BEDROS KEUILIAN | Be a Man

pedros good to see you and sit down with you finally we were talking about it uh yesterday that this is the first time we've met yes sir first time we met in person yet it feels like it feels like we already have known you and i know who you are and what you're about right exactly yeah no i really appreciate the opportunity to come out here and uh experience what you're doing with your squire program thanks man and by the way thank you for speaking at it pouring into those men it was just an amazing talk i know i personally took away notes and they did as well good that's great you know you said something to me uh yesterday you had said that what you'd done with fit body boot camp and all your other businesses well i i obviously i believe there's still passion there you never thought that it would be funding what you're doing with uh the project and also with the squire program that was very interesting to me how you and your thought process has evolved and where it's come since you started yeah yeah so it it was one of those things where again when i i told you how much it cost to just ensure one class of the project right 26 000 right yeah and people go like no that's for the year right no that's for one class that's it yeah and you know stuff like that and then when you think about the logistics of the whole thing it literally costs about 100 grand to run one class for us and we do it very high end like they get a real nice swiss watch at the end with the project crest on it and all this stuff but all that to say that if i was just going to start that from scratch and maybe i would not have started something so elaborate from scratch but fit body boot camp my franchise has allowed me to have this discretionary fund to be able to do things that i feel i'm called for in in this case with the project for men and then the squire program for boys and experiencing that right of passage and so you know now in part of my coaching of other entrepreneurs i'm like look it's one have multiple income streams we've learned that through this whole covid yeah dilemma definitely yeah people who've had multiple income streams found that some of the streams died and others stayed the same and others might have just skyrocketed and i think it's a good point too because you're also talking about a diversification in income streams too right as opposed to all being in the same avenue or vein all being subject to the same type of risk correct exactly because if you've got four income streams in the same space and that space crashes right it's a fun way to become homeless yeah and and so diversification and multiple income streams but then really being mindful about what do you spend your money on right like you sure we can all go buy things and i'm not against things like i love having nice houses and experiences etc but if you're cut from the cloth of service you and you keep saying i'm going to wait until i make the next million before i start donating uh and giving what if you just didn't go buy that thing to flash with and instead donated and gave now and so to me it's always been that i've been i've had the good fortune to have the self-awareness to realize that i am wired hardwired to serve and it feels good and i've done that for as long as i can remember and it's just a great feeling yeah i think people whether it comes to if it's service or starting a business or doing a podcast or any number of things that anybody could do or have interest in i think one of their biggest concerns is because they may not be able to do it to the level that they want today that it's not even worth starting that's exactly what it is yeah i felt that way 11 years ago and 11 years ago we started donating to gosh 12 years ago now shriners children's hospital and we did that because a friend of mine jim saya he at the time was a miami police officer and he worked on the narcotics department single father and his child his son had spinal issues okay and his son's in a wheelchair and i said jim how do you on a cop salary how do you pay for all the medical procedures as your son gets older every year the wheelchair has to get bigger oh yeah right and just like when he told me the price like 13 grand for a wheelchair it's not cheap because you know what if it wasn't for shriners children's hospital i don't know what i would have done i had never heard of shriners and i remember thinking like man i got to donate something to it but at the time 12 years ago we're kind of just getting on our feet with our franchise and you know credit cards are maxed out sure yeah it's like well i could probably just donate maybe 50 bucks but i didn't six months later it was eating away at me still like why didn't i donate that 50 bucks could it have bought something could i have donated 50 bucks three more times since right and so after six months of having it eat away at me i realized that just donate what you can and start the consistent habit right and then the 50 becomes 55 becomes a hundred becomes thousands and now we're seven figures in donating to shriners we're partnered with shriners our franchise now with every web special you buy with our fit body boot camp workouts you know like two or three bucks of it goes to shriners and that wouldn't have happened if i just waited like i can't wait to donate a million bucks or a hundred grand or whatever right because you always have other things to do with your money of course right there's of course reality yeah so i what i mean obviously there's benefits in in service and donating and giving and being charitable you know there's obviously benefits for the recipient sure but there's also benefits for the giver too right um i think there's a lot that to be said for an abundance mentality i think there's a lot to be said for the actions that that you're taking that say i have so much so that i can actually give to other people now which i actually think is part of the definition of being a man sure is not only can you take care of yourself but you have the capacity to take care of other people yeah yeah and and that is again we share in that definition and what a man is and should be and going back to what you said there the act of giving definitely produces an amazing outcome to whatever you're giving to church to cause the charity there's a selfish benefit to that as well in that all men seek out significance and fulfillment all humans have this desire for significance and fulfillment in fact the project we have the four f-bombs that when they're in line create the fifth f bomb which is faith family fitness finance fulfillment if you have those four f rocks or bombs in order you're going to have a sense of fulfillment if you have a sense of fulfillment you're not going to go out there doing stupid things whether it's pornography alcohol drug abuse infidelity we starve for fulfillment and we look for it in shallow wells because we haven't done the deep work to create it and if we can create that so part of that fulfillment is with your family if you can donate a fund and go to a shriners hospital there's 23 of them now across canada and us to go and see exactly how your money gets used and then to show your man imagine if my parents took me to a shriners hospital early on and like look where our money is going even if it was just 20 bucks right i would have started donating contributing programming myself that not only do i need to make enough money for me and my family now it's installed in my fiber that i must also give and serve a charity a cause yeah and so that is a very selfish thing the the feeling of having a selfish this this this significance and fulfillment saves us from doing acts of stupidity as men it's funny you know you say the term you use the term selfish and it has a negative connotation to it right like everybody thinks selfish negative but there has to be a little bit of selfishness in life especially as you're trying to find fulfillment or purpose meaning significance all these things you're talking about because if you can't learn to take care of yourself selfish with your time your pursuits your energy then you'll never have the capacity to serve shriners or your family or whatever cause or charity you may belong to or be interested in later today when you get on an airplane they are going to tell you right before you take off they're going to tell you to be selfish in the event that the oxygen masks fall be selfish and put your mask on so that you can be a useful tool to the people around you who maybe can't or are panicking or need to be calmed down but if so yeah selfishness you're right it does have a real negative connotation and i guess for the most part when we say well you're selfish it's like hey you did for yourself before you did for others but selfish is also