Leadership Lessons From The Great Books

The Man That I Would Become: Lessons from a Life of Hard Work, Faith and Purpose by Victor L. Bretting
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Exploring the intersection of legacy, grit, and faith, this episode features a candid conversation with Victor Bretting about his memoir, The Man That I Would Become. The discussion unpacks the vital role of hunting in conservation and ecological stewardship, the necessity of resilience and discipline for the next generation of leaders, and how faith shapes enduring leadership and personal purpose. Listeners gain actionable insight on leading by example, persevering through adversity, and shaping a legacy that lasts beyond a single lifetime.
  • Book Title: The Man That I Would Become
  • Author: Victor Bretting
  • Hosts: Jesan Sorrells & Victor Bretting
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Time-Stamped Overview:
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00:00 Victor's hunting and ranching journey
03:24 Transitioning Ranch to Charity Work
06:34 Understanding conservation and its benefits
11:07 Books on masculinity and fatherhood
15:15 Balancing mental and physical work
16:11 Discussing empathy in construction
20:15 Understanding hard-headed empathy
24:27 Challenges for Young Professionals
28:28 Reflections on Upbringing and Family
30:49 Parenting different age groups
35:54 Importance of Biblical Foundations
39:37 Reflections on Retirement Life
43:34 Books every leader should read
44:49 Impactful books on teamwork
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Connect with Victor by clicking the links below:
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Creators and Guests

Host
Jesan M. Sorrells
Host of the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast!
Producer
Leadership Toolbox
The home of Leadership ToolBox, LeaderBuzz, and LeadingKeys. Leadership Lessons From The Great Books podcast link here: https://t.co/3VmtjgqTUz
Guest
Victor Bretting
Founder and Owner of Bretting Texan Ranch

What is Leadership Lessons From The Great Books?

Understanding great literature is better than trying to read and understand (yet) another business book, Leadership Lessons From The Great Books leverages insights from the GREAT BOOKS of the Western canon to explain, dissect, and analyze leadership best practices for the post-modern leader.

Hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells, and

this is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast bonus.

There's no book reading on these bonus

episodes. These bonus episodes feature

interviews, rants, raves, insights, and other audio musings and

conversations with interesting guests around

leadership, around life, and around all of the other areas that

impact how we think and how we engage with leadership.

Because listening to me talk to an interesting guest, or even just listening

to me ramble incoherently by myself, is still

more interesting than trying to read and understand yet

another business book.

Now, today on the show, we are welcoming to,

uh, to our conversation here, Victor Bretting.

Victor Bretting is an 8th-generation Texan, part of the original Old 300

settlers who received land grants from Stephen F. Austin.

He has been hunting since his early teens. His uncle took Victor on his

first deer hunt when he was 13 years old. He shot his

first Texas exotic over 25 years ago,

an axis, blackbuck, and a fallow deer.

He and his wife started hunting internationally over 20 years ago and

have harvested over 140 different species of animals from

across 6 continents. His love for the sport led him to acquiring

the Bretting Texan Ranch, which is

designed to help preserve the hunting heritage for his grandchildren

and for the generations to come.

Victor is the author of The Man That I Would Become,

a Texas rancher memoir and hunting memoir book, raw and

honest about growing up without a present father, learning grit from a

relentless mother, and building a life through sweat,

sacrifice, and faith. And those of

you who are regular listeners to this show know I talk

absolutely nothing about hunting, not because I don't know anything

about it, but because what I know you could probably put in a thimble in

comparison to our Our guest today.

Also, I know very little about ranching. As you know, I

live in Texas, not going to disclose where, but I live in Texas. And

those of you who are listening know, and I've talked about this before, I own

a little 5-acre plot. I am not a rancher by any stretch of the imagination,

but I am raising my children to take care of chickens. And

I think that that's a good beginning, at least, to learn some of the

things that Victor has spent time, well,

has been doing for so long that he's probably forgotten all of these things. So

I come into this conversation as an amateur, and we're

going to take a walk through this conversation with Victor today.

Welcome to the podcast, Victor. How are you doing today? Yeah, thank you. Appreciate you

having me on. All right. So let's start off with this. I gave

you that introduction, which I pulled from your website, but sometimes I

noticed that website introductions don't I note that website

introductions don't always do justice to what— to our guests. And so I

always ask this question. I always start off with this one for our listeners.

What is it that you do exactly?

Well, still, I retired at one point in time from construction. So I've, I've

got 50 years in, in construction. I

bought the ranch. The ranch was really supposed to be about our retirement and continuing

the hunting heritage like you talked about for my, you know, my grandkids in the

future. And We met a couple of folks at a, a show

that totally changed the ranch into about what legacy

I'm going to leave. And that is the legacy of giving back because we've

donated 64 hunts in the past 3 years to faith-based children

group, to terminally ill kids, to veterans group, Purple Heart

group. So it kind of, it morphed, you know, my, my life now and

what do I do? My life is I work to support the ranch and the

ranch supports the You know, the charity work and the donations that we do,

hopefully helping folks, you know, going down the road.

