ISI Brotherhood Podcast

158. The Mentor’s Seat: Why Pouring Into Others Changes Everything: Part 1.

• Season 2 • Episode 158

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Some conversations are worth hearing again because the principles they carry never lose their value. This is one of them.

What happens when you commit to meeting with the same mentor every week for over a decade?

In this candid conversation, Bret opens up about his 12-year mentorship journey with Aaron Walker and how a single relationship reshaped every area of his life. What began as business coaching became something far greater—a brotherhood that challenged his thinking, refined his leadership, strengthened his marriage, and deepened his faith.

Bret shares how he went from leading with control and intensity to leading with humility, trust, and grace. Along the way, he discovered that the best business decisions aren't always the most profitable—they're the ones that protect what matters most.

You'll also hear the unforgettable story behind the "$1,157-a-night camper" and how one honest conversation led to a decision that brought greater clarity, freedom, and alignment with his priorities.

Mentorship isn't about having someone tell you what to do. It's about walking through life's uncertainties with someone who's already traveled the road ahead—someone who can help you avoid unnecessary detours and keep your focus on what truly matters.

If you've ever wondered whether one relationship could change the trajectory of your business, family, and faith, this conversation makes a compelling case that it can.

Key Takeaways:

  •  Why consistent mentorship produces lasting transformation. 
  •  The difference between having advice and having someone who truly knows you. 
  •  How accountability brings clarity to business and personal decisions. 
  •  Why success should be measured by more than profit. 
  •  The impact of strong mentorship on your marriage, family, and legacy. 
  •  How faithful brotherhood helps you lead with wisdom, humility, and purpose. 

Ready to find the kind of brotherhood that sharpens you? Join the ISI Brotherhood community and discover what walking alongside the right men can do for your business, family, and spiritual life.

Welcome To The Brotherhood

SPEAKER_01

Discover the brotherhood that sharpens you. The ISI community is free for 30 days. Join now at isibrotherhood.com forward slash community. Well, welcome back to the ISI Brotherhood Podcast where we challenge men to sharpen one another and grow stronger in every area of our life, whether it be personal, professional, or relational, spiritual, and yes, financial, that's what we do here in this brotherhood. Today I'm sitting down with somebody that I know really well, Brett Barnhart. And for the past 12 years, Brett and I have met every Tuesday almost without fail. He's not only the owner of Barnhart Excavating, a successful business in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but he's also a great husband, father, and a man of faith. In this two-part series, we're pulling back the curtain on what it really looks like to have a long-term mentor. Why did he make this commitment? What problem was he trying to solve? And how has coaching shaped his family, his business, and his future? This isn't theory. This is a lived-out experience. So if you've ever wondered whether mentorship is worth the time, the money, and the energy, you're about to hear the inside story from a man who's been at it for a very long time. Hey, Brett, welcome to the ISI Brotherhood Podcast.

SPEAKER_00

Glad to be here. I appreciate the uh opportunity.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, you know, Brett, I tell people this that are close to me and my family. I don't really share this a whole lot. I guess

Meet Brett And The 12-Year Rhythm

SPEAKER_01

I'm going to share it kind of out loud here. Uh, I do look at you differently. And a lot of people say, how come? And I say, because we've been talking every week for 12 years. Like Brett is probably like the son that I never had. And I don't want to compete with your mom and dad on this and get into it with your dad, but you have been almost like a son to me over that period of time. Because I started with you when you were 29 years old. You're like 42 years old now. Your kids weren't even born. I've been around so long they think I'm their third grandparent. But I've really enjoyed getting to know you over these years. And uh I want you to kind of introduce yourself more formally than I've given uh given you good enough credit for and tell a little bit more about yourself and what you're about.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. Um so uh obviously uh Aaron and said a lot to me to for me, and I appreciate that. Um Tulsa, Oklahoma. Uh lived here my whole life, a little bit south of Tulsa. Uh been married, uh going on 20 years uh this October. Two kids, uh 13 and 11, and uh been in business 20, 22 years, started in 2002. Um was around business my whole life. Uh my family, uh four generations of business, and it's just an extension of my life. Uh it's what I know, it's what I grew up around. And uh yeah, yeah, great wife. My wife gets to stay at home now, and uh obviously I'm here running the business.

