Making It Work: Balancing Family Dynamics and Entrepreneurship with Jason and Scott Henderson

Speaker 1: 0:10

Everyone, welcome back to the emotional man podcast. I am really excited to have a very dynamic duo with us. This is Jason and Scott Henderson. They are a phenomenal family of entrepreneurs and we're really excited to get both their perspectives on what it's like growing up in an entrepreneurial family and how do you go about managing the stress and potential conflict that brings. So welcome, jason and Scott. Hey, thanks.

Speaker 2: 0:35

Happy to be here.

Speaker 1: 0:37

Why don't we go ahead and start off talking about your businesses and your entrepreneurial endeavors? How's that you began working together? Why don't we go there? And maybe, jason, if you can start talking, and then we can? I get Scott's perspective.

Speaker 2: 0:50

Okay, let me back up a little bit. I grew up in an entrepreneurial world, if you will. My dad had been in business for himself since he fought in World War II. When he came home they went into business, he and four brothers that had been in the war together At the same time, different parts of the world. They went into business and he had been in businesses for himself this whole life. So I grew up in that right, although he encouraged me to go to school to get a good job, which I did, and I went that way and was not, I don't know, was never really super happy. I was very creative and wanted to do my own thing. Right, and then I launched into that doing my own thing, and I think that Scott grew up in that arena and we've done a lot in real estate.

Speaker 2: 1:41

My dad did a lot in real estate, both in developing and managing and owning and buying and selling type of thing, and that's where we were and Scott wanted in the worst way to get into real estate and kind of be going in that direction, being his, you know, being in business for himself, and basically said to him you don't know what a good deal is, go walk 50 properties. Here's a spreadsheet to help you analyze it. Go walk 50 different deals to so you know what's good and what's not, and we're not even gonna make an offer until you've done that. So he went one direction and a little bit different direction, but we have a lot of overlap and so it's been a little bit later that we started to do things together. And, scott, what do you say?

Speaker 3: 2:24

Yeah, I would say so. I it's just been normal and I grew up in the space. I watched both my grandfather and my father do it. The first job that I really ever had, besides just managing the properties, was doing door to door sales, so I've never had a like consistent income per se. Like Jason said, he actually told me to do a hundred different projects and I did.

Speaker 3: 2:50

It took me about a month and a half to go through and analyze about a hundred different deals. I went out and walked probably 20 of them and still today that's one of my favorite things to do is to jump in the car with my father and my little brothers and drive up to Pocatello and look at some other project that we're planning on acquiring. But as I graduated college I got introduced to a mentor of mine who's still a mentor today, and he basically after five minutes to talk into me, said come run my loan company. Okay, so that was my introduction into the loan world and I was instantly put into a company that was funded 50, 100 million easy a year and just managing all of that. And then from there it grew really rapidly, where I figured out how to do hard money myself and started acquiring more, and now we do stuff all over the country. I still do a little bit with that brokerage, but I'll forever be grateful for some of those individuals who have guided me on the way.

Speaker 1: 3:50

Now talk to me about your spouses. Now you both of you are obviously Jason. You grew up. You said your father was entrepreneurial, you were entrepreneurial, scott's entrepreneurial. Has that ever created any conflict or stress with the individuals you married?

Speaker 3: 4:11

Oh yeah certainly For me and my wife. She comes from a very traditional background. Even though her father's in sales and such like she never had to worry about finances or where stuff was coming from. It was always very consistent and for the first couple of years the whole emphasis was okay, I see where you are Now. We got to go through this whole educational process so that you can understand where we're going and why we're having these conflicts. And once we were able to do that, a lot of things have become easier over time.

Speaker 2: 4:44

Yeah, like I said earlier, I went to education. I have a PhD in chemistry and I had a pretty good paying job in the biotech bay in San Francisco Bay area. I was not overly happy there. I only lived 10 miles from the lab, but on most days it took me an hour and a half to get there. I'm the same to get back. Traffic was that bad.

Speaker 2: 5:07

I was not a very happy camper and so when I was able to leave there, come here to Utah, I started to get into some other things. So early on in our marriage there wasn't a concern like you're thinking that a spouse might have Now. I was blessed. Like you said, my dad had been in that space and my father-in-law was in sales and he didn't have an underlying base salary, he was just 100% commission right. So Tonya had grown up in that arena where things were good, things were not so good, Sales were good, or what kind of me was this or that, or business went under and she moved. So she was acclimated to that and has been very supportive and helpful along the way, which I've been very grateful for.