if your cup is full let's have it overflow and serve others right i think i think where it takes on that negative tone is when it comes at the expense of other people so if we were to use your analogy of the masks you put your mask on and then you never help anybody else with their that's selfish that's a problem well said well but that's what most people do right is is is they will put their own that in my head right now some new just puts it on i'm good everybody's screaming you're good i'm good but no i mean i think that's what people do generally is we fall on one side of the equation or the spectrum is we either are so consumed with helping and serving and giving back and it comes at our own well the expense of our own well-being or we're overly selfish and we only take care of our own needs and never give back give back to other people so there's got to be i think that balance in there yeah yeah that is true that is true i like that you talked about um the fifth f bomb i think is what you called it fulfillment fulfillment because uh i know a lot of men are dealing with not having fulfillment in their lives and so they look for those shallow wells like you were talking about is there a place where you would suggest so let me make sure you get this right so faith family finances and fitness is there a place where you would suggest that a guy plug into like if you're gonna start do this go go here first and then you can hit the other areas yeah the easiest place to have a sense of control is in yourself like you can decide what time you wake up you decide what goes in your mouth you decide how active you're going to be because you might say well if you focus on the finance rock or pillar hey man if we're in an economy like this maybe your business isn't going to take off and you're like i'm not getting that sense of fulfillment now but you can wake up and run in fact i saw your post you're here in town the gym is closed yeah you had dumbbells and you you did something there in your room on a towel right bam knocked it out that's a w that's a sense of fulfillment it's a small piece of fulfillment which allows you to now stack another one on top i do believe that the best place we can start is ourselves because when you start feeling that sense of confidence by look at that i'm getting stronger oh my gosh i'm getting faster holy crap i'm not so self-conscious anymore because i lost my gut my pants feel better my clothes feel better like you need that and you stack those wins you go who else can i help and what else can i do and now you're going to serve your spouse you're going to serve your kids you're going to serve your community you're going to serve your team but it all starts here and i know that from first-hand experience because when i wrote man up and i know we've you've had is my third time on your show and i greatly appreciate that we talked about it that i was trying to be i was trying to lead a company start a franchise yet i was fat and out of shape i wasn't sleeping well at night all the things that i could control of me i wasn't doing yet i was trying to control them what a hypocrite what a hypocrite right and how how could you imagine how much i felt like an imposter yeah and you can't be as effective you know it's funny you talk about that story uh a mutual friend of ours andy priscilla very much the same you know i think it was three four five years ago that we sat down for the first time and he said almost identical to what you just said yeah and that's when he started getting things back in in check and dialed it in and then he's since obviously helped tens if not hundreds of thousands of people since that own personal transformation of the 7500 yep so i i can certainly agree you know it's funny that you say that that's a great example and shout out to andy on this because before he launched that we were talking and this is again when the world was so this might have been like late 2017 or maybe 2018 this might have been 2018 we were talking and he's like hey isn't it funny you know we're going to speak at a similar event same event and he goes hey i always know that like if i have a speaking gig that's coming up as long as it's about uh you know three months away i can get it i can get in shape for it i can be prepared for it and all this stuff right we're just shooting the breeze on that and um he goes i think i'm going to create a program on that and that will really yeah dude no kidding and he had kind of talked about you know here's kind of what it would look like and it was so neat to see a year and a half go by and then bam 75 heart was made yeah you know but all great things start with the self like the greatest work we can do is on ourself and he was inspired to create 75 hard because he saw the impact that change made on himself right like where else can you start that would be creating a bigger impact than yourself because you're a walking talking billboard that the product or service or the thing works yeah and not only that we can't make these decisions in a vacuum right so if you start to improve in one facet of your life let's take fitness for example how would that not impact positively other areas of your life of course it is you know i think andy did something else with the with the 75 heart program and and i wanted to come back to something i saw yesterday to to talk to you about on this is that yeah it's going to help you get fit and strong and in shape but it's a mental health program right so you're changing your mindset because you're doing things that are hard and uncomfortable and maybe even things you didn't think you could previously do so what's funny is we were we were at your squire program yesterday yeah and there was a young man who had gotten the in the uh ice bath yeah and you and i were standing next to each other and he was like i can't he said like he literally said i can't do this tears in his eyes he was cold hyperventilating like it was not going well and then we had the conversation about you know in the next three minutes though he's going to prove to himself that he can do something he didn't think that he could do and that's a powerful powerful moment for him that was such a transformational moment and you know after you spoke you were there a couple hours and we did the truck pull in that ice bath and that's where you saw that last night at the graduation dinner he uh you know we like to get feedback from all of them like what was her big takeaway sure yeah you know what would you want us to do something different can you just give us some feedback right and uh he goes that ice bath i wanted to get out but because i stayed into it he was my heads are above the cloud right now those were his words yeah and his dad just looked at him and start tearing up because how do you create that moment in any other way yeah okay you can do an ice bath at home or whatever but he's gonna be like no dad i'm not going in but in that moment with peer pressure and we do need pressure as men sure pressured and you know grover yeah grover says that pressure is a privilege right uh and positive pressure like no one's like hey you're gonna hold your head under the water but you see your peers doing it and then there was young william that tiny little dude yeah like well he did it like a little savage so you know what i guess i can't do it it didn't flinch yeah yeah like i positive pressure has helped me do a lot of things that i would otherwise back out of in life that's a good point you know it's funny um that young man that we were talking about he actually reached out to me on instagram and he said something that i thought was really really cool he said he apologized to me he said i'm sorry for the language i used in that video and i just thought because he was pretty worked up yeah yeah he was pretty happy and i thought man what like what a testament to his father what a testament to what you guys are doing that not only is he caring about putting himself in difficult circumstances but he cares about the way that he presents himself and the way that he shows up and has respect and reverence for what he's doing and even himself honors himself by saying that that was pretty impressive i mean in that moment knowing all you and i knew about him was right right from that day yesterday okay that's interesting about his reputation he might be someone who's emotionally reckless and you know cusses like a sailor so instantly we start judging people and you're supposed to and that's okay to do i know it's like scary don't judge people but yeah that's he was setting the foundation for his reputation but by reaching out and saying hey man i'm sorry for my language i got worked up gives you a second chance to go you know what look at this guy look at the depth of his character