The Foundation of Fatherhood; Raising Good Fathers with special guest Germaine Gaspard

Hey, welcome back, No Problem Parents. Today's sponsor of the No Problem Parenting podcast is Learning Success Academy. Conventional education focuses on marks and academic performance, but it often overlooks the importance of nurturing a child's overall development. At Learning Success Academy, they understand the limitations of this approach, and they're here to provide a holistic education that goes beyond textbooks and exams.

If you have a child that's struggling in school, whether they have dyslexia or they're in the gifted program, go to learningsuccessacademy.com and take their free assessment. Hey there, parents. Today's topic is all about the foundation of fatherhood and raising good fathers. My guest recognizes that great fathers are pillars within families and communities, and he strives to develop young men into excellent fathers, strong leaders, and pillars of their communities for the purpose of impacting the world for good.

Today, Jermaine's going to share about his childhood experiences and his adult revelation that showed him how to turn his pain into power, love himself enough to play big, and how envisioning himself as the person and father he wanted to be is at the core of his success. Meet Jermaine Gaspard. Jermaine is a dynamic speaker and a powerful individual whose life's journey has been marked by a devoted pursuit of excellence and a commitment to empowering others.

With a diverse range of achievements and accolades, Jermaine has proven himself as a true leader and warrior. He says that just like Batman, every superhero has an origin story and it's possible to use whatever adversity you've had in your life for good. In his TEDx talk, Jermaine encourages listeners to become the author of their own story. He says that just like Batman, every superhero has an origin story and it's possible to use whatever adversity you've had in your life for good.

From his early days as a lifeguard and college football MVP to his remarkable career as a law enforcement officer, Germain has always displayed an unwavering dedication to service and a passion for making a difference. As a member of the Texas Rangers Special Operations Group and Special Agent, he has demonstrated exceptional courage and valor, which earned him the honor of being decorated with a Purple Heart from the Texas Department of Public Safety by Governor Rick Perry.

Jermaine's extensive experience as a seven-time National Junior Olympic Championship coach has allowed him to shape the lives of countless young athletes, instilling in them the values of discipline, teamwork, and perseverance. In addition to his athletic and law enforcement accomplishments, Jermaine is a highly sought after speaker, author, and CEO of the Good Life Living Group. He holds a bachelor's degree in criminal justice and a master's of business administration.

administration. However, his true passion lies in his mission to empower fathers and youth to become strong leaders. I am just absolutely thrilled to have you on the show today. Welcome, Jermaine. Man, thank you for having me. I'm excited to talk to you. I'm excited to share this space with you. I've watched your TEDx video, I don't know, three or four times, just even in the last week. It really puts things in perspective when you can deal with and overcome the challenges and have the resilience that you have. For people who haven't seen your TEDx yet, they are definitely going to want to go watch that. It's super powerful. But tell us a little bit of your background and why you're doing what you're doing now. Outstanding. My name is Jermaine Gaspard. I am a man that is attempting to live his life where I can be recognized by my first name,

Jermaine, no different than a Mark, Luke, or John, right? And that takes an immense amount of work and discipline and focus. I come from very, very humble beginnings. My father was addicted to several things, drugs, alcohol, women, and which took them away from me early on in my life and left a hole in my heart that only my father in heaven could fill. And from going through that process and being spaces where I was hungry and being spaces where I wanted to be loved, being spaces that I wanted to be cared for, I became those things for myself and for other people.

I've done it through the Department of Public Safety, being in the Texas Ranger Division, in our Special Operations Program, being a special agent, being a coach that has been fortunate enough to win seven Junior Olympic National Championships and put over 300 kids in school, by running a food program that fed over 80,000 children in two summers. These are the things that I've done in partnership with other people that are around me that are just as focused, just as desiring to have impact as me.