So when you talk about hunts, again, I have a number of

listeners from all across the globe. People, you know, listen to this

show who, who live in large cities, both

in, both in the United States and in Europe, who probably

haven't ever hunted for their food ever other than standing in line at whatever

their local grocery store is. And we also have people

who listen to my show who might have some familiarity

with hunting. So why don't you walk us through some of the

basics? Why is hunting important? Why is it important for

ecosystems and for management and for wildlife management? And why is it important

for human beings to even be engaged with this? Well, I

think, you know, it says in the Bible we're in charge.

So we're in charge of the ecosystem. So, you know, part of that is

balance. You know, on the ranch, that's, that's what we do. We've,

we've got 2 animal species right now on the ranch that are

extinct in their native land. If it wasn't for ranches like us and other

ones, those animals would not be around. And some of the animals that

we have have been reintroduced back into their natural habitat and

now are, you know, are starting to, you know, thrive a little bit. So, you

know, we're, we're supposed to be the keeper. So to me, you know, the,

the idea of hunting is, is not about what you hear all the time on

this kill. It's not. That's, that's not what this is about. I've never had

anybody come to my ranch at any point in time and brag about the 1

second they pulled the trigger was so fun, man. That was just the greatest thing

since sliced bread. You know, it's what happens before and what happens afterwards.

It's the camaraderie. You know, I'll give you one a little bit about conservation.

You know, my wife and I just came back from Africa. Well, I, I green

darted my rhino. Okay, so what's a green dart? We tranquilized the

rhino, paid the man a fee to do it, took a picture with it.

But nobody ever talks about what the ranchers do as far as

conservation. Yeah, that rhino's being preserved, but at what cost to the

rancher? All the fences they gotta put up, all the vet bills,

all the food, right? Everything that they do to keep that

animal alive comes outta their pocket. You know, so to me,

conservation is a lot bigger than what people think. You know, some people think it's

just an ad on there that makes you feel bad and wanna donate. That's not

what it is. It's about what we do, which is we, we literally are

in charge of the animals, and that's our job. So

conservation. So I understand this through the lens of— you talked

about it in the Bible. As a Christian fellow, I understand it

through the lens of stewardship, right, of a creation

mandate. But when you talk in those kinds of

terms, right, people who aren't familiar with the biblical corpus or aren't

familiar with what we're talking about, they have no commonality to that,

right? So when you use the term conservation, I like that you're using that term.

What are we conserving? Let me ask you that question. What are we

conserving and for whom are we conserving it? Why, why is

it important to engage in that process? You mentioned that, you know, you have

animals that have been reintroduced into, into their native species who

are their native habitats, who were, who are on your ranch.

But what are the other, what are the other reasons for that? Like, what are

the human reasons for that? What, what benefit is there to human beings from

conservation? Well, one, you know, I believe us as

parents are always wanting something better for our kids. So do you want to

sit and sit and tell your kid that there's no more whitetail left in the

world because we all shot them out and we didn't care about them? So part

of conservation is why do I do what I do? It's for the next generations

to come. All right. We always want what's better for that next generation. At least

that's what we always try to do. So that's, that's the one part of conservation.

And the other part is, you know, we weren't, we weren't put on this earth

basically, you know, just to take. We're put on this earth to give. So part

of giving back is to the animals as well. Keeping them alive, keeping them

healthy, making sure there's enough stock, you know, enough breeding stock.

So to me, that's that whole loop of conservation is I

want to leave something better for my kids than what I came into this world

with. Absolutely. Okay. So

you wrote a book, The Man That I Would Become. That's initially

sort of what got us connected, right? Talk to us

a little bit about the history of the book and sort of where that came

from and why you believe that now is the time

to publish that memoir. So it was originally

just supposed to be for my kids and my grandkids and their kids

going forward, because, you know, they, they don't necessarily understand what I went

through, you know, growing up. You know, I didn't have a dad. My memory of

my dad is literally sitting in a, in a recliner with a Falstaff or

a Schlitz beer and an unfiltered Salem cigarette with an ashtray running over,

you know. So my mom was always the port of my life. So she's the

one that taught me the perseverance, the drive, the determination. You don't give

up. So Part of all the understanding to my

kids is they need to understand perseverance is important. They need to understand

faith is important. They need to understand, like, you know, you're from Texas, so you'll

understand. Cowboy up. You got bucked off. Okay. Okay. Get dusted.

Dust your chaps off. Get your ass back on the horse. Right? That's right.

So they need to understand life is not going to be given to you. Right.

I remember my mom at a really early age teaching me this one that

I've, you know, I respond to all of my life is God's going to

provide to you and he's not going to put anything on you you cannot accomplish

yourself. But you got to get off the couch. And that's

so problem with so many people in today's world. So this book has morphed into

a lot of different things instead of just being a memoir about me and what

I've come from. And the book is not about my success. That's not it. It

is about the journey, what you have to go through, the dark days you're going

to come through, and the silver lining at the end of the tunnel because of

that perseverance and that faith and that belief that you got. So it's kind of

led into leadership book because 50 years being in construction

It's led into suicide awareness. I, you know,

because of the veterans that we have on, you know, here at the ranch that

we provide the hunts for, you know, everybody talks about the 22 or

23 suicide deaths that happen a day, you know, in the veteran community.