for me yeah i mean what a great lesson in being able to remedy and fix things and and also you know we talked about that ice bath being three minutes i think about that with a workout too you know if you're sitting there and you're like you maybe you're 50 pounds overweight and you're thinking yourself i just want to lose weight i want to be healthy i want to be strong i want to look good i want to have the self-confidence that comes with it and then you see the the you know the bag of chips right or you see or you know that you're gonna have to get up at 5 00 a.m or 6 30 or whatever it is and do your workout change happens in such a short period of time you can not eat the bag of chips you can you can forego that for 30 minutes like you can do that anybody can do that or you can get up and you can work out for 20 minutes even if you don't want to and then the way that you feel after you do that is incredible and it sets the foundation for you doing it moving forward bingo and it's such a short period of time no we're not telling you to suffer forever just go suffer for a half hour and then you're done do you think cause isn't it funny that we have more convenience at our fingertips more access to information with these cool little gadgets yeah yet we've gotten more unhealthy and fatter and diseased than ever and i wonder if we've gotten access to too much convenience in other words if too much convenience and access because the hunt for good information when well you've probably thumbed through an encyclopedia before right yeah and so going to an encyclopedia when you don't have google to give you the answer of how many people the population of switzerland which i just happened to do because we're opening up locations in switzerland right now but you know to go to an encyclopedia and do that when you do harder work to produce an outcome you are more in love with that outcome than if the outcome came easy building a canoe versus buying a canoe you will take better care of that canoe that you built with your son than if you went and bought a canoe that someone hand built of course that's just how it is because you know the work you put in and i just wonder if this convenience has uh kind of crippled us well i think as men we used to be stronger and harder and tougher more resilient more gritty just because we had to be like or you would die or you would those are the two choices you can get tough or you're literally going to die we're not faced with that anymore right so what what we need to do is we need to put ourselves in voluntarily put ourselves in demanding in difficult circumstances that's not an easy thing to do but it has to be done because it's not going to be presented any other way so going back to modern days i'm going to ask you when someone has the option of going to the grocery store versus turning on the app and literally saying i want the i don't know if you use those grocery store apps but it will literally say i live in such a rural area my wife showed me you could say i want bananas uh-huh i want them organic or not oh we have done that okay and how do you go pick it up yeah yeah it has the images of like do you want it super ripe with the little dots like three or four different pictures like how ripe do you want it you want kind of green so it'll ripen up on your counter and then they'll deliver it to you so when you have the opportunity of going in and picking it out yourself and let's say it was raining that day in other words people i think when we didn't have the choice of this stuff of technology and convenience if it's thunderstorming and you're like dang my kid needs medication you're gonna have to go out in that thunderstorm and brave the weather and go into the store and get that thing when you come back and you take care of your kid you're like you know what doggone it i'm a man right like i braid some adversity there definitely versus dog i'm a man i just ordered kid's title and all that's gonna show up in four minutes and i could track it where it is in my town yeah like i don't feel manly if i would you wouldn't and there's no pride in that i'll give you a another example so so we need a big electromagnetic pulse to happen hey look that actually might based on where we're at right now that actually couldn't be i don't know if that would be much worse than what we're anyways so i'll give you another example so my son my oldest son he's been into hunting he's been on his hunting kick for a couple years now and we've tried to kill an animal and he's never come together and so to back up there hasn't ever been a moment in my life as as my son has been in my life for 12 years now since he was he was born where he he had pride at dinner because what would he have pride about sure like he's just eating he's consuming that's all he's doing he's just consuming resources so there's nothing to be prideful about okay so we spent two years trying to figure out okay let's grow the food plot let's put up the stands and put the cameras out let's track where everything is well uh several months ago we were invited to go on a hunt in pennsylvania with a friend of mine and we went out there long story short my son ended up harvesting his first deer big nice mature pennsylvania buck and we he went he shot it himself he sat in a tree stand for two and a half hours in the cold and the dark by himself and he shot that thing we we uh the first thing we did is we pulled it out of the forest we had it we had a side by side so we'd bring the brought the side by side up and it was me and my oldest son and my second son and we had to together lift it into the side but so he's like does this have your dad i'm like i know it's just us like we gotta get it in there yeah so we lifted it in there and it took us two or three tries but we finally got it in there then we broke it all down we skinned it we broke the meat we processed it all then we got home and we processed it further you would never imagine the amount of pride that he had in taking a bite of food at dinner something he'd never experienced before because there wasn't anything to be proud about and now there was an element of pride and there was accomplishment and satisfaction fulfillment in his personality yeah so to that point my dad when i was like when i was a kid i was probably 12 13 probably right around your son's age told me a parable and an armenian parable and i'll just say it in english because it's going to make sense in english and armenian and so you know this is family and dad says hey son you're of age now and you need to go find yourself a job so go to the market and find yourself a job right and um of course dad comes home that night how did you find yourself a job nope so he really gives him a stern talk and he's like hey you're of age now you need to contribute to this household go find yourself a job and of course the kid doesn't go out and do it dad comes home and goes hey did you find yourself a job he goes yep look i uh i earned five bucks dad takes the five bucks and immediately walks to the fireplace and throws it in the fireplace and the five dollars burns and uh kids like looking at mom because the kid got the five bucks for mom like just so dad doesn't get mad at me the next day the kid goes out and actually finds a job and dad says hey how was your work good i got another five bucks again dad goes over to the fireplace to throw it the kid just jumps on his arm like don't you dare throw that right and really it's you value what you harvest you value what you harvest and it doesn't matter the our version of harvest these days i guess in metropolitan usa is is to be able to go to a store and i am convinced that convenience and comfort are going to be the death of us yeah i think the other thing it does when it's convenient it frees up time right so if you don't have to pick everything out somebody else can pick your groceries you know that example frees up time and then what do we do with that time more trivial [ __ ] and so now we're inundated with a bunch of trivial nonsense that doesn't really matter that does not add any sort of depth or fulfillment or meaning to our lives but we have a lot of time because we have all these conveniences yeah you know like me going from point a to point b i thought about it uh as on my flight out here it took me i left at um what time did i leave i left it two or three in the afternoon at my place and i got here in the evening it was probably nine o'clock in the evening yeah so it took me about nine hours to travel from maine to california which i was complaining about but i'm like you know a hundred years ago it would have taken you months and you probably could have very easily down the way the probability would have been higher right so we've like we've come up all these conveniences that