I'm currently a sergeant, but I work for the Department of Public Safety. I've been working for DPS for 23 years, and I've had a range of responsibilities during that time period. DPS, Texas DPS, deals everything that deals with public safety within the department, within the state of Texas, which means that we have pilots. We have rescue swimmers. We have men that operate boats. We have the Highway Patrol. We have Texas Rangers. We have special agents. We have CSI, where all of the crime labs in the state are owned by the Department of Public Safety. So we have scientists.

So there's this large umbrella of public safety that I've worked for for over 23 years. And inside of that 23 years, I've had different responsibilities. Currently, I am in recruiting, and I work with the training and development of our cadets, as well as going and finding applicants that we believe will turn into amazing protectors of the state of Texas. So super accomplished. You are also the father of four children. And that is really going to be our topic of today, the role of fatherhood in developing tomorrow's leaders with strong values. And I just have a bunch of questions for you. How do you define the role of fatherhood?

I define the role of fatherhood as being the protector, the provider, the cultivator, the teacher of the family that is always aligned with being in God's presence. That's who I roll father. And the example that I give is actually of Jesus when he says, you know me because you don't know my father, which means as a father, I have to mentor. I have to model these things that are that exude greatness and become the foundational pieces and the cornerstones of family, community and everything else that we build that has that human and family component.

That's super powerful. And so then one of the questions I have for you as well, because a lot of times dads are, you know, they think, oh, they got to be the head of the household, right? They got to be the protector. They got to fix everything. They got to do all of that.

So what do you think is the role of fatherhood to be the head of the household? I mean, I think that's an amazing question. So I think the idea of being the head of the house is misleading. All right. I rather I rather I identify as being the foundation of the household.

So when you go, when you look at a building, the most money that you pour into building a building is creating of the foundation. Right. Because that's where the house sits on. Right.

So if you have a building and the roof is torn up or there's walls torn up or there's a door that needs to be shifted, all those things can be repaired. But the moment that foundation is cracked, oftentimes that building is condemned. Also, very rarely do you walk around and say, man, that's a nice foundation on that house. So you have this important component that no one ever really sees or pays attention until the house is falling down.

And I think that's what fatherhood is, is being the thing that the house sits on, the thing that keeps us stable, The thing that keeps our families balanced, that has self-control, that exudes awareness of we are here for a purpose and we are here for a legacy. And God creates nothing without purpose already attached to it. And it's my role and my job to help you fulfill that purpose and to find it. Yeah, that's awesome.

Here at No Problem Parenting, we are all about helping parents become the confident leaders that I say our kids crave us to be. And we don't have to be, we are the experts of our children, but it doesn't mean we have to be the expert in every area. We don't have to know everything, but it's our job to seek out supports and resources and help when we need it so that, because our kids crave our leadership. They do. They do. Without a shadow of a doubt, our kids are looking to us to find a direction.

Right. I was in an interview one one time and in this interview, I was part of to be part of this specialized group. And the question was, what's more important, loyalty. Or integrity and why. Right.

So after a second of pondering, the way I answer that question is my integrity is more important because that's the compass for where I place my loyalty. Nothing can grow without loyalty. However, our integrity is the compass to make sure that that loyalty is not mismanaged. As parents, we are the compass for our children to find what they will be loyal to because they will be loyal to something, whether it be good or bad.

So we have to be that compass to help them find that true north on their way to where they're going. Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes I think as parents, we think our job is to teach our kids a lesson. You know, growing up, I'm sure you've heard that before, too, where we're going to teach you a lesson.

What do you have to say about that? Because I mean, I have my obviously my way of parents on this topic. I don't believe it's about teaching them a lesson, but the modeling and the integrity behind that. What are your thoughts on that?

I think it's about the different experiences, right? So when I'm talking to my daughters, I speak from the perspective of whoever I am to you is who you will marry. Whatever I do to you is what you will accept in your relationships. So I'm modeling the perfect husband.

