jesus, right?
So that was. The love it.
For us.
And we wrote songs that I mean, the Old Testament
is full of a bunch of super metal stuff.
So yeah.
We wrote songs about that.
And toward around the world and didn't eat meat, you know, regrettably,
and did the whole trendy like Christian straight edge metal thing.
And then like 2006, I had not gone to college yet.
And my dad,
my dad was the photographer around here.
So like the twins and all their brother, like everyone's school pictures around
here was taken by my dad, my granddad.
So everyone knew my family and he was like,
he would always say, Hey, you know,
whenever you decide to go to college, I'll pay for it like I want.
Even education.
I had no idea what I wanted to do.
And finally those conversations changed to like, Hey,
if you want me to pay for your college, you should probably go.
And I was like, Dang, I'm going to miss this boat.
So my uncle lived in Dallas and worked at a church
that had like a seminary attached to it as well, college.
And I called him and he had just been through a pretty gnarly divorce.
He was my hero. I'm sure we'll get to talking about him.
He was kind of my mentor spiritually
and I said, Hey, can I come live with you and like, go to that school?
And so I moved out to Dallas, went to an undergrad seminary.
So I kind of skipped the whole like, go to college and then seminary, like
I did the biblical studies theology degree right off the bat,
met my wife there in
Dallas, got married really young, 21 and 19.
That was in 2008.
We just had our 50th anniversary and congratulations.
Yeah, so moved on from that.
Became a student pastor
and then a family discipleship pastor started training dogs like for fun.
And then it was it was kind of one of those like,
Hey, if you're going to have this hobby, it can't cost so much.
So I started figuring out ways to make it make money,
and that led to it becoming like I sat down
and maybe 2014 or 15 with my accountant, which was my dad's account.
I just like inherited this guy.
He was like, Hey, you owe a bunch of taxes.
Do what? You know, the church takes out money.
I was like, Well, you made a lot money, a lot more money at your your other deal
than you did your church deal.
And I was like, the church deal is my full time job.
Like, I can't make more money at the other deal.
And he's like, Well, you did.
So we started exploring what it would look like to just go the entrepreneur route.
And we love the freedom that provided for our family.
Truly.
So we started the online platform around the in 20 1617.
And yeah, we, we have three kiddos that are 12, ten and eight.
Happy to chat about them. We homeschool
all on a 20 acre
property about 20 miles north of Tupelo
and they have just kind of living life herding cats.
My wife's actually speaking at a event this week
and so she's on her way home from New Orleans right now.
So I've been a single dad for the last three days, and that's it's pretty fun.
It's pretty cool.
I did that last week.
I only have one, kiddo,
but yeah, wife is out of town, so we got you right now
that you're all depleted and tired and worn out.
And now we're going to do this podcast.
So, no, I'm just super happy to talk to adults.
Yeah,
these conversations are where, you know.
All right, well, let's continue the adult conversation to do your
your therapy live right here. So
tell us a little bit about
that uncle relationship and I guess with your dad, too,
it sounds like your dad was, you know, very present, very involved in.
Yeah, for sure.
Right.
Well, so tell us a little bit about more the roles that those men played for you
and how that's prepared you to be a dad and how you taking those lessons.
But man,
I start with my dad.
He's a great guy.
I had lunch with him today.
He is truly one of my best friends.
We, we, we were a Christian home.
Like we went to church on Sundays.
We had Bibles, like, around our house, but,
I mean, maybe prayed before family meals if everyone was together.
And my dad made sure that we were like at church.
But that was really the extent of the spiritual like discipleship
that took place in our home, which I feel like is probably
90 plus percent of families around here.
You know, it's like, Hey, church is one of those deals.
You just go, everyone goes. And
discipleship didn't really take place per say, My dad loved us very well.
He was an excellent father.
The most lacking part would have been spiritual,
you know, and he's the oldest of four brothers.
The third was went to seminary, became a youth pastor,
and sort of I was a pre-teen when he was a youth minister.
And I was like, he's the coolest person on earth, you know.
And so he became a college minister in Dallas, Texas, at First Baptist, Dallas
when I was in like middle school, going in high school
and would invite me on all the mission trips, the
the camps, the ski trips and these I mean, first we had this dialysis.
There's a lot of connection there.
So the people that were like
our ski trips, the worship leaders were Shane and Shane,
So or David Crowder and the guys that were speaking
were like these dudes that
while I didn't know any different, I just thought they were just Bret's like,
These dudes are cool, but they were, you know?
And in fact, I saw Shane and changed their night at your church.
Brandon Which was super awesome
because I walked in and I was like, Dude, I hadn't seen him in 12 years,
but he, he really was my spiritual influence
and I'm thankful for that for the Lord
providing like a father who loved us.
Well, I learned a lot of things about being a dad from my dad.
I also learned a lot of what I didn't necessarily
want to do as a dad,
but my uncle was the one that spiritually was that anchor.
And I keep that pretty close at heart because I feel like,
statistically speaking, you really need that one person,
someone who is spiritually like leading and guiding and discipling you.
Or it's easy to just, you know, get at that piece.
You know, I've got freedom.
No one's making me go to church every Wednesday.
I'm out of here.
So he was really that guy for me.
And we're still super close.
He's in Dallas, Texas, and his son, I think I'm that guy for his son
and he works for me now.
He owns one of my council locations in Texas. So
it's cool to see that sort of replicated.
Yeah, generations with us.
That's beautiful to kind of see it, you know, carrying forward
know all his work is now kind of being reinvested in in his.
That's right.
That's awesome.
Well, his son his son was a football stone is his name.
And he's he was a football player in high school.
He's really good, got recruited by a lot of D1 schools and really just like it.
And he played really well.
But it was like discipline wise and girls and just
he had a tough time in college and my uncle was like,
All right, you can join the military
or you can go live with Cousin Barton and learn how to train dogs.
So he chose Cousin Barton and there was multiple times
that I was like, Hey, but military might have been a better choice.
We're super tight now and he's doing really well.
But yeah, it's, it's, it's cool to see that kind of passed down.
And I felt like a
healthy sense of obligation, you know?
I was like, Hey, I got I get to do this now.
This got my uncle invested. I lived with him for three years.
He officiated my wedding with Bethany. Really?
Like he was like our when we dated and we went home from a date.
He was there. So we talked relationships and all that with him.
And it was it was fantastic.
So I'm happy to kind of reinvest that with him.
Yeah. Yeah.
And so you're
so as you said, your uncle is the one that was kind of your spiritual anchor
and kind of the one that helped you with your your walk and your maturity
and your dad seem to be the one that just always supported
you in anything that you had an idea of.
So my question is, with your dad doing that, supporting everything,
was there anything that was working that you wanted to stick with
and then you just kind of the dogs fell into the into player?
Like how did that affect your your life trajectory, I guess is what my question
is. Yeah,
my dad's
like way of loving people is is giving gifts and he's you know, financially,
you know, for living in Mississippi, it doesn't cost a lot to live here.
But he's well off. You know, he's he's done really well career wise.
And so we didn't ever want for anything.
We had everything we needed.
And he was so supportive that sometimes it was annoying.
Sometimes it was like, hey, man, like, I'm married.
I have kids.
Like I got a family of my own, but
I really could use that ten grand, you know, to buy this deal for my business.
So, yeah, let's just not talk about it.
You know, it was like I wanted to be independent, you know?
I wanted to and I was.
I was a youth pastor, discipleship pastor.
That is not a lucrative career, you know?
I mean, that's not you're not you investing.
That's news to me. Well, yeah, you're not you're not taking
any sort of nice vacations with your family.
Not that those things are most important, but I was I was.
I wanted to spend that kind of time.
I grew up with a family where we went to Destin.
You know, we we went on ski trips. We did stuff like that.
And I was like at one point we started having kids and I realized
if I didn't find some sort of supplemental income, we're never going to do that.
My kids are not going to experience that.
The boat's a bit long, but I'm sure we'll get to that.
But just I grew up on a boat and so I wanted my kids to grow up on the water.
Unless someone invites you, has a youth
pastor here, you're not going to unless you want to fish from the bank.
So, you know, my dad would and I didn't really understand this.
I was 22, 23, 24 when I really started
getting into the Southern Ocean, his journey.
And he would constantly calling anything,
you know, and he saw the vision that I had.
And when I say he believed in it, I mean 110%,
he would have given me his last dollar just to get this going.
And so a a Bethany, that we were talking about this and
she she made some comment about how it's like, yeah, like women
borrowed money from your dad.
And I was like, yeah, in like seven years, like a long time, you know?
But those first few years of my business,
he was the bank, you know, It was like, Hey, interest free, What do you need?
He had a new study and believed in that in such a way
that it really enabled me to like
I don't know when when you're
there's a
there's a lot to be said of people who go all in and they're like,
Hey, if this doesn't work, I have nothing to fall back on.
I think that there's probably some motivation that comes from that.
For me, it was a little different.