are very nice and comfortable but then we filled it with things that aren't relevant or don't give us more meaning and purpose in our lives yeah ain't that something ain't that something and that's the thing right because the argument that someone might have is like guys what are you talking about like that gives that convenient gives you more time to do purposeful stuff yes on paper that sounds amazing and the most disciplined will the truth is the convenience of having marlin our housekeeper in my house gives both me and my wife to work on our do our deepest work right she keeps publishing recipe cookbooks and is the cfo for fit body boot camp and i do my thing but the reality is most of us and if i went back even ten years ago if i had the convenience of someone shopping for me i would have used that time to mess around of course just to do stupid stuff and at the end of the day and you do enough stupid stuff you start getting stupid that's just the reality like if you're not sharpening those synapses they're they're dulling out and we get stupid and that is my greatest concern for society but anyways i don't know if we have an answer for that i just wanted to hear from you on that i felt actually the same way when i hired my first employee because i was really fearful about hiring that individual because i thought to myself what am i going to do with my time and i knew that i probably would have squandered a bunch of time yeah which then how do i pay for this individual because now i have to worry about my paycheck and theirs so what am i going to do and then i just had a little bit of faith in myself and said okay well i'm going to be intentional about this i'm going to hire this individual they're going to do x y and z so i don't have to do that and now i'm going to do x y and z and i became more intentional about the way i was going to spend my time i think that's what guys are not doing yeah we have all these conveniences and they aren't intentional about how they're spending the time that has been freed up what was that quote that you said about if boys don't know yeah boys don't learn men won't know if boys don't learn men won't learn and you share that yesterday at the squire program and really what you're talking about here is the answer to i guess the question that i brought up and that's is all this convenience and technology harming us well yes if we continue to do stupid stuff with the time that we've i guess bought back because we're paying someone to deliver food for us but on the flip side if we're intentional and if you teach your son then hey this thing could really a lot less convenience and comfort but it could also suck you into this whirlwind of stupidity and so let me teach you how to use this this is no different than a than a gun of course and i do believe we can kill people with this i i can leave enough messages for someone on their comments to get them close to suicide and we've seen unfortunately people do that and i and i just want to kind of bring that to the surface like we have a responsibility as parents whether it's fathers teaching their sons and parents teaching their family their kids but we have to teach our family on what do we do with this device how do we use it what are the best practices and when we do buy back our time with it because right now my son and daughter they during the week they do school through the laptop right california schools are shut but they know that hey i'm gonna go out there and do some activities and i'm gonna go skateboard i'm gonna go do this and play with the dog and because given the opportunity they would just screen suck right but we've had those conversations and i my greatest fear is that not enough dads parents fathers mothers are having those conversations which are leading to the convenience and comfort factor creating stupidity i think it's a um a misuse of a tool right i mean that's just a tool a gun's a tool gun's a tool so the other day i was down in the basement because that's where we're building our canoe that you're talking about and you have a strategy to get that thing out of there by the way i do yeah a lot of people are concerned about the house a lot of people were very very concerned like don't build a thing in the basement because how are you going to get it out there i've got a plan oh good man yes i've thought about that ten years ago i would not have thought about that but i've made another mistake but i saw that remember what you were gonna say when i saw that post i'm like dude if he's building a canoe in the basement how's he gonna get it out i'm sure he's thought of it like but if he hasn't there is that infomercial i forget the tape the whatever gorilla tape or whatever tape where the dude cuts the boat in half oh yeah tapes it and then tapes it and then it goes you know goes on the lake i'm going to imagine if you had if i built that and then i had to cut it apart or scoop i would cut a hole in the wall before i cut that canoe yeah yeah that goes back to your message about the value of something that you've worked on right right you'd rather hole in the wall somebody else did that yeah i built this yeah i'm not messing up with me my son did yeah well all right anyway so uh we're down there well my son and i my oldest son and i are building the canoe and we had to put these forms on which is what holds the canoe it's the the skeletal structure as you build it and you build the canoe around it and we had to put these forms on there and hold a couple pieces of wood in place and i said all right just hold it right there and there was a screw that i had pre-drilled and i got my drill and i drilled the screw in and i said just hold it while i drill it in so he held it and i drilled it in and then we went on the other side i'm like okay hold it the same thing and i put my screwdriver down and i put it on his thumb just messing with him and and he's like cool and he got all afraid of it and i said you know that's actually a really interesting lesson i said this screwdriver or this drill is just a tool it could either cause harm or it can cause what it is we want the desired outcome to screw this board it's all about how we use it so if i caused you pain did the tool change he's like no no the tool didn't change the way we used it did but that's social media that's phones that's a vehicle that's a firearm and it's even your own your own body in the way that you communicate right like the way that we communicate for example on this podcast is a tool for the betterment of other people or we can use the words that we share to put people down to knock people to diminish what they're doing to make them feel worse about themselves that is a powerful statement because as i was coming down the hill to pick you up from your hotel one of my coaching clients left me a voice shot i uh him specifically i haven't leave me a voice shot every sunday just catch me up on your activities for the week and um he just kind of you know so i broke my toe and that really sucks because i have a boot on but i got a coaching client so he also does real estate coaching i got a coaching client using that system that you taught me and the ignition program is going to work just fine i'm really excited for that and then yeah i'm having my business partner buy me out dude it was so low tone the voice shot and i found my energy changing and i'm not a wubu guy that goes out hugging trees and and doing kumbaya but i literally found like starting to feel a little a little funk as i'm driving down the hill listening to his voice shot and uh let's just call him mike and i sent a voice shot back i'm like hey mike man great great job on on crushing it with that coaching client getting a new coaching client and i'm glad to hear that you guys are going to find a way to have your business partner buy you out that's one more headache that you don't need and you have now this big lump of money that you can live off of as you build your coaching business and so sorry to hear about your toe but can i ask who died because it seems like you're just so low energy low tone if if it's from your toe then my gosh what happens if you break a knee what happens if you right i said just so you know how you show up in your tonality matters and then i ended up recommending a book to him the book's called choose your people sadly it's out of print but if anyone does a google search it talks about all the different tones that people show up with and what and how they're perceived based on their tonality right so if you're super enthusiastic and whatever uh hey you might come off there's a level of enthusiasm that if you surpass you might come off as a untrustworthy person making it right exactly sure exactly on the flip side if you're kind of like yeah and so i broke my toe and i