So when I'm disciplining you, how would I expect a man outside of myself to love you or to care for you? The difference between honesty and the truth is honesty is a blunt tool that tells you the facts of something. Truth is something that leads you to a better destination. So the experience that I have with my daughters is always leading them to the woman that I want them to be.

And for my sons, it's leading them to the fathers and to the men that I want them to be. So every situation, yes, it might entail discipline, but is it positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement? The difference between discipline and abuse is love. Is love attached to or is there a lesson attached to the discipline?

So oftentimes when I'm talking to my son and it's something that he didn't do right, I might say, hey, man, do 10 pushups, do 20 pushups, do body squats, Whatever that is to make him physically stronger while teaching him the lesson of what it is that I'm trying to help him remember along the way. I know that you believe in exemplifying integrity, resilience, and leadership. Tell us a little bit about your work in helping fathers so that they can instill values in their kids and really be that confident leader with integrity.

Definitely. So we're pushing a matter on IG. the kingdom of kings, and then the real coach troop. And in this space, what we're doing is identifying and defining what words really mean, because words matter, right?

Words are the expressions of ideas. So when we say integrity, there are a thousand different things that integrity can mean. So what does integrity mean to us? Integrity means to be able to say something, think something, and do something, and it all being in alignment.

When we look at the integrity of a building, if we say, what's the integrity of that building? We're saying when a storm comes, how strong would this building stand in the midst of the pressure of the storm? Were integrity supposed to do the same thing in the midst of the pressures of life? Are my actions, are my words, are my thoughts in alignment with each other?

Or are they out of alignment, therefore me lacking integrity and then causing issues when those storms in our lives come? When we speak of character, what is character to us and how we communicate character is character are the things that we stand upon. Right. We understand that there that we have ambitions and we understand that we have a purpose.

We see those as differences. Anytime our ambitions becomes more important than our purpose, our character is challenged. So when we work with fathers, the question is, what is your purpose? Is your purpose to galvanize and secure, protect and provide for your family? Right. If that is your purpose, do your ambitions come before that? Now your character is being challenged.

So then we use words like tough. Well, what does it mean to be tough? Because there's so many different ideas or identities around tough. Well, tough to us is doing the right thing the right way with the right intention, regardless of the environment or circumstance.

So now when we're teaching our children or men toughness, did you make that decision because you were tired? Did you make that decision because you were stressed? Did you make that decision for any other reason for the right intention, for the right reason, for the right output? So as we define these words and break these words down, then we assemble them into our characters.

And then now we operate in integrity with our character and we make stronger men. I love that. Hey there, parents. Thanks for listening to the No Problem Parenting Podcast.

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Maybe you've even signed them up to see the school counselor or an outpatient therapist. But despite your efforts to find the right person or thing that will help, your family is still struggling. You're tired of pretending everything's okay. Well, if your confidence is shot and you feel like you're failing your kids, but you also don't have a ton of time or money, register to become a no-problem parent for just $50.

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So Good Life Living Group is a business that I created about six, seven years ago. After exiting the special ops community within the Texas Rangers, while I was still coaching, I found this niche of what I learned by being a MVP All-American athlete, what I learned in the special ops community, what I learned in coaching of how to develop leaders and how to create team building events that grew people. So I define leadership as the capacity to influence the compassion, the conviction, and the actionability of others for a desired purpose.

So inside of that space, I started working with different companies, and we started developing leaders. And the first thing in that definition is capacity. Do you have the capacity to influence other people's inspirations? Because when we don't inspire, we manipulate. So that was the beginning of the Good Life Living Group going in and dealing with, hey, Fortune 500 companies, dealing with CEOs, dealing with people who run businesses, dealing with coaches. How do we turn your performance into higher yielding results? And that's the space for Good Life Living Group.

