[00:00] Charlie Brenneman: I was pushing him and say, Rocky, my son, I was pushing him and he was in his little baby thing in the cart and I said, I’m there and I’m looking at this free thing. And I’m like, Oh, I don’t want, I don’t know about the pop. So like, I wanted to ask my wife’s opinion. She was at the other end of the aisle.

[00:16] Charlie Brenneman: So I ran down and over one. I was like, Hey honey, what do you think about this? She was like, where’s Rocky.

[00:23] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Welcome to another episode of Success Through Failure, the show for successful people. And for those who want to become successful, the only show that reveals the true. And today I’m bringing you one of my longtime friends and, uh, a guy who’s been on the podcast a few times before Charlie “The Spaniard” Brenneman.

[00:44] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: If you don’t know who Charlie Brenneman is, Charlie was a very successful high school wrestler in Pennsylvania, a successful college wrestler, division one college wrestler, national multiple time national qualifier, and became a high school Spanish teacher. Then. Got onto a sports based reality TV show called pros versus Joe’s and Charlie, who did you compete against that?

[01:07] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Who are some of the, who are the pros?

[01:10] Charlie Brenneman: I was a regular Joe. It’s on Amazon for like two bucks an episode. It’s fun to watch if you want. Pros versus Joe season one, episode nine and 10. Uh, Brandi Chastain, Kevin Green, John Rocker, Herschel Walker, Dominique Wilkins, Clive Drexler, Xavier McDaniel, Darren Dalton.

[01:27] Charlie Brenneman: And one or two other awesome professional

[01:30] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: athletes. That’s crazy. How did you do by the way? I

[01:32] Charlie Brenneman: forget. I won baby. I was the pro of the Joe. I won 20 grand. And then on the second episode, I want a brand new 2006 Dodge Caliber. The cool one with the cooler up front.

[01:44] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: I don’t think I knew that. I do remember you did well, but I don’t remember you won the Dodge Caliber.

[01:48] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: That’s pretty cool. All right. So that was before he becomes a professional athlete. Then. He leaves his job, commits to becoming a professional MMA fighter. And after years of success and failure and ups and downs, I mean, you got to buy his books. They’re just amazing. Just recounting, uh, your, for your first book, especially, which is right behind me on my, on my bookshelf is an amazing recounting of your story, Charlie.

[02:13] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And for the listener, I highly recommend you buy the book. What’s the name of the first book again?

[02:18] Charlie Brenneman: So the first one I wrote is Driven, and then I actually just released a young reader version of Driven to be used in schools and for kind of like a parent child connection tool. So I just wrote a young reader version of that, too.

[02:31] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Yeah. Great, great books. I’ve got, I’ve got both copies right here behind me and it documents Charlie’s journey to becoming one of the best in the world at what he did. He got into the UFC, which is the, the top. Promotion in the world for it’s like getting into the NFL of football or of MMA. And he ended up knocking off the number six ranked fighter in the world, fought several fights at a 19 and eight professional record as a fighter.

[02:59] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: He has since written multiple books, become a speaker and an influencer, a podcast host. And we’re really lucky to have Charlie on. And we’re talking today about success through failure. As a parent, Charlie is a parent of two. I’m a parent of four. So I’m twice as good as Charlie here. Actually, I’m probably twice as bad twice as bad, but we’re going to be talking about some parenting failures that we’ve experienced.

[03:23] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: I mean, mistakes we’ve made and. Some of them are funny. Some of them are, are a little bit tough to share publicly, to be honest. And we just want to reveal that parenting is hard and guys like us who are sometimes put on a pedestal for people who have all the answers and do everything perfectly and do everything right.

[03:43] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: It’s far from the truth. We, we struggle, we fail and, and we learn from it just like you, the listener. So some of the things we’re going to, going to toss back and forth, like I said, are going to be funny. Uh, I’m going to, I’m going to give you an example of a funny one. So when we’ve had our first child, Jesse, he is 18 now, which is crazy.