got a coaching client and i found a way to get bought out of my business it's like oh i don't think i ever want to talk to this guy again he just seems like a loser right right there's everything in between and so i'm like dude you got to find a way this book's been out of print for like 20 years you got to find a way to buy it on ebay or find the cliff notes or maybe someone does a review on youtube but you got to choose your people is the book and he sent me a voice shot right back saying holy crap i listened to my voice shot that was horrible thank you for giving me those outside eyes but sometimes we need those outside eyes to tell us how we're using the tools that we have right in our body whether it's body language or it's actual voice and inflection sure yeah ray brought up a good point in the program yesterday with the question he asked about how do we help and serve other people and i talked about the experience that i saw him interact with one of the young men there and you know i think as leaders we need to use the tool the tool of our voices and our presence and the way we communicate effectively but we need to also change them based on what we see in other people right reading the room like does this person need me to be energetic enthusiastic or do they need me to be a little bit more firm than maybe normally i would or they do they need my empathy and compassion and understanding and caring at this point like i think we have to do a better job at figuring out what people need so that we can use our tool to be able to more effectively help them for what they're after amen there's just too many guys who are like oh you know zero fs and i don't i don't care about whatever if they don't like what i have to say then screw off i'm like how does that help anybody dude that's like showing up with a hammer and therefore everything's a nail right exactly yeah yeah that's just silly but i think that is a big problem is a lot of arrogance and ego and society today too and and a lot of hurt feelings right that if somebody disagrees with me then they take that personally they feel like they're under attack just because somebody sent him a voicemail and said hey you sound really tired and low energy today you know most people would probably be offended by that it doesn't sound like he was but no a lot of people would probably be offended by that you're right and again that's a byproduct of the culture that we've created because as men we've stopped asking for feedback we've stopped asking for a brutally honest course correction because you would only ask that of people that you trust and respect yeah and there used to be a time that there was a plenty of people you could trust and respect like these days it's hard to find someone you can trust and respect and then to even have the confidence or to be taught as a young man that hey son when you when you find someone that you trust and respect it's okay to ask for brutally honest feedback and just listen don't wait to talk just listen and don't defend yourself because someone just might be able to give you feedback with their outside eyes that you have not even seen and have not experienced my my first mentor jim franco did that to me of course he in a very harsh way he was 60 something years old this was about 20 years ago i was a personal trainer he was my personal training client and then i had i had enough i had enough gumption to ask him for a loan to start my first personal training studio and he goes well if i'm going to loan you money i'm going gonna be your business partner if i'm gonna be your business partner i'm gonna start teaching you how to live your life with structure etc i'm like shoot all right it's great even better yeah but being from the east coast and also being from a very different generation the feedback was direct and i found myself like the first year constantly like wait jim but the reason i did that right he's like and he would call me kids like kid just shut up and listen um and i would shut up but i wouldn't listen then i started defending him creating defense in my head sure i wasted that first year of i guess mentorship that relationship because i would then go away with the pout and i never showed him because he wasn't gonna buy it anyway but i would go away as a young man with a pout and that was probably my early 20 like mid 20s 24 25 26 and i i remember after about a year i realized like does this guy have any mal intention towards me he probably doesn't he's loaned me money and he's become my business partner and he's trying to make me better so that he can make more money and i can make more money and we can help more people what if i actually took his advice and didn't try and defend it but it took a whole year to get there man what what was the catalyst though for that change like were you not experiencing the results that you want like why did you come to that conclusion that maybe you're going about this differently i would i would like to say that i came to that conclusion because i evolved into a better person but he was like hey uh i think i want to leave our partnership and you can just pay me back over time i was like whoa whoa whoa why do you want to leave our partnership he's like it seems like every time i try and coach you mentor you give you feedback you're not you're not you're not there you're not taking it you're not taking it you're you're defending yourself and i was like oh okay and that i had a fear of losing him because i truly felt and uh and now i understand when a young entrepreneur was like man if i could just have you as a business partner if i could just have you as a coach a mentor you do feel like when you don't have a track record of success in a space in business let's say in my world having someone who's been there and done that multiple times over does give you the sense of confidence you're almost writing you're almost renting their confidence you're releasing their confidence then you certainly have access to their brain trust right especially if they're loaning you money or chose to be your mentor or business partner yet i was using his money but i wouldn't want to take his advice or when i would i would want to always defend myself first and he was just like dude i'm done like i saw something in my personal trainer and i wanted to help him but i realized you're not in this he taught me this term he goes you're not listening you're waiting to talk and there's a difference there it's like oh shoot and so the second year of course i'm like hey man if you give me a second chance just give me another chance i don't want to lose you as a business partner i'm pretty sure i'll just tank this business on my own and the fear of losing him as a business partner is what got me to turn that corner and realize he's got no mal intent all he wants to do is level me up and get me to where he is right probably 20 years faster maybe he didn't tell me those things and maybe have had he told me like look b i'm gonna give you feedback i love you and i have no bad intentions towards you i'm gonna give you feedback it's gonna hurt but if you just listen and don't wait to talk and accept the feedback and go go just think deeply on it and then apply to your life you will achieve success a decade possibly two decades before me holy crap right so he didn't say that right but imagine if i just had enough wherewithal to be like this guy so it took me a whole year and it took the threat of him leaving basically yeah i think too much debt yeah just bankruptcy it'll be fine no big deal that's why that's why it's there whatever could go wrong we've built in even with kovitt oh yeah you know you haven't saved up any money we'll send you checks it's okay we're gonna send you checks yeah yeah these things where we're trying to strip people away or strip consequences away from people's decisions is not going to serve us well in the long term we've built rip cords into everything into a marriage into all types of relationships where we could pull the rip cord and file the bankruptcy pull the rip cord and file the divorce and pull the rip cord and name the outcome where if the rip cord wasn't there and you have to like if someone says ryan's gonna be your only business partner or your only friend who's gonna have your back in life like you can't get another person you can't have an army of ten if we had our differences we would have to work it out yeah we would have to work it out and it goes back to what another lesson from good old jim franco he goes you know what the difference is um between the ham and the eggs on a plate of ham and eggs i'm like i know it's breakfast i don't know one's ham one's eggs right different animals well the the chicken was involved the pig was committed that's a good point it's a level of commitment