It was like, Hey, at the end of the day, I have a dad who I know
is not going to let us, like, lose the house.
He's not.
So I can I can go all the way, all end
because I'm not really risking my kids like not eating a good meal.
But yeah, so he was supportive in that way, if that makes sense.
Yeah. Right. Or pletely
does this is, this is like what we talk about right.
This is the goal of involved
successful fatherhood is you're able to bless your kids in this way right.
So obviously the stories where someone overcomes
immense hardship and, you know, hey, this is my only shot.
If I didn't make it, I was doomed type of thing.
Those are inspiring.
And there's a lot of people have been successful that way.
But that's not the ideal or and I think a lot of those people too
would say, I hope to provide better for my kids.
Yeah.
So, yeah, it's good to hear that.
Like your story is in a lot of ways like the ideal that people
should aspire to, to rise to and pass it on to the next generation.
So thanks for sharing.
I don't think I fully understood it until I had kids and specifically til
I had Noah.
Obviously for the girls I'd do anything.
I as there was a video going around social media
the day where they were asking a bunch of moms like, Would you kill for your child?
And the mom's like, I don't know. And I was like, What?
You know, Yeah, I do anything, especially for my girls.
Right. Now.
Yeah. Yeah.
Like my son was born.
I was like, I just became a murderer. Yeah.
If I needed to be you up.
But no, for for Noah.
Like, you know, he chases his dreams, and I get that comment all the time.
I go, It's so cool that you're doing this for your kid.
Take him out the boat and all this stuff and sacrifice in this. And I'm like, Wow.
I think I learned that from my dad more importantly,
I think I fully understand it now that I'm on the other side,
I'm like, Oh yeah, I would do anything, anything at all if he had a vision.
And I said, Hey, this is just crazy, you know, if he has a vision that makes sense.
And I knew he was going to chase after it
and give every last last penny to see it succeed.
Yeah.
And he's, he's working hard and yeah, I mean values and stuff.
It's not like you're just spoiling him or something.
Not we don't enabled. Yeah.
Big difference. Yeah, for sure.
So I just I were about to go.
Yeah.
I was going to say I like that
you're jumping into the boat already, so I kind of wanted to get into that.
What do you think as a father, it's.
Why is it so important to get your kids out of the house, especially nowadays,
and get them into the outdoors?
And and what are some of the hobbies you and the kids have
together doing that? Man,
I grew up in a family that loved the great indoors.
Like we we I loved being outside and we did we grew up in Woodside Circle,
West Tupelo before it was overdeveloped there were, you know, lots of words.
We played paintball.
I was big into BMX, but like my family really spent
a lot of time inside and it wasn't like we weren't encouraged to be out much.
I wanted to be out and
that is a little bit of a like, Hey, it's going to be different for my kids.
We're going to be outside all of my kids I've taken into the woods hunting ducks
and geese with me starting at the age of seven
because I want them to learn the value of hunting.
I want them to learn the
like failure of hunting, you
know, the lessons that come with, hey, it was a bad hunt
or the excitement of, Hey, it was fantastic.
As soon as they start hunting, I teach them how to clean birds.
You know, they all love Eden Wild game.
They're obsessed with it.
So if I go on a hunting trip, their first question is not
how many you kill, it's how much meat did you bring home?
Like they want to eat it.
And then being outside the boat, My best friend growing up was a
junior pro wake boarder and we spent a lot of time on the water
and I always told my wife, who did not grow up loving the water
at all, like, Hey,
we're going to have a boat at some point when the kids are old
enough, we're going to
we're going to be on the water and she's all in now, thankfully.
But man, when we're when we're hunting
ducks and geese, which is a big part of my job
with the dogs, I breed dogs specifically for people who duck pheasant, upland hunt.
So a large part of my job in the fall is traveling
and hunting with those clients and my kids get to go along a lot.
And when we're on the boat, on the water, there's no screens,
you know, no, no one's begging for their attention.
There's no YouTube.
There's no, you know, dude, perfect screaming in my ear.
No offense to those guys.
It's straight content, but like, that's all. It's just us.
We're talking, we're spending time together, we're trying hard things.
We're moving.
So for me, it's
imperative, especially in this age where, you know,
I meet a lot of kids and talk to a lot of families,
and the amount of time spent on screens is just it's incredible.
It's sad, really.
And so for us that we want our kids to grow up a little different than that.
We want them to experience the great outdoors.
And and
look, you guys twins grew up in Ridgeway.
I don't know how long you live there, but you were there for a while.
I used to ride my bike to Ridgeway there.
I used to ride near you?
Yeah, just ride with you.
Every four miles. Right.
And then ride a BMX bike through neighborhoods across Purnell Road,
go to the country club and swim in the pool, and then right
across the golf course, get cut step by a bunch of old golfers that were mad.
And then killed.
RIDGWAY Well, I'm like five, three, four or five miles from home.
No cell phone on a bike. Got to be home by dark.
The rover
No kids do it, unfortunately, right?
Yeah.
It's just the world we live in.
It's not happening.
So I've constantly been trying to figure out, okay,
what can we do so that my kids can have similar experiences to that?
Is it like if we go to the lake and we we park in a cove somewhere
and they want to go to the beach and like hike up the trail by themselves
and everything, and me saying, Well, that's dangerous.
And I'm like, No, no, no, they got to do that.
They got to go learn to do that
because they can't ride five miles across town anymore.
Those days are gone.
So if it's on a hunt and it's like, Hey, you want to go
scout the field for us to fields over and see if there's any geese in there,
sort of thing like that.
Just figuring out ways that they can and they can live similarly to how I grew up.
In a day and age. It's very, very different.
This is important to me.
Yeah, I I've thought a lot about that too.
Or I have a only child daughter.
And yeah, it's
hard to find places where like I don't have to be fully involved
because there's just creepy people out there, like everywhere you go.
And there's just not a lot of places really, unless you're like
way out in the wilderness somewhere
where you kind of just let them roam a little bit
because there's just so many things to be vigilant about.
So it's definitely a challenge
for anyone really where they're living.
But it's I guess if you have any more suggestions, I'm
all ears because I could use a few myself, but I like the idea
of getting out in nature because it's a little bit more
kind of let them walk ahead a ways and stuff like that.
Yeah.
And they're not
they're not attached to technology or even really looking for it out there.
You know, I live,
you know, we have nearly 20 acres out here and it's off the beaten path.
And so my kids usually wake me up outside.
You know, I wake up and they're flying past on a one wheel
hold and two cats, you know, And I'm like, what is happening?
You know, six in the morning, why are you awake?
But they wake up and the first thing they do is go outside, all three of them.
I mean, my son this morning, I had a near panic attack.
I'm in my lodge right now, which is a little place
where we host clients and we host our puppy days and all that.
And my house is about 150 yards that way.
Well, this morning, Noah was nowhere to be seen, just gone now.
And my phone randomly would not turn on.
My wife's out of town.
I don't know if you ever had this happen,
but my iPhone would not come on for 2 hours.
Just I couldn't make it. Come on.
And I'm.
I'm not like a tech nerd, but I'm pretty tech savvy with an iPhone.
I was doing all the trick. I couldn't get it on.
And Noah was nowhere to be seen.
And I was like, Is this something happening?
Like, what is going on?
Anyway, he he woke up, went and let all my dogs out
over here, there's eight Labradors in the kennel.
And then his computer was in the live.
So he just came over here,
brought himself
some Eggo waffles over here, and was doing his schoolwork.
He was just on his computer doing schoolwork at 715 this morning.
And I love that man.
We got to have a little bit of land.
There's a buddy of mine, country singer Jordan Davis.
You know, he wrote that by Dirt Song, and I'm all in on that.
I love. That.
It's in a space for your kids to be able to be outside,
whether it's your space you live or just a place where you can go like
a hunting camp or something that you lease where they can just be outdoors.
Yeah, and Jordan is actually one of my favorites
because, you know, I moved to Louisiana.
But yeah.
I'll say this man, I think about North
Mississippi all the time, and I never thought I'd ever say that.
But now that I have a son,
I want to go on adventures and be outdoors because it's like you said,
honestly, like I feel like God wants us outdoors, God wants us out in nature.
And that's where we're supposed to find peace.
And we're supposed to find ourselves and and learn to, you know, survive and stuff.
So I find myself more and more want to get up there and go
hunting with my brothers and just I mean, heck, I just bought a308.
I was like, I know it's a little overkill for deer, but it's still going to be fun.
Yeah, And I wanted something I can take up to the mountains in Colorado,
some buddies and, you know, go hunting and stuff. But
man, I find myself missing that property
because I live in the heart of Lafayette and it's awesome.
It's big city meets little town.
It's nice, but at the same time, like, I don't have, you know, like you said,
it's suburbia. Yeah, I miss that.
I have to be honest. Like, I never thought.
I miss that.
You can have the white sheep, you know.
After you know, even before really the fall, you know,
Adam and Eve are are tasked with cultivating that garden.
And then after the fall, they're tasked with, you know, ruling over creation.
