Welcome in to the cool grandpa podcast. This is the podcast where we talk to grandfathers, adult grandchildren, and experts in areas of importance to grandfathers. Whether you're a new grandfather, a seasoned pro, or somebody interested in learning about relationships, this is the place for you. So come on in, join us as we learn together, laugh together, and support each other on the cool grandpa podcast. Hey, cool kids. Welcome into the cool grandpa podcast. I'm your host Greg Payne, and I'm excited to have you join me this week. We are going to be talking to Doug Marno, and what we're going to get into is his experience as a grandfather, as a father. Before we get into this conversation, though, I want to remind you that at my bookstore, I've got some items out there now for sale for cool grandpa. I want you to go over to the bookstore on my website at cool-grandpa.us, and check out that bookstore. Look at some of those mugs. Look at some of the mouse pads, the polo shirts that I've got. Everything that you want for a cool grandpa. This stuff is actually pretty classy, in my opinion. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can see the polo shirt that I have on. That design, along with some wording about one cool grandpa, is all that's on those items. So check that out. See if it's something over there that you would want to gift this coming holiday season. I also want to remind you, too, that with all this fall activities coming up, it's important to do something that's fun for yourself. Now, one of the things that you guys know is that I read a lot of the books when I'm interviewing guests, and I enjoy doing that. But this fall, I am making the effort. Now, some people might call this fun, some people might not, but I'm going to be reading this book. It's a classic book, and for those on YouTube, you can see it. Those listening, it's called the Class of 1846 from West Point to Appomattox. And what this book does is it goes through and it talks about all the generals in the US Civil War that you've come to know. Stonewall Jackson, McClellan, so many of the other people that were young officers in the Mexican War, and then what their careers, what their lives were like between the Mexican War and then the US Civil War. So it's a fun book for me as a history nerd, so I just want to encourage you to go out, make sure that you have a little bit of fun. Fall activities can be a blast, but they can also be a little bit of work. So, hey, I've talked an awful lot, so without further ado, let's jump into this conversation with Doug. Hi, Doug. Welcome to the Cool Grandpa podcast. I'm excited to have you on. This is going to be a fun conversation. Yeah, I hope so, thanks Greg. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I think it's the first time anybody's asked me officially on a podcast about being a granddad and normally it's all business stuff, so this is fun to talk about what's really important and that's our family. Oh, absolutely. It's great sometimes to dig into that why when we're doing what we do and what really drives us. You know, why do we spend all day on phone calls and why do we do some of these things and it's to be able to enjoy family, enjoy your friends and have that as the big why. Absolutely. Now, what I'd love to do is have you start out with just kind of a brief background as far as kind of where you're living, what your circumstances are with being a dad and a granddad, and then we'll get into some more granddad stuff. Sure. I was born in Vancouver, Vancouver area, so I'm kind of rare as born and grew up here. My parents have predeceased me, but my in-laws are both up and functioning and running around. Well, not running around so much. They're a little lardness, but we've got, you know, three kids that we've raised here and now we've got five grandkids. Oh, that is awesome. That is awesome. And I think maybe Vancouver is becoming a little bit like Atlanta and even LA and some of these places where like you can hardly find people that were actually born and raised in these towns. Everybody seems to be a transplant from somewhere. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we like it. I travel or I used to travel a lot more for business, but it's always nice to come home here. Oh, absolutely. And such a beautiful city. I think we were talking and I've had a chance to be out there a few times on business trips and absolutely beautiful part of the country. I always ask the grandfathers, like, take us back to that time where you learned for the first time you were going to become a grandfather, kind of what was going on, maybe professionally and personally, and then what was the reaction like when when all that news hit you? Man, I mean, I've been doing the same kind of work for a long time. So I won't bore you with those details. But yeah, it was quite exciting. I mean, my son and daughter, the, you know, we got they got married. And then within the year they were pregnant. And they let us know it was it was super exciting times. I didn't know what to expect. I hadn't anticipated being a granddad that soon. Then the next question came was, well, what do you want to be called? It's like, I don't know, something nice would be great. So, you know, her dad wanted to be called grandpa. So said, I'll be called granddad. And that was it. And so we just waited for that magic day. And we got the invite to the hospital, the phone call, because this was the first. So we didn't have to look after any siblings. And off we went and I thought, well, it's getting close. I think I'll go sit in the other room and I'll wait to be called in. I'll wait to the baby's delivers. Thank you for that. And then, you know, soon after that, you know, we went into the room and there was there was a lie, Jim, that was number one, healthy, which are all the things that every parent hopes and praise for mom was healthy. And things had gone gone well. I mean, it's always a painless experience for us as men. Yeah. So that was even less, less painful than when my wife, my wife was given birth. Oh, sure. Well, and the biggest thing I think for a lot of us is that hand, the, the, the