yeah that's a good point and so these days people are involved in friendships they're involved in a marriage they're involved in business knowing that there there is no real deep sense of commitment because i can pull the rip cord and get that government check i can go to tinder or whatever the next goofy app is and swipe left or right or up and down and find the temp next mrs right and with the lack of commitment there we end up operating more like the chicken where we're involved in life and not fully committed and that's that can't lead to anything great can it well i don't so here's the deal on that i don't think there's anybody listening to this who would disagree with that that if you're if you're committed you're going to experience more results like we all know that so why don't people get committed why do they dabble or make things casual and cavalier about the way that they approach aspects of their lives one side of the coin for me in my head as i go they are seeing so many things we have access to so many things my wife and i had this crazy conversation like you know what we used to not really not not care what happens in other countries but for the most part you would turn on the news there was that one talking head that you know liked and trust who actually broadcasted news not his opinion and not the opinion of a conglomerate right right and so and it was usually the news kind of in your city maybe in your county and you're part of the world as as humans when we go back to caveman era did we really care what happened to the other side of the world to the caveman there like i really don't care because how's that gonna put food on your in your cage i still gotta start my fire today exactly i still gotta you know spear that saber tooth tiger and drag him into my cave so that the wife and i could cook it up for the family like the news i wanna know is did we run out of saber-toothed tigers is it raining and can i not start my fire like i just want to know locally right and i think i i'm not i'm not a doctor sean stevenson's not here we don't but i do believe our brain is only wired for i just need this much information and now we've got these goofy things where we see information from all over the world and opinions from all over the world and lifestyles and and of course careers and impact from all over the world i'm like well shoot this dude's got a podcast and in six years look at the impact he's made with his podcast so maybe i'm gonna start a podcast as well in addition to my franchise and you know look at that guy he's got a supplement company i'm going to start that as well well shoot look at that look i might have the capacity to do all those things but that's because i know how to find and build leaders and attract them into my world if you only knew what you cared about that and we didn't have access to this i i think you'd be like well what am i passionate about i'm passionate about making canoes and i would just be building canoes all day long not knowing that there's a dude on the other side of the country that is building airplanes right right right but compare yourself to him right the comparison thing and i feel like well he might be having more fun than me and he might be making more money than me and he might be having a greater impact but is he really because he's feeling the same thing about me as a canoe builder isn't that true that's a good point i don't think our brains are wired to process that mega global information yeah and then we have jealousy envy and greed kicks in the greek glands begin to percolate and before you know it i want to do what you're doing and you want to do what he's doing and no one's really doing what they should be doing yeah so what is so what is is the solution just to turn it off is it to in some ways yes i've actually i went from 1014 followers or that i was following i'm down to 217 and my goal is to get it to 100 100 people that i follow who are friends that i go but through my filter of that i trust and respect right trust and respect because there's someone in the industry good dude you know of him not going to put his name out there he really is a good dude good heart great entrepreneur but stir is the racial pot stir is the racial pot and i'm like dude we're already divided enough like stop it be cool like cut it out stir is the racial pot and so i'm like do i really need to be following him i don't i can still be friends with him see him at events hey i'm in your town want to go work out and break bread together but i realized he does not i'm not he's not he adds value 90 of the time but that 10 percent if i get worked up did he really yeah right so i just started like i need less information i've gone to even less information than i was getting my life keeps improving because i'm i'm convinced that we're not capable of processing all this stuff and then of course the algorithms are designed to feed you whatever thing that you log on to and starts driving you crazy of course yeah it is it is the like that that idea of the attention economy right and and i i would even think it's it's different than just their attention it's more of like an outrage economy because i don't want just your attention i want you to be i want you to be outraged i want you to be worked up because if you're worked up you'll make dumb decisions you'll you'll tune into this longer than you should my wife and i differ with some of our philosophies on conspiracy theories that might be happening in the political climate right now and she's like doesn't this even concern you i'm like yes of course it concerns me but i i'm not looking for entertainment i said i think that's what you might be looking you might be looking to be entertained and she's like yeah it's entertaining and i said and that's fine i don't i'm not gonna give my entertainment that way like i'm worried about something else and so we have these types of discussions but yeah i think the goal of the media and the news outlets and social media accounts and whoever it is you're referring to it's like let me get you worked up and outraged because then you're mine that's exactly it that's exactly it hey there's a sweet sweet little lady named marlene in stratford canada in case anyone's wondering where stratfor canada is toronto keep going north and then over a little bit a little farming town called stratford and who's from stratford uh that kid the singer um hey ed i know you've played this guy's music as a dj he's oh it's on the team like a white kid from well i don't know if the world knows that he's from canada like a lot of club music he's like a modern-day vanilla ice looking dude if you think of it throw the name out but very very famous okay very very famous kid and from stratford yes marlene valentine is the mother of craig valentine my business partner empire mastermind yeah and so i send her boxes of the truline wellness shots and she'll send me an email dear pedros i see what's going on there in united states i'm very concerned for you guys trump goes back into power marlene thank you so much i love you and i appreciate you right another box shows up dear pedros here's what i hear there's fires in chino hills are you marlene should not be worried about what's happening in america you're in canada in stratfor that little just right this poor little lady does not need to worry herself about that and i think don't our brains aren't designed for that so going back to what you said i realized as you were saying that i'm like oh my god maybe it's just a form of entertainment for her and that's okay if it is i suppose well but so then and i i don't i don't know this woman so i'm not making a spec speculation about her but i think a lot of people yeah for those people it is entertainment and entertainments sorry justin bieber justin justin bieber stratford stratford i would have never guessed and so when craig goes to visit him so imagine like i've actually visited marlene's home like i'm talking like 20 acres 30 acre hundred acre farms yeah i live in southern california see that's different yeah right she makes the best smoked pork chops different story but we go to their local little ymca because they don't even have a gym and he's craig's like you know when justin bieber comes out and visits his family like he works out here like i'm like that's just bananas that like justin bieber works on this yeah from this town works out in this little hokey gym but anyways let's continue the loop had to be closed justin bieber yeah the ocd kicked in uh what but what is the balance though between isolating or focusing on yourself and then you know politics is a great example i believe we should be informed sure but i don't think we should be inundated and consumed to the degree that we're not able to do our own things