Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Watch the Video

What does it mean to “do hard things?” Today, Brett Harris, the co-author of the best-selling book Do Hard Things and Co-founder of The Author Conservatory joins us to discuss what this concept looks like in both ordinary and extraordinary practice. Plus, stay to the end to discover Brett’s big tip for raising young people to become exemplary writers!

Episode Transcription

Note: This transcription may vary from the words used in the original episode for better readability.

Marlin Detweiler:

Hello again, and welcome to Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian education. Today, we have with us someone well-known in many homeschool circles, Brett Harris. Welcome.

Brett Harris:

Marlin, it's an honor to be here. Honored to be with your audience.

Marlin Detweiler:

Well, thank you! For those of you who don't know Brett, he and his brother have written some books. Wrote them at a very young age to a very young audience, and their parents. But before we get into those things, like the books Do Hard Things and Raise Kids to Do Hard Things, I'd like to hear a little bit about you, Brett.

Tell us a little bit about your growing up, your family, educational background and your career, because that all fits neatly into what we're going to talk about.

Brett Harris:

Yeah, Thank you. So I grew up in a pioneering homeschool family. My parents, Greg and Sono Harris, were early homeschoolers, along with the Detweilers and so many others. And my dad was really a big part of making the apologetic for home education as a good option for families and Christian families. Grew up homeschooled from K through 12, and went on to college at Patrick Henry College with my twin brother Alex.

But before we did that, we wrote we wrote a book called Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations, challenging young people that God can use them as a teenager, that they can do so much more than society expects, how historical standards for young people and that what they can accomplish have dropped precipitously. And we need to go back to history and to Scripture to see what God really expects of young people and what they're capable of.

Marlin Detweiler:

While you're mentioning that, I just want to say, we have found it helpful to look at both historic standards and international standards as we compare what happens in the United States with what happens in many other countries, too. And so that's a really good thing. So you were homeschooled, your parents were at some level pioneering in homeschooling.

I know you're in northern New Mexico today. Is that where you grew up or near where you grew up?

Brett Harris:

No, I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and out in the country in Oregon, and my family had nine acres out there surrounded by hundreds of acres of forest owned by other people that we were free to explore. So I had a very idyllic childhood, homeschooled, did delight-directed study, which was my parent's philosophy of education, and then a lot of time outdoors, catching bullfrogs and salamanders in the pond and all that stuff.

Marlin Detweiler:

That's great. I remember my wife one time with sons doing similar things, finding a snake in one of his pockets when putting pants in the laundry. It was it was not a comfortable scene. But anyway, well, let's talk about Do Hard Things. You and your brother wrote that what year and what problem were you trying to solve?

Brett Harris:

Yeah, well, my brother and I were both involved in high school speech and debate. And one of the speeches that Alex, my twin brother presented when we were 16 years old was called The Myth of Adolescence. And it was really addressing this modern concept of the teen years as a vacation from responsibility.

Marlin Detweiler:

Ha, I’ve never heard it put that way. But that's very picturesque.

Brett Harris:

Yeah, well, I mean, historically it's a real thing. The first use of the word teenager in writing that can be found was in Reader's Digest in 1932. And then, you have some of the first generations, our grandparents and our parents, growing up in a world where teenager wasn’t even a category. before that, you were a child or you were a young adult and then an adult.

And so we were looking at that. We were looking at how that changed, and the consumer culture and the entertainment culture that arose around teenagers. And a lot of this was tied to removing children from the workforce, which there's a lot of good in that, and getting them out of the coal mines!

But then there was this kind of culturally imposed idleness that replaced the productivity that young people historically were engaged in. And so we were identifying that problem. And again, all credit to our parents. They were drawing our attention to this, encouraging us to study these things for our own lives. But then we were starting to share it with others.

Alex won first place in the country with that short speech. It eventually became the inspiration for a blog that we started called The Rebelution: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations. And then we had publishers starting to contact us. We were doing some conferences, and we had publishers who said, “This looks like a book. Will you write it?”

We ended up going with Penguin Random House, and that came out in 2008.

Marlin Detweiler:

Very good. As you wrote the book, what did you learn? And then, as the book came out, how did the response affect what you had learned?

Brett Harris:

I think one of the biggest things we learned… Because we had already written 800 articles on our blog on the topic before writing the book. So we did learn some things in terms of research and our topic, but a lot of it was stuff we had already been studying beforehand for several years, but I think one of the big things we learned is just how hard it is to write a good book! We are really blessed to work with some of the best editors in the Christian publishing industry, it helped us to really refine and hone the manuscript.

I remember at one point, actually having tears in my eyes and saying, “This is going to be the worst book that has ever been written.” Telling my family that.

Marlin Detweiler:

For some of the books I've seen, you'd have to be intentional to be at that goal!

