Mastering the Art of Family Management: Insights from the Steve Baer

Speaker 1: 0:11

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Emotional man podcast Today. I am really excited to have Steve Baer with us. I met him and was just really impressed with his capacity to help others and especially his own family. He is the founder of Steve Baer Consulting, where he helps small businesses build a strong team so they can scale to the next level. He is also married to Jenny Baer, who is a sole coach in helping women with depression anxiety, and they have seven children, which I think is the record holder on the show. Hey, steve, welcome. If you need to start talk to us how you came about to your consulting company and just your origin.

Speaker 2: 0:51

Yeah, Thank you for offering to interview me. I love talking about myself. I love talking about my story. About 20 years ago, when I finished my studies at BYU, I started working in insurance. I've just discovered that I accidentally fell into different opportunities. I fell into insurance, had a nice career for 10 years and then my wife got the entrepreneurial bug. When I was on about year eight of my career, she started building a network marketing business and reading all these personal development books. In fact, the first not the first, but one of the books that she gave me was on my birthday. She gave me Rich Dad, poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. My reaction to that was I was actually angry. I said you bought this book for yourself because she was devouring personal development books and I was not interested. She gave that to me and I was mad, but I ended up putting my pride aside and apologizing, of course apologizing. I listened to it and it changed my mindset on money and about entrepreneurship and about jobs. I said you know what I want? To pursue entrepreneurial endeavors. So I started to help her with her network marketing business. Then I was approached by somebody in my downline of all things about starting an e-commerce business to sell aromatherapy tools and supplies, which dovetailed with the network marketing business which was doTERRA. It still is doTERRA, incidentally.

Speaker 2: 2:28

We built an e-commerce business for four years, grew it from zero. We both put in $4,000 and we grew it from zero to over a million dollars in sales by the third year. It was a lot of hard work and I put on some weight, added some stress to my life. Then, ultimately, I was seeing the lay of the land in the future and thinking, oh, we need to make some key pivot points. I also saw a little bit of the incongruity with my level of passion for that business, which did not match the level of passion that my business partner had, which was far exceeded what I had. In order to get back to a space of integrity, I said why don't I divest and you can buy my share of the business? We're still great friends, by the way. That was a very amicable parting.

Speaker 2: 3:20

I decided to divest from that and then really started to look into coaching and consulting work. Then a friend of mine hired me to help him with his coaching business, which he was scaling at that time. I worked with him for three years and we developed a coaching certification program that was very transformative and life-changing for the people that participated. It was a community-style business model. Then again, at the end of that experience, I thought you know what I am capable of doing, things that I am more passionate about I am and chose to do small business consulting and taking the frameworks that I had learned in my coaching business with my friend and then applying those to teams in small businesses.

Speaker 2: 4:11

When I see small businesses that can be anywhere from just a entrepreneur in two or three employees or it could be a 50 or 100-person business where they have a team of 20 people that they want to go through my program and frameworks Anyway, I started that a year ago and, of course, as anybody will discover, when you're starting a business it's ups and downs. You learn during the downs and you get excited during the ups and you pivot as you need to. Then here we are.

Speaker 1: 4:45

During this time, is Jenny continuing her own coaching or is she working with you? Is she in doTERRA with you? Share with me what does it look like to have two working spouses and then also you have seven children during all this time? Just explain to me how that all fit together.

Speaker 2: 5:02

Yeah, how that works is I very much believe in helping people stay in their zone of genius. My wife is an incredible mother and she's an incredible homeschooler and she's an incredible coach and healer. She is not an incredible marketer and she's not an incredible operational manager of some large coaching enterprise, but when she sits behind the camera with somebody to do a Zoom coaching session, she is phenomenal, and so my job and my goal is to keep her in her zone of genius. Sometimes, as husbands and men, we want to stay in our zone of genius and we discover that we still have to wear the hats that don't necessarily belong to our zone of genius, but someday we'll be able to set them aside. But for her, I'm like she does motherhood and she does household management and she does coaching, and then I do brand building, email marketing, social media, content creation and all the strategies involved with helping her gain new, additional clients. Okay, yeah, that's how we.

