Ryan Michler - How To Reclaim Your Masculinity And Celebrate It

Full transcript: Ryan Michler on London Real

2:29 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is What does it mean to be a man? This is a common question we’re hearing about today. We also hear a term called toxic masculinity quite a lot.

2:51 What does that mean? Is that loaded in itself? Well, these are some of the things I sat down and spoke to Ryan Michler about, and he has a podcast and a movement called the Order of Man, and he used to be someone who was unhappy in life and unhappy in his marriage, until he discovered that he had to go into his masculinity. And he says the job of a man is to protect, to provide, and to preside, and by doing those things you can empower everyone around you.

3:19 It was great to sit down and talk to him about these concepts, like the patriarchy, that a lot of people consider to be something bad. I think it’s important that we embrace the good parts of masculinity, and that us men be proud of being men, and we make sure that we actually show up and be real men every single day, and not be boys in the disguise of men. This is powerful stuff. It might offend some, but I think it’s important to have these discussions.

3:45 And I’m curious what you think as you enjoy this episode with Ryan Michler. This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Ryan Michler, the American author, broadcaster, combat veteran, and founder of the Order of Man. Your mission is to help men grow fully into their roles as protectors and providers for themselves their families and their communities.

4:06 Your book, Sovereignty, calls on men to fulfill their masculine potential with your 13 sovereign virtues, and your Order of Man podcast features leading influencers like Jocko Willink, Ryan Holiday, David Goggins, and me too. Yes, Ryan, welcome to London. Glad to be here, dude. Man, great to have you here. It’s been a long, you know, as we were talking before we started recording.

4:26 I think I was introduced to London Real probably about three years ago. Yeah, and I remember seeing the studio, and so to be sitting in here and having a conversation with you is really cool. It’s really humbling. Cool man. And you had me on your show maybe two years ago, right?

4:41 I don’t know if it was even that long ago. 18 months. Yeah, somewhere in there. But yeah, and you know, it’s interesting because I know we both teach broadcasting to students, and, um, I get a lot of people that reach out to me, and I say a lot of no’s. But when you reached out to me, I looked at what you did and I saw your background, and I said yes.

5:00 And that’s why I always tell my podcasting students, if you have a mission, an intention, and a real purpose, it doesn’t necessarily matter how many views you have or all this other stuff. And I, I didn’t check your views. I just looked at you, and I was like, this is a guy who’s serious about what he’s doing. He’s obviously been doing it for a while. I looked at your background, your service background, and, like, I said you had a mission, an intention, and that’s why I said yes.

5:24 Tell my students that too. Yeah, well, I think that, but I also think somebody who’s willing to make a stand for something, let’s talk with my wife as we were walking around London. You know, a lot of the things I share aren’t always the most popular things, but that’s important. And you know you’re hitting stride when you hear a bunch of people who say thank you for saying what I’ve been thinking for 20 years. Thank you for having the courage to make that stand.

5:47 Well, they say great art divides. Yes, one of my guests, Grant Cardone, says criticism is a sign of success, you know, and if you’re, if you’re not saying anything, then you’re always going to have this lukewarm reaction from everybody out there. But if you stand for something, yeah, you’re going to get people to disagree, but you’re also going to be you, and you’re going to find a tribe of people that get angry depending on what you have to say. And I guess you’ve found that.

6:10 Yeah, yeah, I think I’ve, I’ve found it. I think I’ve, I don’t even like saying found it as much as maybe created it, discovered it, something a little bit more assertive, I think, than found it. Yeah. Because it’s always there. It’s always there, right?

6:25 But I feel like if you say you found it, you tripped over it. But I’ve been connected to it, and then articulated it, and then refined it, and definitely about it, and continuing to redefine and articulate it and massage it, and really what resonates with me as I evolve as a man and I have a lot of my thoughts have not necessarily changed, but crystallized. Uh, and then knowing what resonates with the guys who want to be inspired and want to be led, and who want to do the leading.

6:51 It’s important for me to hear their voice as well. Yeah, so I don’t know where to start off, but I wanted to start with a quote from you, and uh and it goes like this: we’ve gone away from being strong, rugged, independent, and tough to a collection of wimpy, dependent whiners. Something has got to be done now. That’s one of the things I just jumped in with there, but, you know, we heard. We hear this term toxic masculinity thrown around a lot these days, and, like, I don’t know where to start with you, but with that quote and that term, maybe we can get into some of the things that you talk about.

7:21 Yeah, I haven’t really had a proper discussion about that here. I’ve spoken with Dr. Jordan Peterson. I spoke to Elliot Hulse. So we touched on a lot of issues, but how do you start this conversation with people, especially people that maybe haven’t been following you or that don’t know that there’s this conversation out there, right? How do you start talking about some things that matter to you, and kind of your purpose and your mission and Order of Man?

7:44 I, I actually talk a lot about myself. 10 years ago, 10 years ago, I was more the second, the latter, of that quote. Okay, I was that guy. Who were you? I was, uh, I was lost.

7:57 I really was. I was lost. I grew up without a permanent father figure in my life. I had a couple of stepfathers coming in my life who weren’t great examples, looking back on what it meant to be a man. You know, I think about my childhood, and I remember my friends, they would go on hunts with their dads, and they’d be playing catch in the yard with their dads, and I didn’t have that.

8:18 But I didn’t feel bad as a kid. I really didn’t, because you don’t know, right? You don’t know. You don’t have anything to compare it to. So my life was just my life.

8:26 It wasn’t like I felt like I was missing out. Um, I, you know, I did a lot, and I’m sure we’ll get into some of these things that I’ve been able to do, but, uh, I got married and I was lost as a husband, you know. I didn’t know how a man showed up for his family. How did you know that? Because the results weren’t there.

8:47 You know, there wasn’t, there wasn’t love. There wasn’t a whole lot of respect in our relationship. My wife’s here, you know, right now. There wasn’t a whole lot of respect mutually between her and I. Um, I at times, I feel bad about even saying this, but I didn’t really even want to, you know, be at home.

9:04 I wanted to be out pursuing work and doing the things that I thought I was supposed to be doing. I had a one-year-old son at the time, and I didn’t know how to father him, and I felt like, you know, at times more of a nuisance. Always loved him, but more of a nuisance, really, than my son. I mean, I think about who I was then. I feel bad about even saying it.

9:23 There was a time where um, my wife and I got into an argument. We were supposed to go on a trip, and we couldn’t. It started snowing or something, and we came home. When we got into an argument, long story short, I looked her straight in the eye and said, I don’t even want to be married to you anymore. And she said, I don’t either.

9:40 And the next morning she left. And so her and I went through this separation, and I really struggled. I remember sitting in my one-year-old son’s room at the time, empty crib, a couple pictures on the wall of him, looking at the picture of him, crying, saying, I’m gonna find a way to get you back in my life. And through a lot of work and a lot of conversation and a lot of self-discovery on my own part, and you know, what she would say, the same thing about herself.

10:10 So I don’t want to, I don’t want to excuse any of the things that she had to work on, because a lot of guys will say that. Well, it takes two to tango. Yes, it does. But I could only work on myself. I couldn’t do anything about her, and that’s actually what I tried to do is, I tried to control her, manipulate her.

10:25 If I thought, if only I get her to change then everything would be fine. You know, she was appreciative and supportive and did the things that a quote-unquote good wife should do, then we wouldn’t have these issues. And it wasn’t until I actually came to the conclusion. I remember the road I was on, the cross street I was on, where I thought to myself, this marriage is over, and simultaneously I remember thinking, well, if this marriage is over, then I just want to become the best catch for the next woman to come into my life.

10:55 And that’s where things started clicking for me. I began to work on myself. I began to fix the business that I had, which is a financial planning firm. We’ve, you and I have talked about that a little bit in the past. Uh, I got back into shape, starting to get the finances in order, started to focus on me, which a lot of guys don’t do.

11:13 You know, I look at guys driving down the road to work, and I assume they’re, they’re miserable, because I can see in their eyes they’re miserable. They’re driving to a job that they hate, to sit in a cubicle or box for eight, nine, ten hours a day, to get home, you know, to feel annoyed, or put out that they have to do anything with their wife or kids, eat dinner, maybe watch some TV for a couple hours, go to bed, sleep an insufficient amount of sleep, and then get up and do the same thing over and over and over again, and these guys are just running through this cycle. I know what it feels like, because that was me.

11:48 And when I started to work on myself, I was able to remedy and fix a lot of that. I feel like over the past, it’s been almost 11 years now since my wife and I went through our separation. Um, I’m a significantly better husband, significantly better father, but that all stemmed from learning to take care of myself. Okay, but this is a book about masculinity, not a self-help book. True.

12:11 So how did that become part of your journey, where you were like, okay, I’m finding these things to be either resonating with you or making you a better person? Well, I feel like it’s a man’s job to be the protector, to be the provider, and not just financially. There’s other provisions as well, and the presider, the leader, and I feel like we’ve stepped away from a lot of that as men. I feel like we as a society have generally said that men aren’t needed, that they aren’t respected.

12:40 Most men are, it seems like, if you watch TV, mocked and ridiculed, and the dad and the man has looked at the stupid buffoon who trips over everything and can’t do anything right. A lot of that is actually manifest in real life as well. You look around and you see these guys who can’t lead their families, can’t lead their communities, can’t even lead themselves. And I found that for me, as I stepped into what I would call masculine strength and learn how to be a more effective man, I became fulfilled.

13:08 And that’s the problem. The further that men move away from what it means to be a man, and move away from genuine masculinity in the name of fairness, in the name of equality, in the name of just sit down, shut up, do what you’re supposed to do, the less fulfilled, the less satisfied, the less productive, the less effective, and more miserable that they are. And so I feel like the work that we do is a call to step away from mediocrity, a call to step away from the trends of society, which is a more effeminate society into, and reclaiming and restoring what it means to be a man.

13:42 Why is the trend to be more effeminate? Why is that? Have you thought about it? You must have. I’ve thought a lot about it, because it’s not necessarily, uh, the Illuminati planning this, the grand scheme.

13:52 It’s not like all the women have got together and say, we’re going to do this. It’s it’s happening. It’s probably been happening for 100 years, right? Have you thought about why? Well, I think, I think let’s start with when it started happening, and I believe it started to happen near and during the Industrial Revolution, because what was happening prior to the Industrial Revolution is the men of the house were out tilling the fields, working the land, teaching their boys specifically, who are out tilling the fields, working land with their dads what it meant to be a man.

14:27 Now we come into the Industrial Revolution, and out of necessity, men are shipped away to factories, right? They’re shipped away to factories to go do the work. Now they’re no longer at home, so where are the boys? Where are the girls? They’re with Mom.

14:40 Right? So now little Timmy and little Tommy are with Mom. And she is raising them by herself. The guys are gone, they’re nowhere to be found. They come home at night, pat little kids on the head, and they go to bed, and then they don’t see him again until the next night.

14:53 So now little Timmy and Tommy are raised by Mom. Now what happens? Well, Mom starts, during the feminist movement, starts to enter the workforce. So now Mom’s out of the picture. So what do we do with little Timmy, little Tommy?

15:04 Oh, we’ve got to ship them somewhere too, so we shipped them to schools. So we introduced them to the school system. You look at the school system, who’s teaching Timmy and Tommy? Women. And there’s nothing, I want to say, there’s, there’s nothing wrong with women.

15:19 There’s nothing wrong with boys learning from women, but if they don’t have the male presence, that masculine energy, what ends up happening to little Timmy and little Tommy is they have all this masculinity coursing through their veins, and they don’t know how to, how to channel it and how to power it, and what happens is they become, either, uh, submissive because that’s what they’re quote-unquote supposed to do, right? Sit down, shut up, color within the lines. If you get out of line, we’re going to medicate you, because we can’t have you acting that way.

15:48 Or they become destructive. And what do they do? They go up and they shoot at school right? Or they go and create some sort of problem, because there’s no positive male influence teaching them to harness that power. I found a lot of that through sports.

16:03 I remember when I was I must have been 12 or 13. It was before I moved to southern Utah. I moved to a very small town in southern Utah. Prior to that I lived in a big, big city, in Anaheim, in Southern California, And, uh, my mom raised me and my sister predominantly on her own, but the thing that my mom always knew, and I love and admire and respect about her more than probably anything, for this: she always knew she needed to get me around other men. She knew there was a limit on what she could do in raising me from a boy to a man, and that there’s something that she had to step away from, and let me, to go, allow me to go out into the world and do myself.

16:40 Do you think most single mothers would agree with that? They do, but they don’t do it, right? You think most would actually say, you got boys bouncing off the walls, eight, nine, 100 you know, I don’t remember the movie Boyz in the Hood. Um, yes, great movie, but it all starts with his mother saying, I can’t teach you how to be a man, and she sends her son to live with, you know, right, with Laurence Fishburne. Yeah, with his dad.

17:03 Yeah, and that’s where he was rough, right? Yeah, a little rougher, who was masculine energy. Yes, right? Yeah. And even though his mom was actually she actually had a bit of masculine energy, and she was trying to lay down the law, but she was still frustrated with, because she couldn’t do what, I guess, the dad could do.

17:19 Yeah, it’s a little bit of a case study that’s And that’s, it’s exactly right. And I think, and the reason I say this is, maybe it’s anecdotal. When you ask if most women would do that, I think it’s anecdotal. The reason I say that is because I get quite a few messages from women saying the same thing you’re saying. Okay, hey, I’ve got my son, you know, he’s 10, 11, 12 years old, and Dad’s not here, and I actually listen to your podcast because I listen for him.

17:44 And I don’t know what to do. What should I do? And my answer is, get him involved in competitive sports okay, all male competitive sports. And people will say, well, what’s wrong with girls being there? Because it changes I can, I can watch my 11 and my eight-year-old little boys posture when a cute little girl walks in.

18:03 And I can see it on their football teams. I can see it in their demeanor and the way they act. It changes, and there’s nothing wrong with it. In fact, it’s healthy, but there needs to be an environment where there aren’t women around. This is why I was so frustrated with the Boy Scouts.

18:16 Uh, their continual progress and movement towards allowing women into Scouts, which is now a done deal. It’s a done deal. It’s changed the name now, right? It’s Scouts. I think, I think technically it’s BSA hyphen Scouts.

18:32 Okay, Boy Scouts of America, but you can’t say Boy Scouts of, it’s BSA. Okay? Because it can’t just be Boy Scouts going on with your country there. Yeah, I’ve, I don’t know your country too. It is half your country too, it is.

18:42 Am I? And my boys are American, half American half Bulgarian and half British. But look, you make a point, and I’ve been around a bunch of guys, and the dynamic is different as soon as a woman is in the room. And I don’t mean this, uh, to be sexist. Um, and again, you can, and also you can have guys that would be like, all right, I’m not, I’m not posturing, and I’m already married and I don’t care, but it’s still changing.