[04:02] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: He’s we’re looking at colleges. We were in the throes of new parenthood and we didn’t know which way it was up. Like, you’re like, man, have I showered in the past week? You know, like you have no idea, you know. What’s going on in the world because you’re so focused and like just thrown for a loop because you have this human being you’re Those handed to you to take care of in this one day my wife went out and by the way I got permission from my wife to share this first She went out to have coffee with a friend of hers and they had the babies with them And my son had just started eating baby food and, you know, sweet potatoes and that sort of thing.

[04:34] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And she’s sitting across the table at this coffee shop with her friend who also had her baby. And my wife’s friend reaches over and starts, says, Oh, you got some, you have some sweet potatoes on your face, on your cheek. And she starts kind of scraping it off with her fingernail. And my wife thinks to herself, Oh my gosh, I haven’t fed Jesse sweet potatoes in like.

[04:55] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Two days, that’s not sweet potatoes. It’s poop. It was poop. My wife went out to a coffee shop with poop on her face.

[05:08] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: So like, this is, this is parenting and this is how, this is some of the funny things that happened, but there are a lot of deeper things that Charlie and I are going to, it’s not just that this is not just a show about poop. This is a show about deeper

[05:20] Charlie Brenneman: things. I’ll follow up with a cleaner one, but one similar to that, too.

[05:26] Charlie Brenneman: We’re at Sam’s club and I think it was my son. So I’m going to say this as if it were my son. If not, it was my daughter. I got to ask my wife, but it’s kind of plays into that kind of forgetting everything because you’re just in the throes of life and parenthood. But we’re at Sam’s club and if. I think Sam’s Club is national, but Sam’s Club, they have on the end of the aisles, those like free sample things.

[05:47] Charlie Brenneman: And I was pushing, I’m going to say Rocky, my son, I was pushing him and I, he was in his little baby thing in the cart and I set him there. And I’m looking at this free thing and I’m like, Oh, I don’t want, I don’t know. So like, I wanted to ask my wife’s opinion. She was at the other, like the other end of the aisle.

[06:05] Charlie Brenneman: So I ran down and over one. I was like, Hey honey, what do you think about this? And she was like, Where’s Rocky? I was like, Oh, I forgot. I forgot him at the aisle, the end cap of the aisle at the free thing. I turned around and sprinted back and fortunately he was there. But there was kind of a nice older motherly type woman, maybe like 10 or 15 feet away who just kind of stopped and was looking at like to make sure everything was okay with this baby who was alone in a cart at the end of the end cap.

[06:36] Charlie Brenneman: And she kind of made eye contact with me and She understood that I forgot and I ran him back and I ran back and it ended up working. Okay. But that was one of the, I don’t know, one of the few after the fact, funny things

[06:50] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: that happen. Yeah. Well, we, I have a friend who she’s a great, she’s a family friend and we’ve been friends with their family since our kids are all the same ages.

[07:00] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Great mom. Well, she went to the gym and, you know, worked out, dropped the kid off at the daycare, got the kid. Put him back in the car seat and she forgot something in the gym. So she pulled up right to the front of the gym, left her car running and ran inside like super quick. Like just had to run inside to the front desk, grab something and come running right back out.

[07:19] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Police. Pulled up right when she ran in and she got, she got busted. I forget exactly what happened, but she, it was an ordeal. I mean, she had to deal with the police and a report, police report and everything. It was bad. I think there’s a lot of parents who have stories like that. Maybe not with the police involved, but stories like that.

[07:36] Charlie Brenneman: We’ve been in that situation where it’s like teetering yay or nay. And you either decide yay or nay, but that’s the, like, well, that’s not the worst case, but that’s an example of, like, 99. 99999 percent of it, the time, it’s fine, because she’s probably, like, walking backwards, looking out at the baby in the car, like, reaching to the desk, still looking at the baby, but, boom, that timing was perfectly terrible.

[08:04] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Quick interruption. Hey, if you like what you’re hearing, be sure to get the notes, quotes, and links in the action plan from this episode. Just go to JimHarshawJr.com/action. That’s JimHarshawJr.com/action to get your free copy of the action plan. Now back to the show.