And the same exact task is given to
Noah when they come off the ark, you know, you need to rule over this.
And there's definitely something primal is not even the right word,
because it's it's really just a God given foundational divine.
Yeah, yeah.
Divine calling that it.
And I'm maybe there are people who live in suburbia
that find ways to like bring that out, you know?
But for me,
it's got to happen outside
somewhere and and I want my get well, my kids to experience that.
So thankfully, the Lord has blessed us with the ability to do that.
If we didn't live here, I would just
I've got a friend who what he does is instead of
we don't do Christmas gifts, we do trips and he does the same thing
for Christmas and birthday, and they do national parks.
So constantly they're trying
to national parks and hiking and figuring out ways to keep.
You don't have to you know, if you're if you're listening and you're like,
I can't buy 20 acres where I live, no worries.
You know, there's other ways to get your kids outside, that's for sure.
Yeah.
I mean, if you're listening from the U.S., almost every state
has some pretty amazing terrain somewhere.
Yeah, maybe a little bit of a drive, but I've crisscrossed
most of the U.S., and every state has kind of its own unique,
you know, whether it's desert or forest or mountain.
There's there's some pretty impressive places in the U.S. So,
you know, just getting out there and especially for your younger kids,
like the first time they see something like that,
you know,
it's one thing to see it in a book or on the Internet, but to be there in person
and to witness it for yourself, it's just you can't top that.
So it's definitely a a great suggestion to get your kids outdoors.
Barton I wanted to get back to a little bit, you know,
taking the leap, getting your, you know, dog
training and kennel business going and
one of the lessons through the journey.
But then also now in the back end, like what that whole process has helped
you take into fatherhood for it and to apply. Yeah
you know, I was working for
the church in Tupelo and it was it was really an awesome job.
I loved working there and some of the things
that I learned there and that I was tasked with doing.
I didn't plan it this way, but they were things that became
like the crux of why our business was successful.
The biggest one would be community development.
So I was the family discipleship pastor, but my job really was like bringing people
together for youth events, for life group, you know, getting people in life group.
And I, I did feel my two gifting
when I worked there were teaching and then, and then building community.
And so when I started at Southern Oak Kennels, I knew how to train dogs.
Well, have there are people out there are way better than me.
There are people way worse than me. But I knew how to get the work done.
That's really like, can you do it or not? You know, it is what it is.
And then I was blessed with, you know, my dad backing me financially
and the ability to bring over some really nice dogs from the UK
that that were the type of dogs I wanted to breed.
And that's really a thing you, you learn how to produce nice dogs.
But what really took our business
to the next level quickly, We were 11 years old right now
and in one of, if not the largest British lab kennels
in the USA and have been very successful in that amount of time.
And it's the thing that I attribute that to is the community that we've built.
And that was really from inadvertently taking what I was doing at church
and just like applying it
to what I was doing with business and that was taking people and
finding people that had the same passion and figuring out ways
to bring them together, both social media wise and in person.
And so I loved bringing
that over into what we do as a family.
And that's
it's, it's one of my favorite things.
And my wife is she's a she's any grandma type for
she's not antisocial by any means.
She's just way more introverted and for me,
all that means is being in a social setting drains her.
I'm extroverted.
Being a social setting charges me.
So if she's out of town, I'm never alone.
I'm like, No, someone's coming over, You know, if I'm out of town, she's like,
I'm by myself drinking coffee, reading a book.
This is the best day.
I'm like, That's not the worst day.
So as a family we've had,
I've had to work hard to balance that well with her.
But I love creating community.
So wakeboarding is a good example.
My my son loves to wakeboard.
I just got back from Houston, Texas, with four other dads,
a guy who's a former
pastor who leads a wakeboard ministry called Wake.
Well, we all stayed at a house in Texas.
It's the second year we've done this trip.
All the dads are believers.
We all care about the cycling.
Our kids, all the kids are national competitors at wakeboarding.
And we end the season by going to this really fun grassroots tournament
and then spending three days at a buddy's house, wakeboarding in his backyard
and talking about Jesus.
And the whole deal is just that.
It's community.
It's like we text all year long.
It's called the Red Dead Weight Club.
And it's it's it's like
I don't know that I thrive in that environment.
I want there to be community around some sort of passion.
And when you can infuse that with Christ, it's awesome.
And with kids, it's especially with us.
We homeschool so our kids run around like they're classmates all day.
So I really have to take like, hey, they have to have some community.
What is that?
It's my girls.
It's horseback for all of our family.
It's jujitsu and then wake like lake life
and then just the people around us that live in this area, church
building, that community, I would say, is the one skill
that I learned through through seminary and church.
I applied to my business and then now inadvertently in the blind to our family.
And I think it's probably one of the most important things that we do.
That's a great.
Yeah.
Can you you kind of made me feel like
that gave me the chills a little because what you applied is what
we're trying to apply to fatherhood and just this community we're trying to build.
So and it gives me hope to know that, you know, others have seen success
applying the same thing. So it's nice to know.
Sorry, Jordan.
Oh, no, I know.
I'll say one more thing about that.
Like I travel all over the country and duck out with a lot of people
and some of them no one ever heard of hear of ever.
Some of them are like super well-known people in the U.S. And
and then I go to Wakeboard tournaments all over the country.
And there are a lot of times that you could go to duck
camp, do your camp weight board, you know, competition.
And like from a spiritual standpoint,
you leave and you're like, I need to take a bath.
Like I'm I'm dirty.
You know, this is this is not not the experience I needed, spiritually speaking.
And I that challenged me a lot
because there were trips that I was like, I can't take my son on this one.
And and then I was like, well, and actually, my wife,
who's the discerning one, was like, Well, why are you going?
You know, it's like, dang, you know, I mean, when you got to ask those questions.
But, you know, for me, your mama got you.
She's I trust her.
She's the wise one.
But being able to go on these trips and orchestrate them in such a way
that you leave and you're like, All right, we accomplish like the main goal.
We wake boarded, we shot ducks, we whatever that is, whatever your thing is.
But we also left and we loved Jesus more.
And I was challenged to be a better dad or a better husband.
My kid either was influenced by
or was able to influence some other kids for Christ.
You know, that to me is like if you're trying to figure out
where to go with your kids and their hobbies, that to me is the ultimate,
even if it's tournament baseball, you know,
like how you got a group of dads that love Jesus, You know, what a team,
you know, figure out like, all right, win or lose this tournament,
how can we travel here and come home next week and look more like Jesus?
How can we do that?
And it takes some work.
But man it's it's that's that's been
that's like the passion I have right now for what we do with our kids.
It's really cool. It's a great example.
We had a previous guest, Dave Powers, talked a great deal about
he homeschools his kids to talked about
how he's really intentional about drawing other men in specifically for his boys,
for like rites of passage, and to also make sure
that they have like a community of other men around them and stuff.
And so it sounds like you're you're building a very similar structure
for your kids to have different
you know, because yes, of course, you as the parents are the number one.
You know, you're the primary educators both,
you know, academically, spiritually, everything.
Right.
But you don't want to just rely on your own understanding.
There's obviously value. Like for you, your uncle was a great source of
growth for you.
So that's cool to see that you are building these communities
for each of your children.
And it's a great example that we can kind of try and emulate now.
But the gears are turned in my head too.
I'm like, Okay, how do I replicate something like that with my daughter?
Is it's just instantly the efficacy of it is very obvious, right?
Long, long term that's going to pay off.
So, so much more than we could probably imagine.
Yeah, from the onset. So thank you for sharing that.
So absolutely.
Yeah.
So I guess we'll come back to a question I'm going to have
about like trips and the stuff you did with no and your kids.
But is there like a specific point in your life or something
that really just kind of brought you to Christ by completely like that?
Aha moment, you know? Yeah, really. Two
At the age of seven,
I heard the gospel preach at my church.
I grew up at Calvary Baptist Church in Tupelo,
and I was seven,
I was young, but for the first time I felt like rather
I could have told you all the answers to the gospel questions.
This is like a talk.
I grew up in the Bible Belt and like I knew those answers.
But for the first time I felt like it was preached to me.
I was like, Oh, shoot, Like.
And I remember there were some there were some specific sins
that that came to my mind, and I was like, Oh, I need forgiveness
for this. And
and this guy told me how I can get that.
And so at so maybe at eight, I think after my birthday
I was baptized here and I, I believe for the gospel.
And I really believe at that moment I was saved.
And then there's this weird thing
that happens in the South where people are like, born again, again.
You know, it's like they they get old enough
to, like, really know and they're like, oh, now I'm really getting saved.
I had that experience, but I knew I was saved.
I was just like, oh, like I'm walking into a deeper
level of faith here.
And that was really in high school with my uncle
hearing, hearing him preach, hearing
other people around him, preach.
My mentor spiritually passed him with a guy that had a ministry with him.
And, you know, he's a very successful pastor nowadays. And,
you know, hearing those guys really preach the truth,
I was like, hey, I'm this is this is deeper than what I thought it was.