19:04 I mean, get real. Yeah, of course. And, uh, when I went to MIT. I lived in a fraternity house with 50 guys from 18 to 22. And they were some of the best times of my life, and I learned so much about you know, what I used to say, Ryan, about life, but it was about being a man, because, like, within six months I did something wrong.

19:22 I, I said something out of line, and one of the guys pulled me aside and said, “Don’t you ever do that again.” And that was one of the first, like, guy talks I had, and I was like, oh this is how you behave as a man. You don’t You don’t gossip. You don’t do this stuff. And, like, I got a code, yeah, in that house that, that probably did me well.

19:43 Some would also argue I got some bad habits being in the fraternity house. Maybe so. We might want to talk about some of that stuff too, but let’s finish on this. So, okay. Kids are going to school learning from women.

19:54 Are there more of this thesis of the Industrial Revolution? Is there more that happens there? Yeah. So now they’re, they’re raised by women. They’re told to behave and act like women.

20:03 Men are out of the picture, either because they’re at work, and that’s best-case scenario, they’re at work, but they’re still engaged as a father, or they’re not even present. Now you have that. Yes. And it’s, it’s interesting. We both had Jocko Willink on the show And Jocko writes children’s books, right?

20:17 And in all of his children’s books, the father’s not there. And Jocko says that’s just the case a lot of times. And, like, Jocko’s old school. Jocko said, look, men have been going to war for a long time. They’ve been not there for a long time, and this has actually been a reality for a long time.

20:30 So he might disagree with your premise. I just interviewed my dad for the show recently. Oh, is that right? And he grew up on a farm, and he said, Brian, even though he grew up on a farm, his dad was never there, because he got up at four in the morning, and he came home in the middle of the, you know, very late at night, and he worked all the time. So he said he was actually raised by his mom.

20:49 Now he got to see his dad. Sure. So maybe there was an influence. Yeah, definitely. You know, definitely.

20:55 And I’m not going to say that’s 100% of the time the way that works out, but I think predominantly that’s what ends up happening. Okay, so, uh, anything more on this scenario of the Industrial Revolution, or is that kind of how it is? The boys don’t have releases. They have competitive sports, if they get involved, if they get involved, which is 20% of the kids at school, or 10, maybe. Yeah, that’s a good thing.

21:14 I avoided them until my junior year in high school, where I did wrestling, but other than that I avoided them. I was a science geek And yeah, these days you can get through high school without competitive sports, right? You can. I don’t know that it’s I wouldn’t say that’s not advisable. That’s not what I would say, but I think there’s something uniquely powerful that can be learned in competitive sports.

21:33 Okay, but it didn’t get and do enough for you obviously to get where you wanted to be, and you went into the service, and you went to Iraq on a tour, right? So some would argue that would turn you into a man. Yeah, and I don’t think there’s a moment where you become a man. I mean, a lot of cultures throughout history have looked at it, and they’ve looked at rites of passage and rituals. You even look at your college days with your fraternity.

21:57 I assume you get a lot of the rituals. You get, I wouldn’t say hazing, maybe hazing. I got hazed. You got hazed, hazed, right? And yeah, that stuff’s important, and society would say, oh, can’t, heaven forbid, would make anybody feel bad, but it straightened you out in a way, right?

22:12 Because you got, you’re positive you got lined out. Yeah, by another man who you admired, respected, and looked up to, because if you didn’t you would have blown him off when he said, don’t you ever do that again. Yeah, I would have been thrown out. It was, it was an order, right? Order was enforced if you wanted to be part of the unit, right?

22:29 And I did, right? So I, I, I learned how to submit. I didn’t want him, man. I wasn’t good at it, because I didn’t have to the rest of my life, in my previous life, for 18 years, but I learned how to, and I learned how to get along among men, and it helped me a lot on Wall Street and in other places in my career later. For sure.

22:47 Well, there’s value. So this goes back to what Jocko says sometimes, and Aristotle said it also, 2,000 years ago: through discipline comes freedom. So you look at that a lot of times, and what a lot of guys will tell me is, and this is a very funny thing to say, it’s interesting, a real man doesn’t need another man to tell him how to be a man. That’s the furthest thing from the truth. There’s no other way to learn how to be a man except through other men who have gone before you.

23:11 You can be a male, that just requires anatomy. That’s the prerequisite, but being a man is something entirely different, and you have to learn that, because there’s a difference between masculinity and manliness. Masculinity is raw. It’s just the raw masculine testosterone and other hormones coursing through our veins that determine that level of masculinity. Manliness, however, is taking it, refining it, and producing effective outcomes for yourself, for your family, for your community, like you had said earlier, and also for those who can’t help themselves, which there are plenty of people out there who are incapable for whatever reason, and we as men have an obligation to lift those up and to serve them.

23:52 Okay, all right. And so when did you start to learn this stuff? And you know, so you played some competitive sports? Yes, but you didn’t have a male figure growing up. You served Did that help?

24:05 Definitely. Learned some things there. Yeah, definitely. Um, Let me start with sports. Okay, I had one coach in particular.

24:12 His name is Matt Labrum. In fact, so this was 38. So this was 20 years ago in high school. And him and I still talk. He’s somebody I still admire, respect.

24:20 He’s still coaching. In fact, I had an opportunity to speak with his, uh, his baseball team last year, or earlier, I guess, earlier this year. And he was rough on us, man. Like, he was rough. Like, I remember, you would look at him, and you know, you did something wrong, you’d look at him, and you could just see, like, the disgust and disappointment in his eyes.

24:43 But it wasn’t there to belittle you, and that was the difference. And I recognized that even then. Like, he doesn’t think less of us. He actually thinks more of us. He thinks we’re capable of more.

24:53 So there was never a point in time with him that I thought, he doesn’t like us, or he doesn’t, he doesn’t want us to win or be successful. It was always about that, but the way that he did it was different than, say, my mother would do it, and so he’s rough and hard on us. I remember my boys. Um, earlier, my oldest in particular, he’s playing tackle football. He has for the last couple of years, and this season, the first game, he got chewed out by the coach.

25:19 And I was sitting with my wife on the sideline. I usually coach. I didn’t coach this year, and I could see my wife. She’s like, she’s getting all ruffled up, like, Mama Bear syndrome, right? And I’m like, just Just relax.

25:32 He’s getting chewed out. He did something wrong. He probably knows he did something wrong. He, yes, he did something wrong. Let the coach yell at him.

25:40 Let him get his butt kicking and his butt chewing, and then let him learn from it. So we got his butt chewing. As I was watching, he got his butt chewing. Um, and then a couple of plays later, the coach came over to him, wrapped his arm around him, and started talking to him And after the game, I asked my son about it. He says, oh yeah, he was telling me what I needed to do.

25:57 So he did it in a way that was like, hey, you let down the team, you failed. Yell at him. Then what did he do? He built him back up. Well, he was probably cooled off, right?

26:06 And my son could let the lesson stew a little bit. So I learned that a lot in sports. Sports was really good for me that way, and when I wasn’t in sports, I noticed myself getting very aggressive, but not having a constructive outlet for it. I was getting into fights, and I, I was, I was mouthing off to my teachers, and I was letting this masculinity take control without learning how to harness it in a productive way, which is, in this case, through competitive sports.

26:32 Okay, all right, helpful. All right, good. Yes, service, yes. Talk about that. So I joined when I was 17.

26:38 Still in high school, joined the National Guard. Um, didn’t really have any plans on what I wanted to do. I figured the National Guard would be a great way to pay for some schooling, which I planned on after high school. Uh, and I was patriotic. You know, I always had this idea that I wanted to serve and wanted to add value and wanted to be a warrior and a contributor to society.

26:58 The National Guard seemed like a good route, because it was, you know, you had your weekend drills that you did, and you had some activities that you had to do during the summer, but you could also be a civilian, right? Civilian soldier in a way. And then in 2003 we got activated. And we went to Colorado. We were about a week, when they pulled, a week out, when they pulled that, uh, Saddam statue down in Baghdad, and I remember watching that on in the chow hall a week before we were supposed to go.

27:28 So they get us together and they say, hey, you know what, never mind, we’re not going. You’re going to go to Fort Lewis in Washington state, and you’re going to train ROTC cadets. So we did that for the summer. And then in 2000, let’s see, it was 2004. Yeah, it was 2004, Thanksgiving of 2004.

27:47 My wife and I were newly married. I think we had been married for about five months at the time. We were down in Southern California. I was managing, managing a retail clothing store down there And my section chief calls me up, and he’s like, hey, um I got some news for you. We’ve been activated.

28:04 This was a day before Thanksgiving. So I drive to southern Utah, which is where her family was and where we’re from. So I drive to southern Utah. She was already there to have dinner, so I drive up there, and I’m sitting there eating dinner, and my father-in-law says “Ryan, what’s wrong with you? You’re gonna get activated or something?”

28:22 Just joking. He was joking around. I don’t know why I would say that as a joke. What? Like, what came to his mind to say that?

28:29 Um, and the only thing I could say at the moment was “Actually, yeah, our unit has been activated.” My wife didn’t even know at the time. The family didn’t know, and I left in January of 2005. We did six months training stateside, and then a year in Iraq. When, when what you do literally represents the difference between life and death, you start to realize the weight of your consequences.

29:02 Most people don’t have consequences for their choices. I mean you have a bad day at work, you get reprimanded, you know, even if you lose your job, welfare kicks in, pays it for you. Like, there’s no consequence for your decisions. When you’re in battle, there’s heavy consequences. Somebody dies, and not just somebody the guy that you’re responsible for.

29:27 And I remember I played softball with a friend of mine. He’s actually been on the podcast. His name is Braxton McCoy, and of all things, we played softball in the middle of a desert in Ramadi, Iraq, and we were playing softball. One day, two days later, he gets a mission to go to a glass factory And, uh, part of our unit’s mission was recruiting, so responsible for recruiting, uh, civilian Iraqis to their security and police force. So he goes on this mission, and one of the Marines, the Marine dog handlers, and the dog alerts to an individual.

30:04 Jumps on the individual, that individual blows himself up, and he’s packed with a vest full of explosives and ball bearings. Shatters his arm, shatters his legs, almost kills him. And it was so weird at the time to think, two days later, I was turning a double play, you know, I was playing shortstop, he’s playing second base, I was turning a double play with him, and then that happens, and you start to realize this is, this is legitimate. Like, there’s consequences for our actions.

30:33 That’s something that’s been, that’s stuck with me forever, and every little action, not just the life and death situations, but how many of us are indifferent to the way that we show up, you know? How many of us are indifferent to the way that we communicate with our wife because she’ll always be there, or the way that we communicate with our kids, because we’re the boss and they need to do what we tell them to do, and we don’t think about how fragile life is, and we don’t think about how powerful we are. I mean, we really are.

31:03 If you think about the words, if you think about our actions, and yes, it’s more magnified in a combat environment. But that taught me a lot about what leadership means. It taught me a lot about service. It taught me a lot about the words I choose to use, the actions, the behaviors, the thoughts that I have, and how powerful they are, and why they matter. I think there’s a lot of people who think that what they say and do doesn’t matter.

31:29 That’s not true. It matters to you, and it matters to the people around you. So it’s a big learning experience for me. Made you more of a man? A hundred percent, because what it means to be a man, first of all, is somebody who takes accountability, responsibility for himself and those he has an obligation for.

31:45 So when I was sitting in Iraq, and part of what I did while I was there, I was, uh, in charge of base defenses, like a shift supervisor, base event. So we had observation posts all the way around the base, and what those observation posts were looking for is any sort of threat, and as they would recognize and see those threats, it was my job to take that information, go through the data and figure out what the heck was happening, and then figure out a way to respond to that The way that I communicate and the way that I choose to respond to that situation spells the difference between life and death. I had to take responsibility for myself and for other people I didn’t even know how to take responsibility for.

32:23 And that translates perfectly into running a business, leading a family, coaching a sports team, being involved in your community, or any other capacity in which we serve. And I guess a history of fighting in wars, you know, because, been, in humanity for thousands of years. So ever since. We’ve, yeah. And who goes out to battle, right?

32:43 The men, traditionally, the men, right? The men go out to battle because physically they’re stronger, they’re more likely to take risks. In a lot of ways, I think most cultures believe that women are a more valuable asset. We’ve got to protect the women. That’s very pragmatic.

33:01 That’s kind of gone away, but I think that’s true. What do you think about women in service and women in leadership and women in corporate? So start with service. Yes. Um, this is where it tends to get a little controversial for me.

33:17 When I was in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, which is where I did my basic training, we were one of the first units to be a co-ed training unit, and in my experience, and what I saw, is that when you have multiple standards, the lower standard is the one that’s enforced and upheld. Explain multiple standards. Well, so if you take the physical fitness training requirements for the military, well, the standard for women is lower. They can run slower, do less push-ups, do less sit-ups.

33:48 The standard naturally, that makes sense. Men are generally stronger, so there’s two standards. So if there’s no man left behind, and I will never leave a fallen comrade. Well, whose standard do we go off of? Well, we can’t, we can’t leave the women behind, so that’s an inferior standard.

34:09 So people will hear me say that and think, oh, well, that’s sexist, you think less of women? No, it’s just, it’s the facts. You take the average man, you take the average woman, the average man is bigger, stronger, faster, etc. That’s the way it is, whether you like it or not. So what I saw is I saw a reduced standard because of that.

34:29 Now, are there women who are capable of hanging with the men? Absolutely. And if we’re gonna go by that standard, then it should be a uniform standard, and the Army is working to unify in the military in general, to unify the standard. But what happens when you try to unify or merge the standards? Does the lower standard come up, or does this one come down?

34:53 Well, this one comes down. The higher standard comes down. Okay, so physically that’s true. Um, but do women bring other assets to the table 100%. Okay, yeah, such as they do.

35:03 I think women can be, uh, decisive. Uh, well, let me say it this way. Masculinity is not all man, and femininity is not all woman, right? We, there are varying degrees of that, right? So we all, at times, can exhibit what we would traditionally believe is masculine qualities and characteristics: strength, decisiveness, fortitude, resiliency, uh, rational, you know, thinking, um, an ability to take higher levels of risk.

35:36 That’s not exclusive to men. It’s just a, what we would consider a masculine characteristic. So women are fully capable of exhibiting that, and that’s why the women that you see in the military who succeed and thrive in the military are generally more masculine. Same in, say, mixed martial arts or in the corporate world. Okay, of course they’re going to be they have to be, right?

35:58 They have to be highly competitive. They have to be decisive. They have to be willing to take risks. They have to be firm, strong, mentally, physically, emotionally. So, women like that are going to be more masculine And so I have no problem.

36:12 I think that’s great, but I, I have a problem when the standard changes in order to facilitate not just women but anybody. It’s not, it’s not an organization’s responsibility to accommodate other individuals. If an individual, whether it’s a woman or whoever it may be, wants to engage in an organization or environment, it’s their responsibility to assimilate to that organization. You want to be here? Great.