[08:22] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Here’s something that just happened to me the other day. We’ve got a new dryer, the dryer conked out on us. And so we bought a new dryer. This is just on Saturday and we bring it in and I asked my son to help me install it. We have to remove the bifold door and I’m kind of holding a couple of things in my hand.

[08:38] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: I’m holding the full, the door and I’m like, Hey. Run down and grab me the screwdriver. Right. And he runs down and grabs the screwdriver, comes back up and he hands me the wrong screwdriver. And it wouldn’t worry. It was, I needed a Phillips and I’m like, you know, I expected him to grab the one that had the reversible end on it, which is in the drawer in the kitchen.

[08:53] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: It was like super easy to find. And, and I rolled my eyes and. I’m, I regret it because like, it’s one of those things where I made him feel stupid. I made him feel stupid for doing me a favor and grabbing me a screwdriver just like I asked him to do, but he didn’t do it in the way that I expected him to do it.

[09:11] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And I hate when I do that, I try to be more cognizant and aware of it because, because I know I can do that. And I’ve treated my kids at times like they’re small adults and they’re not. They’re kids and they do things that are developmentally appropriate for kids and a five year old, a 10 year. I mean, this is an 18 year old, by the way, but like a five year old, a 10 year old, a, a, an 18 year old is not an adult.

[09:37] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: I mean, I know an 18 year old is technically an adult, but, but your brains aren’t fully formed and you, until you’re in your twenties and, and. Even then, like a 25 year old professional in a work environment is not going to have the same skill level and experience as let’s say a 45 year old in a work environment.

[09:55] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Like you have to understand that kids are in a developmentally appropriate age for them and they’re going to make mistakes. And man, when I do little things like that, it hurts me to know that I sent the wrong

[10:06] Charlie Brenneman: message to him. Yeah, so I’ll add to both of those sides of that coin. The idea of remembering their kids.

[10:13] Charlie Brenneman: My son just turned seven, my daughter’s turning ten here in four days. Remembering, so my, my son is like, really positive, really just like a little boy, just, he’s exactly like you’d think a little boy would be, and moving and running and jumping and literally bouncing everywhere off the walls. But he’s really forgetful and absent minded.

[10:34] Charlie Brenneman: And it frustrates the crap out of me because I tell him a thing a hundred times and he doesn’t do it and. I get angry and then I, I, I like, I mean, the only thing you can do is kind of remind yourself, become aware of it and then course correct. But that he is seven. He’s not supposed to remember that stuff.

[10:52] Charlie Brenneman: So just remembering who your community, like you don’t have a brain like a grown adult. You have a little kid brain. And then this, the, the first part of what you mentioned, you made him feel bad. So I speak, I do school assemblies and I always, yeah. Touch on the fact that nobody likes to feel alone and pointed at or like, Oh, and everyone points and looks at you.

[11:14] Charlie Brenneman: It’s like that empty

[11:15] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: hollow when you drop the tray at lunchtime in school. Yeah, just

[11:19] Charlie Brenneman: terrible. I have a perfect visual of me getting knocked out cold in a UFC fight to, to, to really drive that home and like show how lonely that feeling was and how I don’t want that for anybody. So hypocritical sometimes.

[11:33] Charlie Brenneman: In that, when my, one of my kids will do something, I’m like, ah, like you overreact, you’re like, ah, as if it’s the end of the world, like, I can’t believe you just spilled your water, as in, and you give them that feeling of, they did the worst thing in the world, right, that I feel bad enough doing that, but then I’ll see one of my kids do it to my other kid, and then I’m like, oh, you’re modeling my behavior, you’re doing that to him, my daughter’s older, So it’s normally her to him because he makes, you know, as a little kid.

[12:03] Charlie Brenneman: But, and then like, Gracie, you can’t do that. And then in my brain, I’m like, but dad, she learned it from watching you. So you can’t do that. So that just makes me feel terrible doing it, but then it makes me feel worse seeing her do it to him. Because she learned it from me.

[12:18] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Yeah, man, I’m, I’m guilty of that stuff too.