Brett Harris:

Well, I think any writer out there knows that feeling in the middle of a project, you have that feeling like this is the worst thing ever. And so we, by God's grace, we finished it. We were blown away by the response. And I think the biggest thing again, and this was the surprise throughout the process, Marlin. When we started our blog, it was just, “Hey, we're going to write for our friends.”

Blogging was a new thing back in those days, you know, and suddenly we're having hundreds and now thousands of people visiting. Within a few months, we were featured in the New York Daily News with a feature story about this blog and this message.

And so, just at every stage, we were blown away by how much young people want to be challenged. How much our peers were hungry to be told, “Hey, you can be more, you can do more than what society expects.” And so just the groundswell of response and enthusiasm, not just from parents and teachers that you'd expect, but from the young people themselves saying, “I thought I was the only one who felt this way.” “I thought I was the only one who wanted more, who wanted to be more responsible to accomplish more, to have more opportunities and responsibilities as a teenager.” So that was that was certainly a surprise. And the book has now sold nearly 700,000 copies. And I think that is, again, just the surprise of how much young people want to rebel against low expectations if they're given permission to do so.

Marlin Detweiler:

This is maybe hard to do off the top of your head. But, what success stories have you heard from others outside your family for having read that book, of taking initiative and seeing good results?

Brett Harris:

I mean, it's wow, it's hard. It's hard to pick one. I mean, we have young people who are at the forefront of the legal industry, the nonprofit industry, and politics and government, bestselling authors now who all read and were inspired by the book.

I don't want to make it sound like that's the most important outcome, though, because the message of Do Hard Things as much as it is about, “Hey, young people can do big things, you know, the kind of things that would be in the news,” It's also about the small, quiet, hard things that no one sees. It's about character. It's about doing what's right, even when it's hard, which is often much harder when no one's watching or when you're going to be criticized for it.

And so I'd say the biggest impact and the stories that we love the most is when we're contacted by someone who says, “I read your book when I was a teenager, it changed my life. I started challenging myself and taking more responsibility. Now I'm in my thirties or maybe my forties, I've gone through some hard things. There have been challenges in my life. I was tempted to run away from them, but because of what I learned and because of the strength I developed as a young person through your message, I was faithful. I didn't run away from doing the right thing, even though it was hard, even though it was scary.”

And again, these aren't things that are going to be put in the newspaper, though. They should. But those are the stories that matter the most.

Marlin Detweiler:

And I appreciate you saying that and turning my question into a question that related to character and is and is very broad. I also understand the impact of leadership. If one person properly and effectively leading makes a very significant difference. And I know it would be true to say that that is what you and your brother did.

And I'm happy to hear that there are all kinds of careers and paths that people have taken as a result of that impact, too. But I couldn't agree more that what is ultimately best is what we like to call character development. But that sounds to me, that sounds so removed from the truth of what we know in who God is and how he providentially superintends his creation and our connection to it as well. Vice-regents of his creation and the way that we manage that.

Maybe you have some stories that would help us understand that impact too, because stories really help us appreciate the impact of written words. Are there any others that are worth commenting on or even some specifics there?

Brett Harris:

Honestly, a lot of times when I receive these stories, it's private.

Marlin Detweiler:

I understand that.

Brett Harris:

I think probably the best illustration of the different ways in which the message can impact a life would be to contrast Alex and my paths since we published the book, I think that's a story that I could tell with the most detail.

And so, Alex, since we published the book at 19 years old, we both went off to college, and he went on to Harvard Law School, where he, graduated at the top of his class and made Harvard Law Review.

He clerked for Neil Gorsuch in Colorado before he was on the Supreme Court, then went to the Supreme Court and clerked for Justice Kennedy. Just did the best you can do in law school and immediately out of law school. And now he is working for a prestigious law firm in Denver, having a big impact through his work. But also a lot of pro-bono work that he does for really important causes.

And he went through Harvard Law School as a young married man with a daughter. He married young and had a child with his wife, Courtney. And he went through law school and had all that success while finishing all of his schoolwork by 5:00 and being home for dinner with his family, spending time with his wife and daughter when most students at Harvard are burning the candle at both ends, not having time for those important things.

And so I think his path is an example. Okay, when you exercise yourself as a young person, when you push yourself as a young person, you're able to continue. You know, it's not that Alex is just smarter or has a higher IQ than all the other Harvard Law students. I mean, these are people are at the top of the heap in terms of academic excellence. But he had a 5 to 10-year head start in life in terms of how he was pushing himself and challenging himself in a healthy way as a young person.

So, my story then is the contrast. I married my best friend Ana, right out of college, and within a few months she became very sick and was practically bedbound within a few months of our wedding. We didn't know what was going on. We ended up moving back across the country to live with her family. Her mom was a former nurse. She was still on her parent's insurance, trying to go to doctors who were in-network for us and went to specialists and doctors all over the country.

