George Rivera on Faith, Fatherhood & Founder Freedom: You Can Make More Money, But You Can’t Redo a Childhood

George Rivera on Faith, Fatherhood & Founder Freedom: You Can Make More Money, But You Can’t Redo a Childhood

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David Pasqualone: Hello, friend. Welcome to this week's episode of the Remarkable People Podcast. Today, we have with us George Rivera. George, welcome to the Remarkable People Podcast.

George Rivera: Thank you, David. Excited to be here.

David Pasqualone: Oh, I am looking forward to having you on the show. You and I spoke a few months ago, and then I actually had the pleur- pleasure of meeting your son and be on his podcast, the Leo Podcast.

So today, we have a great community [00:01:00] all around the world of listeners, and they're here to learn and to be inspired and to grow. When you and I spend our time together, George, what is at least... I'm sure there'll be many, but what is one gold nugget or one truth or one skill that our listeners will be able to take from your story, apply to their lives, and have an even better existence?

George Rivera: I believe it'll be perspective. Two weeks before my dad passed away, this is 2015, he said, "Don't miss Leo's games. I've missed too many of yours." And that was like the line in the sand moment. It divided my life in before and after, and it made me realize that I could always go out there and make more money, but I can never redo a childhood.

So I believe sharing that perspective with the world is the reason why God's got me here right now, and I'm looking forward to sharing that with your audience.

David Pasqualone: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Ladies and gentlemen, we can make more money, we can get more things. I don't want to sound cruel, but we can even make more friends, but [00:02:00] we can't get time back.

Time's the most valuable resource we have. So we're going to take a short affiliate break. It's going to be like 60 seconds, then you're going to hear from George. You're going to hear his story. You're going to hear more about how perspective came to him and became so important that it not only changed his lives, but his family's lives and those he coaches and consults with. So we will see you in 60 seconds.

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David Pasqualone: All right, welcome back to the [00:04:00] show. George, they don't want to hear me, they want to hear from you. Give us a summary of your life, buddy. The good, the bad, the ugly, the pretty, the pretty ugly. Everything that happens to you, me, our listeners, makes us who we are. So what's your story?

George Rivera: Absolutely. I'm 31-year entrepreneur. I started my first business back in 1995. That's way back when dinosaurs used to roam the earth. And started when I was 17 years old in, in high school. Started online marketing also through other direct response methods like direct mail ads in newspapers and things like that.

And yeah, it was in the nutritional space, and the reason I picked supplements is because at the time, and even still up until seven, eight years ago, the baby boomers were the largest segment of the population, and basically wherever they put their dollars were is what was growing. And at the time, the anti-aging market was on fire.

GNC was the fastest-growing retail chain store in the country. Again, going back to the [00:05:00] mid-'90s. So anyway, I jumped on that on that bandwagon, and that's where I've been for most of the of the 31 years. And over the last year, I've had a major career change. I feel like the Lord's leading me in a specific way to serve the me of 10 years ago, and I call that cash rich, time poor.

Cash rich means successful on paper, successful business. The world says, "Wow, you've made it." Time poor because the business gets all the time and the family gets the leftovers, the burned out, stressed out, frustrated version of dad, of husband. Don't ask me how I know. Actually, we're getting into it now.

And so yeah, and like I mentioned earlier, My dad, he was diagnosed with cancer in 2015, and two weeks before he passed away, he says, "Don't miss Leo's games. I missed too many of yours." And I, m- my whole life right now revolves around that statement. And when he first told me that, first it was like a ton of bricks falling on my head.

Wow, this is quite the [00:06:00] eye-opening moment. Flashback to when I was in high school, I played in about 40 basketball games, and he only went to one of those games, and I was raised with a hustling, hardworking dad. I'm in high school. That's not a shocker. But I guess the frustrating or perplexing part was that, like, all my teammates had all of their dads at all of the games, and they would score y- they'd score and their dads cheer like they won the championship.

And I do my thing, and there's nobody there cheering. And I remember looking at another dad just loving on his kid, and I was like, "I wish that was my dad." And that would've crushed my dad, 'cause he was a good man, but he was the cash-rich, time-poor person that I later became, and now I'm looking to serve And so that was nice closure to whatever that was.