36:41 Here’s the standard. Can you meet it? Yes or no? You can meet it? Great, welcome.

36:44 No, you’re not welcome. That’s what I think it should be. What about, uh, women having, let’s see, being able to form a coalition better, being able to make decisions, you know, sometimes more logically, because maybe egos aren’t involved? One of my mentors, and we’ll definitely talk about him, Dan Peña. Yeah, he was pretty, uh, masculine, pretty alpha.

37:04 Yeah, he is. Um, and we’ll definitely talk about him. But he says that when he brings people to the castle, the women get it quicker, because they’re able to move forward without their egos getting in the way, and they’re able to execute on things, because they follow by the numbers, and they don’t let that get in. I think that’s actually very true, not only of that, but another area: hunting. Believe it or not, shooting, just marksmanship in general.

37:28 I know, for example, for me, when I shoot, I put a lot of pressure on myself to perform. Women don’t have that same level of pressure. They don’t apply it to themselves, because they’re out just to do it, and that added level of pressure and stress causes some variance in the way that you shoot, whether it’s a bow or a rifle, but women tend to do better because they don’t have that added level of stress. Your wife’s a better marksman than you? Absolutely.

37:52 Oh, you’re very honest about that. You know what’s funny about it? Um, So I only started hunting two years ago. She’s been hunting with her dad for 20 plus years, and, uh, I love my wife. It’s really funny, actually.

38:05 So, so I went on a couple hunts, and then last year I went on a hunt and missed a really great shot on a buck. I just, I just dropped the ball. I just couldn’t make it, and I was kind of reminiscing. I was back from the hunt, and I was talking with her, and I said, yeah, you know, it’s just really frustrating. I I wish I could go back and just, like, redo that, because here’s what I would do.

38:27 Do you know what I mean? That’s what I said to her, and she’s like, no, I don’t know what you mean. I’ve never missed any of the animals I’ve ever shot at. And it’s true. She’s a hundred percent, and that might be because she doesn’t add that added level of stress and anxiety and pressure.

38:42 She’s there to, to do her thing, and that’s it. So I, I’m not, the point that I’m making is that I’m not saying that the roles that men have traditionally filled should be filled exclusively by men. There’s a set of characteristics that makes an individual successful in, in certain capacities, and whether those roles and responsibilities can be filled by men or women, that’s great as long as it can be completed to the standard that’s set. I do not like to see inferior standards, because it puts people at risk, and that’s what’s happening in the military and in other organizations.

39:17 You know, if and that goes for men or women. If there’s an inferior male soldier, he’s got to go, because he’s putting people at risk. Same thing in the work environment: if there’s somebody on the team, whether it’s a man or woman, who’s not performing, they gotta go. Give them all the chances and all the training and all the tools available to catch up. We’re not slowing down.

39:38 We’re definitely not turning around to carry your weight. So let’s go catch up, or we got to let you go out into the world. Okay. And that applies to corporates as well. Oh, 100%, and anywhere else.

39:49 Yes, I think so. So, so all right. So but this, and this, how far into your marriage were you when you went on the service? Was that a few years in? Uh, we were, when I went to Iraq.

39:58 Yeah, uh, we were married for six months at the time. Okay, all right. Yeah, so you still came back from that, and you still separated, so yes, that wasn’t enough to teach you enough how to be a man. No, so no. Interesting.

40:10 The sports didn’t do it. The service didn’t do it. You had to go on your own journey. I think it laid the foundation. Okay, fair enough.

40:16 I mean, you get the knowledge, but knowledge is, you know, you have a book, for example, and your stack of books over here. It’s like, that’s a great stack of books, and even if you read it, still a great stack of books. It doesn’t really mean anything until you apply it. So I learned a lot of this. I observed a lot of this, but I felt like I, there was a bridge between what I knew and what I did.

40:35 So when I started Order of Man in 2015, my goal has always been, and I’ve told the guys, to bridge the gap between what we know and what we do. And that gap, I call that the integrity gap. And we all have it. Some have small integrity gaps, some have a large integrity gap. I have an integrity gap.

40:54 You have an integrity gap. I’m constantly trying to fill it. So are you, I know that of you, right? And most men who listen to this, most women who listen to both of us, are trying to do that: live up to what they know they should do, right? Make those decisions, be that person.

41:07 Yeah, they should be, because if all it was was knowledge, we’d all be independently wealthy. We’d all have chiseled six-pack abs. We’d be the greatest father, husband, or wife, or whoever we were trying to become, and we would succeed and thrive in every single area of life, because we’re not at a lack of information. You’ve got your tablet in front of you. You can access whatever you want on a moment’s notice.

41:28 It’s not the information, it’s the application of that information, and whoever can apply it the fastest, quickest, and most efficiently will win. And so you started Order of Man, and so you went on your own journey, and then you found yourself going into this masculinity more, and going into, maybe I need to connect with being a man. Yeah, and again, I said this is a book. I’m just roughly using that term, masculinity. It’s not a self-help book.

41:52 So there’s Tony Robbins over here, which is I’m going to show everybody how to become better. Right? And you’re like, I’m going to focus on connecting with my manhood, sure. I am, as a man, right? Maybe can you explain why that became so evident to you as important, and then that’s what I wanted.

42:06 That’s what you wanted personally? Okay. I wanted to solve my own problems, but Ryan’s problems, or also Ryan’s problems as a man, as a man? Okay, because I kept coming up. I thought they were problems, and I believe that they are problems as a man, not just an individual, because you weren’t properly raised as a man.

42:25 So you’re raising yourself as a man. I didn’t feel like I was okay. All right. You know, I, I was raised to be a good human being, right? My mom did a wonderful job.

42:33 She’s a loving woman. I never had to worry about food on the table or a roof over my head or paying for sports or going on field trips. I never had to worry about any of that. Never had to worry about am I loved, or did somebody care about me? Never.

42:53 It was never a thing of mine. I mean, I, we weren’t, we weren’t broke. Looking back on it now, I think we were not as well off as I thought we were. She didn’t lead on to a whole lot of that. But, you know, I imagine, I think about what life would have been like had I had a father, and I think what it comes down to is a level of confidence.

43:14 I think I would have had a lot more confidence about who I was if I would have had a father in my life. Now, some people say, do you wish you had a father in your life? I would say no, because I don’t think I’d be the same man that I am today if I didn’t have that. I don’t think I would have gone on a quest to solve my own problems as a man, which in turn has, has literally helped millions of people across the planet become the men they’re capable of becoming.

43:39 Okay, and so what are some of the things you learned, and what are some of the things that you teach to men? Yeah, so, man, where do we start with what I’ve learned? What I’ve learned about being a man, well, first of all, well, let me say it this way: a man’s job is to be a protector, provider, and a presider. I think everybody generally and universally agrees with the protector part. That’s not one people push back on a lot.

44:07 Physically protecting. Yes, okay. You know, even when I’m, even when I’m walking around in a new environment with my wife, it’s my job to make sure we get from point A to point B safely. It’s not her job. And when, hits the fan, nobody’s gonna look to the woman about it.

44:22 Who are they going to look to? The man. And am I going to be the kind of guy that cowers in the corner and runs from that adversity because I’m scared, or am I going to be the guy who maybe is scared but has trained himself and made himself capable of protecting himself and others? That’s the kind of guy I want to be. Those were the kind of men that I aspire to be.

44:42 Like, that’s why I got into martial arts. Now, jiu jitsu is not the end. I’ll save all, I’m not saying that, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction. It’s certainly moving away from being dependent to being self-reliant. What percentage of men do you think are ready to protect right now?

44:59 10%, maybe. I guess it depends on the, the risk, too. Yeah. Like, what risk are you talking about? Let’s say it’s just walking around the city and just feeling, oh, that you can, less than that, 1%.

45:12 I’ve been walking around for the past three days, and I can’t tell you how many damn guys are on their phones. Like, and Pat McNamara, do you know who that is? No, Pat McNamara, we won’t really get into. He’s been on the podcast, and, uh, man, just an incredible, incredible human being. He talks a lot about making yourself a sentinel, being that protector, right?

45:29 He’s an incredible, incredible human being. He talks about as being the 45-degree culture. I said, what do you mean? 45-degree culture? 45 degrees, our head is always at 45 degrees.

45:38 You know how many people could, again, got shot, robbed, mugged, whatever, and not even known about it until it was significantly too late. There’s people just aren’t aware. So if you’re talking about just being around, is less than 10%, and so it’s the man’s job, because he is stronger. And that’s just the role as well, but, you know, heaven forbid you say that, gender roles. Yeah, well, we’re gonna get into that.

46:06 We’re gonna get, we’re gonna dive into that. Let’s go over provide. Yes, provide, uh, financially. I think is a big reason. There’s statistics and research that shows that, uh, when, when men aren’t the breadwinner of the family, there tends to be more animosity, contention, and broken families because of it, divorce because of it.

46:25 Why is that? Well, I think a guy knows inherently that it’s his job, even though there’s more college-educated women than men these days. What does, I mean, and, like, do you need a, do, how often do we need it? It’s a real stat, though. It is, you know, it is, and I’m not saying that.

46:43 I’m just saying my wife has more college education than I do, but she stays at home. She’s a full-time homemaker. Okay. But she could work if she wanted to. Okay.

46:53 She, when she does work, I better say that. That’s well said. She does work. She works a lot harder in many ways than I do, and when I am at home watching the kid, she was gone on a trip several months ago. That was hard work, and I love my kids, but I don’t want to do that.

47:08 Yeah. My wife, my wife works harder than I do too. Yeah, it’s hard work, but she’s qualified for that. She’s, she loves it. She’s wanted to be that since the time that she was little, and just because she has a college degree and I don’t doesn’t mean that I get to absolve myself of the responsibility of providing for my family.

47:23 Okay. So you believe a man must provide. Can a woman provide too? She’s fully capable of doing capable. Mmm.

47:29 But you’re saying it changes the dynamic, and maybe it’s not natural. I believe that. Okay. 100%. Now, somebody will say, inevitably, well, what about this person?

47:38 Well, of course there’s always exceptions to the rule. That doesn’t disprove the generally true rule. The analogy I use is, if I were to ask you how many fingers do humans have, you would say, 10. Yeah, unless it’s a trick question. No, it’s not a trick question.

47:53 Right? Fingers in two thumbs? No, ten. Ten. How many digits humans have?

47:57 Ten digits. Whoa, what about somebody who’s born with an extra digit? That doesn’t mean humans have more than ten fingers. What I’m saying: what about a couple with no kids, and they both work? Yeah, that’s great.

48:09 That’s great. Whatever the dynamic is that works for you. Okay. I think, what, man, providing there or not, I think he’s providing for himself. I think he’s going to take a lot of great value in being able to contribute financially and monetarily to the, to the union of him and his wife.

48:24 There’s a lot of pride that comes with being able to secure the resources you need to keep your family thriving, or half the resources if she’s working in that case. When my wife and I were newly married, she was working. Okay. I didn’t feel any threat, and that’s fine. I think it’s great.

48:39 I think, let me say this because you ask it that way, yeah, I should also say, I think it’s fine if a man stays at home and a woman goes out into the workforce. If that works for you, all the power to you. Okay, I’m not here to tell you the way you should do it, but I’ve just seen the research that shows that men are generally dissatisfied when they’re not out in the workforce. This is true for guys who are voluntarily staying at home, and also men who are unable to find work, or incapable of working because they have some sort of illness or disease or medical condition that keeps them out of the workforce.

49:13 They’re not satisfied, they’re not fulfilled, and they feel bad about it. Yeah, there’s a lot of pressure on society that they should be providing. I don’t think it’s just pressure from society. I think it’s internal, and you might be right. Yeah, you might be.

49:24 I think it’s natural pressure. There’s a great line in Breaking Bad when, um, when Walter White is talking to that, um, the Pollos, whatever guy, the, the Black guy, he’s a great actor, and he says, “A man must provide.” He says that to Walter White, and it just struck me. It’s like, season four or something, and it just went right down into my DNA and my core, and I realized that it is in my DNA. I mean, I assumed it was cultural, but maybe it’s not, but it is something that we feel.

49:54 This need, you know? Like, my kids and I always joke with my, with my misses, like, I want to bring home a chicken, and, yeah, and when I bring it to the kids and she’s going to cook it, and then, like, I feel complete, and I can sleep at night. It’s the same way about hunting. It’s very caveman. It’s primal.

50:08 It’s primal. It’s, it’s, it’s the way things should be. Is what you’re saying? I’m saying it’s the way things are, and if you fight against it, it’s not fulfilling. Yeah.

50:24 There’s, even with, with, and again, I say like this, if it works for you, great. But in my experience and what the data and research shows, it’s not great. You know, even a woman who, who, uh, decides to pursue a career, for example, and not pursue a family or to have children, she thinks that the career is the ultimate objective. At some point she realizes that maybe she wants children, or maybe now she’s too old to have children, and the career wasn’t as fulfilling and aspirational as she thought it was going to be, and so she’s upset about that, and then it’s too late to have children, so now she’s upset about that, and she’s got this conflict that’s just continuing to be conflicting for her about, do I continue to pursue this career or pursue this family?

51:11 Like, what is it that I do? I think her being out in the workforce has a direct odds with the way that we’re created. Now, some people will say, well, masculinity, femininity, it’s societally constructed. It’s not constructed by society. I made a post on, uh, on Twitter just, like, a couple of days ago, and it was this, this gorilla, and he walks out into the road first before his tribe, and he stands there proud as could be, stands there, and the rest of his tribe passed through the road, and as they leave, he was the last one out, first one in, last one out.

51:47 And I said, something effective, you know, remind me again how masculinity is a social construct. And people said, well, gorillas are social too. Yes, they are, but the point that I’m making is that this is inherently hardwired into who we are. It’s biologically constructed. Men are protectors, providers.

52:03 Providers. Biologically we’re built that way, and society supports it because it works. My wife supports me going out into the workforce and providing because she knows that I’m fully capable of doing that, and she’s placed her trust in me as her man to be able to do that. It’s, it’s reinforced, society, not constructed societally. Okay.

52:28 Preside three. Yes. What does that mean? Preside, leadership. Leadership, and this comes back to the skills that I was talking about, or the virtues I was talking about earlier.

52:35 It’s decisiveness, it’s physical, mental, emotional strength and resolve, it’s competitiveness, stoicism. The American Psychological Association came out with a study. Did you see this? This was last year, I believe, maybe earlier this year. They came out, and they said that the virtues that we would generally consider masculine, and the virtues that they had listed, were competitiveness, aggression, and stoicism are harmful and dangerous to young boys.