[12:22] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Like I one of the things that happens in our house all the time is, is my daughters, after they get a shower, they’ll leave their wet towel on the floor. Right. And it drives me bonkers, you know, but I. I sometimes focus on that and I’m always pointing it out and, you know, it’s a habit. She needs to learn how to pick up her talent, but it’s not a big, she’s a wonderful, amazing human being.

[12:45] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: She works really hard in school and, and all of her activities and she’s positive and so kind and she has all these amazing qualities. But I realized that sometimes I focus more on what she’s not doing well than what she is doing well, because she’s this amazing, amazing human being and both of them are, I mean, really just sort of focusing on the one who is guilty of this more, more than the other.

[13:07] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And another one is like when, when they. They get a shower. Sometimes they’re like, after the shower, like, Hey, can somebody give me a towel? I’m like, you gotta get it. You guys supposed to get your towel before, you know, should be one hanging on the door. If there’s not, you should like go get one first. But man, I get convicted because you know, one out of, I don’t know, 20 or 30 times I did the same thing.

[13:28] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: I’m like, Oh, I don’t have a towel. Right. I get mad at them for like, you’re supposed to get a towel before you get. I do the same thing and I’m like, man, I, I can’t, I’ve just, I got to eat my words, right? I’ve got to realize that this younger person who hasn’t, you know, hasn’t been through the world as long as I have and doesn’t, hasn’t built up these habits of like making sure you have a towel.

[13:48] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Like if she is not always doing them. I, and I don’t do them sometimes, like it’s okay if she’s not always doing it, you know, even, and I’m, I’m failing at the same thing. And sometimes I just overreact to that. So I just wanted to sort of validate what you’re experiencing. And I do the same thing in terms of role modeling that.

[14:04] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: So here’s another one. I was hanging out with a bunch of dads one time. There’s these, me and these two other dads, all of our kids were born around the same, within the same few weeks. And the moms have all become friends and the dads are all friends. And matter of fact, the, the, one of the moms is the one who scraped the poop off of my wife’s face, but the dads I’m hanging out with the dads and the moms went out, like the moms went out, left the kids with us.

[14:27] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And it was kind of like, Kind of nice to get the moms. They got to go out and hang out together. And the dads were just at home and they all came over to our house. And we ordered some food and ordered some sandwiches and stuff like that and had them delivered. And we had, you know, had a great evening together, hanging out the dads and the kids and, um, and the moms came home and they walked in the door and they saw all this food and these boxes and stuff like that.

[14:49] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And they said, what did the kids eat? We all looked at each other and we realized we didn’t order the kids any food. Like the kids were playing. They’re all about the scattered about the house. They were like just doing their thing and we forgot to feed the kids. And it was this moment of like, what is the matter with us?

[15:06] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: How are we not paying attention? And like, we certainly didn’t engender any more trust with the kids that, you know, mom leaving the kids with, with the dads, we didn’t engender any more trust. By, by screwing that one up, uh, and my wife likes to bring that one up as a good chuckle every once in a while. So

[15:24] Charlie Brenneman: my reaction obviously tells you that that’s happened a lot, right?

[15:29] Charlie Brenneman: And then the, the, uh, kind of like upgrade of that, right? Rather than being totally absent minded, you know, pretend that we’re at a party, a birthday party or a meal time or whatever, whatever. So one, there’s just totally forgetting to get your kids, anything you walk up, get your food and then you walk off and then your wife’s like, well, are you.

[15:48] Charlie Brenneman: Are you going to get anything for one of the kids? You know, I’ll get one you go in. I’m like, Oh yeah. But then there’s the, like, you get up and get your plate and you’re walking to the food to get yours. And you’re like, this place for rock. Come here, rock. Let’s go, bud. Like you remember midway through, this is not for me, this is for them.

[16:03] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: But he doesn’t like anything that’s on your plate, Charlie. Well, it’s just, uh, I, uh, maybe I was gonna, I was gonna have him try some new things. I have

[16:10] Charlie Brenneman: two, not heavy, but kind of more serious ones. The one has to do with. So I’ll say taking out my emotions on the kids and or allowing my insecurities as a human to have a negative impact on how I come off to my kids.