I'm not a therapist. I don't know how to put language on that. But coming back to current day or back to the 2015 moment, like I said, that's my line in the sand. I'm like, "I get it. I'm not going to do this now to my son," and he's nine months old at the time, and I'm already missing him learning how to walk and learning how to talk, a lot of the first firsts.

And the sad thing is I couldn't even tell you what I missed it for. I wish I had this amazing thing that [00:07:00] I could point to that I missed it for, but nope, I don't. And I remember thinking, "Okay, I'm in, but I'm going to have to start tomorrow because I'm working 16 hours today." And of course tomorrow, sometimes it means never.

In my case, it meant three years down the line. So fast-forward, it's 2018. I'm scaling my business to numbers I'd only dreamed about as an entrepreneur, multiple eight figures, very profitable, printing money. I've got this little money printer. I want to make money, I press a button, and it spits out more money than I knew what to do with, but hating life.

And I know hate is a very strong word, but there's really no other word that better describes the feeling of having your family ripped out from under you and a little bit of your soul right along with it. And so I remember thinking, "This is just not worth it. I want to, like, either sell this business or burn the thing down to the ground."

Selling it, that's a multi-year process, especially a business of my size, or really any size. LOIs fail on an 80% rate. That could be a multi-year process, so nope, that's not going to solve me tomorrow. [00:08:00] But burning it down, I could do that. That'll get me my sanity back, my time back. I could rebuild a business that truly reflected the lifestyle that I wanted.

Probably not a good idea. It was already successful. It was just a massive design flaw in the business which designed it, and it w- it was... I'm the one that designed it that way, is I was the most important person in the business. I step away, things would either fall apart, or approvals and decisions couldn't happen without me.

And so when I was on vacation, I was really completely still plugged into the business and completely absent from my family, even though I was physically present. And so- I had a coach and a a- and a mentor at the time that lovingly walked me off the ledge of making a not so smart decision of burning down a successful business, and I just had to re-architect, redesign the business.

The pinnacle of the success, I would say, or the transformation happened a little under two years later, where I went from working 90-hour weeks down to zero off the grid never working more than 30 [00:09:00] hours, and that's by design, by intention. And actually having a really good income before and an even better one after, like more than double the business.

And it doesn't really make sense on the surface. You work less, make more, but the frameworks would route situations and issues somewhere else. It wouldn't rip me off the dinner table or wake up my home at 3:00 a.m. like it used to. And I'd say the biggest, most impressive thing overall, more than the time or the money, was, like, how my dad said, "Don't miss Leo's games."

I never missed any of Leo's games. I was there for all of them. In fact when he was eight years old, I taught him how to negotiate real estate. We do real estate as a byproduct of the cash flow of the main business. And we own... So we live in Texas. We own a home up in Northern Michigan, and we bought a couple properties on a lake up there.

We're known for the nicest home on that lake, and there's a million lakes up there, so it's not hard. But we had our lake, and this is ours. We get referrals and stuff as a result. Another home came up on Zillow, and I'm like, "Oh no, we got competition." So I'm thinking, "Eh, we're just going to buy this thing.

I know the numbers that it can do, but we gotta look at it and make sure it's not a [00:10:00] bundle of sticks." So we go over there, realtor shows us around, and I'm thinking, "Yeah, we're going to buy this thing." Realtor gives us some time as a family to discuss in private what kind of offer, what do we think.

And I was like, okay, the old me would've said, "Leo, here's an iPad. There's a couch over there. Knock your socks off." And I'm sure he would have the time of his life playing for a couple hours. But I'm like, "No, this is the present me. Son, you're going to make the offer to the realtor." And I said, "Tell him we're going to close in 30 days.

Here's the price we're going to pay. Leave the furniture. Leave the dock, 'cause this is an Airbnb. We're going to turn it around fast. Now, go tell the realtor." And he's looking at me like what am I doing?" I was like, "Go. We'll debrief later. Time's of the essence." He goes in there. Realtor's a really big, tall guy.

He's just waiting for us, and then my son walks up to him. He's even smaller than he is now, and he's we're going to close in 30 days. Leave the furniture, the dock." And he looks at me. He doesn't say a word, the realtor, but his eyes are asking me, "Is that the offer?" And I'm like, "Whipper-snapper spoke.

That's the offer." And we got the house. And I love thinking about that from a legacy perspective, 'cause one day he'll be with his kids [00:11:00] and he'll be like, "Grandpa used to take me to make deals," and they're going to make deals. And so the ripple effects of that are just really exciting. And, fast-forward to current day, like you mentioned earlier, he's got a podcast.