grip that comes in by our wives and maybe daughters or whatever. Yeah. During that whole process, you kind of come out and it's almost like a cartoon where you have this hourglass thing on your hand from, you know, where it was crushed. But we're grateful to give whatever support we can during that time. Absolutely. Now, I'd love to hear a little bit more about those relationships as, you know, you had Elijah and then the other ones as they were starting to come along is how did you start to build up the relationship with those kids? And were there any particular things that you were doing while they were still really, you know, infants or even toddlers? I wasn't really sure because I didn't have, I didn't grow up in a household with a great relationship with grandparents. So my dad's father had passed away before I was born, just a month before the born. And my mom's father, so my grandfather that was so alive. And my dad didn't get along at all to the point where he would not come in the house. He would come to visit and he would kind of haunt the horn. My mom would go and see him, but he wouldn't step in the house. So it wasn't a great, didn't have a great lesson there to be learned. So I wasn't sure kind of what was going to happen. But you know, our family, our kids were pretty close. We lived pretty close, proximity wise. And so we had this great relationship with our kids first. So we had a relationship is, Hey, we're always going to be your parents. You're always going to be our kids. But we realized that, you know, as they're growing, they need to start making their own decisions. And so we had kind of just encouraged that along. And so when the grandkids came, the one thing that was a bit of friction was a parentic, right? Because you know, my in love said told us all the things that they thought we were doing wrong. And so but again, we had to stand back and go okay, not our kids. However, Graham and Granda have different rules at their house and maybe have at home. And so I think there was that that mutual respect. When the kids when they started to get a little bit older and understand that it really is just about spending time with them. And not necessarily, you know, quality time, we use 15 minutes of quality time. It's like hanging out for a day or hanging out for half a day. And as they start to get involved in activities, just just being there. So they can see that you're there. Oh, yeah, I think that's that's huge. And I like to talk about to with people is that, you know, especially with grandkids, we can't pick out what a quality moment is. We almost have to just have the quantity. And then let the grandkids pick it out. Because when I talked with adult grandchildren, sometimes it's activities that I think as grandfathers, we might think are just kind of throw away activities or throw away time, meaning, you know, oh, yeah, we went down to the pond for 30 minutes and through fish hooks. And and you know, we didn't catch anything. But then 30 years later, that's what that granddaughter's talking about is my grandfather took me to the pond and we would sit there and we would, you know, fish. And so that that's just great advice and kind of reinforces that idea of being able to spend time when you can to be there. The other thing, too, is that letting the kids be the parents was was a big lesson learned. And something that not everybody can do. I mean, it we all walk that line between wanting to jump in and fix stuff and wanting to let the kids, you know, sort it out themselves. It's a fine line there. Yeah, we work really hard not to do that. You know, we see lots of situation where that's not the case. But again, it's just like when your kids are growing up, they're going to make mistakes, they're going to fall down, they're going to make bad decisions. And at the end of the day, they need to own that, you know, they can't they can't be, you know, your children forever where you make all the decisions to protect them, they're going to bump their nose and they're going to do some of them, they're going to do stupid things. And that's just the way it is. We've all done, I won't, you know, we're not going to get into that hopefully, but we've all done stupid things when we were growing up. And I thought that my kids don't do as many stupid things as I did. Absolutely. That's the I would tell my kids, you know, I'm going to let you make those non fatal errors. If I if I see you right, you know, doing something really disastrous, you know, I'll jump in and give you at least a word of caution, but, you know, sometimes you got to make those mistakes and and just learn from those. Now, I do know you've got a granddaughter that lives out in Charlotte. So she's not, you know, a trip down the road to go see her. How have you been able to start to build that relationship up with her at a long distance? It was a bit tough at the beginning because, you know, my daughter had moved there. And she said she was never going to have kids. She's very career oriented, very focused, very driven. I used to joke and say she's like me. She's cold. She'll never get married. But, you know, she found a guy that that stole her heart and he had a daughter already. And so she just fell in love with this, this young girl. And it's like, wow, we're so excited to see Danielle, you know, as a mom, as a stepmom. And the family was very, very supportive with the that situation. So we went down to visit and we just, you know, gave them their space, right? Go stay in a hotel. You want to ruin your family relationships with your family. So we stayed in a hotel. And, you know, she was very shy and it's taken a while, but it's through, you know, birthdays and Christmas and special events and the times that we've traveled there and conversations that she starts to get used to. Hey, the, you know, there are other people who care, love, you know, love on me. And I think too, that idea when you're welcoming somebody in from another family, especially somebody young, is that idea is this permanence, right? Because I think sometimes when the kids are born into the family, it's just kind of already there, that