[16:25] Charlie Brenneman: So I’m a really, I don’t know, complex person in this battle between confidence and self doubt. And I’ve gotten like some, it used to be where self doubt, you know, fear would hold me back and I would. I wouldn’t be able to accomplish, you know, like I lost two state titles, a hundred percent, my negative self talk doubt a hundred percent that had a lot to do with it, right?

[16:52] Charlie Brenneman: Wasn’t totally why I lost, but through fighting, you have to really get in front of fear and really learn about preparation and explore all these emotions that you feel, but then still perform however in daily life. And you hear like guys like me and you and most of a lot of probably listeners of the show.

[17:10] Charlie Brenneman: Thank you. We have a lot in life. We’re very good at things in life, but we still lack a thing or we don’t have direction or purpose or we’re always searching or why can’t you just be happy type thing. So there are elements where I’m still figuring that stuff out. And as a husband, as a business owner, there’s a lot of tough stuff.

[17:33] Charlie Brenneman: And so I question myself a lot. Am I the husband I want to be? Am I the dad I want to be? Is my business growing? Like, and I’ll turn that stuff into a negative, inward shatter. Where I feel insecure and I feel self doubting and then I’ll allow that to come off to my kids when I communicate with my kids It’s through a lens of am I good enough?

[17:56] Charlie Brenneman: Am I enough? Am I saying the right thing? So it’s like when I’m talking I’m not worried. What is Jim thinking of me? Am I coming off as a good interviewer to I’m just talking when I interact with my kids You know, that, that doubt a lot of times will come out and it’s, I’m going to say, I’m going to use the word gross.

[18:15] Charlie Brenneman: It’s just, yeah, I don’t want to put my doubt on my kids. I want to be a positive voice, you know, in their ears. And it probably happens with my wife too, but more so than that with my kids.

[18:29] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Well, I can relate to that one. My insecurities, like when I grew, I grew up pretty very middle class, lower middle class, maybe we didn’t have a whole lot of stuff.

[18:39] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: We had plenty, plenty of love, plenty of food. You know, dad was a construction worker. Mom was a secretary. We didn’t have any college degrees, any family, any extended family or anything. And so. I had a lot of insecurities when I went to university, Virginia, I showed up, you get a chuckle out of this, man. I showed up in 1994 with my, my cutoff jean shorts.

[18:59] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And I thought that was cool, you know? And it wasn’t, it wasn’t, I know that now, but I had a Huffy. I didn’t want it to be everybody see it was a Huffy. So I spray planted the whole thing black. When I went to college, I was my, I didn’t have a vehicle with him. You know, I didn’t have a car. So. I had a Huffy bicycle that I bought at the thrift store.

[19:17] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Bray painted the whole thing black, just so it kind of looked like it wasn’t a cheap, cheap bike and. A lot of insecurities about that. I mean, even over the years, I never knew how to really dress professionally. When I got into the professional world, I look at pictures of myself years ago, when I was kind of first getting into coaching and business and like, man, my shirts didn’t fit.

[19:37] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: My pants didn’t fit. I, my shoes were trashed. Like I looked like I felt, and I felt like a country boy. Who didn’t have a whole lot growing up and didn’t know how to act around successful people outside of the wrestling world and. And on a typical Sunday morning in the Harsha house right now, you will see that insecurity come out.

[20:01] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: So a typical Sunday morning conversation is this, we’re all ready to go to church. We’re about to walk out the door and let’s say one of my, one of the boys comes downstairs and I look at them and I’m like, you’re wearing that to church. Like, what are people going to think about you? Like you, you’d have like sports, sure.

[20:18] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Like mesh shorts on and like, uh, like an old t shirt, you know, that has a stain on it, like, and by the way, my pastor wears jeans and a, like a polo, just a very, very informal and tennis shoes, you know? So it’s not like a formal church, but I’m, I get dressed up. For church. I got, I want people to see me in a certain way.