He's had over 150 guests. The thing's blowing up like crazy. I had to alter the trajectory of my own life to impact my son so that he could alter the trajectory of his life, and now he wants to help other children and young kids do the same thing that he's doing. So I mention my son because that's just evidence of a present dad at home.

You can do cool things like that. And so I first had to adopt my dad's message, that I believe God gave him, for myself and my own life. And now I'm like, holy cow, the world needs to hear this. Just insert your child's name for Leo's name. Insert your family events for games. Maybe it's recitals, graduations or just dinner moments with the family that we can never get back.

And so as a result of that I've written a couple of books. I've spoken on stages. I've made the rounds on the podcasts and m- with the with the goal and [00:12:00] desire to get this message out to, to founder dads. You can always go out and make more money, but you can never redo a childhood.

And so I'll leave it there. I know I gave you a nice long intro. Wherever you want to pick it up from there.

David Pasqualone: No, that's excellent. So having the priorities right, like the... God says in the Bible, "Love God with all thy heart, soul and mind. Love thy neighbor as thyself." And our family, we love God first and we love our family.

So putting our priorities right, putting things into perspective, that's the way I believe it's intended. When you made the shift, like you said, your business was booming but you didn't have fulfillment. You were stressed out and the money didn't matter at that point. There's still a reality that we need to work to make the money to feed our family, and there's so many people who are stuck in this cycle where they're working, and if they stop working, they lose income.

So what tips do you have for that transition to go from the, you know, whether [00:13:00] you want to call it the rat race or the chaos of just move and move and 16-hour days working to transitioning out to where you're working less and making more?

Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good question. And everybody's at a different level in their business and there are seasons where the founder has to be the one to put the pedal to the metal, they have to be the one to do things because they might be tight on resources and it's "Hey, it's gotta come from either, time or money." It doesn't just come from anything else. And so there's a season where sometimes the founder does have to do that, and my suggestion to anybody that finds themselves in that position is you're scaling one of two things.

You're either scaling freedom or chaos, and there's a proper way to scale freedom even if you're a one-person shop. Set things up with the intention and the idea that there's going to be more people to come in and help there, and we can go in more detail on that. But on the other side, once you've reached that level, and like I said earlier, my audience the people that resonate with my story are the cash rich, time poor.

They've already reached a level of [00:14:00] financial success. The world might consider them, they've made it. They've climbed the top of the mountain. But they find themselves still trapped in what I call the founder prison because it was a poor design from the beginning relying on the founder's nervous system essentially to run the business.

And for those in that situation, in that position, you have the resources, likely have people on your team or can expand it in order to get things off of your plate like I did. And it starts with a process to identify what those things are. But once you taste a little bit of the freedom, y- you get addicted to doing this as much as you possibly can.

And so that's that, that's my message is if you're able to do it, then, the benefits and the reward on the other side are so worth it. And I want to work with people who want to, do it so that they can get back with their family, and there's frameworks to reconnect with your family as well.

It's not, "Hey, good luck. Hope, hope that family thing works out." It's no we have to intentionally reconnect with our family and restore the bond that's been broken over years of broken promises and canceled commitments. Not with any negative [00:15:00] intentions, but that's just how life happens sometimes.

It just pulls us in that direction and we don't know that we have a choice.

David Pasqualone: Yeah, and it's a constant struggle and balance and juggling act. So who is your, what is your primary business now? Where did you land as of today?

Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. Now I help founder dads. That's my primary goal is to help founder dads buy back 10 to 20 hours a week so that they can restore the bond with their family while their profits grow.

So we don't, neglect the business. The business is super important. That's what allows us to do all the other things, and that's what gets us the freedom. But once you, you reach a certain level, you need to make sure that it's been designed, hopefully before, but it's not too late if you come to the point where you've been scaling chaos.

It needs to be redesigned, re-architected so that it functions and grows without you. And I have what I call a two-week vacation test later on in, in working with my clients that- is really the thing that we'll shine the light on is if we actually did build a business that can grow and scale without you.

And that's when you know you have really made it, and and I [00:16:00] only speak from experience because it, it was amazing once we, we crossed the other side of that

David Pasqualone: Yes, and what you're referring to is when you can leave the business for two weeks and it not only survives, but it thrives. It doesn't fall back.