like how do you find the balance of yes this is information i need and want and would be relevant and this is nonsense i don't want anything to do with it would you agree as someone who does very meaningful work like you do deep work i try yeah i do deep work uh you're being very humble thank you if you have a purpose on this planet if you have a purpose and you're doing meaningful deep work the balance will form itself you will be informed about what's happening in your world but you will not be consumed by it and you know all caps multiple exclamation point comments on the medias social medias because you have deeper work to do this goes back to what i shared with the kids yesterday before you came at the squire program i said look you know so you saw nest the german shepherd there that aaron's german shepherd a german shepherd uh because uh cookie is part german shepherd my dog part mastiff and so when we got a dog trainer the dog trainer pulls me aside and said look you know the german shepherd in this dog that dog needs uh needs constant purpose it needs to be shepherding something so your kids are gonna be perfect for her to shepherd so make sure you connect them you know she bonds with your kids and she needs a morning routine she needs a routine every morning she needs to have this purpose i'm chasing the ball dad's throwing the ball she goes don't you dare mess that up right like she was just like the protector of all dogs on this planet i was like okay ma'am i won't and um i'm just curious what would happen if she like loses her sense of purpose she goes let me tell you what would happen this beautiful backyard that you have she'll start digging holes in it tear it up right and i go why she goes well german actually you have one don't you yes that's remember that picture um so you know this as as if they don't have a sense of purpose and little children that they're shepherding they begin to get anxious and depressed and in the absence of purpose or meaning they begin to dig holes to give themselves something to do yes we were talking about that about the beach remember when i say that about the beach your strategy show up with the shovel i love that because now you've got a sense of purpose because men that's funny yeah we're not going to want to just lay there but that's exactly it and so if someone is doing their deepest most meaningful work they're not going to start digging holes in their life one of those ways of digging holes is just going on there on social media and screen sucking and being part of this conspiracy theory and being part of the whatever and and that's the loss of balance i want to know about government i want to know about politics but not to the point where it's become my purpose right unless i'm going to be president or the mayor or whatever sure yeah that's a good point and it makes me it reminds me you know is it i guess i can look at events or social media posts or conversations through as a litmus test let me say it this way my purpose is a litmus test for what else is relevant to me so i might see a post or connect with somebody and say yes this is relevant for example coming out here from maine to california was relevant to my purpose and to what i want to accomplish and so that's the litmus test if i was invited to uh kentucky to whatever do something else then maybe it wasn't in alignment with what i'm after and so i would decline that opportunity but the same thing with social media as like we get inundated and entertained and how is this relevant to your life and what you want to accomplish if it is good do it if it isn't maybe you ought to find something that's a little bit more relevant for you yeah but i i am convinced that it's exactly that it becomes a filler for meaning and purpose until you hopefully until you find your purpose in meaning and those who don't then they're just going to keep going from it might be pornography it might be food might be alcohol might be drugs it might be just screen sucking and because as this delivers this false sense of productivity like i'm doing something good for my country for my community are you or are you really letting your family down because now at the dinner table you're spewing fear and conspiracy at the table and really your kid's like oh my god like i remember i remember in the true story class oh five of the project i don't know if you saw the axes that were hanging there i asked about them so yeah okay one of the white acts yeah i saw the white one yeah a class 05 we had a gentleman pass away and you know when that happens obviously there's legal issues that arise right and so my family my son's 15 years old like he knows this happened and we're in the hot tub together and he hears me and mom talking about it he goes hey dad are we going to be okay i'm going what way bud it was like financially are we going to be okay like are we gonna be able to live here are we gonna be able to keep our business like you know like you know my dude that's a really good question and that was another reminder to me that little ears are listening on his case he's a big dude now but big bigger ears are listening right and so when you're screen sucking and then you think you're doing something productive by complaining about guess what trump did and biden did and disadministrate is it really necessary for your kids to hear and not be able to process through what's happening yeah like to me i'm like of course man we got insurance we got all the stuff and whatever we're going to be fine he didn't know that he's just like am i going to lose my friends and am i going to we're not going to like where would we live and where would home be and how's this going to happen are you going to jail yeah you know it's like oh shoot those are all valid questions let's talk about it you know that's a good point and i think we as fathers have a responsibility to ensure that we're filtering that information and then painting it in the the correct context so that they can learn you know if you have a son or a daughter who's afraid of something they hear about your job is not to feed into it your job is to explain it to be rational and say here's the reality and here's what we face and here's what we've done to protect ourselves and we explain those things you know like we always hear these things of like you know you don't talk about politics and money and this and that like no you like with your children or or sex or drugs or yeah like you that's exactly what you should be talking about with your kids you know i remember having those the birds and the bees with my two oldest boys and we've talked about pornography and we've talked about drugs and we've talked about some really awkward and uncomfortable things that i would have loved not to have talked about with them but that's my job that's my responsibility yeah and that's where really i think the greatest thing a man can do with his son or daughter is to assume the responsibility of i've gotta be a role model and i've gotta forge information into this this this child like they're going to grow and i have a responsibility to do something we can't just let time go by and let them grow we actually have to pour into them you said it well yesterday when we were at the squire program when you were speaking you you even have to correct yourself you're like uh look i know plenty of men okay no i know plenty of adult males right because you're right they're just giant man children that's all they are they're not men they're giant man children because they are emotionally mentally some even physically still underdeveloped yet they're set out into the world and we have that responsibility to lead our boys into understanding and defining like what does a man do are you just going to be a savage protector guess what you're going to miss out on a very important part of life where you have to be gentle and soft with your with your kids and your spouse so yeah you could also be a savage servant you could also be a protector and a provider you could also be willing to be vulnerable and if the dads don't teach the sons it goes back to that quote you said that if the how is it if the children yeah boys if boys don't learn men won't know always don't learn men won't know and you know i was that actually we shared this in common i i learned way later in life all this stuff and i was like the hell of my kid's going to learn in his like late 20s and 30s and the first book that i got that changed my kind of paradigm on that was raising a modern day night great book every dad should go get that book i forget the author's name but when i read raising a modern day night i'm like holy smokes holy smokes first i gotta start doing all this stuff i gotta have an ethos secondly and my wife was pregnant with andrew at the time i was