[20:37] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: I don’t want them to see sort of that insecure country boy who grew up blue collar and didn’t have much, didn’t know how to dress professionally. I like, I had this vision in my mind of like, I don’t want P I want to tuck that piece of me away and I don’t want my kids to be reflecting that to the world either.

[20:54] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: So my insecurities get reflected onto the kids. And I know that, and I see that. I don’t like that. I bring that to their world. My insecurities to their world is something I have to be more aware of. I try to be aware of it. My wife has really helped me with it. I mean, if you, my wife’s a licensed therapist and man alive, if it wasn’t for her, man, my kids would be so screwed up.

[21:15] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: So anyway, that’s another one. I, I struggle with.

[21:18] Charlie Brenneman: And like to add a little context of why I do what I do now, I speak for a living, mostly in schools, mostly middle school and high school, and that, that feeling that you had of spray painting your bike black, that is why I do what I do, because that is so sad to me, not sad and like you’re pathetic, but sad and like that hurts me that you felt that way, and I think of that in my own life of that stuff.

[21:43] Charlie Brenneman: And my parents, we’re, we’re very similar in, I’m a little bit grew up a little bit east of you where you did in PA, but still pretty country. And I have very wealthy friends. And, but, and my parents, I never felt like weird because we weren’t loaded, but. There were instances, and I realize that more now as a grown up looking back than I ever did then, but those feelings of not being enough, or is my car nice enough, or is my this nice enough, or like having that one shirt that is like super cool name brand that you wear to every nice thing, because that’s your shirt, but that’s what drives me to do what I do now.

[22:21] Charlie Brenneman: Another thing. And this is huge for me and it, it may or may not have been for you because your kids are older than mine, but the natural progression, I love sports, I love training, I love reading, I love all this stuff, right? So it would be awesome if my kids loved the things that I love. I see a lot of my peers, especially wrestling peers, who are my, I don’t know, plus minus five years, who have sons who are kicking butt in high school wrestling.

[22:54] Charlie Brenneman: And I’m like, that’s got to be the coolest thing in the world. God, that would be the most amazing thing in the world. And most people look at me and they just think, son, right? But I have a daughter too. And my daughter, I don’t know what she’s, she’s not into wrestling, grappling, etc. But she’ll, I would love that she ran.

[23:12] Charlie Brenneman: She’s very good at running now, has the heart and the drive for it. I would love to have that bond with her. My son is in wrestling. He very much enjoys it. It’s not his favorite sport, but he very much enjoys it. He’s very good at it at a young age. Everyone’s telling me, Oh, you should bring rock here. You should bring rock there.

[23:30] Charlie Brenneman: Papa is rocky wrestling. He’s right. Papa, papa. Yeah, he does. He likes it, right? He does a lot of things. He likes a lot of things. Forming that bond with my daughter. I hope I want. The point of what I’m saying is, it’s very easy to say that you want your kids to be happy, and you will 100 percent support them in anything they want to do, which is true.

[23:54] Charlie Brenneman: At the same time, I would love for my kid to love what I love, because that’s a natural bonding and connection point, and also, I know the lessons. They’re going to learn from these things. If my daughter runs really freaking hard and it teaches you a lot about yourself. If my son wrestles, I can take all of my life and hand it to him and say, this is, this is what you got to do, bud.

[24:17] Charlie Brenneman: But I had no control over that. And I have to be okay. Case in point that Rocky doesn’t want to go to spring wrestling because he’s. Six. And he wants to play baseball. I have to say, okay, well, I’m going to go to practice. You stay here. And I have to not care about that. Right? And I say have to. But what I mean is if I want to be an integrative person, I need to.

[24:40] Charlie Brenneman: And that’s not easy. Allowing them to make choices. And I’m not talking about right choice, wrong choice. I’m like taste choices. What do you like to do? Let’s do it. And then be there. It might Fine. Daughter’s super into food shows like to be, Oh, you want to do chef? All right, let’s be like that is really, really, really, really hard and I lose sleep over it.

[25:04] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And I just want to point out that was the first time the word Integritus has ever been used in 400 episodes.