connection. But when you have somebody that realizes that, hey, this hasn't always been here, that may be trying to build that permanence and that relationship and that trust. Absolutely. Now, what are some of the lessons and what are some of the things that you've noticed about interacting with the grandsons versus the granddaughters? If you have seen any differences? Well, I mean, one of the things is that we've noticed each of the kids are different. You know, they have different aptitudes and attitudes and different interests. So we can't treat them all the same. So do your example, not everybody wants to go to the pond and throw in a hook. And so that was the first thing was realizing they're different. And I remember that with our kids, this is my wife, he'll like, if you want to be a morning person, it's really simple. You said you're lying for five a.m. on a rings, you just get out of bed and you go, she said, no, people are different. And I argued with her until we had kids and I went, Oh, some like to sleep. Maybe my wife is right. Their kids are different. So I went into that knowing the same thing with the grandkids. So an example is that I used to play the drums. That's my wife and I met was in a band. And I have one grandson who likes to come in there, just honed on them for about a minute. And then he's bored and he's gone. And then the younger one will sit there for like an hour and play. So they both come into my office because that's where the drum set is and they want to play. But there's two totally different outcomes. The granddaughters, again, totally different interest. Once the youngest one, the two year olds got boundless energy. And the older one wants to sit and talk or wants to sit, wants me to paint your nails or do something crafty with her. The two year old wants me to read. So I think it's just about paying attention to what, like you said, what the kids want. And then just spending time one on one. So, you know, I might be sitting reading with the youngest one and everyone wants to pile on the coach and talk. So you know, I'm sitting here with Isabel or sitting here with Abigail. It's her time. You guys go play. We'll come outside. We'll do something, you know, something the boys want to do a little bit later. Oh, yeah, it's it's interesting to sometimes just how that interaction goes. And it changes over time because you probably have already seen this even though you've got younger grandkids is that what they're interested in at three and at four is not the same thing as when they're five, six, and seven. And so I think that that always keeps us on our toes. And, you know, not a bad thing either as we get a little bit older and into our routines to have something that comes in and shakes us up where it's like, I thought the last time we were together, you are all into robots. And now you're into dinosaurs. And we got to shift gears on. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, then the kids now, obviously, you know, the world operates with computers. And so, you know, great examples, we were out with my fun law out to see the grandkids and out for dinner on Sunday. And so I pulled up my phone and AI. And I said, can you create 50 children appropriate riddles for seven and under? And we sat there, we went through these riddles and they had a blast. Oh, hey, grandad, can you do that again? Can we get some tougher ones? And so there was just an opportunity to do something a bit different. But everybody at the table was engaged regardless of their age. Obviously, the younger ones didn't get it. Then the adults weren't tough. But, you know, it's just, yeah, hanging out, spending time. And yeah, that's the quality time with the kids. It's fun. Well, and you brought up an interesting point using AI to create those riddles because I know being gen X and then talking with even some younger baby boomers and things, sometimes we can be a little resistant to technology. Some of that is just, I think, just because we didn't grow up with it. And so because we didn't have it, it can't be that great. But you use that in a really interesting way. Have you found other ways to use some of the technology around to engage and build relationships with grandkids? I did because the oldest granddaughter, she knows that I've got an apple watch. And if we push the button on my apple watch, we can use the video camera on my phone. And so she likes to do that. During, I told you that both the grand sons were playing football. They were in a tournament this weekend. And so I took pictures, obviously, of the kids playing and I got to do some poses. And then I used AI to create a cartoon character version of their picture. Well, the oldest one, the eight-year-old thought that was amazing. And he wanted to drag me over to his coach. And then I became the official photographer for the team. Because everybody wanted to have a cartoon avatar. So I was, in that case, as you would say, the cool granddad. Because I used this tool in a way that supported the family. And the next two days, that's all they wanted to do. Can we do some more pictures? Can you change the color in this? Can you put my name on my helmet? Can you change my... So it became something of interest for them. So it was a bit of teaching. And what I had forgotten was I thought, hey, they're kids, they know everything. And my son said, dad, they don't know what AI is. Say, all right, I thought they knew everything about technology. Okay. So then we had to back up the bus a little bit and explain what it was and how it worked. And he goes to sit and know everything. I went, no, AI is often like you, like an eight-year-old child where you ask it for, ask a question. And it will make up an answer if it isn't no one. So you can't use it for your homework if you don't know your subject matter. Because it may give you the wrong answers. So there's fun things to do and there are work things to do. So yeah, it was a lot of fun. Oh, that sounds awesome. And that's such an interesting thing that you brought up. As far as the young kids today, they're going to grow up in a world where AI is just everywhere. Like, you know, the