Jeremy:
This is a really fun episode, and that is that one of the things I’ve noticed about virtually every single one of my friends who have become really invested in building a family team, they have suddenly also discovered their inner chef. We want you guys to understand it is awesome to learn how to cook. Now the reason why I think this is happening is because we talk a lot of about family teams in general. They do most of their really building of their team, and experiencing, and celebrating the team around the table. 

If you really want to experience that at an epic level, oftentimes it’s not really a good idea just to sort of throw that vision on your wife and walk away. What a lot of guys have done is they’ve really gotten into cooking and figuring out ways to cook epic meals. Today is the day and age to do that. We want to give you guys a bunch of tips for how to discover your inner chef. If this is not you and you’re like, “I don’t like to cook. That’s not my thing,” think again. You may need to discover your inner chef. If you want to build a family team, you want to have an amazing table experience. Begin to embrace the process of cooking epic meals. 

These are five ways in which I have gotten excited about cooking, because it wasn’t my thing growing up either, but I absolutely love it now. 

One is, fire. I love fire. I love cooking around fire. Fire is a manly thing. If you want to get into fire, you want to get into that stuff, that can really cause people to enjoy becoming more of a cook. 

Strategy. I love the strategy of figuring out how do I cook for 20 people an awesome main dish in under 30 minutes. That’s a huge thing I love. 

Tools. The amazing tools that are out there to cook. Jeff’s going to talk about some of those. 

Jeff:
Yes. 

Jeremy:
Flavors. When I experience a flavor, an unforgettable flavor at somebody’s house or at a restaurant, I’m like “How do I reproduce that. I want to taste that again.” So that’s really gotten me excited. 

Then getting to coach my team. One of the greatest moments in terms of coaching is team is when we’re in the kitchen and we’re all trying to work together to cook an epic meal. Yeah, Jeff, I know you’ve embraced your inner chef. How did that work, and what are you doing these days? 

Jeff:
Yes. I think one thing I would say is, which is one of the biggest things is don’t buy the lie that, “Oh, I don’t do that.” It’s not a personality thing. It’s actually like a vision and structure for your life thing. What I mean by that is I would say the same thing. I didn’t cook. When me and Alyssa got married, I didn’t do it at all. I didn’t like it. I didn’t know how. All of that. But it’s funny how once you start stepping into a particular lifestyle, certain things become more important to you, and then you more desire them. So, I desired to learn how to cook. I desired to host more people, because these things line up with being a family team, opening up our home, our home being a sacred space, our table being a sacred space, the table being really, really important when maybe it wasn’t before. All these different things. 

So this kind of then lends yourself there. This is true I think with a lot of family team stuff. Another thing too, is I’m not a planner. I don’t like journals. I don’t really like planning a ton. I don’t write down a ton of things. But once I started living in the family team idea, then I started planning, and journaling, and getting organized. There’s these things that should push all of us into them because they’re not about our personality, they’re about the lens itself to the vision you’re going, if that make sense. I loved that, where I just started liking it, and desiring it, and seeing the joy of it and the blessing of it. 

Yeah, I probably do most of the cooking now in our family, if not almost all. Alyssa will kind of step in if I just need a break here and there. I mean, she’ll do the morning meals and stuff like that, but I think I do most of the dinners. I love it. Another side effect to that is, it really has alleviated her. It’s really taken a lot of burden off of her. I think a lot of times, sometimes we always, for no reason and then I don’t think it’s that helpful, see the wife as somehow that that’s the thing that they maybe are better at usually, or whatever. But it’s like that’s just not true. It doesn’t come from anywhere. It’s like you could actually alleviate your wife an immense amount by taking off the meals off her plate. 

I know Alyssa’s said that to me, where she loves that I… It’s like a double whammy. She gets to eat good food, she doesn’t have to do the work, she likes that I’m getting stoked on it. So that’s a huge one. I would say it becomes more sacred and purposeful when you realize what it’s about. So, center the table. Understand that that’s a sacred centering kind of headquarter place for your home for hospitality, but also for your family. Then tools and things like that. I geek out. I’m good. I told Jeremy I’m getting this Camp Chef grill here soon to be able to smoke and do all these things, and reverse sear. I’ve researched it crazy. 

I’ve probably honestly watched 300, 400 or 500 hours of YouTube videos on just cooking. I just sit there for six hours sometimes when I’m really bored. Not six hours, but I have done those binges before. I don’t binge Netflix. I binge cooking YouTube channels. I just watch them, and I watch them, and I watch them again. Then the next episode, and how to do this, and how to do that. I just kind of think about it, and then I try it the next time I’m in the kitchen. It’s cool because then I can see a tangible play out of that to the blessing of the culture of our family. 

I think it’s really fun to be able to see oh, I’ve leaned into this and it’s not just for me. It’s not a hobby, but it’s actually blessed my family and blessed the people that come into our home. I would just say yeah, don’t buy the lie that it’s a personality thing. It’s a skill and a practice, just like anything. So, you can learn it, and it actually is really fun. There’s a lot of joy in it. It can really bless your family team.