The gospel is more than just, you know, believe in Jesus and you'll be saved
and he'll forgive all the stuff you do and just go live your life.
And so as I matured and I was really
playing music at that point, so it became important.
And that's really what led me to think, All right, whatever
I do after this, I want it to be somehow connected to this gospel
that has impacted me. So that was like 17.
And and when I went to
I'll add a third layer to that, when I went to Criswell,
I really plugged in with that pastor I mentioned earlier
my uncle, a couple professors at school, and
I took like a biblical literacy test when I got there and I would have told you
before I took that, like I'm about to sustain
part of that.
So I just always have a lot of confidence
in my ability to get through a standardized test.
And the other part is like, I grew up here, I thought I knew the Bible.
I made like a 34 out of 100.
I mean, just like total failure.
It was a. Lot big book.
I was like, Oh, I knew this, you know, I knew the Sunday school stories,
you know, in that first year at school, when my eyes were open to
the depths of for me it was reform theology.
I was just blown away at that point.
I was like, okay, I'm going to have to really, really plug in deeper here
because this is this is either immensely important
or not important at all that can be somewhere in the middle.
So that was the those three
sort of stepping stone saved at eight,
like committed to some type of pursuit
of ministry at 17 and then like
drug into the depths of theology at college.
Right before I met my wife,
you know, at 1920.
It's so great that you plugged in like,
that's your kind of earth, your third community, right?
I mean, than the wakeboarding and the the hunting church.
I mean, so dad's if you're looking for a brotherhood
where you have men
that you can trust that will be holding you accountable in a loving way,
you know, the church is a small group, specifically your discipleship group
mean that's such a great place to plug in.
And that's where Summer and I are pouring in for our kids because,
you know, they do go to public school
or chickpeas and you know, they get some great community there.
But church is where we really want them to have that foundational community
because they're seeing other kids loving Jesus and it's encouraging them.
Okay, I see him super happy, right?
I want more of that. Right.
And so that's where we really try to plug in for community. But
yeah, churches is probably one of the best places
that we've experienced community in Tupelo.
So I'm glad that you brought that out.
That was that was great.
Yeah, it is.
And we went through you know, we were not at the church
where I worked for ten years and went for 12 years anymore and loved
the people there. That was a very tough transition.
I'm a creature of habit and super brand loyal.
So any type of change like that is very difficult for me.
Yeah, that's not to make it trivial, but
we are a great church now.
We're the orchard and
some of our best friends are there.
My wife leads worship there, the worship team.
We're all we're all buddies with them and
my kids.
Yeah, well, that. He's a saint.
He's the guy I was mentioning.
He takes his kids all the parks, and that's what they do.
The travel. Guys.
And I love Will.
And he and his brother Logan.
So this week.
Logan goes to church with I see him.
There is a great spot and for my kids, like my son doesn't
have a class so like his
to what you said Brandon his Sunday morning class,
that's his buddies, you know, that's the group of guys he knows.
And then my, my daughter's in the youth group, which is mind
blowing to me because I was a youth minister, you know, for 12 years.
So she should not be in the youth group yet. But she is.
And that's like her deal with her community, you know, and her
her best friend
that she hangs out with through the week is in our small group at youth group.
So, yeah, for sure.
I mean if you're if you're out there for a place to start
this community journey with like minded, like faith individuals
that make that a priority for, for what you want to do with church, I mean,
obviously
you want to go somewhere where you can stomach the music.
Hopefully you like it.
You know, you want to go somewhere with somebody who's preaching through the word.
For me, that's super important.
But I mean, we undervalue community, you know, It's like, Hey, can I come here
and and build some relationships and some friendships that influence me,
you know, Monday through Saturday.
Yeah.
I feel like super, super important to what you said, Brianna.
The fellowship is super powerful
both for you as an individual, you know,
man or woman, and then for your marriage and then for your kids.
You know, there's,
like you said, connecting
especially for men.
You know, for me, just in my own marriage, there were points where
because I had a group of
other Christian men and some of whom were much older than me,
like set in their seventies, right as part of our small group,
were able to really talk me through
either wrong, think or kind of just, you know, be a vessel
for God to kind of like shake me a little bit like, Hey, you're wrong.
You know?
And without that, I mean,
I don't think we would have made it, you know,
either.
Either my wife needed it, too, right?
And so to discount that aspect of what you get through
being plugged into a church is a it's dangerous, really.
So I wanted to kind of go a little bit deeper on marriage.
You know, you got married very early.
I certainly don't think I would have managed that very well at 2119.
So I would assume that you had a few struggles along the way.
You know, what are some lessons learned through that and
how early did you guys start having kids?
How many years are you married before?
I mean, lessons learned from my wife.
She would fully agree.
Lesson learned from getting married at 21 or 19 is don't do that.
I tell people all the time like I.
I would marry her again tomorrow on my doorstep. But
ten of ten do not recommend getting married. That
we were very young and that's a Bible college kind of thing.
You know,
she'd already had one guy
propose before I met her, and it was her first semester at school.
So it was I met my wife and we started dating
kind of casually just, Hey, I like you.
You know, I went to Bible college, dude, like, if a pretty girl shows up, it's like
if a girl shows up, that's, like, one for every seven or eight dudes.
I think if a pretty one, like, a good looking girl shows up, that's that's a
that's a unicorn.
So I was like, All right, I've got to figure this this whole thing out. And
I had not met her
family yet, and I wrecked my sport bike with her on the back of it.
The twins from the race I used to race Moto GP Sport, but.
I remember hearing about the.
So that's how I met her.
Look, here's your daughter and what's left of her arm, you know, not.
Not actually a lot of road rash.
And so did I had a bunch of road rash.
It was a bad one.
And you know, that was a big watershed moment for me.
I wrecked this motorcycle
with her on the back of it and hold onto her for a second.
I had my my right arm on the pavement of I.
635 and that was the probably 200 sport bikes was on bike night.
I was in a group called Texas or Dallas Stunt Riders or Stupid,
and they were Someone has it on film.
They're filming us. I've never seen it.
And as soon as I got my arm started to get really hot, I let her go
and I remember in that moment I was like, I felt her flip.
And then I flipped and we were we were going like 60 miles an hour.
And I was like, I may have just killed this girl, You know?
I really like her.
It was this like, gut punch.
Like, how could you be so childish?
Like, it was an immediate grow up moment?
Oh, if you've had any of those.
But it was like went from here to up here really fast and
she was fine. We were both all right.
And I met her family and we, we met in July, sort of dating.
That happened in August.
We got engaged on New Year's Eve that same year and got married in July.
So we had our one year dating anniversary as a married couple. Wow.
Very quick.
What did her dad say to? You? Oh,
you know.
I don't think I'd be too happy of my daughter for some.
I mean, now he's he's he's a great guy.
He's a missionary in Kenya,
and he's he was a worship pastor in Texas at that point in time.
And he's a I, I learn a lot from him and he helps temper me a good bit.
He is significantly more passive than I am because I would have killed me.
You know, I'm I'm Enneagram eight so and it would have been, hey.
We're the same.
Okay.
Get my rifles right there.
Thankfully, he was gracious, you know, and I did.
I drove her home and I was like, Hey, I did this, you know, I'm really sorry.
Nice to meet you guys. I really like your daughter.
Sorry about this whole deal.
I may end
up and handled it like I should have, but it was not super fun.
But we fell in love very quickly.
We had the same faith.
Same faith backgrounds
and personality wise were very different enough that where we.
We got along well.
I can't be around like I could have married someone who was in India.
Graham eight or any anything that any grandmother even out there, I don't think.
But somebody that challenged me would have been a problem.
Little did I know how much she would challenge me later on because she's
I mean,
she's so sanctifying in my life.
I mean that in the positive way.
Like I'm I'm such a better human being because of my wife.
But we got married and an age where she never experienced, like,
any type of like college, going out, having fun, being your own person.
She went from living with her parents to living with a roommate and dating me. And
it, you know.
Yes, several years.
And we had a really rough patch.
I don't even know how many years.
And that would have been, I guess, like eight, nine, ten years
in where we we barely made it out.
Still married.
I mean, was it was rough for years and we had young kids.
It's a lot to go into.
We had a failed adoption, which is one of the worst experiences of my entire life.
I mean, three years of just really like absolute darkness
while trying to start a business, having other kids
that are healthy and happy and you're trying to enjoy being a parent.
And the Lord brought us through all that and was incredibly gracious to us.
And here we are happily married 15 years and and truly, like at a point
where, like, we really love being married, like, we're it's fun.
We had kids that
Naomi was born in 2010.
We got married at eight.
So two and a half years into our marriage, we had our first child.
We had him two years apart after that, and then we had.
We became a dad.
So I was 20.
23. 23, 23 and a half.
I thought so, yeah, Young babe,
which is great because I thought that was like I was like, Oh, it's normal now.
Like people were like, Yeah, I'm getting married. I'm like, How old are you?
Like 21.