way, I don't know, I went to college first in like 1989, 1990. And that was the first time I was really getting an email address. And these kids today are not going to know anything other than AI and the watches and everything else. And it's just kind of, I don't know, it makes me stop every once in a while and just, you know, hey, everything goes so fast. And if we don't use these tools to connect with them, we're as grandparents going to be the ones that get left behind with some of that connection. Yeah. And I wish in one way, I wish the kids had a bit more technology. Obviously, there's, you know, a lot more risks in the world when they're when they're exposed like that. But there's, I find I spend a lot of time online and let my phone for work. And there's some great speakers and there's some great music. And it would just be easier to share with them, like, hey, I like to check out this. I know there's some bands they like. And so, you know, I know they're like monster trucks is a great YouTube video. I'd like to share with them, but, you know, it goes to mom and dad first, obviously, and then mom and dad can pass along. Yeah. Well, okay. So this reminds me the person that connected us, Jim Padilla has started doing something where he created a Gmail email account for his grandkids. And so what he's doing is when he sees some of that stuff, he'll fire off an email that the kids may not read for 10 years or whatever. But it's like, Hey, I'm thinking about you. I saw this, you know, whether it's a speaker or maybe a song or whatever it was thinking about you, whatever. And then it goes off. And the idea that he's got behind that is that the grandkids can access that. And then it's like, Oh, wow. You know, back on August 13th in 2024, granddad was thinking about me and wanted to share, you know, it might even just be a funny meme or something. Yeah, I thought that was really cool. I was listening to your podcast and I heard that. That's a really smart idea. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's definitely something I think I'm, I need to get on the ball and go do that. So that's on my to do list is do something like that. Because my grandkids are about your, the ages of yours. So they're starting to get to that point where like, hey, in a few years, they're going to be able to start accessing some of these things. Yeah, absolutely. Now, have you noticed that it's been hard or easy for you to switch gears between the grandkids when you're spending time with the grandsons and they're doing football and they're doing everything and then switching over to having time with the granddaughters? Not really, because I like when the boys were on the field playing, I'm 100% there. So I'm not working. I'm there, but I can walk away from the game and go do something with the granddaughters. Right. So we could play, we could sit, we could talk, could do some photos of the granddaughters. Once they looked at the apple, watch into some videos, take some new pictures. You know, I did photos of them with AI as well, which they were, they thought was, oh, that, I said, who's this? Oh, that's Abigail. Who's that? Oh, that's me. So I included them. So it was, it was pretty easy and not setting because it was outdoors. Now when the girls are dancing and they're in a theater, well, we're not doing anything with anybody except for sitting there quietly with their phones off. Right. Right. No, that's, that's awesome. The other thing I wanted to ask you about too is knowing that they're young and so you've only had them for a short period of time, have you already been able to encounter some really special moments with the grandkids? And if so, would you be willing to share any of those? Sure. We try to include the kids in our activity. So when we raised our kids, we brought our kids where, when we went out. And so they understood business, they understood a bit of politics and they understood how to behave out in public. And so we didn't really, we didn't treat them like kids. We didn't put them in the corner and tell them to be quiet. And so we, we've treated the grandkids the same way. And so we involved them in our activities and there's been times when they've come over and we've got friends over for a barbecue. And so they know how to interact with adults. And the one day I was sitting out by the river with my oldest grandson Elijah and he said, Hey, granddad, you said, I really like sitting out by the river and talking to you. And that just absolutely melted my heart because I didn't have that relationship with my grandfather. So I didn't understand it until I experienced it. And I went like, Oh, man. And to be honest, the every time we see them, just to hear them go granddad and come running and put their arms up and jump into our arms. That's a special moment. And it's kind of funny because you said, do you interact with the granddaughters, different the grandsons? And what's been funny is the different ages of them. You know, when the girls were really young, if I walked in the room, Abigail would cry like like somebody was pinching or she would just shriek if she saw me. Now she runs in the house and she runs past my wife. We're granddad, we're granddad, we're granddad, we're granddad. So the kids, the kids change, right? In terms in terms of the girls, when we raised our daughters, you know, a friend of ours said, you know, if you're not hugging your daughter, somebody will. So, you know, we're not afraid to hug the hug the kids and play with the kids because, you know, that's they want that affection and that attention. Along those lines, do you have any tips or any anything that helped you maybe get to that level of physical affection that maybe other guys that didn't grow up with that in families might be able to use to get comfortable with that? No, I really, that wasn't the impact I grew up in. I grew up in a really ugly personal household and then not a great relationship with my grandfather. So there was no nothing that was really personal at all other than, you know, we wanted to change the next coming generations. So you've heard, you know, saying, well, this is generational. This