Speaker 1: 5:54

So there's two issues here that I want to. I'm sorry there are many more time together. On Scott, you talked about your spouse, what comes from a traditional background. You said there had to be some education concerning what you're doing.

Speaker 2: 6:12

A lot, and it's not only a spouse you need to and maybe Scott's being a little cryptic here. His in-laws were very nervous, right, that their little girl was going to be taken care of. Are you getting the job? What are you going to do? How are you going to do this? And Scott had this vision in his head and maybe I'm putting words in his mouth, but he had this vision in his head where he was going, what he wanted to do, and it wasn't congruent with what they felt like he needed to be doing. So they took care of his little girl, their little girl, right? They only have one daughter or so as like protection, and that's been. I know that's been a real big struggle for Scott. But anyway, scott, I'm sorry I'm saying something, oh no it's true you talked only about the wife.

Speaker 3: 6:55

I would say that, more than just that, friends and in-laws in particular have needed even more education than she has, because I have the advantage of trust with her, although, when it comes to my in-laws and stuff they don't understand, I have spent my whole marriage sending them books and having them read and helping them understand, and even to this day, like we went from barely being able to make rent and stuff I lived in my in-laws basement for a while to all of a sudden making, let's just say, a good amount of money where they can't understand, where I can do that, but I can't get alone. But there's like these little nuances that they just don't get, and so it's from their perspective. They're like okay, let's see, tell them the truth. Is he lying, is he doing something shady? And so that's where a lot of the conflict is had. Is it's simply a matter of not understanding the game? Does that answer your question?

Speaker 1: 7:52

Yeah. So how do you navigate the conflict? Because sometimes it's so easy to wish you could just control and change someone, but you can't. And so how do you go about handling the stress and the conflict? How did it manifest in the relationship? And then there can be conflict between in-laws, and by in-laws I mean between the parents of both sides. So maybe Scott can talk about handling the stress of having in-laws who don't get what's going on, who think you should be doing something else, and then Jason, if you can talk from your perspective, what it's like as a parent seeing that situation.

Speaker 3: 8:34

So, again, my first thing was like they just they don't understand. So it's been. I spent most of my time reminding myself that they just need to understand, they just need to be educated, they need to really have these conversations that to a typical American family there no one talks about money, no one talks about some of these stuff, and so it's been this very awkward dance that I've had to have with my in-laws. And so there's times when I've had to put things on a break and be like you know what, just in the effort to save this relationship. Know that we disagree, know that I'm right, but I'm just going to take a break and we'll come back to it. And then there's other times where, even though I think I'm right, I'm like you know what, this is not the battle I want to die on. They're not ready for this. And so, more than anything, it's taken a lot of thought and I haven't done a good job.

Speaker 3: 9:31

In some cases there's been arguments between my wife and I, although, again, like over time it's, my wife and I have started to become more and more on the same page, and as we've been able to do that, as I've been able to especially her, educate her more and how she has started to understand.

Speaker 3: 9:50

And now we're five years into marriage and now she's really starting to see some of the fruits come from this. It's been easier because she becomes this conduit between her and her parents. I don't like putting her in that spot as often as possible, but when it's necessary, a lot of times it's easier for them to listen to her than it is for them to listen to me, and so it's. I'm still struggling to work it out and figure it out, but the little things I can help with or I'll pitch in on, I do so. And then what has saved us a lot is I have stopped talking about our successes as much. I've become much more tight-lipped around some people. I used to be extremely open, and even to my own father, has told me that I need to settle down a little bit and not disclose so much, so that has helped quite a bit as well.

Speaker 1: 10:47

Thank you, Scott. What has this been like for you as a father, Jason?

Speaker 2: 10:50

There's. Sometimes it's been funny, sometimes it's been frustrating watching someone go through some frustrations, knowing that it's good for learning to handle things. There have been multiple times where I've felt like picking up the phone and calling certain individuals and saying back off, being the Papa Bear right and jumping in to fight in that battle to some degree. I haven't done that, I don't know. It's just like Scott says, it's a different way of thinking and some people maybe are not ready for that or don't quite understand it. So you need to be patient and hopefully they'll come around to your way of thinking.

Speaker 1: 11:29

Perhaps one of the last questions we can discuss is how do you teach the entrepreneurial mindset in a family? Is it done intentionally or do you think it was picked up just by being in the environment and watching?