53:08 How can that be? Again, biologically hardwired into who we are. Now, the way that we use those things is up for interpretation, but in and of themselves they’re not dangerous, and they’re not bad or destructive for boys. The other one that I had overlooked there just a second ago is the ability to take risks. Men are more likely to take risks than women, and those combined factors make men uniquely and very qualified to lead.

53:38 Can a woman lead? Yes. And guess what? Women leaders exhibit more of the characteristics I just shared with you than a woman who does not go out into the workforce and lead. They’re exhibiting more masculine characteristics.

53:53 And so you’re encouraging men to understand these things, that they’re inherently who they are, into their DNA, and embracing them, and embodying them, and that will solve all the problems they’re maybe facing with anxiety and depression, and depression, and that’s what’s going on in this world. And when you see male suicide rates going up, you say it’s because men aren’t being men, right? Being encouraged to not be men, right? And when men are encouraged not to be men, they get in this weird limbo state where they try to be aggressive, and now that’s bad, and they’ve been taught to act in this way that’s not who they are, and so they get depressed, and they either do stupid things like shoot up schools, or they shoot themselves.

54:33 Right? In its condition. From the time they’re little, we made the decision to homeschool our children this year. But if you look at when a child goes into the school system, especially a boy, there’s a lot of great research by, uh, Dr. Warren Farrell, does that, in ringability, uh, he wrote a great book called The Boy Crisis, and another, uh, Dr. Leonard Sax, called, uh, Why Gender Matters and Boys Adrift. He’s got other books, but those are the two on the subject, and they talk about how the school system is uniquely stacked against young men, and young men are falling behind on just about every metric.

55:12 You even talked about the, uh, the school, college graduates, men are falling behind, and not just falling behind relative to women, falling behind further than they used to be themselves. Uh, and a lot of that comes down to the way that it’s stacked against the young men. Sit down, shut up, color within lines, do what you’re told. We’re not going to create any sort of experiential learning. You have to sit and read this book, which boys don’t want to do.

55:39 Boys don’t want to read. Did you want to? You probably do now, but when I was a kid, I didn’t want to read. Did you? I don’t remember.

55:46 I didn’t want to read. I remember the book, the one book I read in high school was uh, The Old Man and the Sea, and I think I just skimmed through it. I didn’t want to read. I wanted to go out and play sports and be active, and if you exhibit that, then what do we do? We medicate and sedate our young men because they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, which is synonymous with, they’re not being girls.

56:06 Yeah, we’re forcing them to live in a feminized environment. Yes, that’s what you’re saying. Yes. Uh, a couple questions. That word, toxic masculinity, gets thrown around on Twitter a lot.

56:16 Yeah. What does that mean to you? What does that mean to the people that are saying it? How do you feel when I say that? Okay, phrase, I like this discussion because it’s an important one.

56:26 It is, so. I don’t like the term, because it’s a bit of a misnomer. First of all, toxic and masculine. It’s like an oxymoron, right? It’s, it’s a misnomer, and that’s the problem with it, because you asked what do people think when they say it.

56:44 I don’t know. That’s the problem, because one person can think one thing, another person can think something else. So I’ll give you an example. One person can think that toxic masculinity means that men are using masculine characteristics ineffectively or negatively to produce destructive outcomes, and so they’re calling that toxic masculinity. Well, if that’s the definition that we would use, then I could see that.

57:14 I could actually see that I’ve done that. I’ve let the testosterone that’s coursing through my veins out in destructive ways. I think we all have. That’s why it’s important that men step in and teach our young boys how to be men, exhibit manliness, not just masculinity. The problem is you have another subgroup of people who believe that when you say toxic masculinity, that somehow masculinity in itself is inherently toxic, and anybody exhibiting any levels of it is therefore toxic.

57:44 That’s why I have a problem when the American Psychological Association, actually, let me back up. When I say that, people say, that’s not what people mean. Well, why did the American Psychological Association come out and say that stoicism, aggression, competitiveness, and other virtues that we would generally consider masculine are dangerous to our young men? They said stoicism. Stoicism.

58:05 Okay, we can talk about that, but when I hear that, what I hear is they believe all masculinity is inherently toxic. So which definition are you? What are you trying to say? We don’t know. And people say, well, there’s not this attack on masculinity.

58:23 I don’t know if there’s an attack, but there’s certainly a dismissal of it. Certainly there’s attacks out there. Yeah. I’m careful to use that word, though, because I know what a real attack is like. Somebody the other day said I was verbally attacked.

58:36 I’m like, I don’t even know what that means. I was verbally attacked? I was verbally assaulted. What does that mean? Somebody yelled at you, said something you didn’t like?

58:44 That’s a danger, because then who determines what is an assault, what is an attack with words? Right? That’s a further feminizing of the world. That’s what it’s, it’s just softening. Definitely.

58:56 Okay, right, because I can’t, if I say the wrong thing to you in this conversation, Brian, and you don’t like it, and you feel bad or threatened about it, did I attack you? Not necessarily. I don’t think so. It could just mean we had a disagreement about something. I think so.

59:09 Yeah, yeah. I don’t love that phrase, uh, but look, I want to have a healthy discussion with this stuff, but, like, I don’t, I like that phrase. If you don’t like certain habits, that’s toxic behavior. Sure. Illegal behavior, or criminal behavior, or uncalled-for behavior, but masculinity in itself, by definition, can’t be bad, because it’s who we are, right?

59:30 And so just as if femininity can’t be bad. Well, you don’t hear about toxic femininity, and I know of plenty of women who behave in every manner but womanly, right? But we don’t call them toxic femininity. No, it’s just toxic behavior by women, right? Okay.

59:49 Right, right. So that the term itself is loaded. Okay. And now we see the world going into this. I always think of Twitter for some reason, Ryan, when I’m thinking of the stuff.

59:58 I keep the Twitter-verse, because I think of a place where everyone is hypersensitive. Yes, everyone is super politically correct. Everyone is going these ways, to where you’re like, what is going on here? Like, I think you posted something on Instagram a couple weeks back, and some institution was banning urinals because it was a threat to gender-neutral people. Yeah, I think it was the city of Portland, which may make it.

1:00:22 Yeah, which may make sense. To ban urinals, because it’s, I don’t know, it’s somehow, I don’t know, a threat to signal to the patriarchy or something, right? Um, we should probably talk about the word patriarchy as well, but when I think about this out there, and I think about all these things that are happening, with people are saying, so I had Jordan Peterson in here, and he was told he had to use gender-neutral programs. Yes, and that’s kind of how he came into popularity, right?

1:00:45 He was really kind of, not, nobody knew him before, right? A little obscure at that point, but he said that was a freedom of speech issue, and you can’t tell me how to speak. Or now we’re no longer in, you know, the Western world. You know, he’s Canadian, but still it’s basically, you know, un-American, or un-Canadian, to force someone to, you know, you have to have freedom of speech, or you’re back to a dictatorship, right? So he said, I’m going to say whatever I want to say, and that’s how he became you know, really big.

1:01:09 And sure, there’s a lot of people here who don’t identify with a lot of these things, and that these terms come up in this Twitter sphere. Patriarchy, another one. Tell me about this word. It’s a great, it’s a great thought. I mean, look, words are just noises that we make with our bodies, right?

1:01:25 But collectively we give them meaning, and the meaning of a patriarch is a man who has gone before who leads his family or organization the way it needs to be led. Who would argue with that? Well, plenty of people are, right? Because now people take that term, and they say that is everything that’s wrong with the world, that’s controlled by men, right? Because they believe that women have been unfairly treated, and all these other things, and and have they been?

1:01:50 No. Okay. Never. By what metric? I don’t know.

1:01:53 Never. No. Okay. Relative to men. I mean, you have to compare it to something, right?

1:01:59 So, so have women been pulled back or weighed back more than men? No. Have women been treated poorly? Yeah, absolutely. So have men?

1:02:14 There’s been more damage to men at the hands of other men than women. You know who goes to war, and who dies? You know, what, what life expectancy? I mean, look at it. Look at any metric.

1:02:25 It’s the men that go out and risk it. It’s the men that we’ve been persecuted just as much as women have. So I don’t think persecution or holding back is exclusive to women. I think it’s just a human condition. I think there’s people who are evil, and there’s people who would subject other people to evil and atrocity and horror.

1:02:45 I mean, we’ve seen it, but it isn’t exclusive to women. It’s happened to men as well. Should women have the right to vote? Of course. They contribute to society, and they have to live with the society that’s created through the voting process, right?

1:02:58 Elliot Hulse disagreed with that. Well, he said he wasn’t sure. Why? I trust him. I don’t know.

1:03:03 He’s like, I don’t know if they should. You know, I think he thought it would, should. He thought that the men should maybe make the decisions. That’s why I think, well, no, I think women are women. Women are impacted by the things that happen in society.

1:03:19 That’s a hard one, though, because I’ve thought about this a lot with those who don’t pay taxes. Why should they vote? Right. Yeah, or, yeah, criminals, for example. They, felons vote?

1:03:33 Can they? No, no, they can’t. Yeah. So why? Because they’re not going to contribute to the overall betterment of society, we would assume.

1:03:41 Right? Can they fix themselves and correct their behavior? Yes, but generally speaking, that’s what we would assume. Sometimes I wonder, when it comes to somebody who doesn’t contribute economically to the country, like, why again would I let that person vote, so they can vote themselves more benefits? That one’s a little strange for me.

1:03:59 Yeah, that’s a good question. What do you say to people who say you’re sexist? Do they say that? I have very few people that say that, because the things that I talk about help women too. Explain that.

1:04:14 How many, how many of your viewers are women? That’s a good question. I would say roughly 10%. Okay, I believe that. What do the women, why do the women thank you?

1:04:23 This is a really important point. Well, first of all, before we go here, are there any male feminists? What do you say when a man walks up to you and says, I’m a feminist? Um, what do I say? I think he’s probably playing the white knight game.

1:04:42 He’s trying to get laid. That’s what he’s trying to do. Explain that. Well, I think he’s trying to, trying to pretend that he cares more about the issue, that he has no familiarity with. Right?

1:04:54 He’s not a woman, so he doesn’t know, and then if he can get on their side and get under their good grace, then maybe he’ll get some action. Or maybe he’s been told by all the men, by women, in society, yeah, by women, or that’s the common narrative these days, right? That this has to happen, and this has to happen, and you’re doing this wrong, and doing this wrong. It’s not really by just women anymore, is it? It’s good.

1:05:13 No. But why would, why would, why would somebody think that about themselves? You know, like, if somebody, if you came up to me, for example, and said, I’m a feminist, I’d say, well, have you, uh, impoverished women? Have you pushed them down? Have you taken advantage of them?

1:05:28 What would you say? No, of course not. Then you’re not, you’re not part of the problem. I just, I, I just think that’s a little bit of a white knight game. I think it’s somebody trying to get on their good graces, for reasons that I’m sure we’re all familiar with.

1:05:44 Yeah, that, or they’ve just bought into the narrative. Right? Um, it’s, you know, it’s the world we live in to a certain extent, right? I mean, it’s one of the reasons maybe you’re not saying, what school, or, oh, the feminist, the, the softening of society. Oh, absolutely.

1:05:58 It’s a big reason why, because I don’t, I want to be able to know what my kids are learning, especially when they’re young. Now, look, when they’re older and they get out into the environment, they go visit the wide world and they see you and have all these experiences, I want them to have a base of of virtues and knowledge and thinking that I helped foster, so they can measure everything else against. I don’t need anybody else indoctrinating my children into philosophies I don’t agree with.

1:06:25 Right? Okay. And I also don’t think it’s responsible to send our children off and just wash our hands and absolve ourselves of the responsibility of teaching our children, and let me say it this way. Those, those people who send their kids to public school, I’m not suggesting every one of those people do that, by the way, because there’s plenty of people, and we were, we were, my wife and I were those parents who would send our kids off to public school, but they would come back, and we would still engage with them and still learn and grow and teach.

1:06:55 So we still had a part to play in that process. And so right before we went here, I said, what do the women say to you? Oh yeah, and, like, I always think about this, and I thought about this quite a bit. Is it honestly, I’m gonna tell you something, Ryan. I remember when I was a kid that my mom was teaching my brother to pull the chair out for a woman before she sits down and putting it in, and I remember part of me, and I was like six or seven, thinking, why are you teaching him how to do that?

1:07:23 And I, for some reason, and, like, I think chivalry is an interesting thing, and I think you definitely want to protect and provide and all that stuff, but it just felt like he was being taught to kind of be a beta male somehow. And sometimes I see instances of this, and then sometimes I see women saying, I want you to do this, but in reality, they think they want a man to be compliant or to be these things, but in the real sense, in the long term, they actually don’t want that. And I think that that exists a lot today, and I’m maybe stealing your thunder, because you should be telling me this, but, you know, where women are like, no, I don’t want the aggressive person, I don’t want this, I want you to stay at home with the kids, but then a few years later they’re divorcing him, and they don’t know why, right?

1:08:04 Because he is not being a man, he’s not connecting to them on a DNA level of themselves. Yes. He’s not happy with him, and so you’re, you’re forcing people to do things you actually don’t, in the long run, want them to do. Right? Um, do you see that a lot?

1:08:20 Well, I think it’s the women who experience this feel good about it, because it’s like having a puppy dog, and it’s control. It’s control. It is, and I think that’s less of the issue than, I’ve got a lot of attention. Right? My husband dotes on me, and he loves me because he buys me things, and he pulls out my chair, and he does all the things that I can’t do or don’t want to do for myself.

1:08:41 And they equate that with love, and eventually it just becomes a nuisance, because that guy can’t stand up for himself. He’s not going to get a promotion at work. He’s not going to go start a business. He’s not going to get in any sort of altercation if he needs to protect his woman, and so the woman starts to realize, oh, all this love and attention that I got is really nice, but this guy’s kind of a wimp, and I don’t feel like I’m going to get what I need, and that’s what women need, right?

1:09:06 That’s why, that’s why they marry who they do. Women get to pick, in a lot of ways. We don’t get to pick. I mean, we do, but it’s really the women who do the choosing of the men, and those men who have excelled, or at least show some sort of potential for excellence, because I wasn’t excelling when my wife found me, but she saw something in me. And that’s who women are naturally going to pick.

1:09:32 Somebody who, again, biologically hardwired, protect, provide, preside. I need a man who’s going to be able to do that, and if she finds someone who falls outside of that category, the only reason she’d be interested in that is maybe some level of control, or because it makes her feel good, because guess what? She doesn’t have a healthy role model or an example of what a good man looks like. Dad probably wasn’t in her life either, so she thinks, oh, guys are just supposed to wait on me hand and foot.

1:09:59 That’s what it means to be a good man, because a real man wasn’t in her life as a father. This is also the problem when it comes to women and promiscuity. So Warren Farrell talks about this in his book as well. It’s good for a daughter to have a father in her life, because she sees positive attention outside of her being sexual. Right?