What they don't realize, and I did not realize this, is there's 50

deaths in the construction industry. We are the 2nd leading cause of

suicides based on any type of work. So,

that led to me saying, well, maybe there's a platform too that I can help

somebody or they can understand. Because, you know, you know this, we don't, we

don't talk a lot. We're men, we're macho, we take care of it. You know,

we're gonna, we're gonna be in the bar fight and be the biggest one. And

so part of, part of this journey, right, the man that I would become, is

about being raised without a dad that— with no feelings, right? Mhm.

There was no room for crying. There was no room for anything other than get

your work done. Because I watched my mom Well, you have a couple of failed

marriages because I couldn't— there was nothing to give. It wasn't like I

wasn't trying, but there just wasn't that heart, right? So this journey

is really what this is about. How do you become something and how do you

persevere through it? And how do you continue with your life to try to be

a better person? Now, it's interesting that you talk about failure

because one of the things we talk about on this show is

what books can teach us, right? That's, that's what the core

show is really, is really about. Um,

and, you know, I got that idea of

what literature could teach us from— you talk

about, you know, your father being, being absent or maybe being bodily there, but

not being emotionally there. And, and, you know, in a lot of ways, my

father was, was the same way, right? Um, and so I picked

up a lot of what I have

cleaved to over the course of my life

from, um, from my mother and from my grandmother, right? And I think a

lot of guys who grow up in those kinds of environments and grew

up in those kinds of environments, and you and I are probably separated by 20

years, probably.

There's been a generational shift, right, in

how masculinity, I guess,

is thought of and how we, how we talk about it both

as men, but also just as people walking around,

you know, in the world. Now we can argue if that is a good thing

or a bad thing. But ultimately,

at the end of the day, having these kinds of conversations

is critically important. Books can help us get to those kinds of

conversations and open up those kinds of doors. At least that's what I found in

my life. I guess the question that I have for you

is, you know, you said you started out in construction.

Construction's really hard. My father put on roofs in New Mexico for years,

right? My father did construction work, right?

The closest I've ever gotten is being an amateur carpenter. Don't ask me to put

together a house. I, you know, I can

hammer a nail in straight, but that's about where it begins.

Hey, that's at least good. You could do that. I can do that. I have

mastered that. That's good. But

beyond that, well, everything is, you know, YouTube University, and we're gonna take this an

inch at a time. Like, this is how this goes. But what

were some of the things you learned? And you probably have this in your memoir,

but I'm not asking you to tip your hand because I want listeners to go

out and get the book. But how did you, what were some of the things

you discovered in construction in that space? And what was

it that kept you in that path other than maybe money and success over the

course of, over the course of, like you said, a 50-year career?

Well, one, I love construction because we see a product of what

we do every single day. It's kind of neat. You know, the next thing is,

you know, when I built a stadium, I never built a stadium before. When I

built a nuclear power plant, I never built one before. So it challenges your

mind. You've got to figure things out at all points in time because you've never

done it before. So that was— that's what kept me there. And, and yeah,

I've led a good life. I've been paid well. Um, but

you know, construction— that the positive and the negative of construction, right? We're all

A-type personalities. You know, you take the hill, get out of my way.

You know, so Victor's learned a saying in my leadership: it's tens and ones. You

know, God gave you So if I can take the hill and, and get out

of my way, and I'm going to make it happen no matter what, my 1

is I don't have any empathy, I don't care, and I probably don't listen really

well. And there's a whole bunch of things that go on the 1 side. So

part of my transition in my life was to understand that I was

feelingless at one— at some point in time. I just couldn't connect.

And the other thing, then realized, okay, if you're really going to be a well-rounded

person, the 10 does not become a 5. 'Cause I tried that, lost money

on the only job that I have ever lost money on in construction in my

entire life 'cause I changed what God naturally gave me. Yeah.

So you learn to be a better person in life.

You take your 1s and you just pick 'em up a little bit. 2, take

'em to a 3, and if you get lucky, take 'em to a 4. I'm

still inside, take the hill, get outta my way. But we can sit down and

have a conversation and I can listen to you about what you believe before

we take the hill. So to me, it's your transition in your life, which

goes back to the book again, How are you transitioning in your life to

be a better person? It's interesting that you talk about being a

10 and being a 1, um, and, and, and transitioning those 10s,

you know, or maybe not the 10s, but transitioning the 1s to, you know, maybe

3s or 4s or 2s even, and moving those up. Um,

because we talk a lot in our culture about empathy, right?

And, uh, you know, I'll, you know, lay my cards on the table here.

I'm a white collar guy. Right? I, you know, do things with my brain.

90% of the work that I do is with my brain. This is why carpentry

is so interesting to me because it's the other 10% of my life where I

actually get to do something physical. And to your point, build something in the real

world I can actually see, you know, oh, I built that, that's there.

Or if I failed miserably, oh, I failed miserably, there that is, right?

So it's immediate feedback, right? And I like things where I

get the immediate feedback because So much of white-collar work,

you're not getting that immediate feedback. You know, you file the paperwork or you,

you press the keystroke on the, on the computer, right? Or

you move the numbers around in the file and then you email it to somebody.