I'm like, Dude, do not do please hold the phone.
But it was.
I think, yeah, I mean, I think a lot of this
is kind of like our way of life is different. Sure. Yeah,
I know.
Like my grandparents, they were like one of nine kids,
you know, both sides of the family.
And I think just people to start started earlier, you could afford to.
I would argue that that's a that's a topic for another episode.
I think if the Lord had left me on my own
through the rest of my toes, I don't know that I would have made it.
Yeah, Yeah, I'm being honest with that.
Yeah, I think my wife and she would interpret
that as like, Oh, I'm the boring one and you don't have as much fun.
It's not that.
It's just I was incredibly reckless.
Yeah.
You know, And she was really, like, the thing that grounded me.
So I think it was a little bit of the Lords intervening, like,
Hey, you're not going to make it
through your twenties if you don't have something that
something that keeps you live in anger.
It's not girl that used to be alone. Here's one
that was the feel that way.
When she's out of town, I'm like, This is the worst thing for me.
Like I am the worst version of me.
When she leaves, I'm like, I need you to just be like,
It's everything is better.
She's she was supposed to be gone until tomorrow,
and they're driving home tonight.
So I was like, Thank goodness, you know, I came in like, Go to sleep.
I'm just like the little the world's not right if she's not at the house.
Yeah.
And I think I think it was a blessing, like for Summer and me.
We met, we were 15 and 16, so, you know, going on 23 years,
it's like I look back, it's like, man,
the end of my high school days and then my college.
Years would have been a.
Disaster for my life if I didn't have summer in it.
So I feel. I mean, mine were.
Yeah, that was it.
Yeah.
Now, with that said, were you guys equally yoked
as far as your walk and or did she.
Know for sure I was going into ministry and this,
this is a kind of I don't know how much we want
to get into this, but it's a good subject.
It's just I don't know how much we want to get like marital counseling, but
yeah, I was going into ministry.
Her dad, uncle, Uncle,
Granddad were pastors.
So her identity was I'm I'm a I'm
a female in the Baptist world, living under a man
who is the head of the house, who is a Baptist minister.
That was the world she grew up in.
So obviously,
you know,
dating the guy that had tattoos and rode a motorcycle was her like rebellion.
But I was going to be a minister.
I was in seminary, you know, like it was like I didn't go she didn't go too far.
She went like two blocks over.
You know, she didn't go that way. So
I was in
ministry and all was well, we moved to Mississippi.
She's she's from Texas.
She did not want to come here.
But once we had kids here, she she loved it truly.
To what you said, Justin, I mean,
I wanted to leave this place and put it in rearview mirror and never come back.
And then now I'm like,
I can't think of a better place to raise kids than, like, where I am.
So it's it's, there's, there's, you know, it's give and take.
But I love Dallas, Texas. I love the big city.
We move back here.
I'm working in the church and then I start doing this this new business.
And then fast forward, all of a sudden, she's the wife of an entrepreneur
who's traveling around the country three months out of the year, hunting
and is no longer working in a church.
Well, that's like a full blown identity crisis
for a girl whose whole life has been.
I live under the roof and around
surrounded by men who are working for the church.
There's there's a whole.
But then
that led to the unraveling of my whole life.
I've had to look the part of a minister's wife
or a minister's daughter or a minister's granddaughter,
because there's a lot that come and that's a lot.
And we try so hard.
I'll tell you,
I'll give you a it's going to make me emotional,
but I'll I'll share with you how this is impacting our life. So
my youngest is like wild.
She's ADHD. She's the definition of it.
She's awesome.
But because of her ADHD,
she forget stuff like tonight she forgot to take her belt to jujitsu.
I can't really even get matter.
She literally got it out
and put it in the driveway and just left at the driveway like that.
But her brain works that way.
We pulled that church a few months ago
and she forgot her shoes.
So we're walking in church and she's got no shoes.
And I am livid.
Bethany is like
pretty much mortified.
You know, as a mom, my kid showed up here with our church, no shoes.
What are people think of us and.
Yeah, yeah.
And we know the answer to that like is no one's going to care.
But like, in that moment, it's like I'm so imprinted with, like,
she grew up in, like, Hey, put a smile on girls.
We're going to church.
She has two sisters. She's the middle.
So put a smile on girls. We're going to church.
You know, if you
if you look there, if anything's
wrong with you, it's going to reflect on your dad who works here.
Right.
And thankfully, we've had all these great
with her parents about this, too, which is great.
I grew up with a dad who works for the school system, and
if I got in trouble in high school, maybe that impacts my dad's job, you know,
like, there's a lot of weird pressure there.
And we're walking to church and I'm just like, so mad.
I'm like, getting Miriam's boo hoo.
And because she's embarrassed that she has to go to church without shoes on.
And I'm like, Oh, you're going, you know, you're going in there.
And Bethany's just like, Can we please go home?
You know, dude, I turn around my oldest daughter, who's 12,
is walking in with my youngest daughter, and my oldest daughter
doesn't have her shoes on.
And I was like, What are you doing?
And she's like,
I just thought Marieme would feel more comfortable if I didn't wear my shoes.
And I was like, Dang, man,
I failed, you know?
Yeah, I succeeded.
If I raised that way. Right?
But man, like, I'm so worried about this stupid stuff, that doesn't matter.
And my oldest daughter is, like, all I care about that.
Marieme wants to go into church.
Like, if I don't have to, if I can just go barefoot, then who cares?
And man, that was that was super impactful for me in the moment
and really is like this microcosm.
My wife and I realize I'm like, shoot,
with the way the pressures that came from growing up, the way we did
and from our first several years of marriage really weigh on us even still.
And sometimes you have this massive impact.
And I'm glad you brought that up because that's you know,
that's kind of my personal testimony is like really unpacking
your past,
especially like childhood and stuff and how that really weighs
on your marriage and how you show up as a parent. And,
you know, even if you're raised pretty well, I had a pretty good upbringing.
There's still some things that were probably not great.
And if you never identify that it's not to play
victim, it's not to be like, Oh, I'm because my parents are horrible.
I get to be horrible myself.
It's you have to like figure out what went wrong so that you can not repeat it
or you can identify Oh okay.
This is why I have a short temper or something, right?
Whatever the thing is for sure.
Yeah.
I mean that mindfulness and maybe it's therapy, maybe it's,
you know, counseling or whatever,
doing some of that work to
dig into that is I think a lot of people don't do that.
And that's
where they run into a lot of problems because you're always kind of reacting.
We could get way into this,
but your body actually trains itself as a physical response.
So any any stimulus
anywhere in the world that is similar to childhood stuff,
your body takes over and you're not even thinking anymore.
You're reacting like a a traumatic response almost.
And if you don't do any of that work, you can't untrained that response.
And so you'll start snapping at people or whatever it is that how you lash out.
So it's very serious.
And I think a lot of people don't understand
that You never peel the onion back a little bit.
No way to undo that. So, yeah.
So you're you said your immigrant a obviously,
you know, fairly fairly type-A, some type of leader.
You want to be doing this?
Yeah.
I listen to a couple of other podcasts.
You wouldn't have done what you did in the military.
All that, right? Was it?
And I hate to be like flip in the script and ask you questions, but was it
was it difficult for you to accept the reality
that you needed to have some counseling and some help
to peel the layers of that onion back in order for you to become better?
Did you have like this sense of like, I can make myself better or
I don't need that?
So I was never like against counseling.
I had actually done it since I was like a teenager,
you know, like therapists and stuff.
But, um,
more intensive, like kind of group therapy things that I got.
You know, you go for like a week at a time.
I've been to several different of those things,
um, where, where I had those harder moments where I had to really confront,
Oh, I am this type of person or I have done these things, you know, and
tended to not downplay them and to fully own it.
Like, okay, I, you know, that's some of the darkness that I've done.
Right.
And I can't undo that. So
going forward, I have to be better, that type of thing.
So those were the hard moments because it's like
I didn't want to admit to myself that
I wasn't as good as I thought I was.
Right.
And it really, you know, we a lot of people talk about is is wearing the masks.
That was me my whole life, you know, and the oldest and put on it
put on the brave face and you know, achieve and all that stuff.
And, um,
it gets heavy.
It's really heavy.
And, and internally too, you're like, if they only knew, right.
That's, that's the voice in your head.
And so when you finally put all that down
and you finally let off all this armor that you didn't need to wear,
you can breathe again, You know, like I just did it right now,
just thinking about it.
And, um,
so it's very freeing and liberating.
But, uh, yeah, I'm really in long winded here,
but it's if you don't do that work and you don't confront yourself,
especially if you're a type eight or similar to
like you and me, you're never going to recover.
You're never going to heal. You're just going to drive people away from you.
And I'm really glad that I had people in my life from multiple angles
kind of step in and push me the directions I needed to get pushed
to be where I am today.
Obviously, I want to keep growing and improving, but
if I look back over the past ten years, I mean just
the amount of growth is insane.
Yeah. Yeah.