Speaker 1: 6:20

Run me through what your daily schedule looks like. I'm just trying to imagine having seven kids at home, that you're homeschooling, and then I have nine kids so I know what kids can do to a house and kind of the activities the friends, so keeping up on all that, and then you're running your own business, you're scaling your own business and she's coaching. So yeah, just run me through what that looks like in an average day.

Speaker 2: 6:46

Yeah, it's different every day, but the things that stay the same are that she focuses on homeschooling in the mornings, and then she does coaching clients in the afternoons, and then I will get up in the morning I'll work on a project or go exercise and then come home, make breakfast for everybody and then after breakfast I'll go to work up here in my office upstairs. I do a lot of networking I. One thing that I have learned as I have studied digital marketing and all that kind of thing is that there's a difference between brand building and reputation building, and so sometimes people who are aspiring coaches come into a space like this and they say, oh, I need a nice brand. And, more importantly, I'd say no, you need a reputation, you need a reputation of being good at what you do, and I had the amazing opportunity to help people recognize what they're good at in the coaching certification program that I helped design with my friend. But anyway, because I do networking, I'll go to networking events.

Speaker 2: 7:57

I do one-on-one calls with people in my networking group, I'll do discovery calls and demo sessions, and then when I have clients, they just fit into the schedule and, unfortunately, most of what I do can be done virtually. And then when I go and do a company workshop then I block out four or five hours, go to the onsite company workshop, deliver that and then come home. So I have the chance to really work a lot from home. But I don't thrive when I try to create a very routine and mechanized structure for myself. That doesn't work for me. But I also have to be cognizant of the fact that I can be a little squirrely sometimes, and so I have to really balance the fact that I don't like the structure and I don't like the routine. But if I let the squirreliness go too far then I'm just gonna spin my wheels. Being aware of those kind of things help. Then people can create strategies to work around it, and that's what I like to help people with.

Speaker 1: 9:03

And so after when does your work day generally end, or does it vary each day?

Speaker 2: 9:09

Actually, it really depends, and sometimes my day will look like getting up at 5 am, working slash, exercising until eight, then eating breakfast between 8.30 and 9.30, working from 10 to 1.30, have a quick lunch with the kids, then 1.30, or sorry, that'd be like 2.30 to 5.30, have dinner and then, depending on what's going on, I might work in the evening or sometimes we'll have an activity. But it also depends on the season, like right now it's summertime and so nobody I don't wanna be outside. At four and five o'clock it's still 90 degrees or 95 degrees here in Utah, and sometimes the most perfect time to spend with the family on a nice summer evening is actually at 8.30, going on a walk or going outside and playing in the park when it's getting cool and getting dark between 8.30 and 9.30. What?

Speaker 1: 10:04

are the ages of your kids.

Speaker 2: 10:06

My oldest is 17 and my youngest is six.

Speaker 1: 10:09

Okay, that's a really good age range right there, this is a six-year-old sleeping through the night can dress himself or him or herself. Yeah and yeah.

Speaker 2: 10:20

Yeah, my older kids are phenomenal. We came into this big family thing with the philosophy that we're not gonna allow our older kids to raise our younger kids. There are some big families that fall into that trap and we're like, nope, we're not gonna do that. But we ask everybody to pull their weight and we have little catch phrases in the house. One of them is this it's called catch and release and so anytime they see me doing something that they can do, they're supposed to catch and release me. Oh, dad, I caught you doing the dishes, I'll do them so that you can go and do something that nobody else can do. Because we try to teach kids about specialization and hey, you know what? Only dad can build a funnel. Only dad can do the graphic design work. Only dad can record the promotional video. Only dad can do the coaching. But we have at least five to six people who can wash dishes.