SPEAKER_01

So they married way, way up to I'll throw that in. You no question, you married way up.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I definitely fooled her.

SPEAKER_01

You did. 20 years you guys have been married now, so congratulations on that. And you know, when you said that, Cole is 13, so he was a year old when I started coaching you. So just barely walking if he was even walking at the time.

SPEAKER_00

And so she was a baby when I met you in Nashville. Yeah. In fact, when I met you for the first time, her mom and dad came with us to help her.

SPEAKER_01

Let's tell that story for a second. Uh tell the audience how we met.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. So uh we may get into this, but uh I of course I had been in business uh roughly about 10 years. Um and really looking

Nashville And The Mentorship Ask

SPEAKER_00

for something more. Uh what I thought business was and what the life I was experiencing and living was not what I would say probably most people expect. And so I just I out of a desire for more and leadership and uh the next thing, I went to a conference there in Nashville and Aaron was there. I I do think that there's so many things that we think that um like in in my mind I'm going for this conference for leadership for these things, and I think God has different plans and He meets us in those decisions, and and I I mean I truly think that uh that moment in time was God ordained because I don't know where my life would be today. Not that it was bad, but what was the motive though?

SPEAKER_01

It's like like you were 29 years old. That's pretty young to be really thinking about personal and professional development to the level that you were. What was the catalyst behind that? What was your motive for even going to the Dave Ramsey leadership? It's kind of funny. Why were you miserable?

SPEAKER_00

Well, I mean, honestly, I thought, you know, you're sitting there 18 years old and you see these business people and you get to see the success that they've experienced, and you don't get to see the hard times. And uh I didn't know what I didn't know. I mean, I grew up around

When Business Success Feels Miserable

SPEAKER_00

my dad, but uh he worked very, very hard. Uh didn't really get to see a lot of those things uh as a young man. So there's this expectation of, well, I just got we'll start this business, I make all this money, I get to live this lifestyle, and things will be easy, and you get people to run it, and it's so far from the truth. So it really put me in a place of um a lot of anger, a high blood pressure in my 20s.

SPEAKER_01

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

Uh I did not like uh anybody on the team um really questioning why. I was just miserable at the end of the day. That to to to put it into one word, I was just absolutely miserable uh in what I was doing. I was doing well, I was successful in all things, but like they're just what what I thought was on the other side of it was not what was on the other side of it. So I I had to become a better leader. I had to get around people that had been through it. And uh, I mean, I went to that event, paid the big money because I wanted to be right next to the the people that knew these things, not for the sake of saying that I know these people, but because I need whatever they've done, I need I need to borrow that courage right now for this moment because I can't keep going like this. So I had hit some goals, I had some financial goals. Um you know, I was I had fifteen hundred dollars when I started my business really, really hard for the first eight years on the verge of bankruptcy, and it became a chasing the money thing. And I kept telling Crystal, I was like, Man, when I get a million dollars in the bank, like like I'm I'm gonna like I'm there, like things will be easy. Yeah, uh and and like all in all honesty, I still remember the text message when we hit that, and and and to say this, because I don't want it to sound like I'm I'm I'm this guy with all this money, but like the next day it was all gone, right? Because you have to pay bills. Well, that's not even my real money, right? And it ended up I never texted her back, and I just had regrets. One of my core values in my business is no regrets. And I and and what I experienced in that moment was I hit what I thought would make me feel better and different. And the truth of the matter is all I could think about was the regrets of late nights, Saturdays, Sundays, all the time that I had missed for what I thought was gonna make me feel different, and it didn't make me feel a bit different. Didn't change my work ethic, didn't change what I wanted to do, didn't change my desires, and it and quite honestly, it just made it worse. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing. I'm not I'm not gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, but you told me you felt empty. You said when you got that text message and you saw that money in the bank, it didn't give you the exhilaration like you thought it was gonna give you.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not at all. It's like you sat back and uh you think, well, if once I get there, then there's this feeling that you imagine that you're like what's next that it doesn't come. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And all you said was is you thought, well, what's next? What do I do now?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So I I was just miserable and and and going to that event was the hope that I would get something out of that that would change my perspective. I had I'd been reading some books about mentorship, and a lot of top, top leaders were seeking mentors. Um, and that's when I met you, and I come up to you and I ask you if you'd be my mentor. Funny thing is, like Zoom and all these things weren't around, and you were like, I don't know if it'll work long distance. But the funny thing is, you coach this and you preach this and you teach this in ISI, is the relationships matter most. It's one of the core values, okay. And I still remember on my way home from Nashville to Tulsa driving on I-40, getting a text from you telling me how much you enjoyed getting to know me. And that was the first big thing. It's like even beyond that event, you still reached out to me. And then obviously built a relationship. And next thing you know, I don't know, six, five, six months later, we were working together.