I feel that it was tough for me.
I was I'm first born
always 4.0.
Just didn't really take a wrong step.
If I did, it was funny enough that people just laughed about it, you know?
It was like, Oh, well, you made a mistake, but you were funny, you know, like it.
And getting to a low where I was like, I need help.
And then someone saying like, well, I think your
the way you were raised and brought up by the impact,
this is like, well, nothing's wrong with the way I was raised.
We talk about and finally and then my wife,
after we had kids, actually got a master's degree
and Christian counseling and then pursued further education and trauma counseling.
So she is a counselor and she
she counsels mostly women who have been victims of sexual abuse.
So she's she's the the definitely the wise one.
And she's the yeah, she's she's definitely the
get it get, you know, get deep in there and get it all out.
And I'm just like, I don't really want anyone down in there.
I don't want you, I don't want you, I don't want to talk about that.
And so it took me years to be like, okay, with working on myself for sure
and allowing somebody else to like, truly here, hey, this is how this impacted me.
And it might be impacting how I raise my kids, you know?
And you know, I love my wife and all that.
And pain, pain and grief both.
There's there's a bit of that denial that you've brought yourself
to that place or your your past has done that.
And so for me, like, I'm the guy that always wants to fix it myself.
Like, I grew up wanting to be a psychologist
and I was always a psych buff from reading books.
And like when I wasn't fitting in, I'd read books about being social,
you know, like I was just the kid that trying to fix it myself.
I wasn't leaning.
And I think it was because my dad was gone Monday through Friday.
I didn't have the person to lean on other than my grandfather,
and I saw him maybe three or four times a year.
So it for me, it was fixing it myself.
And and I can I can definitely relate to how tough it is to root out
something that's not good for your life because you're having to kill a part
of yourself.
And it's painful.
But, you know,
realizing you're in that state of denial and then addressing it like luckily I had
summer and summer would just say, Hey, look, this is something that you you do.
And whether you fix it yourself
or you seek help, you got to do something to do it
because it's it's going to harm your relationships.
And so, yeah, I mean, that's that's a huge part of
of keeping a marriage intact as well for sure.
You know, I'm reflecting a little bit
to kind of answer your question, Barton.
It was the the fear of
when you finally admit to others.
Yeah.
Who you are, they really are.
And what you've done
and the fear of like
I'm everyone will reject me and no one will accept me
and they're going to hear me say this and they can be like, Dude, who are you?
They're going to leave this session, as you know, I mean,
and then have the exact opposite happen after you let it out.
And they had nothing but acceptance and reassure, not not to like,
downplay any wrongdoing you've done, but to just be like, hey,
we've all screwed up.
And it took a lot of courage to say that.
And then
we build up these false walls,
you know, they're like invisible barriers that we convince ourselves are there.
And the second you step out
in vulnerability like that,
they all disappear, you know?
And you were the one who put in there in the first place, you being self,
but not to me. But yeah.
That's a perfect analogy.
That's the analogy that my counselor used with me
when when my wife was going through a really, really difficult
bout of depression and then flipped the script and used it on
when we realized that this was my issue was different.
But she had built this wall around her heart
that was
everything that was good,
that was spoken about her was untrue and not believable.
And everything that was ugly was true.
And the wall went up and it was like, Hey, I only accept these things.
And I was like, I don't know how to fix this.
To your point, Brandon.
And I was like, I don't know what I can do because she's I tell her like,
Hey, actually, look, you're beautiful.
You're a beautiful human, You're wise through this,
you're a great mom, and none of these things are getting in.
And he was like, Just just sit at the wall
and take these rocks of truth and chunk them at the wall.
He was like,
Eventually you're going to bust a hole big enough for some light to get through,
and that's your job.
You can't break the wall down at once.
You're not going to but just throw rocks of truth at the wall,
whether it's Scripture or truth about her.
Well, then that script flipped on me because my wall was your tough.
You got it.
You don't need any help.
You know, You can't make mistakes if you do.
Just pretend like it didn't happen, you know?
And so that's the wall that's going to be torn down for me all the time, every day.
I have to ask the Lord to do that.
Just, Hey, remind me that I'm not totally self-sufficient and self-reliant.
I need you.
I need this family and community.
I need all these things because in my flesh, I don't need anything.
You know, I'm totally good.
And that's not the truth.
You're such a type.
You're like the same person this day.
I like how we talked about who's the oldest and some of the things like,
it's so important when if you have kids, fathers
with siblings, it's so important that you are present.
I'm a great example of that.
I'm the eldest in my family.
I'm one of four
Brandon kind of carved his own path.
He's he's always been his own who he is, you know.
And I had Jordan and Logan constantly following me around.
So I was kind of their only example,
like on a regular daily basis besides my parents.
And that gets heavy.
It's a burden
after a while, you know, And and that's why it's so important to be present.
And that's one of the reasons I honestly, we all started
this was one of the brainchild ideas from this in my head was
we need to we need to bring more attention to the things that parents
need to be doing or that we need to be doing ourselves as parents.
And I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for two
my father being president and a song by actually
probably my favorite artist, and it's called Mansion
and literally Everything you guys have said or related
is exactly what that song is about, except for he's had so many,
so many trials and tribulations.
He lost his mom to an overdose and
he just talks
about how he never lets anybody in because it's it's scary.
And he talks about the walls and the different rooms in his mind that he has.
And it's this big mansion.
And, you know, it's it's unbelievable what that song did for me.
One of my darkest times when I was going through a very public divorce
and I was being verbally abused on an absolute daily
basis in my brain, I just I kept trying to get myself out of that.
And I started feeling like the person that this other person was telling me I was.
And this song helped me to deal and cope
with those things, understanding that someone else knew where I was.
And I still to this day, I still struggle with it.
I have walls up
and I have to say the most beautiful thing is that the day my son was born
for the first time in my life, I felt like I can love someone unconditionally
and know that they would 100% love me back.
And I didn't have a wall up for the first time in my life.
And it was so freeing.
And it's one of the reasons I knew I always wanted to be a dad, but
I've never really shared that story.
And my father and I were on a walk right before I went through my divorce, and
I kept asking him the same questions like, Am I this person in my this?
Do I deserve this?
And he's like, Absolutely not.
And then he he suggested therapy to me and the things that he said to me
and just being present and being there for me, honest to God, saved my life.
So I love what you guys said because, you know, walls and barriers or something.
As men, we all build and especially as fathers and sons,
brothers, siblings, whatever the case may be.
But if you have those feelings,
I highly suggest any of you get help because we are so quick to say
I don't need help.
Like Barton said, you know, we don't we don't need this. I'm good.
I'm tough on this. I'm not
Well,
you can be this and that and you can still be struggling.
You can still be hurting.
You can still have walls so high that nobody's ever going to get them.
So yeah, I don't mean to go on a tangent.
Well, the help isn't also just like, go see a therapist all the time.
It's having like a community of other like minded guys.
Or. Better guys who can kind of help
you weed through the lies and help help pull you into what's true.
Like Barton saying.
Yeah. It's not all just therapy, right?
It's it's a lot.
There's a lot of outlets, but just don't bottle it up and
grit your teeth and bury somebody.
So it's super important for me to have somebody who's walked a little further
down the trail.
That's a big one for me.
Okay, I know what's down here.
Come on with your gut.
Let's keep going because, yeah, I come.
And that wisdom they can pass on is good.
That song is actually on Noah's way forward.
Playlist just
everything he does is incredible, man.
He's his genius.
Honest to God, I think he's the best lyrically that there's ever been.
Is that I know.
I'm a little biased, so I kind of want to change gears here.
We go to another happy place, but we're talking about trips earlier
and obviously you guys spent a lot of time in the water.
But as far like land destinations,
I want to hear a little bit about, you know,
either your favorite place that you've taken Noah as a father
son duo or you know, that you've taken the girls.
I'm sure you've taken the girls on their own solo trip,
which which dynamic worked with your son and which one worked
with your daughters and which places did you like the most and why.
Yeah, so my favorite was to take
my son is my buddy's Duck Club called Wild Wings and Stuttgart.
Connor Reddick's.
His name is one of my best friends on Earth and they have a
I mean, for duck hunters, it's heaven.
It's unbelievable.
And it's green timber hunting.
It's an incredible quick boat ride in where you're flying through trees.
You're standing in the trees.
The weather's usually not insane there.
You know, a lot of the places I hunt, it gets pretty inclement.
So this is usually in the forties and the hunts are usually pretty quick,
which is good If you're if you're out there
and you're considering taking your kids hunting, always, always
make sure that their first few hunts are high, high, high likelihood of success.
You do not want kids having to sit there and learning.
Patience is great. There's plenty of time for that.
But if you want your kids to be outdoorsman, like to hunt.
They need to love it and like going out
and smoking a bunch of ducks, that'll that'll do it.
Going out and be like, this is what happens.
Like to sit here for 4 hours and don't see anything.
They're not going to want to go back.
So If you want to get them hooked, kill a bunch of stuff.