somebody that is as highly accomplished as you are you talk about being that role model and that example for your daughter so that they choose wisely when they when they choose their partner right but how do you take such a such a tough upbringing you endured a lot and a lot of alone time and abandonment how do you turn that around where you otherwise could have went down the same path as your dad sometimes i think i wasn't smart enough to know anything other than to fight right i i all i knew was to to fight and to survive and do that process of one step in front of the other like the old adage how do you eat elephant one bite at a time and through that that adage of putting one foot in front of the other foot in front of the other foot i created momentum and inertia and then through that momentum and through that inertia i came in contact with amazing people who mentored me. And that's one of the reasons why I believe in mentorship so much. I came in contact with people that said, you're okay. You're hurt, but you're amazing. There are no excuses for you not to be amazing. So figure it out and don't complain.

Be responsible. Be accountable for your future. And meeting these people and growing with these people and believing in these people and having these people pour into me and love me gave me the opportunity to see myself from a different vantage point so there's a piece of scripture that says that a rich man and a poor man were both made by the lord that is a second scripture that says the only difference between a rich man and a poor man is their sight so what i had to do was see myself as I was seen by my creator to begin to believe and express my greatness. And as I began to see that and see and call myself something other than less than, I began to believe in my faith group and I grew. Now, there was a process into this. Shortly after, toward the end of my my tenure within a special operations group, I was going through a divorce and I found myself working out. I was in a garage probably four or so in the morning and I'm weeping. I'm trying to figure out, man, how did I get here? Like I've done all these amazing things, man. I've got my MBA. I've been on the teams. I've done this, like, but how did I survive so much? How did I get here?

and in that moment i pictured the man that i wanted to be i pictured what he sounded like how he spoke how his family spoke of him with the things that the character he entailed and i envisioned this person and then i said i'm going to begin to respond to life as that person would respond and that was the beginning of the good life living group that was me finding out and starting to understand that man living life on purpose meaning living life on the thing you were created to do living life on the reason you were here living life every day making an impact and I was already making an impact but I it changed in that moment because I because I felt like I was losing the things that were most important to me oh man isn't that the truth it's like you can be You can just be excelling in your career and in your mission and your passion and all that.

And meanwhile, your family life has fallen apart. And there's a lot of people listening today that can relate to that. And then to try to pull yourself up and have that resilience and be able to see forward. Oh, man, it's so tough.

A lot of the men that I work with, they're in that space. A lot of the men I work with are high achievers, but they're losing parts of themselves that mean so much. And it goes back to your initial question about the character. about the integrity. Am I placing my ambitions before my purpose? And when I do so, my character is challenged. Without giving it all away from the TEDx, because I really want, I really hope that people will go and watch that. You talk about being the author of your story.

So share just a little bit about that and what that means and what you hope for other fathers and people in general? Yeah. So oftentimes we're so reactive to life. We're not proactive, right? And someone else dictates how we respond, how we think, and they write our story. We allow people to write our story when we give our power away. There was a point in my life where I decided I was going to be the author of my own story. The idea of greatness that I saw upon myself, I was going to live that and walk away from anything that sabotage or attempted to sabotage that.

Whether that be alcohol, whether it be anything that was coming against me that would make me less than what it is I saw myself being, I walked away from. And there was a time where I turned off the radio or turned off the TV and I intentionally only watched things that taught me how to be the man that I told you I described to myself. So I had this vision and all vision is his purpose in pictures. I had this vision of who I wanted to be.

Now I'm going to be that person. So I have to learn how to be that person. And there's a humility in that, right? Because this is after special ed.

This is after having an MBA. This is after surviving all these different tragedies. I still had to be humble enough to say, I can do better. I can be more.

And I desire to be more. And I'm willing to learn. Oh, man. And that comes in waves, right?

So as a child, you did that. And you fought your way out of abandonment and poverty. And you didn't believe that mental health was a life sentence. And so your, your fears, your sadness, your worries, all that.