SPEAKER_01

You know, what was funny is I was at the event, Dave invited me to come to the event as a guest, and so I was there as a guest, and uh during uh intermissions, we would go back to he had a big bus that for the VIP people to sit in, and we were sitting in that bus and hanging out and getting to know each other. And you had said, you know, I want to talk to you about being my mentor. And I went to Dave during the next break and I said, There's this guy out there from Tulsa that wants to hire me to be his coach, and this is your event. And he started laughing. He goes, Go do it, just go do it. You'll you'll enjoy doing that because you're I had retired at that time. And uh look at me now. Robin said I've retired more than the law allows. But anyway, I was retired at the time. I was just there as a guest, kind of, you know, being a fly on the wall. That shows you God's hand in everything, though God's always in the details behind the scenes, right? Uh God knew I was going to be there. He knew you were gonna be there, and he's gonna put us together for that event. And so that was a pretty cool thing. You didn't hire me right out of the gate, though. It was four or five months later we talked, and uh I said, hey, I got a few other people. Matt Miller was there, and he was another guy that had hired me to coach him as well. Same thing because Matt was hanging out with us as well. And that was really a fun time uh at that. But going back again just a little bit more about your motives and kind of the catalyst and getting you to go there, the problems that you were trying to solve in Barnhart excavating was what? Like what fear or what obstacle were you up against? Or was it just you really wanted more personal professional development?

SPEAKER_00

Well, I mean, in all honesty, I was a horrible leader. And if we went back and looked at all the progress reports, I think we would see how bad of a leader I was and understanding people, leading people, giving people the right tools they need to be successful, which I think was the anger, the frustration, the disappointment was a byproduct of bad leadership. And you know, my dad led me very well, but I never had led other people, right? I mean, I played sports and things like that, but to truly lead people in a business is a whole different dynamic. And as a business owner, there's so many expectations, and like you only look like at that point, I only look at myself. And why can't everybody be like me? Why can't everybody do everything like me? I'm building a business, obviously I'm somewhat successful. Um, but that's not the way it goes, right? Everybody's a little bit different, and and you have to, I think, as a leader, mold yourself into working with people and what they bring to the table, and they're not gonna bring everything to the table. You and I've talked about that many times, right?

SPEAKER_01

So um You just knew something was missing. You didn't know what was missing exactly. You just knew something was missing.

SPEAKER_00

I was just miserable, like in all areas of my life, right?

SPEAKER_01

It wasn't fun. What you were doing wasn't fun.

SPEAKER_00

Money wasn't making me happy, right? People weren't making me happy. I had high blood pressure, fighting with customers, trying to build a business, broke for eight years in a row, which I started broke, so living broke was just normal. Okay, no big deal. I mean, what am I gonna lose? 1500 bucks? Let's go for it, right? Right. So, and and there was nobody behind me. I don't know. One time a pastor told me that mentorship is like walking down a dark hallway with somebody that's been down that hallway, and it really put into context what that looks like for me. And and I I had nobody