1:10:20 Because if Dad’s not around, the only way she thinks she can get attention is to show herself off, show her body off, and the boys at school appreciate it and love it, of course, because that’s what they’re attracted to, and she thinks that’s how you get attention. Now, when I engage with my six-year-old daughter, we wrestle and we have fun, and we go on walks and we talk and we laugh and we giggle and we read books together, everything outside of any sort of sexual relationship, and now she’s measuring what a man is based on how I show up. Right?

1:10:50 You’re setting her up to select a great man, because she doesn’t need to use her body to get attention from men, because she doesn’t equate that to value. She sees, oh, well, Dad treats me well, just because I am who I am. He reads with me, he laughs with me, we have fun, we wrestle together, we play. What I’m going to look for, these women who are promiscuous, they don’t have that. They don’t have that healthy side, so they think, I’m going to use my body and use sex as an advantage to get men.

1:11:22 It’s unfortunate. Is it getting worse? Probably, because men are less and less in the picture, and people say, well, the divorce rates are going down. Well, father’s home rates are going up, so it’s not about divorce rates. In fact, more people are having kids outside of wedlock, so it’s not a divorce issue.

1:11:39 It’s having kids outside of a commitment. That’s the problem. And I say commitment, not necessarily a wedding, because a lot of people, marriage, because a lot of people say, well, I can commit to them and not be married. That’s true, and I actually don’t think the state should have anything or any say in marriage. It’s not their business.

1:11:56 Right? So yeah, you have women that write into you. What do they say? They say, thank you for teaching men how to be men, because that’s what I’m looking for, or, this is how, here’s one I get a lot: I wish my husband would listen to you. I don’t, I don’t do what I do for women.

1:12:15 I do what I do for men, but women are actually served through raising and teaching and leading good men. Yeah, maybe you do do what you do for women. I think it’s, uh, well, for everybody. Yeah, I think it’s a result of, maybe not the direct route, but it’s a, it’s a consequence, the result of the work that we’re doing. Okay.

1:12:32 I think more, I think women generally are looking for and I better make the distinction between a good man and being good at being a man. Please. So David Gilmore, in his book called Manhood in the Making, what he did over decades is he researched tribes, ancient tribes, new civilizations, and a lot of them weren’t connected, and many of them weren’t even introduced to each other, and he generally tried to determine what they thought about manliness and masculinity.

1:13:06 And the conclusion that David Gilmore came to was that generally, throughout all of history and most, if not all, cultures believe that a man is a protector, a provider, and the third that he used was not preside, which is what I use: procreate. A man’s job is to protect, provide, and procreate. He also talked about the distinction between being a good man and being good at being a man. Jack Donovan, do you know Jack Donovan? He also talks about this at length as well.

1:13:37 It’s an interesting concept. Being a good man is a morality issue. So what we have is, you talked about beta males, right? So we have a lot of these men who are wandering around. They’re playing the nice guy, and they think that if they’re just a good and polite, moral person, that that’s enough, and it’s not enough.

1:13:59 It’s not enough. You need to be good at being a man, which is not only morality, but it’s capability. So you can have a moral man who isn’t capable. Is he a man? Not as much as the guy who’s moral and capable, and vice versa.

1:14:13 You can have a capable man, but if he’s not moral, we get into an issue there, and a problem there. And so it’s not enough to be one or the other. You need both. You need to have a set of moral principles, whether it’s through Christianity, in the Bible, or your fraternity at your college, or the military has codes of conduct, but there has to be some sort of code that you live to. That’s morality.

1:14:37 And then you have to have capability as well. Your ability to execute, your ability to do, your ability to be that protector, provider, and presider. The only reason I don’t use procreate, by the way, is because I know of plenty of men, who I would consider men, who for medical reasons cannot procreate. But if there’s a guy out there who has the ability to have children, and doesn’t have children, he’s missing a critical component of his life. I can’t tell you how many guys have said to me, because I ask all of my guests, what does it mean to be a man?

1:15:08 And there’s so many of the guys who will say, somebody who raises a man is a man. And I think that’s true. I think we as men have a moral obligation to turn around and help those young boys who don’t have father figures in their lives, or don’t have the same opportunities that we do. It’s our job, as the guys who go before, to turn around and say, let me show you the way, and help these young men so they don’t have to be your own kids. No, right?

1:15:36 I take so much when I coach. Yes, I coach my son’s teams, but there’s also 20 other kids on the team, and I love those boys. You know, I see a lot, let me say this, a lot of those boys and dads, they’re around, and they’re available, and they’re present, they’re loving, and they’re engaged. But there’s always a good percentage of them who either don’t know dad, or dad never shows up. He’s never at any of their games.

1:15:58 He’s not in their life, and if I can fulfill that role as a father in a way through baseball practice, I take great pride in that. I had a kid last year, I’ll never forget it, never. He was on the pitcher’s mound, he was pitching. Kid hit the ball, hit him right in the face. Right, I mean, right in the face.

1:16:20 It was coach-pitch, I remember. So I was standing. I pitched it, and it hit him right in the face, and I said, you know, are you okay? I was talking with him. He’s like, yeah, and he had tears in his eyes, and I said, you’re okay?

1:16:30 He’s like, yeah, I’m okay. I’m like, you want to stay in? You want me to pull you? He’s like, I want to stay in, Coach. I want to stay in.

1:16:36 I’m like, okay. So then we got up to bat, and he walked up. He was next to bat, and he wasn’t a great batter. I knew that about him, and I was pitching to him, because it was coach-pitch, and he struck out, but I’ve never seen a kid walk so proudly about striking out than I did that moment. And he was proud because he kept himself in the game.

1:16:58 But if I wouldn’t have talked to him, and he wouldn’t have been trying to either impress me or his friends, he may have just walked away. It may have quit there. There’s something about having another man that pushes you, that pulls you, that drives you, just like the story you told about your fraternity brother. There’s something about having another man call you out, and having that pressure, that causes you to level up and step up into the man you’re capable of becoming.

1:17:20 That’s what I saw on that little seven-year-old. That was a powerful moment. Sounds like it. It was, man. I loved it.

1:17:27 And procreate, you also don’t think a guy should just go out and procreate unless he’s ready to be a man? No, and raised. That’s a good point. I’m glad you said that, because otherwise you’d be like, oh, that’s a problem, just go procreate. Yeah, because then you’re, you’re, you’re creating more and more problems, right?

1:17:44 Because, I mean, naturally you know that too. Yo. Yeah. Yeah, I don’t understand that, but that’s not cool. Well, having children isn’t easy.

1:17:53 It’s not. No, it’s, and it’s not always enjoyable. It’s a serious decision. It’s a serious decision. It’s a long-term commitment.

1:18:00 It’s a lot of time and love and energy. There’s a lot to it, and I, I wouldn’t trade it for the world, but I wouldn’t want kids that I’m not ready to have. That’s for sure. So there is a misconception. A lot of people think that traditional masculinity is just about having sex with a bunch of women and just going out and doing your thing.

1:18:19 Nobody’s ever thought that. Nobody. Nobody’s ever thought that. Men have always been protectors, providers. Do some men do that?

1:18:27 Yes. That’s not a definition of a man, and it never has been. Right? And if you’re presiding in an intelligent way, you’ll let other men know that that’s not okay. Well, and not only that, you’re leading yourself.

1:18:38 I can’t lead others until I lead myself. That’s why 10 years ago I was incapable of leading this movement. I wasn’t capable of leading myself. And I hear all kinds of guys will say, I want to lead at work, and I want to get a promotion, I want to do this thing. I’m like, dude, you can’t even get out of bed when you say you’re going to.

1:18:53 You can’t even take out the trash when you tell your wife you’re going to. You can’t even go to the gym every morning for five days. You can’t even do that. You can’t lead yourself. Why would anybody trust you to lead your team, or lead an organization, or lead a project?

1:19:07 Go lead yourself for a little while, and then prove that you can at least do that. And then I think people will voluntarily follow you, which is what I think leadership is. It’s more influence. You can influence other people. That’s leadership.

1:19:21 Like my wife, for example. She’s out there. I can’t dictate what she does, but I can influence her, and when I speak, I speak with authority, and she respects it, because she’s voluntarily decided to follow me because I’ve proved that I’m worth following. I’ve earned that right, because you didn’t used to have that. No.

1:19:39 And guess what? She didn’t follow. In fact, she left. And how did you turn that around? The easy or the simple answer is, I fixed myself.

1:19:49 But to get into what that means, is I started to work out. That’s a huge component. A lot of guys will ask, where do I start, Ryan? I really want to improve myself. Where do I start?

1:19:59 Going to the gym. Let’s go lift some weights, go run, do some push-ups, go for a walk, do something. Move yourself, move your body, because it’s not fun if you’ve been out of shape and undisciplined for years, and decades even. That’s a big step. I have this picture, and I have it saved.

1:20:16 I have it highlighted, and it’s the picture I took of when I first walked into CrossFit, I think, was roughly six years ago, because I had fixed myself. I let myself get out of shape, and things like that. Again, it’s about six years ago. I walked in there, and I just saw, I see this guy who’s in there, I’m like, who is that guy? Don’t even recognize him, but I remember how scary it was to go in there.

1:20:37 I thought people were going to judge me. I felt dumb. They were doing pull-ups. I couldn’t do a pull-up. I just, I felt ridiculous.

1:20:44 So I would say how did I fix myself? I started working out. I surrounded myself with the right people. At the time, I was going to find my financial planning practice, and, uh, it was failing big time, and I got to this point where I was, I was legitimate. Like, I gotta quit.

1:21:01 I have, I can’t make this work. But I was too prideful to do that. Like, I wanted to be successful, and I didn’t want to say I quit doing that. So I found two guys in my office, and they were perpetually good. Like, everything they did, it just came together, and their businesses were operating well, and I reached out to him, and I said, hey, you know, can I just take you to lunch?

1:21:24 And I sat down with both of them. I’m like, I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m about to quit. I can’t make this work. People don’t buy stuff from me.

1:21:31 I can’t get appointments. I can’t get referrals. I don’t know what’s going on. And those two men, they took me under their wing, and they started training me and coaching me. We became partners in a way, and I really started a business to grow the business, because I was hum– I was gonna say humble enough, but I would say desperate is probably the better answer.

1:21:48 I was so desperate to make it work that I was able to get over myself for a minute, and the way I looked and the way I presented myself. You found some male role models. Yes. And they helped you. Yes.

1:22:00 And friends and hobbies. Okay. And so years of working on yourself brought you back together with your wife? Yeah, we were separated for about four months. Okay, which is not, I mean, at the time I was like, this is like an eternity.

1:22:11 Yeah, but it’s not a long time. Um, and it wasn’t like when we got back together that everything was like nothing ever happened. There was a lot of work on both. She, she needed to work on communication. That’s the thing that she would say, and she has.

1:22:25 She’s gotten great at that. Um, and you work on yourself. That’s what you’ve been doing. Well, I have to. Yeah, I can’t work on her.

1:22:34 I think most people, like you said, men and women, try to work on the other person. Yeah, because no one tells them to take extreme ownership, the responsibility of their own lives. Well, it’s easier to say, if she changed, then this would be fine. That’s all her fault. Yeah.

1:22:47 But again, to go back to the influence, you can’t directly change somebody. You can only influence them, and you’re influencing, whether you realize it or not. You’re always influencing, just by the cause of you being in the environment. You’re always influencing. So when I, uh, when I started to work on myself, that was influential to her.

1:23:06 She saw that. She’s like, oh, like, he’s doing it. Like, I’m intrigued. I’m fascinated. Who wouldn’t be?

1:23:13 That’s why people are drawn to what you do, because they’re fascinated with you. They look at you more than the studio and what you’re wearing. They look at you, and they see there’s something about Brian. I want to be part of that. I want to figure out, it’s the X factor, right?

1:23:27 I want to figure out what, what about that guy? Like, what’s that guy got going on? And that’s why people are attracted. It’s influence. It’s powerful.

1:23:35 Yeah. I always thought it was the information I was putting out there, but it wasn’t. It was the inspiration. People want to see how you change, and they watch really closely. Yeah.

1:23:43 Everyone’s really smart out there, which is good and bad at the same time for us, right? Yeah. It just keeps you on your game. I love the level of accountability. Yeah, massive accountability.

1:23:52 Yeah. It’s changed my whole life, just being accountable to show up and do this every week, through good, bad, ugly, through all the resistance out there, and to also share space with so many minds and ideas, and some I agree with, some I disagree with, someone I later agree with. You know, uh, that’s all also super powerful as well. Yeah. Um, a couple things.

1:24:13 Sometimes when you get a bunch of, a group of guys together, you get some toxic stuff. So sometimes in the fraternity there were, there were, you know, misogynistic sides. You know, we saw the whole Me Too movement that happened. Okay, and we could talk about that or not, but you know, there are some things that get thrown at the male side, maybe rightly or wrongly. What do you say about those things?

1:24:34 Um, what would, what would you, are you talking about I mean, what would you say that behavior is? You know, it’s like the quote-unquote locker room behavior, where maybe, and maybe that’s a lack of presiding by men in the room. Yeah, where it goes to the lowest common denominator, and it ends up being, yeah, misogyny. Oh yeah, we’re just talking this and talking that, and people say, okay, that’s what men do. That’s, that’s what boys do.

1:25:03 Yeah, or a bunch. Yeah, that’s to me. Look, I, I, I see you guys. We’re out at the grill and the bar and stuff, in the pub, and I see guys like getting shit-faced, and I’m like, what are you doing? You’re like 40 years old.

1:25:19 Like, that’s boy-like behavior. You never learned how to grow into a man. That’s what that is. That’s all that is. So, so the promiscuity, the drinking, the addictions, all that stuff, that’s not responsible, mature manhood type stuff.

1:25:38 It’s a level of immaturity that hasn’t been grown out of yet. Yeah, and it has little to do with, uh, because you see some, some guys who are definitely well beyond still acting like that, still doing it. So I think the big disconnect is when people use the word masculinity, you think of, of being a man as this, this difficult thing you need to aspire for and be into your core, which means being a leader and someone that presides and provides and protects.

1:26:05 Whereas the world on the other side that’s throwing rocks at it says, look at what these guys are doing. Yeah, and you’re saying, yeah, yeah, but those don’t represent what they should be doing. These are a bunch of guys doing stupid things, right, that I don’t condone. But, like, Me Too, people say, look at all these men that abuse their power and put women in these tricky situations sexually. So what?

1:26:26 Okay, so let’s, let’s just assume that’s, that’s the case. So what would you have us do? Get rid of all the men who would correct their behavior, because the women aren’t going to line those guys out. And they need to be lined out. Like, guys that are taking advantage of women, for example, they need to be lined out, and a woman can’t do it.