And then there's a long, there's a long stretch before you get any feedback about

that. And so, there are many days in the kind of work that I do

where the conversations are full of

People management stuff around empathy, around listening,

around courage. And we talk a lot about that on the show because I do

think those are important things for leaders. But what does empathy

mean when, when you talk about it? What do you mean when you talk

about that? And let's frame it in the context of something that people think of

as being hyper-masculine construction or hunting, right? You talked about

hunting and stewardship and hunting and conservation. Stewardship is

the word that I use, but conservation. Now we're talking about empathy and

construction. How this is going to mess with some people's brains,

but how does that show up in practical ways? Because we also are

practical on this show, in practical ways on a construction site. How does that

show up when you're managing people? Well, you know, it is an

oxymoron, just like you talked about empathy and, I mean, construction,

the two don't go well. And I'll be honest, empathy probably does

not have a lot to do in construction. Empathy, me, really is more in my

family life, you know, being able to put yourself in somebody's shoes, seeing

somebody, you know, go down the road that's homeless. And instead of just bypassing,

maybe sit and ask them a question. Because, you know, let's face it, you need

to ask a question because half of them are fake and half of them aren't.

So, you know, and I'm one of those kind of guys that I'm going to

give you an olive branch. But if that sucker comes back and you've taken all

the flowers and the petals and the leaves off and you give me thorns, the

fight's probably fixing to be on. So. Yeah. But I'll earn your trust, right?

That's one thing about a leader that I've done. I will earn your trust. It

is my job to earn your trust as a leader. So, I wouldn't say that

I have much empathy basically in construction. There will

probably be individual circumstances. I think my

model is more, you know, lead from the front. If I've— if

you have failed, then it's my fault because I either hired the wrong person or

I didn't train you, teach you, put you in the right position, put you on

the right seat of the bus, you know, all the things we read about. So,

I would say there's probably some. I'm sure there's something come up and the guy

comes to me and says, you know, I, I, I've I've got an issue. I

just don't know if I can make it to work tomorrow. Well, how come? Well,

my wife's fixing to have a baby. I don't have money to pay the doctor.

And I think I might miss a day or two. That's probably where empathy would

come in that I can at least understand your situation and say, buddy, you're not

going to lose your job. But you need to come back as quick as you

can because we need you. So, I would say that situation. But

other than that, it's probably more of that oxymoron.

Well, and I divide it up into kind of

2 different types of empathy, right? I classify it in 2 different types

of ways, right? Because it's like, for me, the analogy

is we use the word love in our society and culture,

but the way I love my dog and the way I love my wife are

not the same way. You know, if I love my wife like I love my

dog, that'd be a real problem, right? I think I say, I hope that, hope

you don't. Yeah. Yeah. It'd be a real problem for me, right? It'd be a

real issue. Yeah, it would be. Not for the dog, but— No, no, for

you and your wife. That's right.

So, you know, English is this funny language where we use one

word and the context is what we actually are trying to cover. That's the

waterfront we're trying to cover with that one word.

And I kind of divided up, and I wrote about this in my

leadership book, 12 Rules for Leaders. There's what

I call marketed empathy, which is the empathy that you see like in

marketing advertisements and you should feel this or you should feel that.

And it even shows up in business communications and things like that, and even sometimes

in business books. But then there's what I call hard-headed empathy.

And hard-headed empathy is where, to your point about the example of the guy,

um, with who, you know, having a baby and I need to take a couple

days off and I gotta be here, I gotta be there. What do I do?

Help me solve this problem. That's hard-headed empathy. That's not,

oh, I'm just going to feel your pain because that's not helpful to that guy

at the moment. Um, what's helpful is Recognizing

that you could have been in his shoes or, or even recognizing, you know,

what would I want done for me at this moment? Not how is it going

to come back, but what would I want done for me in this moment if

I were in that space or I have been in that space? And now I

can extend that to him and we don't have to hug it out at the

end and I don't have to invite him over for a barbecue. Um, but I

can, I can extend that. I can extend that to that other human being and

see his humanity. And to me, that's a lot more

challenging and nuanced, which is why I call it hardheaded empathy, than kind

of the blanket sort of way we talk about empathy. And, you know, in the,

in the, in the leadership field, you know, or in the field of leadership development.

Well, I agree with you. And I agree with you for 2 reasons. One is,

one is I'm going to try to make you feel something. And the other one

is how I feel. You know, and that's what marketing is. How can I make

you feel compared to what's inside of me? So I think that's a, that's a

great analogy. You just got to give it. I've never heard it that way, but

that's a great analogy. Yeah. Um, there's some other

terms that you used in the description of your book, um, The Man That I

Would Become. Um, you talk about, you know, grit, sweat,

sacrifice, faith. These are other terms just like empathy that get thrown

around. Um, I want to talk about 2

of them that I think are critical in and important for us to, to have

a conversation around. So this idea of grit, right?

Perseverance, right? How

have— how do you, how do you talk about that in the book? How do

you address that? I mean, yes, you know, having a tough upbringing,

that's one way. But then what are some of maybe some of the other spots

where grit has popped up in your memoir that, that you talk about?

Well, one, one started really early because I

came back from my freshman year with a 1.6 GPA, and the University

of Texas decided they didn't want me anymore. So I'm kind of sitting on

my couch, you know, with, with my mom, and about 2 weeks, and, you know,

I see the, uh, I see my luggage wheeled by. Oh,

okay. Next thing you know, she comes and said, can I borrow your keys?