I mean, talk about that just a bit. Like how did, how does a young boy and then a young man dig his way out when I can only imagine school supports or, you know, other, other social services or different things that you kind of refer to in the TEDx a bit, you know, could easily sway you down, you know, that road. Yes, it's definitely not a life sentence unless you choose to be. Mental health is no different than physical health, right?

So if you have a kid that's playing basketball and he tweaks an ankle or tweaks a knee, right? That injury is easier for us to see and feel because it's something physical and tangible. So we give a prognosis. We're going to put ice.

We're going to elevate it. We're going to stay off of it for a while. And then in a week, two weeks, you come back and you're healed. you can play basketball and then you go back to what you're doing mental health is the same way there are some tragedies there are some traumas that happen into our life that just like that ankle that gets tweaked it tweaks us and takes us off of our center and we need some variation of ice of elevation of talking to someone right so that we can find our way back to being mentally healthy again And we all have those experiences. One of the first experiences I had in law enforcement was I think I was doing a job for maybe two years.

And there was a a charter bus full of youth going to a Christian summer camp. And the driver on this bus decided to take pills and drink alcohol before driving these children to summer camp. and they were traveling eastbound on 20 and he ran that bus into a bridge pillar and out of the 40 some kids on that bus over half of those children didn't make it so we get the call and we show up and we have then we were told and given the direction that it's our job to move these children before their parents have an opportunity to see them like this so and we did as we were told and we did and we did the right thing but that's a space where that was traumatic for many of us and for me included right and understanding one is okay to say that i'm not okay two is okay to seek help and three is okay to say time out i need to step about the game for a second so that I can be my best self and help the agenda and the purpose move forward. And so many people go through those kinds of situations where life throws them something that they're just not prepared for and it overwhelms their senses. But what I will say to this as well is the first rule of combat is to survive the encounter. That's the first rule of combat survive the encounter and combat can be the combat that thing that is challenging your mental health it could be that thing that's challenging your physical health or challenging your life survive the encounter then after you survive the encounter then begin healing yourself

and don't punish yourself for what you had to do to survive the encounter man that's so powerful it germaine i tell you you've lived nine lives turn your pain into your power yes i 100 believe in that so that the idea of turning your pain into your power it comes from the understanding that when we ask ourselves to be responsible right and we talk about responsibility we're talking about responding with one's ability so the opposite that is complaining so the same thing that hurts you The same thing that you don't like is the same thing that you must change.

The reason you don't like it so much is because it's an evil or it's a woe that needs to be taken away. So great people are created by doing great things and addressing great problems. So for me, one of the problems that I experienced as a child was being hungry. So one of the things that I do consistently is provide meals for those who can't feed themselves. I am responding with my ability and my circle of influence grows the more responsible that I am.

Right. So we have a circle of concern and a circle of influence where we start out in that circle of influence generally is only us. The only thing that we can touch, we can be concerned by a hundred thousand different things. But the more responsible we are with the things that we have, the larger our circle of actual influence grows.

And that's the power of turning your pain into your power. Don't just sit and gripe and complain and cry. No, do something. I remember speaking to my grandfather. My grandfather grew up in a small town called West, just south of Hillsboro in between Dallas and Waco.

And he was a share. He served as a sharecropper. He worked on the railroads. He lost his leg being in the military. Right.

and he saw some of the worst parts of racism. My father, his son wasn't allowed to swim in the city swimming pools. So they swim in mud pools. So they went through all these different things.

And I was in a position where I just left college. I was coaching high school football. I was trying out for different teams and I was kind of figuring out what I was gonna do next. And I had the opportunity to be a Texas State Trooper.

and we were in Fort Worth, Texas. I was sitting at our dining table, his dining table. And I said, yeah, you know, they want me to be a state trooper. I don't know about that.

And, you know, I'm saying all these different things. And he stopped me dead in my tracks and said, all the sacrifices that I've made, I've made so that you can have a different opportunity than me. What our community, what our world needs is men and women that are willing to sacrifice themselves to do the right thing. There will always be people who don't like you because you don't look like them or don't sound like them or whatever reason.