like all right i got nine months to like instill this in myself yeah live it be it so that i could be a role model to my son and um without that man it would have just been one of those things where hopefully i would have figured it out but if i didn't i would have just been that dad who let his son grow older right but not necessarily wiser yeah which is a shame i think that's a big problem in society is we have father so many millions and millions of fatherless homes and these boys are looking for they're they're looking they're looking to men they're looking for purpose and direction they find it they do find it but it's usually misguided yeah you know they find it the wrong places the wrong outlets they find it in sexual abuse or or drugs or substance abuse violence they find it but it's misguided it's unfortunate it takes men to be able to lead them correctly yeah and that temptation is so easily accessible too which goes back to when you say they find it we know that all these former tribes and cultures they had that ritual that initiation into manhood um joseph campbell talks about it that you know there's this tribe in new guinea where the older men would come and pull the 13 14 year old from the arms of the mom and take them away at night and they'd be wearing masks and those masks signified the gods and the gods really were a metaphor for authority and structure that society has because at the end of the day you are looking to you're dependent on your mom and dad for food and clothes and all that stuff and so though you know in some way they uh play the role of gods and the idea was that they would steal this kid in the at night from the mom and one of those men wearing the mask would start fighting with the kid and he would fight with the kid enough to then let the kid win and as the kid would win he would tear off his mask and he put it on the kid and by doing this he's saying that you now have a seat at the table you have a seat at the table you now already are godlike you now have a say in the structure and the authority of this and now let's start molding you into that and that's the piece that's been missing and if we don't have that right of passage we don't have that initiation they go looking for it elsewhere because boys we're always looking for this rite of passage that's why boys look up to squire program was literally based on knight's head squires because squires look up to the knights on how do i become a man how do i fight with the sword how do i tend a horse etc and so if we're looking for that and the father's fathers aren't delivering it and this is not a news to you you know this the fathers aren't delivering it they're going to look to gangs of course some look to the military which is great like go there at least there's some sense of structure and discipline but others end up in prison and prisons certainly will deliver that right of passage oh yeah you know uh we west watson's right you know what great example yeah yeah and there's structure there but we're looking for it and if we can't get it at home they're gonna find it in gangs and in some level of violence uh friends that are misguided that are going to turn them on to drugs alcohol pornography so you might as well be the one pouring into your son and also and i think this is a testament to what you're doing and and i think you talked about this years ago when we initially talked is letting them be around other men who who aren't necessarily their father yeah you know i i've seen i've seen my oldest son in particular because he is getting older and he wants to be more involved with the men now as he gets older and and i've seen other men father him and and you know 10 years ago i might have been threatened by that but now i'm like no he needs to be fathered by other men too there's other advice sometimes another man can say something or something in a way that i can't say it that might resonate more deeply with him so this community aspect of men is also very important and we know that we know that success leaves clues and so if again you have enriched your life by surrounding yourself with men that you trust and respect and you expose that and the reason you're not threatened anymore is because you're no longer a hypocrite you you are at that level sure yeah good point you are one of those men and you're no longer threatened because you're not just like oh okay i got this gucci watch but i'm not really successful and they're about to take it away if i miss a payment yeah it's like like i can buy 20 of these and so when when you're there the threat is gone and you're like you know what fellas um i bet you guys can say things and you guys will be able to show things in the light and maybe i can't right and one of the best examples of that is uh in fact we're talking about ray uh raycare as he says raycare former navy seal every voicemail that he sets me is this is ray cash care former navy seal um and when he comes to our house so me and my son play ping-pong we're like avid ping-pong players even saw the ping-pong table here uh we have one at home one here like ping-pong is our thing and he uh ray as it turns out is really good at ping pong now i'll definitely rub it in and i'll be very competitive with my son ray as you saw has a very different way of showing up very loud yes yes and so when he plays andrew and he's just like yelling at him and cussing at him and i'm like this is good it is good i need raised influence on my son because the world is full of very aggressive right people like that and so my son after you know now it's been a couple years that he knows ray and ray comes over every thanksgiving and you know five times a year during the project and now i see andrew delivering that back to him yes his wit has become more trailer park which is great in line with ricky's and i love that and and and it is a you know what it is man we are like rocks i see that like we're like rocks these little jagged rocks and and i jump in a rock in a bag and then i my son's born and then you know maybe i have a friend that i trust and you come in there and someone starts shaking up so now it's like all these men in here and we start shaking up the bag and as all these men interact together of like-mindedness we end up smoothing out each other's jagged edges don't we yeah and you know you might give me an insight on this part of life and ray gives me insight on that part of life and matt gives me insight on that part of life and because i trust and respect these people around me i'm a more rounded man yeah and that is what is missing and as we closed off the squire program yesterday we had all the boys link up arms facing out and all the dads and us instructors linked up arms facing in to them and i said boys this is what you're looking for in life like you're looking for boys like this who will face in and call you out and give you feedback now i said dads now turn around link up again with your back to the boys i said boys looks like we might have our back to you we turn our back on you we haven't we're here to protect you we're looking out for you in times that you can't look out for yourself because life has a way of doing that that puts us in a dark place and we're here to look out for you and be your strength when you can't be and again we turned back around linked up and we poured into these boys each dad kind of shared one thing they wish they had learned when they were 13 14 15 years old that would would have helped them in life but that's the thing man that was the equivalent of all these jagged rocks going into a bag and yeah and that's what a marriage is too by the way right oh definitely i realize how much my knuckles no longer drag as my wife and i have spent time in the bag and there's been plenty of times i'm like i want out of this bag of course because it's uncut it's painful yeah i want out of this bag she's making me talk about things and look at things and address things that i don't want to yeah but as that bag keeps shaking up and now a little kid and another kid and now there's a dog and a cat and another dog and man the rough edges to smooth out and that is really where wisdom comes from i love it man that's powerful well this is uh the third of many conversations to come i really appreciate what you're doing i really appreciate the opportunity to come out and be just a very small part of what you guys are doing for the men that are connected with you and the young men who are connected with you and you're just doing great work man so i'm proud and honored to call your friend i appreciate it likewise yeah thanks man thank you

Channel: Order of Man

Views: 14,197

Keywords: order of man, manly, masculinity

Id: GID4tIiK_3Y

Length: 67min 39sec (4059 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 26 2021