Well, maybe just mom doesn't have gas or something, right? No big deal. So

20 minutes later, she comes back, said, can I, can I meet you outside? I

said, yes, ma'am. Walked outside. She handed me the keys, handed me $20, and said,

tell me where you land. What? No. Tell me where you land. You're not sitting

on my couch. I got your little brother and little sister you got to take

care of. You need to go figure this out, son. So I grabbed a buddy

of mine, and he needed to, uh, to have a job to pay for his

next year, you know, in college. So we ended up down at Bay City at

the South Texas Nuclear Project. And I think we were on day 6, and I

remember the hiring manager came out and said, son, you can't stay here. And I

said, sir, I don't have a choice. I said, I'm down to bread, water, and

cheese. I don't have any gas. I said, the only way you're gonna get rid

of me is you have to hire me. So come Monday morning, he come outside

and he said, if you let me down, so help me God. So

there's the start of 50 years. So there's your grit. Yeah. You know, you

gotta, you gotta suck it up, buttercup. You know, it's not gonna be

simple and it's not gonna be easy, but you have to have a plan. And

I'm not saying that first plan's gonna work, but you gotta continue with

the plan. And my plan was you were going to hire me.

That idea of you have to have a plan, and even if your

plan is terrible, it doesn't matter. At least you've got

something. Um, that

idea of even how your mom set that up for you, right? Like,

it doesn't sound as though she just sort of was like, you know, get

out and I'm not going to give you anything, like get out the door. No,

I mean, she gave you the car and $20. and the keys.

And I'm sure if she had more, she would have given you more. But that

was enough, right? And the 18 or 19

years of raising that she put behind

that, that was valuable enough, right? You knew the value of

hard work. You knew the value of presenting yourself in a particular way

to a person in authority or a person in a hierarchical position.

And you understood, you know, how to

negotiate. And, you know, I have a background in

negotiation and in conflict resolution. I understand the

power of negotiation. And a lot of young leaders, and when I

say young, I mean the 18 to 34-year-old age bracket, a lot of young leaders

who are just coming into work now or who are, who are hitting in

their first, starting to be groomed for their first roles, you know,

moving forward in their careers. Some of the

listeners to this show, and a lot of them will email me, will talk to

me, they are struggling with that resilience. They're struggling with that

grit. Why do you think that is? Because what the

kind of experience you're talking about, if we dropped any of those folks into that

experience, I'm not

quite sure they would make it. I would make it, I think, but

I'd have to be my age now, jumped into that

experience. And then I'd be fine. I'd be like, oh yeah, give me the $20.

Like, I got this. Not a problem. I'll come back with $500

and with bells on. You, I'll be right, I will be right

back. You just, you hold it right there. And I don't, I don't

got to drive 6 hours. I'll be right back. Just give me 10 minutes. You

know? But I chalk that up to the

maturity of 20 years, right? The maturity of being in my

late 40s. I don't know that I would have been able to do that

in my, in my early, in my, in my late teens and early 20s.

Um, and I think it's even less so now, right?

So how are we— I guess maybe the

question is, how are we to sort of get that resilience

into, uh, into these, uh, into these younger folks? Because that is the question of

our, of our era. Well, you know, I'm gonna say something people

might like or don't like, but it's the way I feel. You know, we become

a very soft nation. I still believe you have to protect your

family. I still believe you need to get up and work. And I never said

that was easy at any point in time. I said, I never said you liked

what you were doing, but— Right. You know, in America, we have an

opportunity to do whatever we want to do. You know, I'm living

proof of coming out. I was literally a water boy delivering

water to 10,000 people in a nuclear power plant, okay, to an

executive and owning my own company at one point in time. So you can do

anything you want to, but you've got to get off that couch. So I

think we're soft. Right. I, I, you know, it's like I'm going to

relate it to— and this is a parenting thing, right?

There's a timeout bench and there's a belt. Okay. At the end of the day,

there's a spanking, there's a timeout bench. Okay. Well, we had 2 twins.

Okay. If you, if you put the belt in front of one and

spanked him, he'd look at you like, is that all you got? You'd put him

on a timeout bench and, oh my God, I'm so sorry. I mean, he'd just

be a freaking wet noodle. I can't be helped. Right. The other one,

you know, you put him on a timeout bench and he'd find a piece of

thread or something and he'd figure out how to tighten 50 knots. I mean, you

know, and you hit him on the belt. Oh, don't hit me, please. I'm so

sorry. I didn't mean it. You know, so I do understand the

parenting structure of it. Not everything works for every child.

But at the end of the day, what happened to discipline?

Meaning if you do something wrong, you're going to get disciplined because

I just taught you a lesson. What's the lesson I just taught you? That you

can't go do anything you want to and think there's no consequences in life because

there's consequences to every answer you say, yes and no. Right.

So that's where I believe the soft has come from. Oh, it's okay. And

we talked about this already. I want my kids to have a better life than

I do. Right. But that doesn't mean I'm going to give it to you. Even

my kids today, they know the inheritance of the ranch means one thing.