Speaker 3: That's it. Grow- grows and scales. It, it needs to continue to, like you said, thrive. Yeah. We can't be going backwards. That's not good for anybody.

David Pasqualone: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So there's people who are listening like, "Yeah, that all sounds great, but that can't happen in my business. If I leave, it'll fall apart."

What are some of the things, if you were to go one, two, three, "Hey, here's a self-evaluation checklist. Are you doing these things? Maybe you need to reevaluate." Or, what are some things people can do that you see habitually, like consistently the same traps people fall in?

Speaker 3: Yeah. No, that's

I have a tool called the Founder Dad Diagnostic that essentially starts that process. And yeah I totally resonate with that thought of "Yeah, that's good for you, but that could never happen to me." I was very skeptical at [00:17:00] first until you start getting it in motion, and then you see some of the fruits of that, and then you're just, like I said earlier, you're just addicted to it.

You want to say, "Okay, what else can I get off my plate?" But the first thing is you need to shine a light on exactly all the things that you're doing. And most founders, they're, they already know they're doing a number of things that they shouldn't be doing, so that's like the low-hanging fruit.

Most people can rattle, four or five things off quickly that would naturally get them five to 10 hours a week back or more. So that's if they know. But if you're like I don't really know what that is," then you could do what I call a freedom audit, which is a two-week audit. It just you're documenting everything that you do, and by the end of that, you're going to have this pretty large list of things that you've been doing on a daily basis.

And what you want to do is run those things by what I call the 10K per hour filter. Just exchange 10K for whatever number is what your hourly value is worth. So come up with a number that you feel accurately represents your dollar per hour value, and then double it, because I think most people undervalue themselves.

And then once you have that number, you [00:18:00] take all of the tasks that that you found through the audit, and you run it through that filter. And some things are going to stay on your plate because those are the things that bring revenue for the business. Those are needle-moving activities that every founder should be doing.

And then there's a number of things that don't meet that criteria, that goes off of your plate. Now, there's only three things you could do with those things that go off the plate, and that's what I call the time liberation trifecta. It's eliminating anything that doesn't move the needle, and sometimes it's just meetings endless meetings with note-takers now and people having other team members on there, that those are

those some low-hanging fruit things that could be reduced or eliminated. And then it's automating anything that repeats, and with AI these days it's easier than ever. And then delegation, but delegating- Outcomes, not delegating tasks. Delegating outcomes is how you get to the outcome that you want.

When you delegate tasks, that e- essentially causes what I call context switching, which is a killer of productivity. Context switching is when you're the founder, you're working, and [00:19:00] then somebody you've delegated to or you think you delegated to they come up and they start asking you questions about the task.

Takes on average 23 minutes I'll find the study on that, but takes 23 minutes to to get back on task. And when you get interrupted 4, 5, 10 times a day, that can add up to hours of killed productivity per day, per week, per month. It's a... Yeah, when you look at it on an annual basis, it's insane.

Weeks of life and productivity completely killed. So yeah, that would be the first thing. And then what you do from there, there's more in the frameworks and the steps, but we need to shine a light on all that you're doing and then see what it is we can separate so that you don't ever do it again.

And then we gotta figure out what we do with those.

David Pasqualone: Let's dig into the delegating outcomes, not tasks. That sounds so simple, but I think that's something that a lot of business owners really don't understand. It's "Yeah, I get it," but they don't get it, 'cause if they got it, they wouldn't be in the position they're in.

It's like that click moment when something really [00:20:00] clicks. So ladies and gentlemen, when George is talking about delegating outcomes, not just a task, listen closely. Maybe rewind and replay this. Make sure you have this right. So George, go through and talk about the differentiation between delegating outcome versus task

George Rivera: Absolutely, yeah.

Big difference, and I thought I was doing it right for so many years, but n- I wasn't. So delegating an outcome is when you are showing the person you're de- delegating to what the finished product looks like not just saying, "Here's how you do it." Yes, you need to also show them the steps on how to get there, but then you also give them the liberty to reach that outcome in a more efficient way.

And so the easiest way that I know to do that is to utilize AI. Five, six, seven years ago, or even less than that, there, there wasn't any sort of sophisticated AI. You have... It used to take hours to do this, but now it's pretty easy. What you do is talk into your favorite l- local language model or what have you, and tell it exactly what it is that you're trying to do, and then [00:21:00] it will give you back an SOP, standard operating procedure.