1:26:50 The government can’t do it. It takes another man to do it, whether that’s through reasoning and logic, or a good old-fashioned butt-kicking. Like, it takes another man. So what would you have us do? You want to strip away all the men who would actually correct the behavior?

1:27:09 It’s like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It’s not a good idea. It’s the same thing when you talk about wars and criminal and, and, and horrific and tragic events. What would you have us do? Not build warriors, with, with a moral compass, the good man and the capable men?

1:27:27 Not build those, because one of them, or two of them, or a percentage of them, might go astray? What vulnerabilities do we expose ourselves to? So I don’t think it’s about focusing on that and saying, well, we don’t want any of that, so let’s get rid of all of it. I say we probably ought to put a greater emphasis on building the right kind of men, which is what I’m trying to do. Then we drown that stuff out, because we’ve had guys.

1:27:51 I have countless stories of men who say to me, Ryan, I was lost in my marriage. I was cheating on my wife. I wasn’t there and present for my kids. I wasn’t doing anything with my business and my career, and through listening to your podcasts and listening to the guests that you’ve had on, and reading the book, my wife and I are on a better course. I’m leading my family.

1:28:16 I just got a promotion. I started this business. So we don’t drown that nonsense out by doing away with men. We teach men how to be men. Gotcha.

1:28:27 So we’re glad that Me Too happened to point out all these guys that were doing stupid things, but we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater and get rid of the guys. It’s an alert for what you’re saying. Ultimately, are the men to step up and, right, say something, right, and preside? Yeah, because I don’t condone any sort of, uh, behavior like that when it comes to men taking advantage, sexually or mentally or emotionally, taking advantage of women. That’s horrific.

1:28:54 That’s not behavior that’s becoming of a man. Yeah, agreed. Unfortunately, these days when you throw the term in, toxic masculinity, it just gets thrown into the gender of men, right? And then a lot of people take it, and then apologize, and it goes out into that side, right? And, you know, I think that’s, that comes back to what we were saying earlier.

1:29:14 It’s, it’s okay. My mission isn’t to say it’s okay to be a man, although that’s what I believe. It’s okay to be a man, but it’s greater than that. It’s, it’s encouraged to be a man. And whether there’s a few squeaky wheels, and that’s who it is, by the way, that are saying toxic mass, that it’s the squeaky wheel.

1:29:33 It’s a very, it’s a very vocal minority who are the loudest and most obnoxious about it. But generally speaking, women want masculine men. Men want to be around other solid men, so that they can raise themselves up, and it’s our job to do away with and fight against this other idea that people have of men, which is they’re drunk and they’re chasing around women and they’re abusing people, in the the negative patriarchy that they like to say so much. Yeah, well said.

1:30:04 I want to talk about an alpha male that’s been in my life, who’s named Dan Peña. Yeah, I’m sure you’ve watched a few of that campaign. He’s a fascinating person. He is also known as 50 billion man. He came into my life about five years ago on my show.

1:30:18 This is one of the benefits of having your own show. Yes. Uh, he walked in, and I sure didn’t know what to make of him. I didn’t really like him before I met him. I didn’t, I didn’t know what he stood for, but he has materially changed my life, and if I probably know more about that man than anybody on this planet.

1:30:35 Um, I made a movie about him. I spend time in my personal life with him. I have dinner with him and his wife and my wife too. Uh, he’s been on the show five times. I’ve been to his castle.

1:30:44 I’m actually going back to his castle in January. Wow. Again, for another week. Awesome. Um, Dan is the most politically incorrect, probably one of the most alpha males you’ll meet, and he just doesn’t care uh, what other people think.

1:31:00 He’s got a real firm view on what he thinks is right. He says it like it is, so much so that he’s been banned from universities. Uh, that, you know, most mainstream media cannot take him because of all the throwback. And yet, Ryan, he’s one of the most popular guests to ever be on my show. Yeah, and he says things that would make you cringe.

1:31:21 How can you say that? That’s not even allowed to say that, and yet he comes out and says it. Yeah. Um, what do you make of him, and response to him? I, um, I don’t know him either.

1:31:32 Uh, like you said, you didn’t know him five years ago. Um, but I see every time I see somebody who is an extreme person, which, would you agree he is? I think so. Yeah, and whether it’s in his style, or somebody who is an extreme hunter, or extremely, you know, in the business world, or whatever, I think the world needs people like that, because they’re correctors. Right?

1:31:57 They’re course correctors. I should say, I think there’s a natural drift for society, and it’s always towards ease. Right? What’s easier, what’s safer, what’s more comfortable? That’s what we want.

1:32:08 And then there’s these little outliers over here that remind us that there’s something more, but in order to have something more, there has to be some challenge. And so those people are always going to be controversial, because they buck the safety, the mediocrity, the norm. But I look at individuals like Dan, and I think, okay, I may not agree with everything he’s saying, and I may not agree with the way he’s saying it, but I like that he’s saying it, because it challenges people, and it causes them to think.

1:32:37 Differently and open up new capabilities and possibilities that we didn’t think existed, because we’re all going in this, you know, this little path, this little drifting path that we’re on. So I like it, and I don’t mind being a little controversial. I think that’s, I think that’s great. I think you should be controversial. Didn’t, uh, who did it?

1:32:55 Winston Churchill, who said, you know, if you made enemies, good, that means you stood for something in your life. You should probably have some enemies. Otherwise, what did you say worth saying? I got, I don’t want to make everybody happy. I don’t want to piss people off either.

1:33:10 It’s not my objective in the process. I will, but I think you should be bold, and you should be assertive, and so when I see a guy like Dan, I’m like, thank you for being that. That gives me permission to be able to be bold and assertive in my thoughts too. Yeah, I totally appreciate Dan. Uh, I always say, like, when he goes, they won’t make another one like him, and I worry about that, because he, he was grown up in a different era, before a lot of what you’re talking about happened.

1:33:37 Yeah. He represents this kind of old-school, kind of Ernest Hemingway era. Yeah, he’s very manly. He goes to his castle. He’s got the bear that he’s stabbed.

1:33:45 He’s got the goddamn castle and his suits, and everything that he did in his career is just like, go for the jugular, go kill. He’s very aggressive. He pushes you to take risks, and he’s actually very fatherly. Like, he really spends a lot of time. I mean, honestly, the last 25 years of his life he’s spent trying to get people to step up and be better versions of themselves and be higher performers, and, you know, for him the metric is money.

1:34:09 He wants them to make billions, but in the process they step up. And I see him in my ayahuasca ceremonies too. I actually see him as a leader of the tribe. That’s what I see, and I see the things you’re talking about. I see him as a male that’s teaching the males, or maybe even everybody how to survive, right?

1:34:27 How to lead, how to push yourself, how to stop being mediocre, how to stop giving yourself excuses. He always says to me, uh, he used to say it more, but he still says it to me, Brian, I see so much potential in you. So much potential. I see so much potential. You just need to, to express it, and I mean, I said this to one of my team members yesterday.

1:34:48 I see so much potential in you. What are you waiting for? Like, why don’t you go get it, right? What is all this stopping you? These fears and these self-talk and this mediocrity.

1:34:57 And that’s what Dan brings, and it’s this precious commodity, and yet so many times people see it. They probably see him as toxic masculinity, probably embodies everything bad about the alpha male. But when I, but I, I mean, I see that he embodies everything great about the alpha male, and he’s literally changed my life, like, literally changed my life as a mentor, as a father figure. Yeah. And I’ll always be thankful to him.

1:35:22 And, um, and it’s, he’s very controversial. I’ve had people quit my Academy after. Yeah, sure. I’ve had, uh, team members cry the next day. I mean, the movie premiere, I mean, he almost caused a riot in the movie.

1:35:33 I mean, literally, I mean. And I think, I think now he just takes it to the extreme as well. Uh, he probably likes it two degrees. I think so, and I honestly, I think, you know, he’s getting older, and I think for him the message is important. And I think for him, he now weaponizes his message.

1:35:48 His message, he does the shock in all camps. Sure, and he just goes out there and gives it so straight to people. Yeah, that they’re just like, shocked, because for a lot of the men and women that he talks to for the first time, he’s the first male figure that called them out on their, on their. He’s like the grandfather that some of us had and some of us didn’t, and your grandpa usually told you how it was. Yes, because he didn’t care.

1:36:11 He wasn’t your father, and you probably listen to your grandpa different than your father, and so when you see him tell these people, they’re just like, whatever. But YouTube doesn’t lie, and so everyone’s saying, oh, I don’t like Dan, always too much, but yet everybody’s watching him, because they know they need it, because he’s in the DNA somewhere. Well, I think Trump actually has a very, a lot of that as well. A lot. Yeah, yeah, I was like, Trump, Trump embodies so much of that that Dan does, and he shouldn’t.

1:36:38 You know, you look at the polls, and you think, okay, well, he’s not going to win, and then yet he won. It’s like, that’s because people weren’t supposed to. You’re not supposed to like him, but then there’s something about it. You’re like, oh man, this guy’s like, saying, like, real stuff here. I had a, a trainer.

1:36:51 He was a trainer and a mentor of mine when I was starting the financial planning business, and he said something to me that will stick with me forever, and the more that I’ve done Order of Man, the more that it’s rung true. And he said, Ryan, said the same thing. He’s like, I see a lot of potential in you. It’s unrealized right now. He says you’ll be successful when you learn to light yourself on fire and let others watch you burn.

1:37:12 And I was like, what the hell is he talking about? What’s he talking about? But I know what he’s talking about. Same thing with Dan. Share your message.

1:37:21 You have something to share. You have an experience. You have a story. You have a set of experiences and beliefs and thoughts and ideas, and there’s somebody out there. I firmly believe this.

1:37:31 There’s somebody out there who might listen to this conversation or another one of my conversations, or stumble upon something on YouTube or Instagram, and he’ll hear something at the right moment, the right time in his life, the right place, he’s in the right mindset, he’s going through the right situation, and because I was willing to share it, I will transform that person’s life. But if I let fear creep in, or you know, worrying about what people think of me, or, you know, heaven forbid I’m a little controversial or say something that somebody doesn’t like, I’ll shut myself down to doing that, and that individual who was waiting for me specifically won’t get what he needs out of life, and then I’ll do that person a disservice. It’s not comfortable at all times to light yourself on fire, because there’s pain that comes with that too.

1:38:20 We’ve talked, we talked about it out here. We talked about your experience with running the, the Iron Man, and the things that you had to experience, and the confessions in a way that you had to make. Now, sometimes I talk with my wife about the things I put online. She said, why do you share that? Because it will help somebody.

1:38:38 Period. She’s like, yeah, but, like, it doesn’t, it doesn’t say anything good about you. I’m like, well, I’m not always good, but, but, but that’s what people see. Like, if, if I put myself on a pedestal, I don’t belong, and pretend I’m perfect, nobody’s gonna relate with that. Well, let’s talk about that word, vulnerable.

1:38:56 Is it okay for a man to be vulnerable? Is it okay for a man to cry? Um, it’s okay. I said this on Twitter the other day. I said there’s three times a man can cry: he can cry at the birth of his child, the loss of a loved one, or the end of Rudy.

1:39:11 There’s, those are the only three times a guy, right? Look, men cry. All right, I cry. Like, I see a movie that inspires me, or I get motivated about something. I cry.

1:39:21 Now, I’m not gonna go bumbling around like an idiot because I got work to do, and sometimes crying isn’t the appropriate response, and sometimes it is. Sometimes being vulnerable is not the appropriate response. You think about the word vulnerability, weakness. There’s a time when a leader can’t express vulnerability. Vulnerability.

1:39:39 He has to be strong. He has to be resolute, because that’s what the team requires of him. And then there’s other situations. With my wife, I can share things with my wife, but even with my wife, I don’t talk with her in certain ways. She knows everything about who I am, but there’s certain ways I don’t talk to her.

1:39:58 What, what is she going to understand about running a business? I can talk with you about that. I can talk with you about the struggles and the pains and the adversities and the setbacks and the wins, different than I would talk with her about that, because she hasn’t experienced that. But you have, right? So there’s a time and a place to express who it is you are, and show your flaws, and your weaknesses, and your vulnerabilities.

1:40:23 And there’s a time not to. It’s not always appropriate, either. A lot of people don’t seem to think that. They think, oh, men’s always soft and always vulnerable and always able to cry, and anything other than that is just traditional gender roles? No, it just means that if I’m in a staff meeting and I’m feeling scared about a new project that we’re investing in, I’m not going to cry in front of my staff.

1:40:47 What kind of influence is that going to, what, listen, in them, are they going to be excited or nervous about it? Act appropriately is what I say. Yeah. If vulnerability is appropriate, be vulnerable. If it’s not appropriate, be stoic.

1:41:00 Yeah. So not just those three times in your life? Yes, there’s more. I was teasing. No, I agree.

1:41:05 People take it seriously. The people, I think, a lot of times they say vulnerability, yeah, for vulnerability’s sake. I agree, it’s silly, but there is a time, sometimes, to be vulnerable in front of your team and people to make a point, and then there’s sometimes where you don’t do it gratuitously, and you don’t do it. Yeah, except, again, you have to know when, right? And I think super strong males know when to do that.

1:41:26 Right? I’ve had some of the strongest men on this planet sit in that chair and cry and get vulnerable, and that in itself is one of the most powerful teaching moments, sometimes, for men watching, when they’re like, okay, this guy can be super tough, but he can tell me he’s tough, because he was on the deathbed of his grandma, and he promised her he would be the world’s strongest man, and he showed that. Yeah, he got emotional. So it’s okay to be emotional, but it’s also okay to take that and forge yourself to be something great.

1:41:57 Well, I talk a lot about emotions. I really have, have really bought into this, the philosophy of Stoicism, and a lot of people mistake Stoicism. They think it’s the absence of emotions. It’s not. It’s the understanding of them and then an appropriate course of action from there.

1:42:14 So your emotions, what I tell guys is, they’re all good. All of them, even anger and guilt and sorrow and all these, what we would consider negative emotions, are good emotions. If they weren’t serving us in some capacity, we wouldn’t have evolved or been created to have these emotions. So why do we have them? They’re indicators.

1:42:33 That’s all they are. If you’re angry about something, that actually might be the right emotion. Maybe, or you’re guilty. If you’re guilty about something, maybe you should be guilty, and then what do you do about it? You know, if you stole something, or, or, or you weren’t honest in your dealings with other people, you should be guilty about that.

1:42:53 Now it drives you to fix it. That’s what an emotion is. I use the analogy that emotions are like, uh, like the dashboard of your vehicle. You know, and if you’re driving down the road and the gas gauge gets down to empty and it starts blinking at you, you don’t get mad about it. You don’t feel bad about it.

1:43:12 You just go to the gas station and put fuel in the car. That’s the same thing you do with emotions. You’re feeling bad or angry or guilty or whatever it might be, sorrowful about something. You shouldn’t get mad, or, I shouldn’t have these emotions. No, what’s it trying to tell me?