You will continue the legacy that we're doing, which is giving back. And if you

don't give back, I'll sell the ranch tomorrow because why am I working right now

at 67 years of age trying to do something for you if you don't understand

what life is really about? So, I would say that's one. I mean, we can

get into many discussions, but to me, I think we're soft. I really do. I

think we're soft. Well, and I also think that

the more you get, right, the harder

the struggle. And we don't actually talk about this too often, but I think it's

worthwhile because it actually ties into the other thing which I want to talk about,

which is faith. I think that, you know, so

I look at, I look at my own upbringing, right? My mother and father

both worked hard. I don't think my mother made more than $50,000

in a year before she was 50 years old. You know, I

don't think my father did either. And yeah,

my mother was a little more white-collar oriented,

you know, in her career and in her life, but it took her a long

time to get into a spot where in her work and in her position in

life, where she was able to be quote unquote comfortable,

whatever that may mean. So, you know, there were

times we did without, there were times we didn't have, there were just, that was

part of my upbringing. Fast forward to myself with

my 4 kids, each one of my children, because they're separated

by many years, but each one of my children has had a fundamentally different experience

with being raised because they were separated by many years. And so, you

know, the difference between, you know, the 21-year-old and

the 9-year-old, right? Or the 16-year-old and the 29-year-old. Like, that's,

that's going to be, there's going to be differences, right? Because I'm at a different

stage of my, my wife and I talk about this a lot. I'm at a

different stage of my own life, right? And

I think that the real challenge becomes not in

disciplining, although that's, I would agree with you. There is, there are

some, there are definitely challenges there. I think the real challenge comes in

for the parent anyway, figuring out what the degree of discipline

is that's appropriate to this particular thing, because the nuance

increases the more resources you're getting into the game,

right? Yeah. And so, you know,

I opened up with talking about raising chickens, right? We do. We raise chickens and

turkeys, right? And my boy who's 9, every morning

you got to deal with the turkeys and the chickens. And, you know, just a

basic thing, right? Like if they don't have water and they, they, they perish because

they don't have water and we live in Texas and it's 110 degrees in the

shade until like November, right? If they, if they

die, that's on you, right? You

failed, right? Yeah. And so he's a kid where

I don't need the belt or the bench. I can just talk that kid into

like, into a thing, right? And yes, at a certain point, we're going to turn

the corner and you just have to do the thing, but

that's going to work with that kid right now. The

gap between the 9-year-old and the 16-year-old, 16-year-old's a little

different. She's going to require a little bit of a different, a little bit of

some different pressure points, right? I know who that kid is, right?

And so it becomes nuanced, right?

And I always think about it in this way. I'm not

raising children for my legacy, although that's

important. I'm raising children so that they can go out and work with folks like

yourself and your sons. So they could be supervised by your children, right?

Because I know my 9-year-old's going to eventually have to show up and do a

job at some point for somebody that they may not be interested in doing.

And he's going to have to flash back to the chickens. I remember.

Exactly. Exactly. He's like, oh, I didn't want that. So I'm

going to go, I'm going to go do this. And that I think is the

challenge for a lot of, a lot of folks.

I think what mitigates this is faith. So, talk

to us a little bit about faith. Talk to us a little bit about how

that has impacted your life and your experiences,

how that helped you get through hard times. You know, what does that actually

mean? How do we practically walk— how have you practically walked that out?

Well, you know, Mom again grounded me in

faith. I was in a faith-based school until I was in 6th grade. So, you

know, the fundamentals were there. Mm-hmm. Um, and, and like every

young man, you know, you, you go left, you go right, you go left, you

go right, and you try to stay in the middle, you know. And I'm not

going to tell you that I was extremely strong in my faith

in the middle part of, of my years. I knew where I was going. I

knew I believed. I knew I didn't steal. I didn't, I didn't hate, didn't kill

people, blah, blah, blah, right? I knew that, but I wasn't really strong in my

faith. And I'll be honest, the, um, the faith started coming

back You know, with my wife, you know, because she's very strong in hers.

And then the ranch, the ranch just totally turned it, you know. So, so

here's a funny story I always tell everybody. I didn't know what my path was

until I was 64 years old. And I woke up one day

and God said, you're going to— your legacy is going to be that you're going

to help as many people as you can on this ranch. And all of a

sudden I went, okay, I know what my path is.

So I believe that you're

put on a path on this earth and you might not understand where that

path is, how it goes, and when you get there. But man, when you get

there, there's something, there's just something that goes to your heart

and, and the, and your head and the pressure that just seems to come off.

Like, I got it. You know, I understand. And you know, the only person can

do that to you is God. You know, I just was a little stubbornheaded. Of

course, you'd have never imagined that said I'm an A-type personality in construction. You would

have never have known that, but. I'm shocked. Hey, I know, but

here I am. So that's what I

would say is we, we, you know, you need to have a belief.