situation is generational. The abuse of situation or the financial situation or the whatever or the addiction. It's like, no, we can change that. We don't have to perpetuate the environment that I grew up in with our kids and with our grandkids. So we can make a conscious decision to pay attention, to read, to listen, to read books to talk to different people and then look for people who are doing it right. You know, we all look around in our sphere of influence, whether it's in the community or work. You can see people who are doing a great job and a people who maybe aren't doing such a great job. So what I would say is find some people who are doing a great job and emulate them and maybe just have a conversation with them. That's great advice. I think some of where I was trying to learn how to be a dad because I came into a situation where my wife had two boys from a previous marriage. And so I like to tell people I went from couch surfing to the head of a household like overnight was some folks in our church where I saw that they had large families and they seemed to get along. I mean, they fought and did things like everybody else, but by and large. And so those were the guys that I was kind of drawn to to try to model a little bit of my behavior after and hopefully successful on some of that. Well, my favorite quote that's actually on my website is never ask anybody for advice who hasn't done what you're going to do or is willing to pay the price you're willing to pay. And it was a life insurance salesman, tremendous Charlie Jones, who said that. I heard him speak and I use that over and over again. So I've got, you know, a son-in-law or a potential son-in-law. And I said to him with regards to marriage, don't ask your parents. You know, I'm not picking on his parents, but his mom's been married four times, his dad's married a couple times. Go find some people who've had a long marriage and ask them for advice. So saving with parenting, if your parents weren't great parents to you, they'd probably not the best place to get advice on how to raise your kids. It might be a neighbor, it might be a scout leader, it might be somebody in your faith community or church that can give you some guidance. Oh, I love that. And you know, we find that, I think that kind of advice in so many areas of our lives, but sometimes on the personal level, we don't always take that. You know, we might take that from, you know, in finance or other parts of business like, "Hey, don't go ask a broke guy how to make a million bucks." But sometimes I think with personal lives, we just try to figure it out on our own. And sometimes it doesn't work out very well. Yeah, that's true. Now, you had talked about not having a great background in terms of the family and things. And I didn't know if you want to share just a little bit about that because I'd love to hear maybe some more about some of the tools that you found that might be helpful when you are changing the family direction and you are making that change. Well, I'll start with the tools. The tools for me, anyhow, was reading. So, you know, when I went through school, I thought school person was a waste of time, and the quicker I could get out, I could be productive. Right through my elementary school, the high school, I did go through it, a technical school to serve in apprenticeship as well. But I read a lot, and I don't know why. I don't remember how I got into reading, but I started reading books like Dale Carnegie had a Win friends and influenced people and Zig Ziggler and Dale Carnegie started reading all these different books and just learning. And I like most of them, except for most of them had a religious part on them. So that was before I realized that there was there was more to my life than just me. So I read a lot. And now I still read, but I watch I watch podcasts. I listen to podcasts. I watch a lot of videos. I follow a lot of specific people on social media. You know, my daughter, when she was having some challenges, we're reading together, Brene Brown. Okay. She liked Brene Brown, so that's my daughter's reading it. I'll read it to support her, so I understand where she is. Turn to my background. I mean, I grew up, you know, my dad worked, you know, in a labor job. My mom was at home with the kids. Over the years, my mom became an alcoholic. My dad had some serious workplace injuries like he broke his back and was disabled and basically could barely walk. So he eventually joined her. It became very abusive, fighting police, ambulance, mental hospital, cutting suicide attempts. So going, you know, that's not the environment. That's great for me. And that's certainly not the environment I want to perpetuate. So I kind of paid attention to what I had experienced. And then, you know, what I didn't want. So if you want to call it a little bit of pre-planning, what do we want the environment to look like for our kids? How can we support our kids? And realize that they're different. So my advice to them as they were growing up was, you know, find something that wakes you up a half an hour before your alarm and do that for a career. And hopefully some of them will pay you, opposed to do what I do or do what your granddad did. And so that's the same sort of approach we're taking with our grandkids. You know, right now they're both playing football. So I'm sure right now they're both dreaming that we're Canadian. So they're both probably dreaming about being CFL players. Right. And like you said, they will probably change. And that's fine. So we'll support them in the dream now. But we're not going to, we're not going to, you know, rule them into staying in football. They could, they could do any number of different things, and they might not involve sports sports at all. But it's just to encourage them for a season to go through and to stick with it for a season and try it or encouraging them to read. We read with them all the time. So whether they're reading their Bible or they're reading, you know, a novel series or a Disney series or we're reading Dr. Seuss together, or like you said, we're, you know, we're going through and doing riddles