1:43:26 Oh, he’s trying to tell me I need to take this course of action. Okay, I’ll go do that, and then you do it, and you correct it, and you feel better. Yeah, I totally agree. It’s a perfect way to be, and if you find yourself getting angry and pissed off and stressed out all the time, then maybe it’s time you sleep better, and go to the gym, and, you know, get, find a job that’s aligned to your mission and all that. It doesn’t mean you lash out in the moment, right?

1:43:46 Yeah, they’re indicators, but I agree, they’re all right. They’re by definition correct. Yes. But then you need to go in and say, well, why, why, why is the gas light on, and what should I do about it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, because there’s a lot of guys who will, you know, I talk people.

1:43:59 People ask me, you know, what are your weaknesses? And patience is one of them. You know, I’m not, I’m not a very patient person. You know, I want, I want success. I want results.

1:44:10 I want action. I want, when I speak, for people to move, like, and I want it now, like, quickly. So my kids are a great, a great help with my level of patience, because I get tested there, and that is my weakness. You know, but I realize one of the lessons I’ve learned from that is that I need to give myself space and margin. If I’m always go, go, go, go, 100 miles an hour, just cranking on whatever I’m cranking at, any little variation or divergent from that activity spikes my stress level and patience.

1:44:46 So I’ve just given myself margin, you know, a little bit in the front, little bit at the end. Cool. I can adjust for those things. I can adapt if I need to, and it really helps with that patient, that patient’s issue. But yeah, figure out what your weakness is when it comes to, or your, your vulnerability, if you want to say, or whatever it is, when it comes to your emotions, and then figure out what is my proper course of action.

1:45:09 I like the sleep thing. You know, if you’re tired and angry, get more sleep. Always helps. Always helps. Um, I got a message from, uh, Justin Wren the other day, who’s been on the show.

1:45:19 Yeah, he’s a friend of mine in his Fight for the Forgotten, and he’s been raised in all sorts of, yeah, I know who he is. You know, bullying is something he’s really been looking out for lately, and he was saying some crazy statistic, like, for a younger age group of men, like, something like suicide has gone to become, like, one of the number one causes of death for, like, these younger kids. Yeah. Um, what do you think about, first of all, kind of depression and suicide, and then bullying?

1:45:43 How does that play into manliness and masculinity? Well, I think we talked a little bit about depression. I think we kind of hit on it. We can get into it more, but there’s, there’s definitely an issue with men experiencing levels of depression and suicidal thoughts, and, and ultimately carrying those things out. Women actually tend to experience just as much depression and attempted suicide.

1:46:04 Men pull it off more often. That’s a really interesting way to say it. It’s not the right way to say it, but you understand. I think the reason is, is what we’ve been talking about this whole time, that men have failed to step into their masculine role, and they’re feeling unsatisfied, unfulfilled, unimportant. A lot of guys will ask me, Ryan, how do I build confidence?

1:46:30 You earn it. You go earn it. Well, this guy’s just confident. Yeah, because he earned it. You don’t know.

1:46:37 Nobody’s born with confidence. Arrogance, maybe, pride, ego, sure, but not confidence. You have to earn that. So when guys will say, I’m not confident myself, my knee-jerk reaction is, yeah, well, what do you have to be confident about? Maybe you shouldn’t be confident in yourself.

1:46:54 I, there was a time in my life where I wasn’t. I’d walk around with my head down, and I was 50 pounds heavier than I am today, and I was miserable and out of shape, and the business was going under, my marriage was in shambles. I didn’t have anything to be confident in, but I didn’t make believe that I should just be confident. I didn’t will it into existence. I started doing things I was proud of.

1:47:15 And so for guys that are depressed and suicidal, barring mental illness, the answer is to go make yourself proud. Get up 15 minutes earlier. You’re going to feel good about yourself, because you won the victory over your alarm clock. Get up 15 minutes earlier, drink a glass of water, go into the gym, dude, when you get out of bed, go do 20 push-ups. That’ll build confidence.

1:47:38 Go into work, get your tasks done, engage with, you know, take your wife on a date. That’ll build confidence, because she’s going to be excited about that. All these little actions, that’s what builds confidence. And, and my mom would always say, she said to me when I was little, Ryan, idle hands are the devil’s workshop. And every time she said it, I rolled my eyes, like, oh, Mom, like, that again, but she’s so true.

1:48:01 It’s hard to feel sorry for yourself when you’re actively and engaged, and engaged in something meaningful and significant to you. So if you’re feeling down, sad, upset, go work for yourself or even for somebody else. Bullying is an interesting one. You’re never going to legislate away bullying. You know, you have all these little cute gimmicky little sales pitches and say no to bullying and all that stuff.

1:48:29 That doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. You’re never going to legislate it away. Train your children to take care of themselves. That’s it.

1:48:39 Bullies pick on the weak. Don’t be weak, and don’t let your kids be weak. And then you shore them up from bullying. Now, in the meantime, we should talk about it. We should discuss it, but the proper course of action is to strengthen our children to help them develop their own level of confidence, to make them more capable of defending and protecting themselves and standing up for themselves, and also standing up for others.

1:49:03 That’s really important. We teach our kids to take care of ourselves, themselves first, and then look for opportunities to help and serve other people. I talk with that all the time, especially when my kids were in public school. My oldest boys would say, hey, remember when I would drop them off, because I’d drop them off occasionally in the morning, and I’d say, hey, remember, stand up for yourself and stand up for others. That was something we always talked about.

1:49:26 That’s how you stomp out bullying. It’s powerful, and most people don’t understand that bullies are actually the ones that are, that are scared and don’t have the confidence. Yes. And people think they’re, like, the tough alpha guys. They’re not, no.

1:49:38 And so they’re usually the ones that are, yeah, don’t have the martial arts training, that don’t have that. So that’s the way they kind of lash out. Yeah. So, yeah, by making everyone stronger, you know, you can kind of get that edge out. But I agree, you can’t legislate out bullying, because it happens in groups, behind closed doors.

1:49:53 I always will. So it’s the throwing the baby out with the bathwater thing. It’s like, you know, the no-tolerance thing. Like, a kid, you know, a little boy does this, you know, in the schoolyard, bang bang, and plays cowboys and Indians, and he gets kicked out of school because he did this with his fingers and made a gun, or had a stick and made a gun. You’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

1:50:12 You’re trying, you’re attempting to fix something with the wrong course of action. This is doing this. This is not a problem that’s what little boys do, but when you say they can’t do it, then all that leaves room for is the bullies and those who would take advantage of the system, the criminals, as we get later in life. Like, make yourself capable. Make your children capable.

1:50:34 Like, don’t tee them up for failure, and don’t keep them in a little bubble, because they’re going to get picked on. They’re going to get bullied. It’s going to ruin their confidence, and ultimately potentially ruin their lives. How do you feel about gun crime and gun legislation? I own a lot of guns, and I love my guns, and I think that every citizen should own a gun, and be trained with.

1:51:02 I should say that too. Be trained with a firearm. I think it should be. And I’m just talking about the US, because that’s what I know, but I think it should be every state should adopt constitutional carry, which means that constitutionally you are allowed to carry, so you can carry without any sort of permit or registration requirement. Maine has a constitutional carry, is a constant constitutional carry state, which I, I like.

1:51:25 Um, again, you’re not going to legislate away gun violence, because only the criminals will have guns. So I believe in having an armed citizenry who can take care of themselves. When I was in southern Utah, I went and took a concealed weapons course, because you need it to have your concealed carry card. And it was the police force that was teaching the class, and somebody asked, you know, why do they teach it? And they said, we want our citizens to be able to be armed and protect themselves, because our response time is limited.

1:51:55 So if you can protect yourself, then that helps keep the community safer. So I believe that there should be proper forms of regulation and legislation, but I’m always, I’m always on the side of caution, because I don’t want the precedent set that everything needs to be registered. And there’s, there’s other little red flag laws, like if somebody’s found to be, by a credible source, that they’re mentally ill or unstable, unstable, that they can be banned from having a weapon for a certain period of time.

1:52:31 In theory, that sounds good, except for it sets the precedent. Like, who gets to determine who’s mentally stable and who isn’t? You know, if I have an altercation with somebody, or somebody doesn’t like me, that listens to my podcast, do they then report that I’m unstable, and then I can’t have my firearm? I think that’s a problem. So I lean towards the side of let citizens, which I believe are the majority of people, are good.

1:52:55 Let us arm ourselves. Let us have the capability of protecting ourselves, and I think that reduces gun violence. And what about all these gun crimes, schools getting shot up, all that stuff? Dads. Dads, like, be in the picture.

1:53:11 Don’t have kids outside of a commitment. I tell guys, don’t, don’t marry women without addressing the red flags that you see in those women. That’s a problem, and be engaged. Now, some guys will say, well, the family court system is stacked against men. It is, it is.

1:53:30 So don’t get a divorce, which means don’t date crazy women. And some guys will say, well, I didn’t know until after. Well, you’re not addressing the red flags correctly, then. You know, maybe the sex is good, maybe you really love her, or whatever, but if you’re not addressing red flags, that’s a problem. But there, if you look at these boys who are committing these gun violence in schools and things like that, predominantly, the major overwhelming majority of them are boys without fathers in their lives.

1:54:01 Some people say that’s just coincidence. I don’t think that’s coincidence, and you know, correlation doesn’t equal causation. I understand that, but I believe there’s a huge, huge correlation and distinction, or connection, between a boy who decides to go shoot up a school and not having a positive male role model in his life that corrects that behavior. I’ve been angry, you know? As a kid I was angry.

1:54:26 I got in fights. Somebody picked on me when I was little. Like, that’s natural. You know, it’s like, but I feel like I have the proper outlets to be able to help me channel that in a way that was positive, that didn’t, wasn’t destructive. But it’s, it’s a, that is a man issue.

1:54:44 It’s a fatherhood issue, not a gun issue. It’s also a mental health issue, which comes back to how we’re medicating and sedating our young men. Certainly we can look at the drug industry and how that’s creating all sorts of problems in the brain for these young men. So you take a, you take a, a boy who maybe is mentally unstable to begin with, you medicate him with who knows what, and then you strip out the father figure out of his life. That’s a recipe for disaster.

1:55:20 So the simple, it’s not simple. The, the, the solution is engaged fathers, more manliness across the board. Yeah. Tell me about you. What’s, uh, what’s a daily practice you just cannot live without, something you’ve got to do every single day to make sure you can be the best man that you need to be?

1:55:41 It changes from day to day, or I shouldn’t say day to day. It changes periodically, but right now it’s archery. It’s been really good for me. I’ll go out there every single day, and I have for months, and shoot arrows, anywhere from, could be 20 one day, could be 100 the next day, but I just go shoot, and I go out into my field, and it just allows me to release and be free. I love the immediate feedback.

1:56:12 It’s very, very focusing for me, because when I loose an arrow and I see it hit the target or be off, like, okay, well, I mean, the only reason I didn’t hit the target where I wanted to is because I did something wrong. I think that’s the only reason. So now I’m just completely focused on, okay, well, what did I do? What didn’t I do? What was my shot sequence?

1:56:31 How do I correct that? How do I fix that? And that level of focus is good for me, to focus on a problem, which is not hitting the target where I want, and then try and rectify that as quickly as possible. Um, yeah, yeah, something you just like to do. Yeah.

1:56:50 Uncle Ted. He’s an interesting fellow, for sure. He likes to, he’s big into his, he loves archery. Archery. Yeah, hunting in general.

1:56:58 He’s like, talks about archery like it’s just a way of life. It is. He would do it every day when he was on the road, and, yeah, in the rock band he would just bring his bow with him and be out in the parking lot. It is a way of life for him. That’s what I’m finding.

1:57:10 You know, I started hunting two years ago, and that’s what I found is, I just thought this is a hobby, this is an activity. It’s not, it’s a way of life. To be able to, you talked about it earlier with the chicken, but to be able to, to learn a skill, which archery is not easy. So you go learn a skill. You spend hours and hours and hours practicing this skill for one moment, one arrow, two seconds, and you’re out there for hours and hours and hours and hours.

1:57:41 This last hunt I did, two weeks ago, I was able to kill two, two deer, two does. And you know, people that don’t understand hunting a lot of times will, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll describe it as, you know, cold-blooded killing, you know, murder. I mean, that’s an element of it. You are, you are killing an animal. Let’s not beat around the bush, but there’s training and discipline there.

1:58:08 I spent 30 hours in that tree stand that week, 30 hours for two seconds, and to be able to kill those two deer and cut them, break them down, cut the meat off, provide for the family, then we sit around and we eat it together as a family. That’s a very fulfilling task, job, activity. We need to get you hunting. I’m gonna do it, man, next year. You get a rifle hunt, bow hunt?

1:58:42 Uh, I think I’ll have to. I think I’ll rifle, to start, because I think otherwise it’s it’s easier. Yeah. I think otherwise it’ll be maybe years before I have the hunting experience. Can you hunt here somewhere?

1:58:54 I think there are places, but I think I’ll probably want to do it in America. Yeah. Go out with, um, I had Remy Warren on here. He’s awesome. So, yeah, Remy.

1:59:03 Yeah, go out with someone. If you’re gonna go with somebody, Remy’s the guy to go with. He’s pretty cool. So he’s amazing. Yeah, I want to do it and just completely alienate all the vegans I haven’t already alienated.

1:59:13 I don’t understand that, though. You know, it’s like, I mean, I get that maybe you don’t want to kill an animal. I, I can understand that, and I actually can appreciate that, because it’s not an easy thing. You know, when you kill a deer and you go, and, man, I killed that deer, and it died 30 yards from me, and I walked up, and that magnificent creature is laying there dead because I killed it. I don’t take joy in that aspect of it, but that deer had to die to feed me, and I honor that deer.

1:59:40 That’s not an easy thing to do. So I understand when somebody says, well, I can’t believe you’d kill that innocent animal. I would encourage that person, maybe not to hunt themselves, but to try to open their mind to the process of what goes into that, not just killing. Um, but then you have people, I’ve had people who said, I can’t believe that, and I’d say, do you eat meat? No, yeah, but I get my meat from the grocery store.

2:00:06 I’ve literally had people say that. Like, well, that cow had to die for you to eat. Is your way of dying better than mine? I would argue that the way I killed the animal was better than the way your animal was killed. But people are very funny about that.

2:00:20 Very funny. Yeah, they are. They really are. Remy, and I went really deep on it. I bet you did.

2:00:25 Yeah, and we addressed a lot of these issues. And again, he’s like, I have a lot of respect for vegans. He’s like, they are very passionate about what they do. Yeah, and he’s like, but what I do is this, and it’s different. And he actually talked about his wife going out for her first hunt, and I was talking to your wife about her first hunt as well, and, yeah, how she thought it was one thing, and it turned out to be another thing, and it was, uh, emotional and a connection.