You want to double-check it to make sure for its accuracy. It'll be 85, 90% right, but since you know it well, you want to make sure you're reviewing it. And then what you do is also provide a Loom video or use your favorite screenshot tool, and go show yourself through the process of what it is that you're doing.

And then what I do is I'll put that on a Google Doc. I'll put the SOP along with the Loom video, and then I'll ask my the person I'm delegating to, "Hey, do you got, 10, 20 minutes, however long it takes, to review something? 'Cause I've got some time now set aside to review this with you to make sure that you understand."

And so they review it. If they have some questions, that's when we're like, r- really crystallizing the process. And then once o- once they give me the okay that they fully understand, I'm like, "Great, this is yours. You own it. I should never ever have to revisit this." Of course, you, you don't want to like say, "Don't ever ask me anything about it," but you want to have structured time, a structured cadence.

Could be once a week, could be once a quarter. Figure out what works for your [00:22:00] company. I find that every other week usually works well to where it's like 15 minutes, and you have any questions or concerns that are not urgent, that's where you bring them so we can discuss it. That'll essentially kill the context switching that is that really makes productivity suffer.

And yeah that's the process at a high level. It's not super-duper exciting, but the outcome of it is essentially getting the, quote, "tasks" that you're delegating to done correctly because you've showed them the outcome. It gets you your focus back because you're not constantly interrupted.

If there are urgent situations, which sometimes there will be, you have to give them a structure that escalates it to meet the criteria of urgent so that they can think through and even attempt to solve any problems before they escalate to you. And yeah, this was my first step to getting my freedom back.

David Pasqualone: And let's talk about open door policy verse common sense open door policy or whatever you want to call it. I remember I was working as a chief operating [00:23:00] officer for an organization, and we had 50 people in-house, and it was chaos i- in the sense of the... It was just booming business, right? Things were just constantly ongoing, and many things were on fire.

And one day I have one of my employees roll down the hall, and he's "Four minutes, 37 seconds." I'm like, "What?" He's "I read a stat that every 12 minutes, the average manager is interrupted." He's "I've been timing you all day, and people walk into your office or you getting a call," and he's "Four minutes and 37 seconds."

And I'm like, "Really?" And that was a huge eye-opener to me, and I said, "Okay, number one, thank you. Number two, stop timing me and get back to work." But we joked around about it. But talk about that, 'cause a lot of people want to have this, you know, warm, fuzzy, "Oh, we have an open door policy." But not everything needs to be done urgently, right?

Am I wrong there, or how would you express it?

Speaker 3: You- you're [00:24:00] 100% correct, unless you just kinda don't care about any sort of structure, which I guess there's those out there. But if you're listening, I imagine you care about having productivity and efficiency and all the benefits that come alongside of that.

Yeah, I used to think that I was being a good leader if I was completely open to just anybody on my team. I'm like, "Hey, how can I not be?" It's think about when we were kids. You want your parents to listen and be y- you know, there for you when you need them, not through some structured format, but this is a different relationship.

And I realized that I was not being a good leader by doing that, because I was being the savior to my own company. And some of this could stem from some childhood wounds and trauma, probably, a- another discussion for another day. But what I identified in myself, going back a little bit to some personal things, is that even after my father passed away, I was still seeking his approval through other means, and the feeling of being praised and accepted was something that I still [00:25:00] craved throughout life.

And you add in the fact that I had no structure for communicating with my team, plus this craving and desire for acceptance, I was like, "Yeah, you got problems. Come to me. I will help you." And George is the firefighter for the business, and there's like a dopamine hit that comes with that.

And I found myself burying myself in that type of communication versus, going all in at home, because there's a P&L at work. You can kinda see when you're winning or seeing when you need to step it up. There's, there's like a mirror there. At home, there is no P&L. It's quiet, and the drift can happen, and it's I won't speak for all men, but for me, I'm like, I want the instant response and, and I want to be able to, to, uh, to quickly get into trying to fix something.

And I found that as a big dopamine hit, so I think there's a lot of founders out there that also might find themselves in a situation. And so- Yeah, I thought I was being a great leader by doing that, but I was being a poor leader because what is that person going to say when they go to their next job?