and jokes like we bought our grandson a joke book because you love the jokes. Oh, yeah. Just just different. What fits them? I love that. I love the idea of getting in there and doing some of this together with them, especially as they're starting to read because they're also starting to get to that point. I remember doing this thing called Mad Lips. I don't know if you ever had that or not, but it was a situation where in the grandkids might like this where you get kind of a short story and they leave out nouns and adjectives and adverbs and some different things. And you just put in whatever you want, and then it just becomes super crazy. Oh, yeah. This story through. But yeah, I mean, because those are all connection points. And then it also shows that you have a real interest in what they're interested in, which, of course, as little kids, we're super passionate and everything's right about what's right now and what's right in front of us. And yeah, yeah. And you know, I mean, I'm being respectful because we're on a podcast. I understand proper audio and video. The grandkids aren't visiting today, but there's times when I'm on a business zoom call where the grandkids do come over is it? And it's kind of like the door flies up from grandad and I can hear mom or I can hear my wife playing grandads on a call. It's like, no, come on in and say hi to everybody. So, and then they have questions. Well, what are you doing? Who is who was that person? So that we can have a conversation. So, you know, we want them to know the world's bigger than where we lived to. It reminds me of some of the stories to where I've had people talk about their grandfathers taking them down to the coffee shop. And they would meet up with the other farmers, ranchers, whatever. And they, you know, grab coffee, grab breakfast at the diner. Everybody's talking about, you know, I don't know, soybean prices or whatever it is. But then they're being exposed to that. It's like, oh, hey, there is that that world outside. This is what granddad does. He's worried about too much rain, too little rain. You know, what's the stock market doing? All these different things. And it's a great way to introduce them to some of that and see what they start to pick up interest in. Well, that was the one, I'd say that was the one highlight, my relationship with my grandfather. He retired quite young when he moved from the east coast to west coast. He couldn't stay still. So he started a number of businesses. He was involved in the stock market. And I really wanted the affection of my grandfather. I had one brother and I had two cousins. And so he was involved in the stock market. His promise to me was that if I paid attention to the stock market, he would give me a thousand shares of these penny stocks that he was involved in. So my dad would come home from work and he would read the sports section. And this was like kind of grade school. I was reading the stock market page. And so I learned at an early age that's, wow, I'm interested in business. Yeah. And it's interesting because it's not something that was forced on you, but it was something where it's like, oh, you developed this little bit of a connection. And then it exposed you to something like you said outside the family that then it has been able to probably serve you fairly well as you were growing up. You just understood how different things would happen, right? Somebody got a construction contract. Oh, that means this is going to happen. Yeah. And you know, like you said, how did we plan for this? I remember my wife and I were down in Mexico and our kids were still young. And we looked over at a table, we could definitely see grandparents and grandkids. And so, you know, our kids were just, you know, still in school. So long ways from marriage and grandkids. And we said, won't that be exciting when the grandkids are old enough that we can just scoop them up and take them away someplace. So we've traveled our kids extensively all around the world. All of our kids have been on missions trips to foreign countries, been down, worked in the streets in New York, worked in the streets in the Ghettos and Vancouver. So they realized that, you know, we're pretty blessed where we lived and what we've got. But the world's bigger than what they see out their living room window or what they see on the computer screen. So we're looking forward to as they get older, like we're actually going in a trip with them. You might think this is a bit insane, but our kids have four kids, right? My oldest does. And they have four friends with four kids. And so they've invited us to join them. So we're going to spend a week in Mexico with four couples with four kids. Holy cow. Now we know all the couples. But there's going to be a, it'll be noisy. Yeah. Well, you're going to have to get your cowboy on to help wrangle up all those kids. Well, we might do a little of that. My wife and I intentionally booked into a different building than the kids. We're not going to be neighbors. We're in the same piece of property, but we're a couple of buildings over. So it should be quite a night for us. Oh, that sounds like a blast though, being around there and doing that with all those kids and those families. Yeah, this should be good. I would love to ask you a question about how you go about sharing some of your faith and some of your values with the grandkids. They're very young at this point. But at the same time, they're starting to get old enough to understand things like you were talking about, whether it's reading Bible or having prayers, whatever that is. And how do you go about sharing that without necessarily being over domineering with it? Well, I mean, most of that comes from their parents. So, you know, my son and daughter-in-law, Josh Katelyn, want to put the kids in private schools, so they put them into a private Christian school. So we help support them because there's a financial cost to do that. And so we just think it's important these days to make sure that they get a good education. In terms of our faith, I mean, the kids learned to pray at a really young age. So if you joined us for dinner