No one could figure out what was wrong. Eventually, we got some diagnoses and treatments, very expensive treatments that didn't end up helping. She ended up being bedbound for five years. We thought we were going to lose her. And in my life, I took on the role of caregiver and was a full-time caregiver for my wife for at least five years.

And all of the big hard things, like I mentioned earlier, the writing of books and the traveling and speaking and doing all this, that had to be set to the side as I embraced a very quiet faithfulness as my primary obligation before the Lord to my wife.

And, you know, praise the Lord. Over the last six-plus years, there has been a turnaround in her health. We were able to discover some of the things that were driving her chronic illness. She was able to make a lot of recovery. She is now a professional ballerina and teaching ballet and still continuing to heal. But we're talking about a ten-year period where I didn't take a single speaking engagement, didn't write a single book, or at least didn't publish one. I did work on one with my dad.

But that was a path where, in contrast to the Harvard Law School and clerking at the Supreme Court route, which is also a beautiful example of what doing hard things as a teenager can prepare you for, my preparation was in the quiet faithfulness of doing the right thing, even though it was quiet. No one knew. And it was very, very hard. And trusting the Lord in that, like Joseph, going off to Egypt and questioning the Lord like, “Hey, you know, what about these dreams I had as a young man?”

Marlin Detweiler:

That is a great spectrum for us to appreciate. It’s a really good example. Thanks for sharing it.

Brett Harris:

Yeah, so I like to say if you write a book called Do Hard Things, you better expect that God's going to ask you to do some hard things!

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah, I resemble that remark. Tell me about the book that you wrote with your dad that has been released. When did it release?

Brett Harris:

So that actually has not been released.

Marlin Detweiler:

Oh, I’m sorry. Tell us about it.

Brett Harris:

Yeah. I’d appreciate everyone's prayers because there are some decisions that need to be made about this book. But it was called Raising Kids to Do Hard Things and is a book that really captures my parents' principles for parenting and educating their kids. And it was a real honor to get to step in after my mom passed away from cancer, she and my dad were writing that together, and I was able to step in as a son and say, “I want to help pull this over the finish line.”

And we did finish the book. That was delayed by Ana getting sick. And then it was further delayed when some things happened in our family and we wanted to be sensitive to not putting out a book about parenting when we had some things going on with some members of our family. We wanted to be humble. And so we talked to our publisher about putting things off and taking time. And then and then COVID hit and everything got turned upside down. So that book, it's either God doesn't want it to come out, or Satan doesn't want it to come out. But it has been through everything.

We did have the honor of taking about a thousand families through the content of the book through an online course by the same name, and the impact was tremendous. It's one of the most wonderful things that I've ever done, working with my dad and encouraging parents as they raise their kids to be self-motivated was really the core focus of the book. How do you get your kids to be self-motivated, not just dependent on you pushing them? And so that book has not been out. It is not released, but I don't know what the story holds, what the end of the story is for it.

Marlin Detweiler:

Good. Well, I'm sorry, I didn't know that, but I'm glad you were able to put that out there for our audience. We will move in to in just a few minutes, the Young Writers workshop and the things you're doing there. So before we talk about that, where do you see the role for you and maybe for Alex in the idea of Do Hard Things at this point?

Brett Harris:

Honestly, I think the biggest thing we can do is to continue to live faithfully the message of the book and to finish well. I like to say faithfulness is a lifetime achievement award. You don't earn it at 30 or 40 or 50. You and you earn it when you hear, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

And you know, faithfulness is not perfection. So it's not some unrealistic standard, but it's perseverance. It's getting knocked down, getting back up, moving in the same direction, not being deterred when it's hard, when it's lonely, etc..

Marlin Detweiler:

The answer is, what's the next step? Take it.

Brett Harris:

Yeah. And then not getting derailed when it's going well and it's successful and you're getting honored and praised and becoming proud and becoming careless. So, faithfulness is the best thing I think we can do to have had put a message like that into the world, encouraged people and then to live it ourselves to the end, I think is the biggest thing we can do. And of course, we're still proponents for the message and are still left to talk about that message. But at this point just living it as my main thing.

Marlin Detweiler:

That's wonderful, and it's very encouraging to hear. I did not know that your wife had been recovering for that much time. And in that way, that's wonderful. So you have taken an initiative called the Young Writers Workshop. Tell us what that is.

Brett Harris:

Yeah, well, when you write a book as a teenager that sells hundreds of thousands of copies, one of the things that surprised us in the response, in addition to just the volume of how many people bought and loved the book, was the number of young people who contacted us saying, “I love writing. I want to be an author. Can you can you help me with that?”