Their last job, "Oh, I worked for George's company," and, "Oh, what did you do for [00:26:00] George?" Yeah, every time I had a problem, I just asked him and he solved it." Z- okay, they, they didn't learn how to think, they didn't learn how to research, they didn't or they had a season in their life where they didn't do those activities.

That's not going to look good on them as they move forward with another career or another job. But if I'm able to say, "Look, here's the standards, here's the SOP. If there's an emergency, by all means I want to know about it, but here's how you escalate this. What have you tried?" And oftentimes when they go through the process of escalating, they figure out the answer before it even needs to come to me, and that's how you train and empower leaders within your own team.

And those are skills that they can take that'll translate into, bigger and better things later down in life in their career. Yeah, hopefully that answered your question. I probably veered a little bit there, but yeah that's how I see it.

David Pasqualone: Yeah, no, most entrepreneurs and business owners actually have control issues.

And then that's not to be insulting, it's the things that make them successful can also hurt them. Like you said and you alluded to, the same skill set that makes you successful in business [00:27:00] sometimes sabotages you in the home, right? The communication style, the leadership style. So when we're talking to business owners and entrepreneurs and they're dealing with their staff, they don't want to let anybody fail, but sometimes you gotta let them fail so you can have long-term success.

Is that correct?

George Rivera: Absolutely, yeah. A- and sometimes the best way to see what's broken in your company is to, like you said, l- let them fail, let something fall through the cracks. I like to say, "Hey, just take the afternoon off and see what happens or what doesn't happen," and that'll give you the best indicator of what needs focus.

David Pasqualone: Yeah. No, I think that's fantastic. So where are you today, George, and where are you headed next?

Speaker 3: Absolutely. Yeah. Today, like I said earlier, my goal is to find those cash-rich, time-poor founder dads who are successful on paper, but they're feeling the drift at home. And they know they gotta reconnect at home, but they don't believe it's possible because, you know, while they want to be at home, they're like, "But my business and my role is what brings [00:28:00] in the money to pay the bills for the home and the cars and the vacations that they like."

And I just want to say that I was there, too, and it wasn't until I started doing the things that I mentioned earlier that I got my freedom, and I was able to plug in and alter the trajectory of my family. And so my goal is to help other men do that a- and however God puts me in front of 'em. It could be through a book, through a podcast like this.

It could be through helping them walk through this together a- or any which way. And I also host dinners at my home here in the Austin area, and I'm going to start up in northern Michigan at some point as we have another home up there. And yeah, it's just for men to come and, take the mask off.

It's like we know you're successful. We could all brag for days about our accomplishments. Nothing super unique there, but let's talk about what keeps us up at night. What are the stresses and the struggles? One of the most, fascinating things that, that I've seen in this journey of hosting these dinners at my home now almost 10 times is I'll have men come in, I meet them for the first time in my home, and these are cash-rich, time-poor founders.

They've had [00:29:00] nine-figure exits. They're on top of the world financially, and they kinda come in with that proud yeah, I'm good." Sit down. We start talking for a little bit, and by the time they leave, they've been crying for 30 minutes 'cause their, their wives are going to leave 'em or their kids don't like 'em.

They have no relationship or they're like, "I made all this money, but isn't life... there's gotta be more to this, right? My, my fifth car doesn't bring me joy like the first one did, and I keep trying to find that joy, and more cars, it ain't doing it." I love coming in and just being used by God wherever, finding them wherever they are in that journey to seek purpose in their life.

And a- and, yeah, and then just encourage them that they can actually make the impact that they were born to be. But we gotta fix some things, and every man's going to be different on what those things are. But yeah, that, that's where I'm headed next.

David Pasqualone: Awesome. Now, if someone wants to get ahold of you, learn more about your business, continue the conversation, what's the best way to reach you, George?

Speaker 3: Yeah, founderdadtables.com will link you up to pretty much everything that I do. And you could check for for any dinners. I've got men [00:30:00] who fly in from all over the country, actually some from coming from Portugal to a future dinner. So if you're in the Austin area, even better, but doesn't have to be.

I welcome founder dads from anywhere in the world who resonate with the message. And yeah, there, like I said, you'll find links to all of my stuff.

David Pasqualone: Excellent. And of course, ladies and gentlemen, we'll put links in the show notes to make your life easier. George, it's been great having you on the Remarkable People Podcast today.

Before we end this episode, is there anything we missed in your life story? Are there any final thoughts or anything that you're like, "You know what? Here's a gold nugget that I want you to have so your listeners can benefit."

