Pitmaster and entrepreneur Brendan Lamb has lived a few different lives. He played college football, chased acting in Los Angeles, worked the pits at some of Texas’ biggest barbecue spots, launched businesses and eventually became a dad to two young kids. But becoming a father forced Brendan to think differently about the way he was raised and the kind of dad he wants to be. In this episode, Brendan gets candid about growing up in a hard-nosed West Texas environment, balancing toughness with emotional openness, and learning when to hold a boundary and when to soften his approach. We talk about helicopter parenting, discipline, letting kids fail, apologizing after you lose your cool, and how our own childhoods inevitably show up in the way we parent. Brendan also opens up about his unconventional career, the failures and reinventions that shaped him, and why he wants his kids to understand that success means very little if the life you’ve built makes you miserable.

Plus: barbecue culture, performative playground dads, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, the Gingerdead Man, and the simple parenting goal Brendan keeps coming back to: raise kids who are better than you.