Speaker 1: 11:09

Can you walk me through how you taught that to your kids, because I think there's a lot of other entrepreneurs and business owners out there who, let's put it this way, their kids are constantly asking themselves why can't dad spend or mom spend time with me? I want to spend time with mom and dad, but they're always working.

Speaker 2: 11:30

So how would you teach that principle in an effective way so the kids feel like they're part of it, but also that they still feel like they have their parents' attention and love, and also they feel, I think, when the kids understand this concept of specialization and we had to have a serious conversation just a few months ago and said, hey, dad needs to work at a level that he has probably never worked before in order to get multiple businesses off the ground at the same time. And so just explaining to the kids that and sitting down with them and saying, hey, 13-year-old daughter, can you build a sales funnel for dad? And she's no, I don't know it's like, but can you do the dishes? Yes, I can. Okay, so instead of having dad do the dishes, if you see him doing that, I'd like you to step in and do the dishes so dad can go build the funnel.

Speaker 2: 12:28

Now, that philosophy doesn't work if dad is just on his phone and scrolling, and so it means that every minute counts and work needs to be pretty intentional. And then, as far as spending time with kids, that's something I'm not. I can't delegate that Now I could certainly delegate to my oldest daughter hey, can you take so into their activity over here? Can you give them a ride? But I'd even recognize that, especially with my older son, if I actually put that on my calendar to go pick him up from marching band or to and to take him to marching band. For example, I've got 10 minutes to talk with him as I go to marching band and then, if I pick him up, I've got 10 minutes to talk to him on the way home. So it's creating little connection points.

Speaker 2: 13:19

With my younger kids. We have a routine where I'll lay down with them and we'll listen to some gospel centered music, some Christ centered music, and I'll go to each of the three kids and lay down with them for a little bit while we listen to a song and talk for a bit, and then it's easy to sit and play a quick 15 minute card game with the kids. Here are your assets Nomeing Around Skull King, just all those Uncle, I see Uncle Beck and that's your.

Speaker 1: 13:47

Uncle Ben? I no, I think it is Uncle Beck.

Speaker 2: 13:49

Yeah Beck, yeah yeah. Sponsor of this episode right Joseph.

Speaker 1: 13:55

Like the. Thing.

Speaker 2: 13:56

So it's easy to sit down and play a game with them, and then we try to go swimming once a week and we have a couple different places that we'll go to take the kids swimming. And Sundays, of course, are always off limits for work activities and things. And then, and then Saturdays, that's when there are certain projects that need to be done around the house that the kids can't do. I'm the only one that can do them and I do those things. But they can weed. I don't need to be. I don't need to be the one that's weeding. I don't need to mow the lawn. My son can mow the lawn, but fixing a sprinkler, you know what I need to do that.

Speaker 1: 14:32

So I'd like to ask this what were the pain points along the way that led you to this solution? Because a lot of times and perhaps you were very intentional from the beginning. So, if so, that's incredible. But some of these solutions come out of organic growth, where you experience some conflict, some friction, and you're like I think this could be the solution. So talk to me. What were some of the pain points or friction that led you to this solution?

Speaker 2: 15:00

I think that the pain points were the very real fact that one month out of this year I got sucked into various household projects and I looked at the results the monetary results at the end of the month and I was like, yeah, that's not good enough. And when you break it down and you say, hey, there's one person in this family who can earn the income needed to support a family of nine, so we have to let dad be that guy. Now I got into this pattern of helping around the house a lot because when my wife and I got married, I went into the relationship knowing that she was on antidepressants and I got it. My first job, my first career, was in insurance and I was a claims adjuster and I intuitively chose that job because it would give me the chance to work from home and have a flexible schedule. And so when my wife and I had three kids under the age of four, it was very easy for me to put my work aside and help my wife, who was feeling depressed and had three little kids, by doing the dishes and by playing with the kids. But now she's not depressed. She's done a lot of healing work. She coaches women now on how to come up with the solutions that they're looking for when it comes to their mental health. And so our life circumstances have changed, where I have all these capable children who can be self-sufficient, so I no longer have to be the dad that steps in all the time to help and make sure that the house is happy and that people are happy.