Mentorship As A Dark Hallway Guide

SPEAKER_00

in my life. So if I went to my dad, my dad's gonna take my side for the most part. He loves any any father's gonna do that. Right, sure. So, you know, there's turns, there's there's these hallways, and there's turns and holes in the floor and and passageways that maybe we could go through, but if it's a dark hallway, we don't know that. So mentorship is like allowing somebody to come back down that hallway and walk with you, okay? And then while willing to walk with them and trust them as you go down because it's still dark, but the difference is you've been and you've been through that, you've hit the wall. Or somebody's walked you through that, right? Right. So like having somebody help me walk through these things in life and be a better leader, be a better husband, spiritual leader, community leader, all these different things. And I think too, we elevate some things, like we do really good in in spiritual, and then we're horrible at work or in our household or things. So, you know, all those things in work, business, community, spiritual, all those things need to be elevated, right? So you gotta have accountability.

SPEAKER_01

The mentor kind of helps you navigate missing the landmines. They kind of help you dodge those. You've experienced that, and I don't want you to experience some of those same uh devastating travesties that I've experienced, and even in your marriage with you in Crystal. So, you know, it's it's saying, hey, Robin, and I've been down this road and it may not work for you, but why don't you try this? And so, which takes us really kind of to the tangible impacts that maybe mentoring has had in your life. If you look back and you think about some of the most tangible changes in your business and your personal life as a direct result of having a mentor for over a decade, can can you point to some decisions or seasons of your life where you know that the outcome would have been very different without having a mentor coaching?

SPEAKER_00

Well, I know this is stilling the the words and not just pushing ISI, but I was living a very successful life with no significance. I mean, I I'll take us back to our first call. I was sitting in my truck, I don't even know if I had an office then, sitting in my truck and and you said I can help you be a better business leader, a better uh father, a better husband, all these things, but without God right in your life, none of it matters. And we broke that down what the true value of a relationship with God looks like. So um I don't know. I I sometimes I think with frustration, even with church, like I I don't know if I'd be in church um serving at nonprofits. I get to serve at happy hands. Um

From Anger To Significance And Faith

SPEAKER_00

there's many times that I probably would have given that up out of frustration, and you held me accountable to continue that because I wasn't involved with church. I was attending, but not doing those things. Many, many times, probably the most important, and and I I kind of skipped past this, but Crystal, my wife, has made comments of uh I don't know what our life would have looked like if you wouldn't have hired Big A to be your mentor for so many years. And I think that's because she saw the anger side of me. I wasn't abusive, verbally abusive. My dad raised me like you don't do that, but like uh I was always mad, I come home mad, uh and she kind of got the worst of me in that, and I had to deal with those things. So I don't know. I honestly looking back, sometimes we kind of talk through that and what what would a day in the life today look like without mentorship? It could be both ways. I I could be bankrupt, I could be living on the street, but like I like to work hard and I work hard and I push hard. I really think that I probably would have been in a way larger, you know, bigger business, not really successful, but really big because I would have pushed so hard and probably left a lot of things behind in life that I probably would have later had regrets because I didn't pour into being family, probably for the most part.

SPEAKER_01

You know, one of the things that I remember early on in our engagement that you used to be boastful of ripping guys' heads off that were a good point.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And I look back and think through now differently how you handle situations and you handle it with grace and you're stern and you're very forward, and I think you should be. Uh, but you don't boast in ripping somebody's head off, right? That was commonplace. You used to say those words. You would boast about ripping people's heads off. And I just think that you didn't have somebody walking with you, you know, and you saw that environment in other areas of construction and it was commonplace. And then you would come home, and I don't think you ever would do that with Crystal intentionally, but she would get the residual of that. She would get the, you know, the bad moods or you being down or depressed as uh related to the way you had to handle confrontation at your office. And so the relationship capital that you were spending was eating away at your marriage, though, unintentionally. It wasn't in on purpose, but now you recognize those things.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you ripped me up on that one. And one time I said something about ripping somebody's head off, and you said, Are you proud of that? Well, I mean, I was raised to do that. Like fight when somebody blows up, just fight it, right? And then even you put fuel on that fire with uh, well, I'm this personality. So then that gave me the ticket to be permission that type of guy. Because then that wasn't my excuse. Well, that's just my personality, right? I think that's where a lot of that anger comes to in my 20s as well in high blood pressure, is that like, I don't know, I always said this too, you didn't make me and you won't break me. Meaning I don't care who you are, like, I'm gonna run over you. We can go together or we can go to separate, but I guarantee I'm gonna run over you all the way. Just watch out, right? And that became a prideful thing, you know. And still today, I I had a guy call me recently and he said, Uh, I remember you had a hard talk with me, and I was like, Oh boy, there is no telling what he's about to tell me. And I I said, Did I say something really bad to you? And he said, Funny thing is I was cussing like a sailor to you, and you told me when I become a real man and could talk to me like a real man, call me back and you get off the phone. So that honestly would have had to have been on the back side because in the moment in my twenties before working with you, I probably would have just gone to town with this guy, which then would have pushed me into this anger formide. Let's just run them over, you know. Let's go. It's business, let's build it. Don't get in my way. I they used to say I was a bowling ball, and everybody in front of me is just a bunch of pens. So here we go.