I do believe that. Yeah. But at some point in time, it's gonna kind of,

the key's gonna turn the switch and you're gonna start the truck instead of just

sitting and listening to the music, you know? And I think I started

the truck when I was about 64. I went, okay, I'm driving straight. I'm

not going left. I'm not going right. Hey, look,

don't worry about it. In the Book of Genesis, Abraham, you know, he

didn't get kicked out of— he didn't get kicked out of his father's house until

he was like 70. And, you know, you know, he was old. He was an

old man, you know, and, you know, kept right on, you

know, kept right on going. Right. Yeah. And,

you know, it's, it's interesting because I've

always been strong in my faith. Yes, I had wavering moments

in my 20s and in my early 30s where there were things that happened where

I was just, to your point, going left, going right, trying to stay in the

middle, right? But I've always had that

pillar of— and on this show, and I've said this before, this comes as a

surprise to no one who's listening. I believe in

Christianity. I try to walk out Christianity. I believe in the power of

Jesus's resurrection. I believe that all the things in the Bible are true. And yes,

even the uncomfortable parts that you think are weird and

obnoxious in the world that we have in the modern secular world that we have

today. I think those things are absolutely defensible. I think an

apologetic for, for your faith is something that every good Christian

should, should have. And to your point,

we, we need to believe in something because we're not, as G.K. Chesterton

said once infamously back in the day, the Catholic

writer, he said, you know, we're not going to believe in nothing. No one ever

believes in nothing. There's always something. So we

have a lot of people in our world today who either believe in themselves,

they believe in the marketing, they believe in whatever the

messages are from their family. Sometimes if

they're churched, they believe in the church. But even there, there might be

challenges and struggles. But the book is what you

got to get in you. Even if you don't believe in the book, the book

is what you got to get in you because, as I, as I always say

on this show, it lies at the foundation of all of Western

civilization, all of the assumptions that we've made, even the ones

that led to you being in construction. The idea that, you know, you would do

an honest day's work for an honest day's wage, that has a

biblical basis, like period, full stop. It just does.

And we don't even think about it. It's, it's the fish swimming in the water,

right? But it's only when we talk about that and we engage with

that out loud that we keep it renewed for every

generation, every generation going forward. And so I would say,

you know, just like yourself,

you know, hearing that, that direction and following it is

huge, right? Because God could have said, hey, you know, go do this

or go do that. And you'd have been like, well,

I just, I don't know, I may have some bad, some bad lobster, or maybe

that, that whitetail that I had, that venison I had last night, sitting kind of

weird, right? And there are a lot of people who do this, right?

And, you know, I've often, I've often said, you know,

in, in other conversations with folks that I think

God talks to a lot of people. But I think a lot of people don't

hear. That's a lot of people, or a lot of people say no.

Right. And God will work things out

and there is free will. So you're free to say no. You're absolutely free

to say no. And God will just move on to somebody else because

God's infinite. Like, that's just it. Um,

when we think about earning trust, we think about leading from the front. We think

about faith and grit. And perseverance, all these kinds of things you talk

about in your, in your memoir, in your book.

What would you say maybe are the, the top 3 things that someone would

get from this, from this memoir of yours if they were to pick

it up? And then I'm going to ask you about some books of yours that

you might be, you might be interested in as we, as we round the corner

on this episode. So what are the top 3 things in your memoir that, that

you think people would, would want to pick up if they were, if they were

to read it? Don't quit. That's one. You know, it

talks about a lot of things that happened in my life. I could have sat

down and cried in my, you know, my Postos or my Wheaties, you know, and

I'm not telling you I didn't behind closed doors. And then you kind of get

it over with. You kind of go, okay, I got it, got to go. So

grit and perseverance, you know, 2 different words of almost the same meaning, depends on

where you're at. So I think you, you, you have to continue to try.

Part of the, part of the other thing, again, every, everything I

do, my website, everything talks about faith. You know, I, I,

I believe you'll, you'll see it. So part of faith

and leadership has to do from show me, right? I'm, I'm gonna— I've adapted

a, a really quick saying, toes and tongues. If my mouth is wagging, my toes

better be following. So you can't, you can't go to church,

right, and do things and talk about how wonderful you are and leave the

next day, you know, go rob somebody. I mean, right? So you gotta

lead, right? So hopefully they'll pick up that again. If you're, if you're going to

be a good leader, you need to lead from the front. You need to set

the pace and the tone, you know, and need to do it. And I think

the, the other portion of this is just you're not where you're

at yet, and you might not know what that is until

someday you're going to wake up and God's going to talk to you, or you're

going to hit the wall, you're going to break your neck, you're down there on

the floor going, what do I do, God? And he said, this is your path.

So perseverance of who you're going to become

and what legacy you're going to leave behind.

It ain't over till it's over, you know. The, the town that I

live in, in, in Texas has a lot of folks who are retired,

right? A lot of retirees. And it's been interesting living

here in the sort of the middle part of my career and the middle part

of my life, because I get to see a

microcosm, a wide swath of examples

of how people, quite frankly, live out their,

their waning years. And in our

culture, I was just talking with, with my wife

about this the other night in a different kind of context, but it applies

here. In our culture, we don't talk too much about what do people

do on the back end of their lives. We don't, you know, we sort of

have this image of retirement as a sort of—

you work for 40 years, we still have this Industrial Revolution idea in our brains.

You know, you work for 40 years and then You sit around and, I

don't know, play canasta or backgammon and, you know, have a steak at 4

o'clock and your first drink at 3, and you're in bed by 8.