Speaker 2: 11:42

When I got through with my postdoc at Caltech and then I took my first real job, if you will, after schooling, moved up to the Bay Area and had the third child was on the way, I realized I had this high-paying job and I had this Dr Henderson legitimate title and everything. People referred to me as that and asked me advice. But the reality was I still was almost living, paycheck to paycheck. It's just that my expenses were a lot higher and, of course, san Francisco was a very expensive place to be. I felt American dreams dead. I'm never going to do as good as my dad. I'm not going to be able to do for my kids what dad did for me. Yada, yada, yada. There was this question in the back of my head that a professor often asked me if you're so smart, why aren't you rich? It was me delving into books and then finding techniques and processes of how to really generate wealth and realize that it's not the W-2 route, it's not the 9-5 job. So when I read the book Rich Dad, poor Dad what I recognized is that my father was both. My biological father was both. In practice he was Rich Dad. In advice he was Poor Dad. Not that he was attempting to hold me back. That's what he felt like was the right thing Go to college, get a good job and you'll be okay. When I started to recognize that, I said, okay, I'm going to start doing what dad's doing or dad has done. That was as Scott was 3, 4. Then I was intentional about having those discussions around the family all the time.

Speaker 2: 13:27

To take the boys, we bought some real estate when we first came to Logan. We bought some small office building, which I'm in right now. We bought a four-plex. My maintenance crew were my boys. Every Saturday morning we'd get up, we'd put the lawnmower in the truck or in the trailer and we would go from place to place. One would do the trimming, one would do the mowing, one would do the sweeping, and I employed them. I was teaching them this is broken and so this is. We'd repair it together or we'd do whatever. But then I recognized, say, look, we haven't been by this property since last Saturday, yet people are giving us rent every single day. That rent translates into that new bat or those new cleats, or then a new basketball or whatever it is that we felt like we needed.

Speaker 2: 14:15

At the time. They started realizing that was a form of mailbox money or passive income. I don't know that I intentionally did it, other than that's how we did it. We simply did it. The stakes Scott's younger brother can repair most anything around the house. He's probably the most attentive of the three. The third one he can repair all kinds of stuff. Scott is. I don't know what happened to him. He can't repair a broken mic fixture.

Speaker 3: 14:42

I'm a good alligator, he's focused on other things.

Speaker 2: 14:44

Right, that was the whole mentality. Is they like the ability that? You know, my dad's the coach, my dad's at practice, my dad's here, my dad's there. Well, my dad's at at still at work, my dad's still at work Again, my dad can't because he's worked, and I think they enjoyed having me around a lot as they grew up. They wanted to have that for themselves and wanted to be able to say wow, we just had something good happen, we're going to celebrate, we're taking the rest of the day off. You're not able to do that when someone else is telling you when to show up for work and when you can leave. I hope that answers your question. That's simply been the practice.

Speaker 2: 15:23

What it was is I started to emulate more of what I saw my dad do. And did my dad do it intentionally? I don't think so. Like I said, he came home from war. He had a wife and a three-year-old by the time he got back and he needed to find work. He started doing stuff for himself. He created a business. Right, that's how we did it too.

Speaker 3: 15:45

I could add some color as well to this. He was always there. No-transcript Jason never missed the ball game. He might have missed, like the first part, when I hit my first home run in high school, but he was two minutes late. That was more traffic. He was always there.

Speaker 2: 16:01

It was your mother.

Speaker 3: 16:03

And I got. I had the beautiful opportunity to be recruited by several D1 schools, and the only reason was because I could call dad at noon and be like dad, it's time for ball practice and we would go practice for hours and then he could go back, and so that was. That was a huge advantage and that's something that I'd plan on doing for my kids Past, that is anytime we were playing a game like Jason, jason talked about how we'd go mo and do different things at the apartments and stuff, and then he would talk about it when we'd play cash flow or we'd play Monopoly. He would make sure to take a moment to point out hey, this is what's going on here. Hey, look at this and draw the connections for us.

Speaker 3: 16:43

And it wasn't until much later until those connections really started to become real. I was like, okay, now, how exactly do I do that? But it was that foundation of the constant hints. The podcast that I often listen to talks a lot about success. There's no roadmap to success. It only leaves clues, and so you got to pay attention, and I would say that Jason did very well at that.

Speaker 1: 17:11

I love that. I love that. I just want to say thank you to the Jason and Scott for sharing some time with us today, sharing how to create an entrepreneurial mindset in the family and also just navigating. I know that's something natural conflict that comes when you merge two different cultures, right. So thank you so much for Scott and Jason for coming on and sharing your life's experience with us. Thank you, thank you.