SPEAKER_01

Hey, I'm Aaron Walker, founder of Iron Sharpens Iron. Every successful man needs a band of brothers to push him to grow spiritually, personally, and professionally. Each week I meet with like-minded Christian business owners in our mastermind groups. We share wisdom, tackle challenges, and we hold each other accountable to grow, not just in business, but in life. Don't do life or business alone. Join the brotherhood that will challenge, encourage, and sharpen you. Visit isibrotherhood.com and take the first step today. You know, a fun story I look back on, and you know the story immediately when I tell this, is I invited myself out to Tulsa, Oklahoma to spend a couple of days with you early on in our engagement. I said, I want to get to know you, I want to meet your wife,

Join The ISI Brotherhood

SPEAKER_01

and uh then uh your young son, and he was so young. I mean, he certainly don't remember me coming. But I remember coming there and that little small house you lived in, and uh we were walking around outside, and there was this big camper there. And I asked you about that camper, and I said, Tell me about that camper, and you told me and asked you what you paid for it because we talked intimately about everything related to your family and your finances, and everything was very open. And you began to share with me the cost of the camper and ask you how many times you used it, and you told

Counting The Cost In Real Numbers

SPEAKER_01

me it was a handful of times a year if that. That many. And then you said this past year you hadn't used it at all. And then you showed me the new truck that you had bought to go with the camper, to pull the camper that you gave $70,000 for. And so I started adding it up in my head and I didn't say anything else about it. So I got on the airplane to fly home and I wrote a blog post. It's one of the most read blog posts I've written. I wrote it on the plane and I added up everything related to that camper. The cost of the camper, the insurance, maintaining it, the fuel, the $70,000 truck, the insurance, uh, what you had to pay to, you know, when you go to places. And I added it up and divided it by the number of times you had used it since you bought it. And I said, $1,157 a night at the KOA. I hope you enjoyed your stay. And I posted that blog post, and you never told me that you read it, but you read it. And the next day you sold the camper, you sold the truck, and you got rid of it. And later I found out that you read the blog post. But that's a small example of how making you aware of the things that you were doing. Are we counting the cost? And that's what I named the blog post. Did you count the cost? And so just one tiny thing. But what I love about our engagement every week is that you complete a progress report every week. And we've threatened to write a book with those 12 years of uh every single week doing a progress report. It's things that you were supposed to do and did, things that you were supposed to do and didn't, and why you didn't, and the things that you want to talk about next on the next call, and you send those to me 48 hours in advance. And I want to be honest with you, I don't think I've ever had a coaching client that has been as diligent and consistent as you in completing those progress reports. And it's a testament to your success because you're very focused and you execute on the things that you say you're gonna do. What is maybe one other tangible impact, either in your business, uh your finances, that you can attest to possibly having a mentor walk alongside you?