[25:10] Charlie Brenneman: I don’t know if it’s a word, but I use it all the time.

[25:13] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: It’s a solid word. I’m gonna start using that So I got another one I’ll share here is just to kind of piggyback on what you’re talking about, Charlie, I grew up, you know, I talked about blue collar, we split a lot of firewood.

[25:25] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: We did a lot of hunting. We planted a lot of huge vegetable gardens and we just did hard work kind of blue collar Pittsburgh country boy, wrestling stuff. Like that was my world growing up. And you know, you and I obviously will agree. That wrestling is a really freaking hard sport. And I always thought to myself, yes, my kids have to do so.

[25:51] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: They have to, in an unconscious level, I, I think I even still feel this and I’ve gotten better at this, but I have always thought they have to like. Live the way I lived and do hard things the way I’ve done hard things. And that’s the only way to come into the world, to go out into the world prepared. And I then met my wife and her upbringing was very different than mine.

[26:16] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: She didn’t have a silver spoon in her mouth by any stretch. You know, she, she probably had what she did have less than me growing up, but had her own sort of tough road. But I’ve always had this unconscious belief, like at a logical level, I know that, that you. You don’t have to have that kind of hard kind of life in order to come into the world and find success.

[26:37] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: But I, I was, I was running with my friend. I have a running partner here. He’s a couple of houses down from me. We ran her six miles this morning and about two years ago, maybe three years ago, we were having a conversation on one of our runs about how I. Believe all this and, you know, in the value of hard work.

[26:52] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And I still believe, I mean, there’s no, nothing will ever change that, that I do believe in the value of doing hard things, but it talked about those as, as formative experiences and he didn’t have those. And he had a very sort of almost vanilla upbringing, grew up in a neighborhood, played a lot in the neighborhood, played baseball, played basketball, actually played division three college basketball.

[27:14] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: I mean, so he was a, he was an athlete in college, but he doesn’t believe that you need this like gritty, hardcore background. He’s like, I didn’t. And he’s turned out great. He’s amazing. He’s a teacher. He runs Spartan races and we ran a marathon a couple of years ago. I mean, he does. He’s just an awesome guy.

[27:31] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Very well balanced and loves outdoor adventure and all this stuff. My brother, my late brother in law, he didn’t have any, he didn’t really participate in sports, but he grew up to be this amazing, amazing human being who got this big job. CFO of a pretty significant company in Pittsburgh before he passed away.

[27:51] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And. He loved to just be at home on the weekends with his old beat up pickup truck and build huge decks in the yard, fix things. I mean, guys, just a amazing craftsman. Loved to work with his hands, love to be outside, love to do hard, dirty work. And it was incredibly well balanced. It’s an incredible human being.

[28:14] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: His upbringing was completely different than mine. And so my way of coming into the world, approaching the world doesn’t mean that’s the way my kid, my kids have to do the exact same experience, have a very similar experience as me in order to find happiness and success in the world. And that’s just not true.

[28:35] Charlie Brenneman: Yeah. I mean, the same, my wife and I are very different in that way. You know, she was an athlete through high school and then kind of stopped and just lives a regular life. And it’s hard for me. Oddly, as I get older it gets harder. So I’m in like a, I’ll say a funk, but where I think like, you know, you don’t work out all the time.

[28:56] Charlie Brenneman: You’re not conscious of your nutrition. Oh my gosh, what’s wrong with you? You’re weird. And it’s like, I’m weird to her. I’m very weird to her. So just not only with my kids, but with my spouse, understanding that. Being okay with, you know, I live with ideals or, um, aspirations. This is an aspiration to really whole believe.

[29:20] Charlie Brenneman: Yeah, that’s fine. It doesn’t make me irritated that you’re not like someone who sets all these crazy goals and does all these crazy races and has all these. fanatical workout and nutrition stuff to just be okay with that. And I look at it from a marriage point of view, but also from a kid point of view.

[29:40] Charlie Brenneman: There are plenty of wonderful regular people, and you don’t have to want to be great. That’s hard for me to accept because I operate from this mindset of extreme discipline and consistency and challenge, etc. So understanding that, hey, my kids might not be that way. And you got to be okay with that stuff.