That's not biblical. That's number one. That's

number one. So number one. Number two, the Bible only

talks about— I'm gonna borrow this line from, uh, from the

old Zig Ziglar back in the day. I love Zig. But, you know,

the Bible only talks about retirement as a punishment. So let's

not, let's not, let's not engage with that, right?

Everybody in the Bible, everybody you read about in that book

worked until they died. Mm-hmm. And it wasn't just because they were in

an agrarian society or an agrarian culture. It's because work is built into

the mandate. You have to be doing something. Now, you don't

have to be doing the thing that you were doing for 40 years where you

had that bloodsucking boss and you hated him. You don't have to do that,

but you do need to be doing something. And so in the town that I

live in, and I think we talked about this on the pre-interview, I'm not going

to say the name of the town, but you know the town I live in.

I see a lot of folks who are struggling with what do

we do with this end stage of our lives? But then I

also see some folks who are really, you know, involved in volunteer work. They're involved

in the community. They're really hyper-engaged. They're hustling. They're doing the exact same thing.

And they're vibrant and they're engaged and they're, they're, they're moving

forward. And so it's, it's interesting for my kids to be here,

um, in this space, um, because seeing those

examples shows them exactly what you're talking about, that the work doesn't end and you

can be called at any point in time and you don't just have to just

sit and, and wait for the end to come. So I think that that's,

I think that's great. Well, it's, you know, you, you hit that That, that

nail on the head. I remember a couple things. One, I can't remember, it's 10

years ago or something. I was watching, um, some show of, of show

and they were asking 80, 90-year-old actors, you know, well, how do you live so

long? There's 2 themes that was to every single one of them. You have to

have a purpose. You have to have something to love. Mm-hmm. You know, and what

you just described is that, what's my purpose, right? You know, I, I know what

my purpose is, you know, in my life, you know, and what do I love?

I, I love what I do. I love my family. I love trying to leave

something behind. And, and what I'm— so I've kind of

changed my approach on, on what you and I are

talking about, what on any podcast, anybody I talk to.

And that is, what legacy are you going to leave? Nobody

talks about it. And you're exactly right, nobody talks about it. You

know, I'm not— my name is not going to be on the side of a

hospital or stadium. It's going to be on a tombstone. And I'm okay with that.

Yeah. But what legacy did I leave, and what did I pass on to the

next generation? That's what people don't talk about. And, and if you, if you get

that understanding at the end of that road, it's not so bad.

I'm okay with where I'm at. I know my roller coaster is going downhill pretty

fast, gonna crash at the bottom sooner or later, and I'm okay with that. Why?

Because I've got a purpose, and I've got a family, and I love what I

do. Yep, yep. All right,

so So as we're wrapping up, as we're coming around the corner

of our, of our episode, our bonus episode here today, I always ask every

guest who comes on and does a bonus episode where we don't read a book,

we talk about their book, we talk about their experiences, we talk about whatever their,

their, their, their challenge or issue of the day is, or, you know, just what

points they'd like to make. I always ask them this question because our core

show is about literature and leadership.

You know, we, we read books on that show and then we try to find

lessons in them for leaders. We just came off of a month of Shakespeare. We

just read, you know, Macbeth and Henry V, great play,

Coriolanus, you know, and really trying to pull from those

plays relevant lessons for folks in

contemporary leadership with contemporary challenges, right?

And so the question, that's a preface to this question. What would

you say are some books that you've read outside of your own

that you would recommend for leaders to

read or just for listeners to this show to read? Books that have maybe made

an impact on you, maybe made a really

good or a really deep impact on you that you

would recommend folks pick up? A couple of them always

stick with me. Good to Great and then The Five Dysfunctions

of a Team. Every team I've been to, we go

through The Five Dysfunctions. And it's so funny because me again,

coming from the non-empathy side, that how you become a better

team member is to be able to be vulnerable, because then all of

a sudden you're natural and everybody sees, oh God, this, this, you know, Victor's

not little Hitler. He really, he really is kind of a genuine kind of a

guy. But, uh, those 2 have been a big important part in

mine. And I can't remember the other name of the book. And, and really what

I picked— and I'm like you, I try to pick up different things from different

books. Maybe it's one thing, maybe it's 2. The other one, I can't remember where

it comes from, if it's Six Sigma or whatever, but it's hire the right person.

Then figure out where they go on the bus. And that's really the key to

any business is hire the right person. You don't have to know where they're going

right now, but if they are a fit for the team, you'll get it

figured out. There you go. Well, Victor,

I would like to thank you for coming on the show today. This has been

a great conversation. We're going to have links to

everything everywhere where you are, you

know, online. We're going to have We're going to have links to the Breding Texan

Ranch. We're going to have links to your book. We're going to have links to

previous episodes of previous podcasts you've done in the show notes that are going to

be below the player where folks will be

listening to this show. Before we go,

last question. What would you like to promote today? What would you like

to, what would you like to have the listeners end with?

What are you going to become? What legacy are you going to leave behind?

Everybody needs to start thinking about it. And that doesn't mean you have an answer,

but you need to start thinking about it. And if we do that, we can

make this world a better place. Awesome.

Thank you, Victor, for coming on the show. Thank you for taking time to talk

with us today. And, well, with that,

we're out.