SPEAKER_00

Um something I think about a lot. Going back, started my business. Um I was doing everything in the business. So I was running equipment, I was project managing, I was um betting. Um I would take a laptop with me on vacation consistently and talking week in and week out, you're gonna start, you know, it's gonna naturally get brought up with capacity. And I still remember us walking through what it would like, what it would be like to hire an estimator. And the funny thing is, every other business owner I would talk to, most of them had bad experiences with estimators, and and I think a lot of it's on the business owner because they didn't build it right and they didn't teach these guys right. And

Delegation That Frees The Owner

SPEAKER_00

you pushed me really hard to bring in an estimator in the business to help bid jobs. I was bidding 300 jobs a year, running the jobs, managing the jobs, trying to travel, be with family, and things would always get me consumed. And um it was a scary time then because what it was gonna cost me to bring in an estimator was really gonna kill my overhead if we didn't grow. I still remember telling the first guy, if we don't bring in an extra million dollars a year, I'm gonna let you go in a year. We didn't hit it in a year, we hit it in about 16, 18 months, but I saw the progression of where it was gonna go based off hiring him. And that I I believe that was the first big step in truly delegating to somebody and really it uh excelling and perfecting a department within the business and letting the business be bigger than me, right? Like I had to step out of my comfort zone, I had to spend big money, I had to teach a guy how to do this um unexpected. Like I I have no idea where this is gonna go. Yet there was so much freedom on the other side of that to be able to do that, and even to be pushed through that uncomfortable situation and let give it up. That's that's that's the big part of the construction business, is who's doing those estimates. So that was a really big thing for me, even today, in delegating things and and letting other people and like estimating was good, but on a scale from one to ten, ten being great, it was probably four or five. Project management was good, four to five. All these different things, because I was touching all of them, and I realized if I let some of these things go, I can get them up to like an eight. They're never gonna be a hundred. You got to expect eight, right? Right. But letting somebody else take these departments and run them that are better than me is gonna make this business better, and it's going to allow this business to not require me to run this business. So that's a huge step.

SPEAKER_01

What's been pretty cool over the years is seeing that they're not gonna be a 10 possibly, but there are areas of your business that you've delegated out that they can do as good or better in areas that you've done because it allows you then to work on your business and not in your business and be able to use your uh, you know, your vision and implement strategy on how to grow the business and how uh to do that even better. Listen, before we end this first section of the uh interview, it's a two-part series. I wanted to talk about kind of the ripple effect of mentoring. And first of all, I want to say this is not about me as the mentor. This is about the situation of a mentee mentor. And this is the picture that I'm trying to paint for the audience that's listening out there today. It's not about Aaron Walker mentoring Brett Barnhart. This is about looking for someone that can walk the journey with you that can help you. But there's always a ripple effect. And I wanted to specifically talk about the ripple effect that's happened on Crystal and your kids. Uh, you're not just a business owner, you're a great husband, you're a great father, you're a leader in your community. Uh, people really look up to you today uh as a result of all this growth that you've done. How

Protecting Family Capacity From Opportunity

SPEAKER_01

has the consistency of mentoring over a 12-year period impacted your family, not just financially, because y'all have done great financially, but relationally and spiritually?

SPEAKER_00

So relationally, this is another big thing, even to your last question. When we think about growth and we think about other opportunities, once you kind of start building, other things are going to consistently hit you, other opportunities to invest in, other businesses. And you've always asked me what is the cost of doing this? The funny thing is most of the cost can be buried. The company would be successful, it would cover that cost of the the money side of it. But the cost that you and I always discuss is what capacity is it gonna take from me on my family? And you can sit here and tell yourself a lie of, well, you know, I'll get somebody to run it. Well, mentally it's taking capacity. You may be home, but you're not really home.

SPEAKER_01

You're not present, right?