2:00:44 And, yes, all this, stuff. So, uh, yeah, I’m definitely gonna explore it. Yeah, and probably make a movie out of it, like we do everything around here. You should, because it would open up people’s eyes. That’s what, that’s why this is so great.

2:00:54 What we do lets people see things they never would have seen or experienced or even heard about otherwise. This is why this is so powerful. Yeah, for sure. On that same note, five years from now, what do you want to be doing? What is Order of Man?

2:01:09 What, yeah, what does it look like in 2025? Yeah. What is Ryan’s day like, or what are the kinds of things you’re doing at that point? You know, what does this movement look like? What I really want to create, so, several years ago we started doing events, and I believe that the more technologically driven we are as a society, the more powerful physical events will be.

2:01:36 And we did one, and we called it Uprising, and it was 20 men. We call ourselves a Terrible 20. That was the first crew of us, and we just created three and a half days of hardship, physically, mentally, emotionally, and then taught the skills and things that we needed, and conversations, to overcome that hardship, to harden ourselves. And then a year later I did another one called Legacy, which is a father-son event, same event, but now we get the dads involved with their boys, because there’s that disconnect.

2:02:05 It’s becoming really important for me. But one of the things I see doing, moving forward, is creating local and regional chapters, because as much as we do digitally, I just think that there’s something that just cannot be replicated online, like having another man sit next to you, shoulder to shoulder, in a common goal, pursuit, objective. And I think it’d be really powerful to have these chapters dotted throughout and spanning the entire planet, where men are getting together, they’re talking about what it means to be a man, they’re going on hunts, they’re going on activities, they’re learning new skills, and they’re making themselves better, like your fraternity brother did.

2:02:49 They’re calling themselves out on each other, and they’re just helping push each other. And as we continue to develop this and grow this, that’s the next evolution of Order of Man. Is, those chapters are going to be so powerful, and they’re going to help so many people in communities too. That’s the beautiful thing, is that we’re not just making isolated decisions or these changes in a vacuum. Like, if I can change one man, like, if one guy listens to what we’re doing, or comes to an event, or joins something that we’re doing, and he decides to fix himself and start engaging with his wife, start connecting with his kids, start being active in his community, having some respect for himself by eating the right food and exercising.

2:03:38 One man, if I can help one man do that, it’s incalculable, the number of people that I’m able to impact through one person, because his wife is impacted, and she’s now impacting her girlfriends, who then impact their husbands, his kids. This is multi-generational. You know, so I, I was baptized when I was 16 years old, and I thought about that decision. You know, the decision just doesn’t impact me. It impacts my kids, because if I wasn’t, they wouldn’t have gone through that.

2:04:10 And now they’re going through it, and then their kids will, and their kids will, and their kids will, all through one decision I made when I was 16 years old. So we’re pretty powerful. We don’t even know that. That’s what’s crazy. We don’t even know how powerful we are.

2:04:24 You don’t even know how many people you’ve helped. You know, a lot of people that you’ve helped, but you have no idea how many people you’ve actually helped. Well, that’s the beauty. We get to broadcast. You know, it’s this really weird thing where you can scale your message out there.

2:04:39 Yeah. I remember my dad said that to me a few years ago. He said, Brian, he said, you might produce a show, but there’s someone out there that connects to one thing you said at one minute of the show, because of where they are in their life, and someone else will connect to one minute, a different minute of the show, based on what’s going on in their lives. And I’ve had people stop me in the street that said, your show changed my life. And I’m like, oh, thank you very much, have a good day.

2:05:01 And then, no, it changed my life. Yes, because you had someone on, and they said something at the moment I needed to hear it, and I went this way. And that’s powerful. It is powerful, and I love the live events too. It’s a powerful, it’s, it’s powerful, but I just feel like it’s an obligation.

2:05:21 And I felt that way along for a long time. It’s like, who am I to take my experiences and the lessons I have and then just hide them? Like, the reason I’ve been given those experiences. When I grew up, I remember, my, I must have been 15 years old, and my stepdad and my mom were going through a divorce, and I really liked my stepdad. I mean, he had a lot of faults, but I really liked my stepdad, and I was so, I was so upset that they were going through that.

2:05:55 And I just remember thinking to myself, why me? Like, my dad’s not around, you know? I’ve had two stepfathers coming into my life. Like, why me? Why does this happen to me?

2:06:06 And now I know. It’s, my kids don’t have to go through it. They’ll, barring my death, there will never be a moment where I’m not around for any of my four kids. They’re never gonna have to ask why me, because I had to ask that question. And what a shame if I have that experience and I don’t share it with other people who could be impacted by that.

2:06:30 What a waste. Yeah, I totally agree. What scares you? Flying. I had to fly over here.

2:06:38 Well, it was five and a half, six hours. I didn’t like that. That goes back to me being around my kids. That’s why. Uh, but really, what scares me, um, just getting lost in the crowd.

2:06:52 Like, I felt for most of my life, up until, I would say, five or six years ago, I’m just kind of like average and ordinary, you know? Like, never really fell behind, never really excelled, kind of just did what I was supposed to do. I don’t want to live like that, and so I, that’s why I’m on such a mission. Yeah, I feel like I’m helping other people, but I’m helping myself push harder than I’ve ever pushed before, and I don’t want to get lost in, you know, as I walk around, there’s like 10 million people in London.

2:07:26 Which is crazy. Is that right? It’s not high. But in the greater London, maybe. No, there’s, like, maybe it is.

2:07:32 Maybe it is. Yeah, probably like 9.something million people. It does seem high to me too, because we come from a town of 11,000 people, so it seems high to me. Um, and that’s multiple towns. That doesn’t, anyways, I’m walking around, and I see all these people.

2:07:46 I’m like, man, especially in the station, like little ants running around through here. I don’t want to be a little ant. I want to be a player. You know, I don’t want to be mediocre. I don’t want to be average.

2:07:59 I don’t want people to not know who I am. A lot of people say that’s narcissistic or selfish. Maybe, maybe it is, but I’m driven to be significant, and I don’t want to be insignificant. That’s a fear of mine. Nice.

2:08:11 What keeps you awake at night? My kids. I worry, because we’ve talked a lot about trends of society. Somebody asked me, do you worry about your raising your boys in the society? I said, I don’t worry about my boys.

2:08:24 They’re going to be kings in the environment that we live in, the way that I’m teaching them. But if I’m being truthful, I worry about that. I get concerned with what people will think of them, and um, you know, I get concerned with what they’re going to do for work, and how they’re going to fulfill their roles and responsibilities, and who they’re ultimately going to end up with, and, you know, worry about my daughter. Somebody told me one time, they said, when you have boys, you only have to worry about one penis, but when you have girls, you have to worry about all the penises.

2:08:58 I’m like, that’s totally true. I’ve never heard that one, but it makes sense, right? Yeah. These are the things I worry about. You know, I worry about my daughter.

2:09:07 I worry about my boys, and are they going to be fulfilled? Are they going to be satisfied? Am I laying the groundwork for them too, because my oldest loves what I do? They all love, he helps you. He does.

2:09:17 He helps your products. He’s in it. Watch his videos, man. He’s crushing it. He’s in it because he loves it, because he wants to be like me, and so I get to have conversations every day as we’re shipping packages and sending them out, and we talk about what opportunities we have and how we’ve created this, and we talk about people that go into work, dads that are working nine to five, and how I get to be at home, and my office is at home, my studio’s at home.

2:09:40 The store is at home, and I’m there and intimately connected with my kids. And man, I’m just, I, I love being there, and I love being present. And that’s something that keeps me up is just their, their, their safety and well-being. People ask me a lot, dads, new first-time fathers, will say, what, what, what do you have? What advice do you have for me?

2:10:00 I always tell them, your job is to render yourself obsolete, which kind of sucks. Like, your job is to put yourself out of work. That’s a weird thing. And as my boy gets older, my oldest, he’s 11 now, I think, seven years before he’s gone, and then I have to wonder, like, am I doing enough? I hope I think I am.

2:10:23 Some days I think better of myself when it comes to that than others, but I worry for my kids. I think a lot about them. What about our species? Are we going to make it? Yeah, it’s going to be painful.

2:10:38 It’s going to be rough. It’s that whole thing: the strong, uh, strong men create good times, good times create great, weak men, we men create soft men, soft times. You know, you’ve heard that? I haven’t. Okay, I’ll have to say it without butchering it next time, but, uh, we’re in this moment where these good times have created soft men, and those soft men will create hard times.

2:11:04 We’re not in hard times. People say we’re in hard times. We’re not in hard times. I mean, think about the Great Depression, for example. We’re not even anywhere near that.

2:11:15 People talk about the U.S. Civil War. Said, no, we’re not even near that. We’re not in hard times. We’re in prosperous times, but we’re on the backs of giants, men who have gone before, who have sacrificed and built and done all the hard work so that we wouldn’t have to.

2:11:30 So yeah, we’ll make it as a species. We’ve got some rough ride ahead. So I choose to get out ahead of it. I don’t want to lag behind, but I think that’s what society will do, and I think it’ll take war, and I think it’ll take contention, and I think it’ll take death, but I think we’ll come out ahead and stronger for a while, until we slip back into the cycle. On Mars, and Mars, and the battle.

2:11:56 You’re fighting, is that going to get worse before it gets better? Significantly worse. Yeah, I think you’re right. It’s trending the other way. Yeah, right, it’s trending the other way.

2:12:07 One of the things, yeah, which is interesting, because a lot of people say that’s a battle not worth fighting. I disagree, but I hear a lot of guys, it’s kind of disheartening, that have thrown up their hands and said, one guy said on YouTube the other day, he said something to the effect of, you know, at least I’m just gonna go curl into my corner and watch, watch it all burn down around me. And I said something to the effect of, your indifference is contributing to it.

2:12:35 You know, that kind of attitude is only speeding the process up, and guess what? Your indifference is going to create a hell around you, and you’re going to realize that you’re part of the problem. I, I never, I never got the attitude of, like, well, there’s nothing I can do about it, so I guess we’ll just say, sure. There’s something you can do, and if everybody said that, then we’d all die miserable and alone and horrible and broke and everything else.

2:13:02 So I, I, my plan is not that. It’s to enlist an army of good and capable men who lead their families, lead their communities, and lead their lives the way that they should, the way that will fulfill them, in the way that will serve other people. And if I help one guy, I can help 20. If I help 20, I can help a thousand, and it just exponentially grows, but it’s an uphill battle, and it’s gonna get worse. I’m trying to hold on right now, and hopefully we can grow it to the scale where it continues to get better.

2:13:38 We’ll see. Yeah, we’ll see. It’s gonna be fun to watch, as long as it’ll be good for us, but for my kids and grandkids, that’s what I worry about. Well, we’ll see what happens. Yes.

2:13:49 Uh, Ryan, I always ask a few questions at the end. I’m gonna ask you, if you could pick up a magic phone and call up the 20-year-old Ryan and give that young man some advice based on everything you you’re really connected to your mission, and it shows, and it showed when you first pitched me to come on your show, and I’ve been watching you on Instagram and all that, and I appreciate what you say. You’ve obviously thought a lot about what you’re saying, and you don’t just say things to say them.

2:14:43 You know you’ve thought it out, and I think it’s good for people to listen to this episode, because they might see you and say, oh, he’s the guy that’s going to be the this, this, and this. But, um, that’s why we do these shows, so people can walk a mile in your shoes, and they can understand who you were and who you’ve become and what you really want in this world. Yeah, and, uh, you ultimately want better people in this world. You want us all to step up, and I love that integrity gap.

2:15:07 Is that what you call it? Yes. Integrity gap is real for all of us. And so you’re working on, you know, half the population’s integrity gap, which is a great start to change the whole population. And, uh, it’s something I work on every day, my integrity gap.

2:15:21 And, uh, but this whole world has so much potential. You know, we could all be doing probably 20x what we’re doing now. Um, oh yeah, but, you know, or more, and if we all did, this place would be incredible. Um, and so we need people to get us on that path, and this whole issue of masculinity is important. We talk about, and this is the first time we’ve ever really talked about it.

2:15:42 Yeah, touched on it here and there, but I think it’s important. So, um, thanks for doing what you do. Five years in, I know how hard it is to start kind of a media company. Yeah, what you’re doing. Yeah.

2:15:53 And yeah, it took me years and years to get any type of traction, and I just kept at it, you know, and then kept at it. I took a lot of risks. I had some great mentors, like Dan Peña. Yeah. And, um, you know, eight years later, we’re an overnight success, just like you.

2:16:08 Yeah, well, it’s good, you know. I do want to thank you as well, because I’ve been connected with you for several years now, and, you know, I look at you as somebody who paves the way. You made it easier for me. You cleared the path a little bit, you know. And that’s, I respect and admire what you’ve created, and, man, I am so honored to be sitting in these chairs with you.

2:16:28 I would have never thought this three years ago, that we’d be able to sit here and do this, and, um, a lot of what I’ve created with Order of Man is inspired by what you’ve created here. So I appreciate that, of you. Cool, man. Thanks for saying that. I appreciate it.

2:16:40 I don’t know if I did any clearing, but, uh, if I did, cool. Yes, um, you did, but I just went out there and did it. And it’s funny you say that, sitting in that chair, I meet people all the time, and they say, Brian, one day I’m gonna be in that chair, and I always say, okay, do something. Do something so big that I can’t ignore you. Yeah, that’s what I would say to them, and sometimes I got a blank look on their faces, and all that stuff, but maybe sometimes it clicks, you know?

2:17:02 And so, uh, I’m glad, glad you made it to that chair. Yeah, that’s what you’ve been doing, you know, which is great. So all the best in your message. I love the live events. Keep doing what you’re doing.

2:17:11 I think you’re all on the right path. I agree, the more risk the better, especially in this new, we’re in this new space. I always tell people, like, we don’t know what YouTube is yet. We don’t know what it is yet. It’s a new medium.

2:17:23 I said that to people, and they look at me funny sometimes, like, what are you talking about? It’s just TV on your phone. It’s not just, wait, it’s just not. And so that means you must take corresponding risks in your business, because you don’t know what’s going to work, right? And for me, here, some of these big risks have kind of paid off in really weird ways.

2:17:41 It’s also a long game, and you’re creating these digital assets that will pay returns for a long time. Yeah, I really believe that these conversations are going to be watched 10 years from now, 50 years from now, 100 years from now, maybe a thousand years from now. Um, I, I really believe this one’s gonna be like, look at those guys, look at how funny they look, what are they wearing, what’s he wearing? You know, exactly. They said they used to wear beards.

2:18:06 Yeah, right. Yeah, but, uh, I think we’re still talking about things that they’ll be talking about for no doubt. So, uh, so meant all the best to you, looking forward to what you’re going to do. And, um, yeah, Mel, stay in touch. Thanks, brother.