Speaker 2: 16:41

But I was in that habit and that pattern of being that dad. Oh, you know what Dad can do the dishes. Because if the dishes represent the bottleneck in the kitchen, I had this philosophy If you always put the attention on the bottleneck, and so if you have somebody who is on dishes, then everything else in the kitchen gets taken care of. But if the dishes start to stack, then it flows over onto the counters and then the whole kitchen starts to feel dirty and in disarray. But so as long as you hit the bottleneck. Same thing with laundry. Laundry was a bottleneck where things would start to pile up, and so I was like I can, and so I did laundry for a decade or more for my wife, and then she's like you know what the kids can do laundry, you don't have to do it. I'm like you know what, I don't have to do it. So I handle my gym clothes and that's it, just my gym clothes, and they do everything else.

Speaker 1: 17:41

How did you teach your children to do those chores?

Speaker 2: 17:44

Oh, just, it's not like we had a seminar or anything like that On the job experience and just getting to that point where they were comfortable with it. You can't throw kids into tasks without giving them enough instruction, but they watch you do it enough times and then, when they're finally ready to learn, you just explain it to them two or three or four times, and then they got it.

Speaker 1: 18:07

What have been some of the challenges from both of you working, sometimes at home, also having all your kids at home at the same time? I've met with other entrepreneurs and business owners who work from home and boundary setting. When dad or mom is working, you need to figure out your own problem or you get fighting between kids. So talk to me. What are some of the challenges you face from both of you working at home in terms of family dynamics, especially with the needs of children?

Speaker 2: 18:38

Yeah. So the first thing is that we try not to be both on coaching calls at the same time. So if she's on a coaching call, then my office door is open or I'm downstairs working on my laptop and I'm usually doing some sort of administrative or creative task that can be interrupted and then the kids feel like somebody is here to help them. So that's probably the first thing. The second thing is the kids have learned if the door is closed and they hear me talking, but not a good time to open that door, and if they still open that door, I put my hand out like this. So I'll usually do it underneath the screen and I'll wave my finger while I'm looking at the screen and not them, and then they know okay, dad's on a call, we don't.

Speaker 2: 19:26

We, fortunately, our people will tell us all the time oh my gosh, seven kids. That's amazing, and I said we have seven really good kids. Some families have that high energy kiddo who is just they're always doing something and that really makes the parents want to pull their hair out. We don't have one like that In the energy profiling world. If anybody who's listening is familiar with Carol Tuttle I know you are, joseph we don't have a type three child. Oh, we don't have a type three secondary child.

Speaker 1: 19:56

Wow, so really low energy household. What about type ones?

Speaker 2: 20:00

We have three type ones and I'm a type one, so four out of nine of us are type ones.

Speaker 1: 20:05

You all know how to go and have fun by yourself.

Speaker 2: 20:07

Yeah, yeah. And our three youngest kids, 10, eight and six. We call them the three musketeers and the bear cubs because they play with each other, they hang out with friends together, they go to the grandma and grandpa's house together and our in-laws they're down the street. So that's helpful. So little things like that. And then my I have a daughter who likes to play the piano, and so she's aware and she looks at the calendar on her cell phone. If I'm on a call, she knows it's not a great time to practice the piano.

Speaker 1: 20:35

I don't know, so do you have a shared family calendar?

Speaker 2: 20:39

Yeah, that's important.

Speaker 1: 20:41

Drop the nuggets here. Drop the nuggets. Okay, let's actually go into that. What are some things that you do as a family that helps you all coordinate your activities and especially facilitate communication, because I mean in close relationships that's normally one of the toughest, most difficult aspect of relationships is communication and making decisions. So what do you do to help facilitate that process?