[30:01] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Well, Charlie, I think this is helpful for me to hear that I’m a way better parent than you. So I appreciate you, you boosting my confidence a little bit.

[30:09] Charlie Brenneman: I was, if I could interject quick that I was seeing from your perspective, there’s a thing I was seeing about this from the beginning. I think the fact that you gave your kids, your genetics.

[30:23] Charlie Brenneman: It’s like from the start, probably your biggest injustice you’ve done to them because there’s nothing they can do about it. So

[30:31] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: have you thought about that? We can edit whatever I want here. It’s my podcast. So Charlie, what do we do with this? Right. You know, for me, it’s helpful always for me to hear. Other people who I respect, not that anybody listening has any respect for me, but, but maybe, maybe a little bit if you click play, but to hear their failures, their struggles, their setbacks and their journey and how it’s real.

[30:52] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And the key for me really is to, to be aware of this. I have a, you know, my wife and I see a marriage therapist. So that always helps talking with my wife about this stuff. She’s. An incredible parent and human being. So it really helps me there journaling about this. Having conversations like this is helpful.

[31:10] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Charlie, what followup action items can you recommend and also share where they can buy your books and your courses, et cetera? Yeah.

[31:17] Charlie Brenneman: The idea of just, just keep going. Just keep going. Like, if you live, I mean, it’s the second time, a different form, integritously, and you want to be, and you strive to be that person, be that person, just keep going.

[31:30] Charlie Brenneman: Like, that’s the wonderful thing about being alive, is you never, it’s never over until you’re under the ground. I will continue forever to strive to be the ideal version of the husband and dad that I want to be forever, and I have that opportunity every single day, and I think that’s really important to know and to remember, and then it feels so natural promoting other people’s books, I do it on my show, and I almost feel self serving promoting my books, but it’s why I do what I do.

[31:58] Charlie Brenneman: I wouldn’t write these books if I didn’t think they could help you in the areas that Jim and I are talking about. They’re not necessarily parenting books, but I write young reader books with my business partner to create lessons for kids and opportunities for parents and kids, teachers, and students. To communicate about these things that we’re talking about success through failure lessons on adversity and resilience and perseverance And so what I would say action item if you if you valued anything, I said my website is charliespanyard.

[32:28] Charlie Brenneman: com My books are on amazon. I speak in schools. I have a student podcast called spaniard school I have a grown up podcast called the spaniard show which is much like success through failure But listen to those podcasts buy those books read them with or without the young people in your lives They’re very easy reading.

[32:45] Charlie Brenneman: They’re fun reading. Some of them are nonfiction. Some of them are fiction based off of my life story. They’re there for the taking. And, you know, you can reach out directly to me. Like I said, charliespaynard. com at charliespaynard on Facebook, Instagram.

[33:01] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And I’ve always said for the listener that Charlie has one of the best podcasts on the internet.

[33:06] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: I mean, I know there’s Joe Rogan and Tim Ferriss and all those out there and success through failure. This is a really, really good show. So Charlie, thanks for what you’re doing. Thanks for, for bringing yourself to the world, brother. Appreciate it. Great seeing you, man. Always a pleasure, Jim. Thanks for listening.

[33:20] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: If you want to apply these principles into your life, let’s talk. You can see the limited spaces that are open on my calendar at JimHarshawJr.com/apply, where you can sign up for a free one time coaching call directly with me. And don’t forget to grab your action plan. Just go to JimHarshawJr.com/action.

[33:38] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And lastly, iTunes tends to suggest podcasts with more ratings and reviews more often. You would totally make my day. If you give me a rating and review, those go a long way in helping me grow the podcast audience. Just open up your podcast app. If you have an iPhone, do a search for success through failure, select it, and then scroll the whole way to the bottom where you can leave the podcast, a rating and a review.

[34:04] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Now, I hope this isn’t just another podcast episode for you. I hope you take action on what you learned here today. Good luck. And thanks for listening.

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