and we're about to sit down for dinner, they go, "Okay, everyone sit. Yeah, Malachi, stop eating because he's already eating. We're going to pray." And then you'd hear this round about on the table. They hear the material, "I pray, I pray, I pray, I pray." And everybody wants to pray. So the kids have grown up in an environment like that. They like worship music. They hear it at home. They hear it at our place. They've started worshiping at the same church that we go to. Our church believes the kids should see the parents worship so they're not dismissed until after worship before the message. So that's the environment they've grown up in. Oh, that's awesome. I love the way that it's being shared and not versus, I don't know, a top-down, more authoritarian approach. I feel like kids respond to that better when it's just, "Hey, this is kind of what we do as a family and we invite you into this." And especially when you've had your daughters go on mission trips and things too. You see the service side of faith. Yeah, absolutely. But also the service side, they learned some of that because we were involved in rotary. I was involved in the chamber of commerce. I was a director of both of those. We've been involved in a lot of political campaigns. So they understand how to doorknock, talk to people, hand out flyers, put in lawn signs. So they learned that are really young age. They saw our company get involved with all sorts of charities and not-for-profits and both volunteer and write checks. The mission strips really opened their eyes to the fact that economically we live in a really great part of the world. My daughter Danielle, when she went to Mexico, came back. Now, she was really young to go to Mexico and as a dad, I was really nervous. They were going into a place called the Copper Canyon, which they take mules down into this valley and then up them out on the other side. And I said, "So what if there's an emergency?" Like, "How do you hike out? Oh, no, we'll take the mule out." Like, that's the answer. The mule, you're taking the mule out. That doesn't sound like an emergency escape clause. So if you wouldn't mind, I wouldn't mind donating a sat phone to you guys because it doesn't sound like a great way to take a bunch of people into a really remote area. So she came back and came back from the trip and it was time for back to school shopping because I don't need any clothes. I mean, you don't need clothes. I don't need any clothes. And then she started talking about how poor the natives were that they were serving. They were dying from headlights and really, like, things they shouldn't. Like, bar soap should be something that everyone has access to. I said, "Okay, so there's a lesson. So maybe you don't need four pairs of jeans. Maybe you need two. And maybe a couple pairs of sneakers is lots. Oh, no, I don't need anything. So, well, you're not buying sneakers or you're not buying jeans. Is it going to help the people in Mexico? We will still help. But it gives you an appreciation that you don't need to have a dozen pairs of sneakers and a dozen pairs of jeans that you could gift that or give that." So that was one side. The other side was it gave them a chance to talk to adults. So we said, "You know what? We're not going to write the check for you to go. We could, but we're not going to because we take away the opportunity for people in your community and your friends and your family to hear about what you're doing. So you're going to ask them, you might write letters, and you're going to invite them in to pray and to give. And at the end of the time, if you don't have enough money, we'll write the check." And they all had more money than they needed. And they came back and they had a chance to share with a lot of people that were older that could never go on a mission's trip and share what it was like. So we tried to teach them that they could, you know, they can invite people in to support what they were doing. And then that was a blessing for those people to come back at because they were included. And if they had done it on their own, those people wouldn't have been included. They would have been left out. Wow. That's awesome. I love the empowerment that that has with the kids because I think we lose. And sometimes I think as society, we complain about, "Oh, young people don't do this and they don't do that." Well, sometimes they're not prompted to do these things or have these types of experiences that later on, it's like, "Well, why doesn't this 20-something-year-old know how to talk to other adults or carry on conversations?" Well, we haven't really prompted them to do that when they were younger. Or we haven't allowed them, right? So my wife read a really good book that's called "Do Hard Things." And so kind of our rule is if the book recommended for the kids, one of us will read it first. And it was interesting learning about how the Red Cross was started and how young children got involved and did these major things. And our expectation is that, first of all, we created the phase of teenager. It didn't exist before. In the old days here, they're a kid, an adult, or a child. And we invented teenagers. And the expectation of teenagers is to clean up their room, do the dishes, do the homework. Well, that's pretty low expectation for the brain power and the worst power of a teenager. So my daughter, for example, when they were going to grade school, the teachers run straight. And they were doing a fundraiser for Heart and Stroke. And she's like, "Mom, that's not fair." It's like, "Well, what do you want to do?" I want to do one of those things that dad does. Oh, what's that? You know that piece of paper? He goes and gets everyone to sign and sends it off. A petition. Yeah, I want to do a petition. Okay, so we took her to school and talked to the principal, said, "Daniel wants to do a petition, to petition the school board to allow us to do a fundraiser for Heart and Stroke. We'll provide the volunteers." So they learned at a really early age, if you left them, and did everything go perfect? Nope, it didn't. But it was just kind of showing, I guess, like you said, you just bring them with you. You don't have to do anything magic. Kids are pretty smart. They look at, you know, when your grandkids look and they watch what you do, and they watch what you say, and as soon as you leave, they're going to mimic you. So if you're doing good things, they're going to mimic good things. If you're doing bad things, you're going to add things. They're observant. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and I think too, is that we sometimes we unintentionally lower the bar to what they're capable of doing. Yeah, absolutely. So well, Doug, I've had you on for a little while. One thing I'd love to ask you is, what kind of advice do you have for a brand new grandfather as we start to wrap this thing up? I'd love to hear your insights. I'd say find a community. Like you, you know, there's going to be, we all know that we're not living the life that we thought we'd live. Everybody's got different circumstances. Stuff has happened. And when stuff happens, whether good or are not good, you need a community to support you. So find some other people that are that are like you in your same situation. You're kind of your age groups. You've got some peers. So you don't have to do life alone. You can go, Hey, look, my grandson's doing this, or my granddaughter's doing that. And you've got some comparisons. You can sit as guys and sit around and have a conversation. You know, kind of off the books. And just, you know, maybe you're just dumping your problem on your buddy, or maybe he's dumping his problem on you, or maybe you're just celebrating what the kids are doing. Or like we've done, we've come up, you know, we had this conversation and we both, you know, you interviewed Jim, I heard what Jim is like, that's a cool idea. So you need to get around people that are active with the grandkids. And just, you know, support each other. You know, that's awesome. And, you know, one of the things too that that reminds me of is just that it does take a community for us. And as we're getting older, I think sometimes we have the misconception that just because we've got a lot of miles on us that we know everything, and we certainly don't. So getting together with other like-minded folks and learning from each other is super important. Yep. Ensuring your hobbies with your grandkids. Like my wife and I do Olympic weightlifting, which is a new sport that we took up about five years ago. And so we have some weights around the house. So the kids are, my, the grandsons are like, "Granddad, do you want to come lift weights with me?" So they see what we like to do and they want to please us too. So in, you know, invite them into your hobby and invite them into your life and you'll be surprised at the things that they pick up because they're, you know, I don't want to compare them to a puppy. But a puppy wants to please its master, right? The grandkids want to be, grandma and granddad be proud of them. So they see what you like and what you want to do. And I find that it's a reverse encouragement. They're encouraging you to, "Hey, let's go do this." Oh, yeah. Well, and they, when they're still young enough, before they hit those preteen years and you're still the coolest thing around, whatever you're doing is absolutely cool and what they want to get into. Yeah. Now, Doug, what's a good way if people wanted to connect with you, learn more about you? How, how's should they get in, get a hold of you? Probably the best place is just my website. It's DougMorno.com. So it's Doug, D-O-U-G, Morno, it's M-O-R-N-E-A-U.com. All my contact information's on there. There's not much about my grandkids on there. We keep all that stuff pretty private off my public page, but certainly all my contact information's there and all my social media links are there as well. Oh, that's awesome. And we'll be sure to put links to that in the show notes when folks are out playing with grandkids maybe or driving over to an appointment with the grandkids. They can find that pretty easily. And Doug, thank you so much for being on the Cool Grandpa podcast. I've really enjoyed this conversation with you. Well, thanks so much. I was intimidated when I looked at your photo. I thought, wow, the Cool Grandpa podcast. And I looked at that jacket and I thought, I don't know if I'm worthy to be on, but anyhow, I appreciate it. I really like what you're doing. I think it's important for us to step up as granddads and grandparents and help our kids raise great kids for the future. Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. And this has been an absolute blast. And you know, I look forward to staying connected with you as do I. I enjoyed this conversation with Doug. It was great getting to know him. And I'm super grateful that he took time out of his day to sit down and talk with me. I find it fascinating that everybody has these different moments in our lives where we can choose to keep doing the same thing or we can choose the harder decision, which is to completely change the path that we find ourselves on. It was great hearing how Doug and his children and his grandchildren are really having a spirit of service within that family. And I know that that's going to impact the world and their communities. So I hope you've enjoyed this conversation. If you're watching this on YouTube and you haven't subscribed to the channel, please do so. I appreciate that. It's a way that we can help grow the audience and help people understand how cool and how important grandfathers can be within the family unit. So I want to just thank everybody again for listening to this program. And until next time, remember to stay cool. Thank you for listening to the Cool Grandpa Podcast. If you've enjoyed this episode, please do me a favor and share it with a friend. That's the best way you can help us to expand our community as well as get the news out about how valuable grandpas are in the lives of those kids. If you'd like to leave me a comment or shoot me a potential topic for this podcast, please go to www.cool-grandpa.us. Look for the comments tab, fill it out, hit submit, it's as easy as that. Until next time, remember to stay cool. [Music]