And so over the years, I ended up helping a number of young authors get publishing deals and sell a lot of books. It was just a side thing that I did to help other young people who had that passion and that calling, and then when Ana got sick and we had a good bit of savings from the sales of Do Hard Things, and we were just burning that money, our medical bills and all of this. And so I realized I need to provide for our needs, but I can't go and get a normal job because I'm a full-time caregiver. And so I'd either have to hand caregiving off to someone else, which I didn't feel comfortable doing, and I didn't think it would be best, or I'd have to find a different way to provide.

And so that's when I started really going to the Lord and thinking about, well, what can I do? And what would work with my situation? And that's where entrepreneurship and starting my own business became the best option. And I'm very passionate about that topic. We train our students in entrepreneurship, in our writing programs because having those skills allows you to do well for yourself by doing good for others.

It gives you more options to handle the ups and downs and uncertainties of life and changing economic conditions and cultural conditions. And so, I was able to start a business and started with some online programs around Do Hard Things. But very soon, I realized what people are always asking me about is writing. Young people want help with writing.

And so I mentored a young lady named Jaquelle Crowe. She published her first book with her dream publisher, Crossway, and it's called This Changes Everything: How the Gospel Transforms the Teen Years. And that book sold 10,000 copies in its first four days. You know, one won awards from Christianity Today and the Gospel Coalition. And she also had a groundswell of young people saying, “How did you do it? I want to be an author.” And so we decided together start the Young Writers Workshop, a community and teaching library for young, primarily Christian homeschool students, though, you know, we have nonhomeschoolers as well, but a lot of homeschool students who want to have community, want mentorship, want guidance and accountability to get words on the page, to write short stories and novels, blog posts, articles, all the kind of real-world writing, the nonacademic writing that they can.

And so we started that, had 400 students join the first time we opened the doors, blew us away and eventually that grew. We now have over 1,000 students in the workshop at any given time, partnering with people like S.D. Smith with the Green Ember Series and Sarah McKenzie with Read Aloud Revival, and the great folks that IEW and so many different organizations that have partnered with us.

And then we eventually had so many students who had accomplished so much winning. Winning awards, finishing novels, and wanting to pursue this as a career, that we started a college alternative program called The Author Conservatory. And that is our kind of apprenticeship, career-focused program kind of post-high school. So that's the main thing I'm doing today, helping young people do hard things in the realm of writing and publishing and making that a sustainable career financially.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah, that's wonderful. One of the things that I have been challenged to consider over the years and I'm curious what answer you might have for this is, as I look at the writings of 20th century, writers like C.S. Lewis and of course, I would put Sproul in this category.

He actually wrote a fiction book that was remarkable. And I really encouraged him and told him how much I liked it. He wanted me to tell his publisher that. I don't remember if I did or not, but, you know, it wasn't as successful as he’d hoped, and the publisher didn't go that way. So it stayed in his knitting of writing on theology. But when I see C.S. Lewis and Sayers and some of these authors, I see them turning phrases and having an efficiency of words and communicating in ways that are so captivating and inspire visualization that they really are the best of what writing has to offer. And of course, we're very involved in offering a great books curriculum, what we call the Omnibus.

What are the best ways to prepare someone to be able to write with that kind of imagination and effectiveness?

Brett Harris:

I do think a strong foundation in composition like what you guys provide is critical. But if I had to pick one thing and one thing alone, I would say it's reading aloud as a family. And if not reading aloud as a family, listening to audiobooks, this is something Sarah Mackenzie with Read Aloud Revival is always preaching.

And before I heard her say it, we'd observed it over and over with our students without fail. The students who had the best writing skills, the most beautiful prose, were the students who read aloud as a family, not just as a kid, but all the way through high school, because there's something about that beautiful language coming in through the ear where you are hearing the language.

You're not skipping the hard words, you're not skimming anything. You're hearing everything, and you're hearing it pronounced properly, and you're hearing the flow and the pacing that really trains a young person's brain to be able to create their own beautiful language. So our family read aloud nonstop, all the way through. And that has been probably the number one common ingredient that I've found from our best young writers.

Marlin Detweiler:

I am so glad I asked you that question, because that resonates and it provides a very practical tool for accomplishing something that seems so abstract and hard to get a hold of. That is really helpful. Thank you.

We have had folks, Brett Harris from 7,500 feet above sea level in northern New Mexico, meeting with me at the highest spot in Florida, which is right over there at 324 feet. I'm probably at about 280 feet. We’re in very different places with the same things in mind.

Brett, thank you so much for joining us today.

Brett Harris:

Marlin, Thank you for all that you have done for homeschool families. Thank you for your example and thank you for having me on today.

Marlin Detweiler:

Great to have you folks. Thank you for joining us on Veritas Vox, another episode and we look forward to seeing you next time.