Speaker 2: 21:05

So before going into tactics in fact every time I work with somebody and they're focused on tactics I'm always like let's start with clarity first, get clarity, then implement the tactics, because if you jump into tactics it might not. The tactic might not work because it's incongruent with the person's nature or their personality or their strengths or whatever. So the first thing is my wife and I learned really early on, even just in dating, that we like to talk to each other, that we are each other's best friend, and so if we set aside time to talk with one another, then that resolves 80 to 90% of any problem, just talking to one another. So that will look like every morning I'll get up, or I get up earlier than she does, but the first time I see her in the morning I always give her a big hug and then I'm always available to have a quick little chat about the family calendar or whatever, and then we're always talking before we go to bed in the evening and at dinner time and we share wins with each other during the day. I'd say that we probably talk with one another a solid like 90 minutes to two hours a day just chatting. But that's who we are and that's what works for us. That might not work for everybody else. There are families where people stay in their lanes and they don't need to have that constant communication, and that's okay. So that's the first thing.

Speaker 2: 22:33

The second part, which has been more critical lately, has been implementing okay, who's in charge of this thing? Who's the point person on this particular issue? So every child has a bathroom job, every child has a room job, and in the past I was the one that would coordinate those things and make sure it went well, but we've switched that back to my wife, and so Jenny takes care of making sure that people know what their jobs are. And then a couple of my older kids. They've just become extremely conscientious about making sure they do their thing and helping the younger ones do theirs. And because we are, we have this philosophy that our older kids are not responsible for raising our younger ones. Then the kids know that they have freedom and independence to be themselves, to go where they need to go.

Speaker 2: 23:28

My oldest daughter we've treated her like an adult since she was 16 and said you can live your life autonomously, but having the communication and the family calendar and the designated jobs has been crucial. And if there's something that we genuinely none of us really like to do, then we have to be prepared to outsource it At some point. I would really love to outsource all landscaping, because none of us love it. However, we have backyard chickens, and there are people in the family that enjoy feeding the chickens, watering the chickens, collecting the eggs, scooping out the poop, all that stuff. It's just trial and error, but okay, here's the big nugget. It's like when you understand what your nature is and what the nature of the people in your family is, then you can implement strategies that are supportive to that nature.

Speaker 1: 24:19

And how do you suggest, say you have an entrepreneur on this or a business owner on listening to this call, and how do I know what my kids' nature or strengths are?

Speaker 2: 24:30

There are two systems that I highly recommend For children. It's the energy profiling system that was developed by Carol Tuttle, which I highly recommend, as I pretty much call it the definitive parenting book, although the second one my wife has been reading lately and it's called Hold On to your Kids. I'm not sure who the author is, but she's been studying that book like she was studying energy profiling. And then the second system is the Clifton Strengths Finder Program, especially for older teens and adults, which is a system that it's not a personality test per se, although it reflects somebody's personality, but what it does is it helps the individual define what qualities for success they thrive in doing, and so if they are not thriving as an individual, they can say okay, you are naturally a creative person using this particular strength, so let's do more things in your life that help you have a creative outlet.

Speaker 2: 25:35

Or you're a natural. You have this ability to be extremely flexible in accommodating with people, and so let's institute opportunities for you to be less, to try to be less rigid and just to be more flexible. So I have that strength, and one of my things lately has been if somebody is late to an appointment or they have to cancel an appointment on me. I'm like, okay, I'm flexible, I'm accommodating. Number three strength is adaptability.

Speaker 1: 26:07

And he is because I was 15 minutes late to this interview. Yeah, I know.

Speaker 2: 26:12

I'm not going to be upset when somebody has that. When that kind of thing happens, I'm flexible and accommodating. That is who I am by nature, so I might as well let that strength shine as I interact with other people.

Speaker 1: 26:26

And when I turn to the one of the last questions I really enjoy exploring in these interviews, and that is measuring your family's success, your family progress, or just how do you know if your family is thriving? And so in business we have KPIs, we can like a revenue, we can look at all the different metrics. If you had to identify metrics for your family that you know are critical, that you need to do in order for your family to thrive, what would some of those metrics or activities be?