But there will always be people who look like you who don't like you because you're standing for the right thing. If you're the man that can stand up and do the right thing, regardless of those people or two other groups, then you should move forward. It changed everything that I was thinking. Right.

But that's another form of mentoring. That's a father fathering a boy that needed direction and helping me with my compass. And at that point, I needed my compass to know what my true north is. And that decision of working for the Department of Public Safety has changed my life.

And it's impacted many others' lives through the training that I received from the department and the opportunities that I've had since then. Just absolutely amazing that you have become the author of your story. You have turned your pain into your power in a number of ways, Jermaine. I'm just absolutely thrilled to have met you.

And I look forward to staying in contact and sharing your message and your services to the world. More schools need people like you, more teens. Our second book, No Problem Parenting book just came out. And one of the things I talk about in the introduction is that phrase, parenting is a crapshoot.

I don't know if you've ever heard that phrase before. people say parenting is a crapshoot. Like you do the best you can, your kids are going to take the role they're going to take. And so it doesn't mean that we just get to like, oh, it doesn't matter what we put into our kids or not. You know, it doesn't give us permission or it doesn't imply that we can do whatever we want with our kids without facing any consequences as the parent.

But at the same time, we can do the best we've got and we can give our poor indoor kids and they can decide as they move on what they're going to do with their life. And a lot of that means we just kind of have to give them wings and let them fly. You are a big advocate of mentorship because not every child grows up with a solid foundation in a father and or with a mother. And so mentorship is so important to you. Tell us a little bit more about what you're doing to help develop these young men and fathers. Outstanding. And thank you for that question. What I've done is work with youth in different spaces. What we're currently doing is I am starting a seven on seven football team that's going to start this next season called the Gridiron Giants. We're attaching the Gridiron Giants to scholarships that will allow them to help them to go to school.

On October the 29th, I'm hosting a masquerade casino ball in downtown Dallas as a fundraiser to raise funds to create new experiences for the youth that we'll be pouring into. We'll travel to Georgia, we'll travel to Houston, we'll travel to Las Vegas to have this understanding of responsibility, one to each other. And then to and also to themselves. We have a code of conduct.

We have mantras. We have belief like belief system. We have we will do community service. We are doing community service. So what we're doing is mentoring by modeling all the different aspects of what we believe are in manhood, and manhood, meaning being in the presence of a higher power of God, being a protector, meaning you can't protect if you're not physically fit, being a provider, not only monetarily, but providing good counsel, providing stewardship, being a gentleman, cultivating.

We believe that everything you touch, you should make better. One of the things that we say in our small group is if you ever come in contact with a young lady that you are thinking about dating until you can make her better by your presence, you're not ready to date her. So you have to qualify to be in any woman's life that you want to be in her life by making their life better. Whether it's just opening the door or cooking a meal or cutting grass, right? Those are the staples. And the last thing is you have to be a teacher. So you can't teach what you don't know. So you have to show yourself approved by your life and by your study. So those are the five prongs that we're pouring into and it's our goal to touch as many young men as possible to have an effect and to make young men great men and exceptional fathers. Incredible. Absolutely love everything about this. Parents listening, providers that are listening to this episode today, go to goodlifelivinggroup.com, follow Jermaine,

The Real Coach Troop on Instagram and Kingdom of Kings on Instagram. Jermaine, I am thrilled that you've taken this time to meet with me today and to share your message with my audience, my listeners. I really appreciate you being on the show. Thank you for having me.

Again, I appreciate the work that you're doing because parenting is, I mean, that's the first line of defense and everything else that we do, right? Like what our families look like eventually turned out to what our communities look like. What our communities look like turned into what our government looks like. Parenting is the first line of defense for protecting our civilization and our communities.

I love that. That is so true. Thank you. All right.

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