SPEAKER_00

And you and I talk about that a lot, and you call those things out, and it's like, okay, well, if we do this, what is the how much cost is that gonna be to your family? Like when you go on a trip or you focused on your family, and you can tell yourself, you've said this, you said this to me, you can tell yourself a rational lie to get what you want, but here's the true cost. And I think you've experienced a lot of those things, and I I know this is gonna be counter business. Like everything about what I'm about to say is not gonna be what the business world says, but nine times out of ten, the decision has come that this is a good deal, but I only have so much time left with my family, and maybe we should not do these things for the sake of my family, because when my family's out of the house and my kids are grown up and gone, I can do all these things, right? So there's been a lot of things that I think I would have jumped and went after because I like building business, shiny object object syndrome, create, go build, opportunity, and uh that would have been a huge cost to my family. Because it's all good until it's not good, and then when it's not good, everything goes south. And the funny thing is it's easy to sacrifice the time with our family and make the excuse. I made the excuse every day on. Well, you want this lifestyle, I gotta work this much, right? You want all this stuff, I gotta work. That's just how it is. If you don't like it, then you shouldn't go get all that stuff, right? So from a family standpoint to answer your question, relationally, there's a lot of time that I've been able to pour back into my family. Uh, we get to travel, I can have breakfast with them, I can take them to school, I can pick them up. And I probably would have been pushing so hard in business, I think I would have missed a lot of that.

SPEAKER_01

You only get one chance with those kids. You don't get a do-over, and you can start more companies, you can buy more companies, we can grow, but you only got one chance with those two kids. And I don't want to see you, you know, sacrifice them there. What about spiritually? How has it impacted the spiritualness or the lack of, whichever way, with your family?

SPEAKER_00

Uh well, I mean, you and I talk through that a lot, and and randomly you ask me these just random questions, even when I don't put in the progress report, but where am I at spiritually? How am I leading them? And then even I think it's important that you come and you visit and you get to see, am I putting my money where my mouth is? Is what I'm saying week in and week out the truth, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I was just there just a couple of months ago. I was just there, I got to visit again, so we had fun. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

You know, I I I mean I I hate to say this, but I'm gonna say it. Sometimes I struggle with church. I'm a business owner. I see the like I I see the way they run some things. And quite

Spiritual Leadership Through Accountability

SPEAKER_00

honestly, without accountability, I don't know if I'd be stepping my foot. I I'm a Christian. I I'm gonna study the word, I'm gonna pray and all that. But you and I have walked through that a lot in the frustration. I think there's a lot of people feel that way, and you and you keep hammering it like I need to be there, I need to be there for the community, and it's really forced me into a place of looking at it, and even some of it's my own fault. Expectations create frustrations, like you want him to do these things, and it's like, well, if I owned it, this is how I would run it. Well, that's yeah, that's all good. But um it has planted us there, even going through a difficult situation. Uh, you remember us five years ago in the church and continuing to go even in a difficult situation because my family needed it. I always say at our men's breakfast, where we lead, our families follow. And uh I maybe without accountability, I could have easily got laxed within that and praying as a family, and many times, even in the business, you and I are talking through a decision, and you're like, Well, I think you and Crystal haven't baked this in enough prayer. You guys need to get down on your hands and knees and really pray about the situation and not even said, Well, I feel like you should do this. Like, you need to take this to the Lord rather than just ask me. And it's easy to not do that, and it's easy to just go for it, or it's easy to make the decision. But having that as a reminder consistently helps me to focus on those things in my life.

SPEAKER_01

Brett, you know, hearing how you started this journey and what led you to commit to mentorship has really been powerful today. You've shown us that the decision to bring someone alongside you wasn't just about solving a business problem. It was about building a foundation for growth that has touched every area of your life. But that that's only half the story. Uh, next week, I want us to dig deeper into the ripple effects of long-term coaching and how it has impacted your life and Crystal's life and the kids' lives, and how you've navigated the toughest seasons of leadership. And while you're still committed to showing up every single Tuesday for the past 12 years and ongoing, and I don't want you guys to miss that episode, uh, I don't think that there's any way

Part Two Teaser And Closing

SPEAKER_01

that you could understand the depth and uh the magnitude that Brett has gone through for these 12 years to get where he's at today, and how you too can also apply these same principles to your business and your family. So I want you to join us next week for part two of this conversation, where we'll uncover how mentorship shapes and not just the man that you are today, but how it's going to affect the legacy that you're gonna live tomorrow. So thank you for being with us at the ISI Brotherhood Podcast. I'll see you next week.