Speaker 3: Yeah. At the end of the day my process and working with me or consuming, my book and materials my goal is to get the founder dad out from that founder prison so that they can give that time they get back to the family and make the impact at home to be the man, the father that they were born to be.

But at the end of the day, my heart breaks for the little boy or the little girl that's [00:31:00] wondering "Where the heck's my dad, and why is work more important than me?" And maybe they don't say it in that way, but that's the yearning of the heart. And I want to just tell that little boy, little girl "I'm trying to get to your dad," and my prayer is that the right man hears these words and says, "You know what?

Yes, I can always make more money, but I can never redo a childhood." We only have 18 summers with them, and that's at day zero. Most founders when they realize that, they're like, "Oh my gosh, I got, I got four, I got seven, I got one. I'm out of summers." And so let's realize that the time is short, time is precious, and we never get a do-over.

And so if we hear this now a- and realize it, you can never un-hear it. And my goal is that by the time that the founder dad gets to the end of their days, they're not regretting like my dad was, wishing that he would've been at my games. Yeah, we're all going to have some regrets, but the goal is to minimize those regrets.

And you could say, "Hey, when I realized that there was a problem, a challenge, an issue here, I did my best that I could," and you can hang your hat up on that. So that is my parting word. [00:32:00]

David Pasqualone: I think that's amazingly powerful, and I never thought of it that way. We only have 18 summers with them. You let that set in from the time your child's born.

You have 18 summers before on average, they leave the area of the house, go to work, go to college, go to the military. That's pretty powerful. Thank you, George.

Speaker 3: Thank you, David. Appreciate the opportunity.

David Pasqualone: Yeah. So ladies and gentlemen, like our slogan says, Listen. Do. Repeat. For Life! Don't just listen to the great content George brought- But do it.

Apply each day the things you know to. Repeat it each day. Form those healthy habits. You can have a great life in this world, but most importantly, an eternity to come. So I'm David Pasqualone. This is our remarkable friend, George Rivera. And thank you again, George, for being here.

Speaker 3: Thank you, David.

Appreciate it.

David Pasqualone: All right. And ladies and gentlemen, share this with your friends and family and strangers on the internet. Uh, we want [00:33:00] to help as many people as we can, starting with you. So reach out to us if you have any questions, whether it's myself or George, and we'll see you in the next episode. Ciao!

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David Pasqualone: Ladies and gentlemen, I sincerely hope this show has inspired you. The whole purpose of the Remarkable People Podcast is to inspire you, to motivate you into action, to help you have an even better life, to overcome things you've not yet been able to overcome, or to grow to the next level that you never thought possible.

And all of this, not just to benefit you in this world- ... but to have you come to a relationship with God where it grows every day stronger. And not just this world is blessed, but your eternity is blessed. And we sincerely want to do just that and to glorify God. And we hope with this episode we accomplish that.

If we did, please let me know. It's [00:34:00] great to be encouraged and to spread the word to our remarkable guests that it helped in your life. If we didn't, let me know. Write me an email. You can go to davidpasqualone.com. Go to our Contact Us page and let me know what you think. I got tough skin. Let it rip.

Anything you can think of to make this a better podcast to help you grow and to glorify God, I'm in. So that's it. Thank you for listening to the podcast. Thank you for sending us feedback. If we can help you in any way, let us know. And if you can spread the word about the Remarkable People Podcast, share the episode to your friends, your family on social media, it would be a huge honor and blessing.

Again, I'm not trying to be the most famous podcast in the world for my benefit. I truly want a podcast that's the best podcast in the world to help as many people as we can to have a better life, [00:35:00] come to know Christ, to grow in the Lord, and to have that salvation so they can be with God in peace and joy and eternity.

And right now we're together on this earth, so let's do everything we can to work together and help each other grow. Like the Bible says, "Love the Lord thy God" is the First Commandment, and the next commandment is to, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." So let's do it together. I'm David Pasqualone. I love you, not as much as God loves you, but if I can help you in any way, just ask.

And again, please share this to your friends and family so we can help them too. Ciao,. and see you in the next episode!

Welcome to the Remarkable People Podcast!: The Remarkable People Podcast. Check it out.

Remarkable People Podcast. Listen. Do. Repeat. For Life![00:36:00]

The Remarkable People Podcast