Zach sits down with Kris Hammons — motivational speaker, writer of the Growing Grit newsletter, and a dad of four in the Nashville area. Kris has dwarfism (4'5", one of over 400 types, and one of the rarer ones), his wife has a different, more common type, and their four kids span the whole map: Noah, 11 and average size, who passed his dad in height at eight; Julie, 9, with Kris's type; Zacchaeus, 6, who has both parents' types — a combination with only three documented cases, none of whom lived past 15 months; and Asher, 5, a nephew they adopted in 2020. The stories land hard. At 12, Kris slept through a bus evacuation because his hearing aids were out and escaped out the back door seconds before the whole bus went up in flames. As a dad, he spent ten months in the NICU with Zacchaeus, signed a do-not-resuscitate order after the boy coded eight times in one day, and watched him wake up right after coworkers came and prayed — the same kid who's now six, walking, and full of life. Along the way Kris is honest about the internal side: surviving everything didn't mean he'd faced any of it, and his son's fight became the catalyst that forced him to put words to emotions that had owned him for decades. The practical thread running through it all — from Noah's trash-can business to the waiting-room floor at Vanderbilt — is presence over perfection.
Kris asked Noah three times to throw away a piece of paper he could have tossed himself, and got back "Dad, I'm not your slave." Helpful kids get over-asked precisely because they're helpful. Separate real responsibilities from favors, say which is which, and then tell them to go be a kid.
When Noah kept talking about starting a trash-can business, Kris refused to engage until Noah brought a working draft of a flyer. One hour of polish later, flyers were in every mailbox and Noah had three clients he's managed for a year with almost no reminders. Talk is free; drafts get help.
Kris wanted to write a book for years until a friend cut him off: whatever you write now, you'll hate in five years anyway, so sit down and publish. He committed to writing on LinkedIn every day for a year to build the habit, and that became the Growing Grit newsletter.
A year of daily posting taught Kris that even on a "professional" platform, the best-performing content is a lesson wrapped in a well-told story. Twenty surgeries, a bus fire, and a NICU year gave him no shortage of material — but the principle holds for anyone: lead with the story.
Kris survived everything on paper — the surgeries, the fire, his parents' divorce — but had never put words to any of it, and believed things about himself that weren't true. Zacchaeus's fight was the catalyst that forced him to face it. You can't overcome what you won't face.
In the hardest moment of the NICU year, with his wife frozen outside their son's room, the words that came out of Kris were a job description: be there with him in this journey, no matter how it ends. That's grit — not a guarantee of results, just showing up again today.
One thing we will never regret is starting. We'll regret a lot of things in our lives, but I don't think we'll ever regret starting.
Audit what you're asking your kids to do: split the list into real responsibilities and lazy favors. Name which is which out loud — then send them off to go be a kid.
Got a kid (or a friend, or yourself) with a big idea? Stop discussing it. Require a first draft — flyer, outline, anything — before another word of talk.
Pick the thing you keep saying you'll start and publish version one this week. You'll hate it in two years anyway; that's the point.
Put words to one thing you've been through but never actually faced — out loud, to another man. Unvoiced emotions own you.
Stop wishing the current season away. Write down one thing about your kid's current age you'll miss in five years, and do it with them this week.
Practical skills, real stories, and one thing to actually do this week with your family. Written by a dad in the trenches, not a marketing department.
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