And this this is waiting for success.
Yes. Yes.
So and then we cook and hang out at and have firepit.
And it's really just like man time.
So while Winks is my favorite place to take my son,
the girls are are a little different.
They're honestly like lower maintenance than my son.
He's like, has to be entertained all the time.
He's constantly got to go.
They're just happy to be with me wherever we go.
My oldest daughter loves going hunting trips, just me and her.
But for them, the
best trips for them are usually like either hiking,
going to a place where there's like waterfalls.
We can walk to or going to the beach.
They love the beach, so the girls want to be in the sun, play on the sand chill.
They want me to sit there and watch them without a phone in my hand.
That's what they want.
They want me unplugged from technology and they don't even have to talk.
They just want me to be present and sit there and hang out on the beach.
So that's my favorite thing to do with them.
Do the little beach trip.
Awesome. Awesome.
Yeah. Well, I want to shift gears a little bit.
I'm a I'm a very high type three, four and seven, kind of a hybrid.
And so I'm very introspective and very philosophical.
And so my question to you and, take your time if you need to,
but if you knew your time on this earth was almost up,
what piece of advice would you leave your kids? She
listen to your mom?
Yeah, she's the one.
We're going to wrap right now. Cut.
Now. I'm still processing.
Three, four and seven. Four and seven. That's.
That's great.
That makes a lot of sense for you, truthfully.
I mean that my wife's a four, Wayne three, so,
yeah,
for my kids.
Last piece of advice is time is short, man.
I would probably tell them
to chase after the Lord
surrounded by a community of people who were chasing after the Lord
and the rest of it will work out.
And then the
the thing I'm thinking about is if that's my answer to this question,
why don't I tell them that every day that that's the that's where my brain goes.
Oh, that's good.
So that's what.
As just said, a follow up to
that would be then what's what's the legacy you hope to leave them.
Yeah,
I mean that's a great one.
I think about that actually a lot.
And you know,
I hope the things that they know are I love their mom really well
through difficult times and through the best times.
And I've worked my butt off something I believed in,
but I never sacrificed my family to do that.
So for me, the legacy has been building a business
that two businesses that I really love and working really, really hard,
but being able to look back and say I still was able to prioritize my family.
That's
that's why I get to do fine.
Podcast with guys like you is because I think that's been fairly evident,
you know,
But for me, that's that's the legacy is the time.
I can't replace that, you know 12, ten and eight.
They have so many years gone right now.
It's depressing it is awful for me to think
I'm over halfway there with my days of having it in my house.
And I have days where I'd love to get back.
But for the most I can say, Hey, I would.
I invested a lot of time.
And so that's that's the legacy for me.
Nice.
Yeah, it's legacy is a hard thing, man, because you think about it all the time
and you're trying to think of the different legacies you want to leave.
But yeah, actually you mentioned jiu jitsu earlier
and that you have your kids in it.
I guess not so much.
What drove you to put the kids in it, but what what have you seen
the kids gain from something like jiu jitsu where there's discipline and respect
and things like that?
We have a whole nother podcast.
I my kids
started before I did the older two.
Naomi and Noah started.
A friend of mine that I used to actually ride motorcycles with
was a taekwondo instructor who went headfirst
into jiu jitsu about 14 years ago, and now he's got a Gracie
Certified training center here.
And he
would run into me in around town and I'd have Naomi and Noah with me,
and he was like, You need to get him in jujitsu.
And as I do, they're five. He was like, You start rolling.
And I was like, All right, I'll think about it.
So I started Naomi when she was,
I think, eight and a half, nine.
And then Noah started at like seven, and
he would always push me, you know, you need to train you to train.
Come on out thirties, you know, And
to be blunt, I spent the first,
I would say from like 22 to 30 to ten years,
like avoiding exercise at all costs, drinking Mountain Dew,
drinking, whatever I wanted to drink, eat whatever
I wanted to eat, and gaining weight with every kid and wound up that
in 2019 I was like £50 overweight,
very unhappy, didn't sleep, couldn't do a single pull up, couldn't run a mile,
just was way out of shape.
So I spent the last four years trying to rectify that.
And so at 36, I'm in the best shape of my life and starting
jujitsu two years ago was definitely a massive piece of that puzzle.
And there's a lot physically and philosophically,
there's a lot that you can unpack there.
I'm happy that we can go as long or short as you want and.
You learn a little bit about yourself the first time you get choked out.
So now.
You learn about how small person or a lot weaker
person with really good technique can just dominate you in a matter.
To that.
Yeah, people don't get that.
I'm like,
Look, you see that little dude over there
and he's 60 years old and they might wave £50.
You could destroy every person in this room, you know?
Yeah. So it's,
it's, yeah, it's.
I can talk forever about jiu jitsu.
It's, it's a huge passion of our whole family.
And there are so many things that jujitsu teaches you.
That one being one, you know,
leverage is super important and, and learning how to use leverage
the pyramid principle using, you know, using the ground up,
using strength from the ground
for kids, that stuff is super important and they learn really self-defense,
jiu jitsu.
Then my son has started doing some competitive rolling
and this is I've really kind of held him back from that because
for him, everything he wants everything to be a competition.
He's a he's a boy.
And I've wanted jujitsu to be a life skill for him before it was sport.
And so this is the first year I'm going to let him roll competitively,
but he'll he'll take your arm off.
He's he's a little savage on the mat.
I love it.
And then just teaching them like jujitsu
is such a great
sport for learning how to just overcome difficulty.
Like, it's it's
I like I have claustrophobia
and so rolling and I'm also really big into no guy jujitsu.
But when I roll in a guy and someone ties me up,
I don't know if any of you guys train Georgie myself, I.
Don't do jiu jitsu. I've done like I did.
Well, I'm a black Don't talk Sacramento.
I was super competitive growing up in that and then did combatives
and stuff in the military, so it's like pseudo defensive.
I was a wrestler in high school.
Per, you know, all the bases and a lot. Of the same principles are.
It's like for sure, size doesn't always matter.
Technique is that's right matters a lot, especially when it comes to like
choking someone out, you know, like they get your back, You're done.
That's exactly right. Yeah.
I had a buddy in basic course he was.
I think he was a black girl in jujitsu.
And I was like, Oh, I'm a wrestler.
I can take your whatever we do in our competitive stuff, bro.
I've never been more humiliated in my life.
Like, 2 seconds.
He'd have, like, happen every time over and over and over for, like, an hour.
I experienced that through three nights a week.
And it's it's if I make it a point to roll with as many people
that are way better than me as I do people that I'm way better than.
And it's it's character building for sure.
And then just overcoming difficulties.
You know, there's a jujitsu
principle called the River principle, which is the water flows around the rock.
And that one to me is a huge one.
You run to Iraq, you don't just sit there and pound on the rock.
Water goes around the rocks, figure out a way.
And so we say, work the problem.
And my, you know, my son all the time, you know, Dad, I can't get this to work.
And I works the problem.
Like, figure it out. What are you going to do?
You're going to have to make adjustments here.
You can't just keep trying.
The same thing's a million little things like that from
from jiu jitsu that have been an awesome impact for our life.
My wife does not.
I won't say we're like a jujitsu family
as often as she is.
She does not like any physical discomfort at all.
So like if I come home and start messing with her,
trying to put her in any sort of jujitsu pin
and like two hairs get pulled, she's like, This is why I don't do jiu jitsu.
Like she's she's out on that and she'll tell you.
Or she would tell you right now, Yeah, I'm just not into pain.
But the rest of the the my three kids and myself, we, we, we love it.
That's super fun.
And secretly enjoy all that.
You want your girls doing it so you can check out some punk.
You try something, right?
I posted an Instagram story of me and Noah.
It was like a couple clips of me and Noah working with Naomi.
She was doing some sweeps on me and getting some control on me.
And then swept my son and put him in an armbar
and I posted it and I was like, just keeping her sharp.
So your dusty sons don't impress her with their YouTube? Yeah,
I love that you are.
So I'll tell you what,
you know, George talks about how he got pinned a few times,
but I've actually watched somebody from Tupelo in a pool party.
We went to get absolutely destroyed by George, and George is half their size
and it was hilarious.
I died laughing because Guy got so mad.
He's like, Man, walk down the street pissed off and come on back.
I was like, Oh, Coyote's are, come on.
But do you remember?
I do remember event you're describing.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I still know how to wrestle.
It's just what you go up against.
If you go up against someone who knows jiu jitsu very well,
they will dismantle you regardless of anything else.
Yeah, there's so much about that on the internet.
It doesn't work in the street or whatever.
I mean, the the Gracie Combatives program is super great because it's
truly as a street self-defense program, and that's where we all started.
So there is there are strikes, there are kicks,
they're defenses of all that everything is within mind.
That's my my punch in, the face.
And then when you get into fun, competitive rolling,
it takes a whole different you know that's more wrestling more pins
and then obviously submissions and I'm big
I'm six foot 5 to 30 so
and I'm not a I'm no longer fat to 30, I'm healthy to 30.
