67 Ben Richter on navigating the complexities of a blended family

“The best advice I can give myself as a dad is to believe in your impossibles.” Ben Richter on DADicated Ben Richter is an amazing man, dad and entrepreneur. He is a father of seven from two marriages who has learned to navigate the complexities of blending different family cultures with multiple children of different ages. Ben has built one of the premier airport logistics companies and has managed to develop effective habits for balancing his work and family life. He emphasizes the importance of being fully present for your children by minimizing phone and work time when you’re together. In this session, we discuss various valuable principles of fatherhood. Ben shares how he implemented “checkmark” systems from a relatively young age to teach children to consciously reflect on their behavior in a tangible and quantifiable way. He explains how building positive communicative habits into our own and in our children’s everyday lives yield extraordinary results - and that difficulties are inevitable, but learning how to respond to them is what really counts. Ben is truly inspirational in terms of his outlook on life and what he has achieved as a father and businessman and I thoroughly enjoyed our session together! The most powerful takeaways for me as a dad were: - Teaching children to exercise gratitude is a powerful way to influence their ability to respond to and to evaluate their daily lives. - Focusing on incremental improvement on your performance as a parent is hugely rewarding, rather than focusing on missteps or regretting mistakes. Immediately focus on being the best version of yourself as soon as you walk in the door to be with your children. - Daily and weekly recaps with a quantifiable checkmark system can engrain lasting positive behaviors in children. I was on the fence about checkmarks for a long time but have to say that Ben’s perspectives made a lot of sense to me and have implemented a few of his ideas at home. So far this works really well. If you find these concepts interesting I recommend you read “The Entitlement Trap: How to Rescue Your Child with a New Family System of Choosing, Earning, and Ownership” by Linda Eyre and Richard Eyre. It goes well together with this podcast and the concepts described are complementary and valuable. Thanks for listening, I hope you’ll enjoy this session! GUEST SOCIAL MEDIA LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benbrichter/ Website:  www.airportlogistics.org Philipp Hartmann (host): Web: www.philipp-hartmann.de LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philipphartmann2 Dadicated: https://www.dadicated.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beingdad_official/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/philipphartmann