Speaker 2: 27:01

Great question and, yeah, I haven't even given much thought to it. But off the top of my head and again, my KPIs are going to be different because of my values, and my values are going to be different than the listener's values, based on their strengths and their nature. But one of the KPIs for me would be like emotional outbursts. Not that we ever want to suppress the ability for a child to express the very real frustration that they have, but if those kinds of things are happening consistently, constantly, then there's something that is missing for that child, like they are crying out for help. My son was upset with something, came into my office yesterday evening very disappointed that a swimming engagement had gotten canceled by the host, and was crying for 15 or 20 minutes and then he went and took a nap and he took a nap for two hours at four o'clock in that afternoon and that's all I needed. He just needed a nap. But we talked it out. He knew that I cared, I wasn't going to brush him aside, and then he took a nap and I got so much done. And so there's a real, a very real danger of overlooking or brushing aside kids' emotional concerns. I mean, I'm sure there are horror stories of people who are like, yeah, I could never truly express my feelings because if I did, my dad or mom would get angry with me, and so then they just learned to suppress all of that, and that's not helpful either. But if there's one particular person who is consistently or constantly having some kind of outburst, that's a sign of a cry for help. And so that's one thing.

Speaker 2: 28:50

Another thing is how for us. Another KPI for us is how well do we vacation together? And this is interesting because my wife and I really genuinely like to do something with the family. That's new not necessarily new, but it's outside of the norm of our daily routine every six weeks or so. And so we went on a two-week road trip to Washington DC just recently and we had nine people in our nine-seater suburban and the fact that we could go on that trip and have very few conflicts, and everybody came home saying that was a wonderful trip. I loved that. That was the best. It was like okay, that is a KPI that our family is thriving.

Speaker 2: 29:34

Money can absolutely be a KPI for certain people. They need it to be a KPI, and so for us it's always been. Do we have sufficient for our needs, though we'd like to have even more abundantly than we do, but we've always had sufficient. You've always been able to cover our needs, even as a family of nine. And yeah, and other people will say, date night is a KPI, friday night, date night, right. And yeah, how well you do family dinners together. Like, is family dinner a time of stress and arguing, or do people actually come together and enjoy the time and walk away and there's no hurt feelings and there's no arguments?

Speaker 1: 30:21

I love these. I've never heard how well does my family vacation together. I think that's brilliant.

Speaker 2: 30:27

Love that yeah it's important, I think, yeah, I was coaching a gal the other day who has had some marital struggles and she and her husband and son were going to a Disney park and I asked her about like times that she'd been to the parks before and I think, do you guys have conversations about expectations for this trip? Or have you had conversations about expectations and she's no Say it's time for you to communicate to your husband what your expectations are for this trip. This is what I'm committed to. This is what I need from this trip for me and for our family. Now, what are you committed to and what do you need from this trip for you and for our family?

Speaker 1: 31:11

Oh, that is so important. My wife's really good at that and I'm just so go with the flow that I've learned. I've needed to be better at that. That's incredible. Steve, thank you so much for coming on the show, Especially when I came in late and just for all these nuggets. These are some phenomenal ways to look at how your family processes work. Some things I've really enjoyed the catch and release, talking about specialization with your family. That's a theme we haven't really talked about and I think I'm gonna add that in the future to future conversations. So, Steve, thank you so much for everything you've shared.

Speaker 2: 31:47

Yeah, and I know you're wrapping up and I know that you're an expert in the traction system, but the whole concept of 90 day rocks and accountability charts who's responsible for this? It's hard when your children are young, let's just put it out there. It's hard when you have five kids under the age of 10. But if, as you grow and as they grow, you can really treat your family and operate like it's a business and have a really great team and then end up getting really awesome results, I 100% echo that.

Speaker 1: 32:23

Thank you, You're very welcome.

Speaker 2: 32:24

Joseph, thanks for the hug.

Speaker 1: 32:26

Once again, thank you for coming on the show and I want you to come back sometime, so this will be great.

Speaker 2: 32:31

That'd be fabulous.

Speaker 1: 32:32

So long.