So I have to it
I have to remind myself of that when I roll with smaller guys
that are the same skill level, I'm like, I don't really need
to throw my weight around here because it's it's a lot.
If I, if I get on your size like parking a truck on there,
then there are some guys at my gym, they're like to 90.
So I roll with them.
I'm like, Oh, this is what it feels like
just to get absolutely desecrated by somebody huge.
You know, it's it's it's good. It's good for you.
Good times, character build out.
So one of the questions we ask every single dad,
I guess.
Well, I'm trying to think of the way to word it for you. It's
so I guess we'll go.
Since you have three kids with a core memory,
we usually say like either a story or a core memory
that just really stands out to you from your your time as a father
that you just really want to talk about, that you just have to share.
Oh, man, there's a bunch of those that's thankfully there.
There are a bunch of them.
We we do
like I said, we do trips, not presents
for specifically Christmas and stuff like that, which is big for us because
they have everything they need.
I guess they can put stuff in garage sales and just, yeah,
they don't need any more stuff.
But the trips are irreplaceable, you know,
for me,
I would say the one of the most important ones for me is
it took a lot for me to convince
Bethany that we needed a boat.
It was that it was not not on her list of things.
And we actually have been through a really, really rough patch, our marriage
and had spent some time kind of separated, kind of working things out ourselves.
And when she came home,
I was like, Hey we're going to go to Alabama today to pick something up.
And we drove to Alabama and she was like, What's that?
I was like, That's that's our boat.
You know, we're getting that.
And that summer, our kids were pretty young.
That was maybe 19,
but we did a trip with some
very like minded friends
that I'd met in the hunting community, and we just spent three nights
at their lake house, no cell phone service,
cooking steak, you know, grilling chicken.
And every day out in the water with our kids just who were oblivious that
there might have been anything difficult or wrong
with their parents.
We're just in the world.
And it really solidified for me like, hey,
really, Like, no matter what happens, I'm working for this.
Like, we're we're here.
And that, I think, is why boating is so important to us.
Like, we, we just we go out on the boat like it's our family time unplugged
Every hour we put in the boat.
People are like, you got a lot of hours
in about like every one of those hours I spent with my family.
It's kind of like an extended, like dinner table.
I literally have a tractor.
I'm like, Hey, this boat keeps up with every every hour it's running.
That's that's all investment every single hour.
And so that trip where they were little and they were like they were tubing,
no one could wakeboard that we weren't into the board sports yet.
They were just like jumping off, screaming, having a blast the whole time
with friends who loved us and love this very well and a difficult time and sort of
like they're four or five years ahead of us
and it like kind of taken our hand and pulled us through.
That's probably the core memory for me that I was like, All right, this
this is the path we're going to take.
Raising kids and and being parents and and loving one another
so that we can love our kids. Well,
it's good, man.
I love it.
Yeah.
I want to ask before we kind of wrap here, what's, you know,
kind of your top words of wisdom, top piece advice for dads listening.
Man, I need to.
Barton It's easy to say be present but like to that means a lot of things.
You know, a buddy of mine, we joked about this earlier
but in my country music singer has a be where your boots are song
and I love that look be where you are but
like I train dogs for a living
for a while and a lot and I teach people how to train dogs through our app.
And a lot of what we do is teach people how to read dogs
like read the dog's behavior.
What's the dog telling you through its body language and all that?
For me, being present with your kids is reading them.
I've got a son who has anxiety.
I never had that.
In fact, as my personality, like I was the guy that was like, What do you mean?
You have anxiety? Like about what?
Like what are you scared about?
You know, And like,
I would just dismiss it, you know, thankfully, my wife helped me
get through all that.
And I'm no longer a jerk about anxiety.
I have a daughter
who has ADHD and these are like trivial problems,
but I wouldn't handle any of these well if I wasn't present
and like, listening to them.
Like,
it's easy to react in the moment, but it's it's another thing
to be present and say, what are they really going through right now?
Like what's going on in their brain?
How are they taken?
We all talked about any Graham types except for you,
Justin, but I'm sure you know, but like, what's your kids?
Any REM type?
Do you like studied your kid enough?
And I'm not saying that's like a that's not an end all be all but like,
can you describe your kid's personality and the way they react and like,
what is it that sets them off?
What is it that makes disappointed for me that's being present?
It's like I'm around my kid enough that I know how I know how each one of them,
they work.
I know the ins and outs and that's something that I don't think
I experienced growing up a whole lot.
And that's important as a dad for me.
I know the triggers.
I know when I'm at a concert and I can tell that auditory input
is my son loves rocking out the metal,
but I can tell it's starting to create some anxiety
because I can just see it in his face and I'm like, Hey, dude, you ready to go?
Let's go get a hot dog.
And we're out
because I've recognized those things just because I pay attention, right?
That's it.
I have failed at that a lot of times.
There are times where I've gotten really mad at Mariam because of something
she did, that it was just ADHD, like the way her brain worked.
And I got mad because it it was, you know,
Well, I'll get into this last thing on that.
That's a great question.
My biggest piece of advice
for dads when you have young kids
is to only discipline your children for sin.
The Lord only is ever angry at them.
And I'm very prone to get mad at my kids.
Like if I'm inconvenienced or
if they did something that's childish, right?
They're children like that, what they're going to do.
So my wife and I like made out this list, and I'm sure
it's probably written by lots of people, but for us it was like
deliberate disobedience, dishonesty,
deliberate destruction
and disrespect,
not respecting your elders.
So those are the four days of discipline
that it's not that you just don't get in trouble.
Like we tell you, Hey, don't do that again.
Like, don't steal your milk in the truck. But
we don't freak out about things that aren't
part of those four things where it's actually like, Hey, you,
you really committed a sin here, and we need to teach you that sin has.
And it's the consequences go beyond just you.
And that's what the Lord teaches us.
And he punishes sin only because as a dad, I found it easier
and probably world leader to just punish things that I didn't like
or made me late or spilled, you know, maybe have to clean something up.
So I was very guilty of that.
And I've had to apologize to my kids a lot, which is another piece of advice.
Never be scared to apologize to your kids.
But I've had to apologize to my kids and say, Hey, you know what?
I shouldn't have even got mad at you about that. That's on me
because that's not me.
You didn't mess anything up. You didn't do anything wrong.
So, yeah, there's a long answer, but that's.
That's a really good man.
Well, hit me right here, But I'm just as guilty of, you know,
disciplining or getting a little angry when you're inconvenienced.
I think every dad has had those moments.
I think we all know exactly what you're talking about.
But I wanted to give a minute for you to kind of plug where people
can get engaged with you, and especially if they're looking for dog training.
And so what's the best places to connect with you?
Sure.
I'm on social.
Just my name.
Barton Ramsey on on Instagram and Facebook.
And I think people sometimes follow me thinking
it's going to be like a cool hunting account
and it's just a dad account, just like me and my kids hanging out.
So It's a fun ride out the flotsam.
Yeah, I appreciate that. A lot of cooking.
And then
Southern Oak Kennels and Cornerstone Gun Dog Academy set out.
Kels, if you're interested, a British Labrador retriever
correspondent, Dog Academy.
If you have a dog or are getting a dog and you want to learn or
become a better dog trainer or dog handler, it's all on your phone.
Accessible on the app.
Over 600 videos of Hey, here's start to finish how you how you train a dog.
So all that's on Facebook on the Web, on Instagram.
Awesome and very cool.
Well, I'll let you know if I'm in the market for a hunting dog.
I just want to go hunt way.
Yeah, I'm.
We'll have to set up a present father's hunting trip.
I would love to do that.
I'm in a group of guys that do that
like that, and I tell people all the time, I don't
get to invite people hunting very much because most of my I'm invited on
and it stinks because I have this massive list.
People like, I love to hunt with that guy.
Yeah, one day maybe the Lord of Blessed knew this cool spot where I take people
right now I live in Gunn Town, so no ducks here.
All right.
Well, Barton, it has been an absolute privilege to reconnect with you
and to just learn from you and your stories and your experience.
A wealth of information in this episode.
So appreciate your willingness to share and
and just be real and I think I speak for everyone.
It's been a real pleasure.
So let's talk dads or go ahead. Sorry.
No, I was just going to say thanks for having me, man.
This was super fun.
And I do a ton of podcasts where we just talk about ducks and dogs.
So it's really, really refreshing to do one where we talk about stuff
that is significantly and eternally more important.
So I appreciate you guys doing this
and using your platform for something that I think and hope will be
a massively positive influence on dads out there.
That's the goal, man.
We just want to help dads out there
because we all have our own struggles and stuff.
So thank you for contributing and making a difference.
So with that, dads and tough talk, let's get climbing
the mountain of fatherhood together. See in the next one.
Thanks for tuning
into this episode of the Present Fathers podcast.
Make sure that you subscribe to our YouTube channel
and follow us on Spotify to catch all of our amazing episodes.
We will see you in the next one.