Modern Fatherhood, Co-Parenting & Blue Collar Dads | Men’s Mental Health, Marriage & Mentorship - 2 Be Better

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Look up.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
We've come all the things, beat it on the bottom.
All our want is you You're my favorite view, But
that's not.

Speaker 3 (00:22):
And we are back, ladies and gentlemen. We are doing
some new things that my wife is not here with
me today. I am doing an interview with somebody as
we are trying to branch away from just relationship content
and provide you content that is going to enhance your
life in one way or another. And I am here with.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
What's up, guys. My name is Wes. I'm the host
of the Modern Fatherhood podcast. I'm on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube,
and I started that show just to give originally just
dads a place to tell their stories and to give
out advice and try to help them through what they
go through. But it's quick brands to just parents in

(01:02):
general having a safe space and a place to learn
and talk about what they're going through. And I've followed
you guys for years now, so this is a great opportunity.
I really appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
Well, you're very active in our chat and I see
you in live streams all the time, and the name
of your podcast got me because the conversations, so the
conversation around. Fatherhood is a big deal. From any ways,
I included it in both of my books. I don't
think that there are enough good men out there present
in the home raising their children. We become babysitters, We
become people who go out to the bar, we have

(01:36):
video game, We disassociate, and we do not take place
in the home the way that we should. We don't
take up space. We're just there, right. I guess we
should say we're taking up space, but we're not present.
But so the name of your podcast is what initially
intrigued me. I thought it was a cool name. But
you just said that that it's not just about men anymore.
You have women coming in. Is that becoming a normal thing?

Speaker 1 (01:58):
A huge amount of the support and people that are
coming in to offer advice or these women who need
their husbands to change, or these these men are coming
in and the moms are giving them advice too, and
it's it's become where whenever, especially I'll do debates on

(02:20):
TikTok Live, and seventy percent of the people that come
in there are women that are actively debating. And that's
whether I was talking about why relationships aren't lasting as long.
Family Court marriage. Every every time I do a debate,
the women are the ones showing out, and a lot
of them are giving advice based on reasons why their

(02:42):
marriages failed or what worked for them and their husband
and the changes they made. And a large percentage of
the people coming through my podcast are actually women and
men are the ones finding value in it.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
Do you think that the so I know that women
show up more than men across these things. Anyways, because
even with my books, the things that I've written, a
lot of the comments for women going I wish my
husband would read this, How do I connect with them?
This gave me so much insight? Blah blah blah blah blah.
How much of that do you think is that most women,
most men are blue collar workers and they don't have
time to sit around and watch podcasts and do these things,

(03:19):
so women at home do And how does that do
you think that that looks in terms of your metrics?

Speaker 1 (03:25):
I'd say it's a very large percentage of my metrics.
So I work a rotating schedule, so I'll rotate between
days and nights, and for my TikTok lives, if I
do them late at night during the weekday, A huge
amount of men actually show up. But if I do
that vice versa first thing in the morning, it's seventy

(03:46):
three to seventy eight percent women, and most of them
are stayed on moms.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
Gotcha, Yeah, it makes sense.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
It absolutely makes sense my Spotify and YouTube metrics, even
though my YouTube metrics aren't very large yet, a majority
of those are the men late at night saying with
my Spotify, that's where a majority of the main get
them because as somebody who was a blue collar even
if I'm driving to work, coming home from work, that's
when I would listen to my podcast, and it shows

(04:11):
the same thing in the metrics.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
It does with us too. It absolutely does with us too.
And it's wild because our YouTube metrics showed that we
are like sixty five to seventy percent women, but our
Spotify shows more that we're fifty to fifty yep, because
you're able to throw in an AirPod and listen while
you're working versus watching an actual video. So off topic,
do you remember we had had a conversation at one

(04:33):
point during one of the live streams where you and
I had a disagreement. Do you remember what the disagreement was?
If not, we can just move right past that.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
I don't. I don't really remember what it was.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
I don't either, but I remember going, Okay, that would
be an interesting thing. Let's put a pin on that.
And it's been months, so I forgot. Yeah. Okay. So
with the way that our metrics work and knowing that
we have more Spotify listeners than YouTube listeners, and we
do know that men are listening to both of our podcasts.
I know. I know personally because I have men's groups
and I do mentorship that we have a lot of

(05:04):
things that are working in favor for men to become
more mentors and in the home and be present. One
of the big things that we're seeing is co parenting
issues where you have a man and we have no
idea whether or not a man is actually doing the
things that he should be doing as a father. We
just know the story of she's a crazy ex wife,
she's trying to keep me for my kids, YadA, YadA, YadA.

(05:26):
With what you're doing, how prevalent is co parenting and
what is that looking like in terms of your discussions.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
I stress co parenting so often because more often than not,
I'm talking to the single fathers and a majority of
the people that I've interviewed on my podcast are all
single fathers fighting through the family court system. And I
stress co parenting because anytime the relationship fails or that

(05:54):
marriage is over, whatever the case, when there's kids involved,
the mom and dad are now secondary. In my opinion,
those kids should come first. There are healing, you know,
there's healing, and there's priorities, and there's other things that
need to be done individually between both parents, but the
kids should come first. And when it comes to co parenting,

(06:16):
I feel like when you have conflict or you're not
able to just sit there and even have a conversation
or it's it's all hostility at that point because you know,
there's there's resentment, there's anger, there's you know, hurt feelings. Absolutely,
the kids get lost in the mix, and the kids
are the ones that should come first. There should still

(06:38):
be stability had. So I'm trying to help people understand
that more and so far it's a very difficult conversation.

Speaker 3 (06:48):
Of course, it is, dude, what people, This is why
I stress prenuptial agreements while you're in love. This is
why you're divorce or your potential split situation should be
had when you still care about someone and there's no
ugly in the mix things. I have two things that
I want to touch on. The first one is going
to be a statistic and the other one is putting
the kids first, just in case I forget the statistics

(07:08):
of a divorced man being with his children. We are.
Men tend to be very prevalent in the first year.
After that first year it drops to like, only you know,
twenty five percent of men are still in their child's life.
After year two, that number goes down to single digits.
And it always comes down to a fucked up co
parenting situation. If you have two parents that can be

(07:31):
civil towards each other, you don't have to be friends,
you don't have to be lovers. You don't even have
to be you don't have to like each other. You
just need to be very civil and understanding when life happens.
If you can maintain that you will have a father
that is present with that child, those numbers go away
the fuck up dude. Like year one goes up to like,
you know, fifty percent of men are still there or

(07:51):
forty percent of men are still there, and like it
continues to get better and better and better as life
goes on. Because the father is building a relationship with
a child, they are able to see the type of
living situation the child is in, whether the mother has
brought a new man, in whether the new man is
acting as a bonus parent and is good with the kids.
And we can get into that as a whole different
discussion as well. But knowing that the civility between co

(08:15):
parenting will dictate the relationship that a father has with
his child so greatly that you can watch the statistics
is fucking huge. And then the other thing was you
said that you put the kid first. I am a
very big proponent of when you are married, your marriage
comes before your children, and that the priory, the priority

(08:36):
needs to be on the marriage, then the individual couple,
and then the children. So like you prioritize your marriage,
then you make sure your wife is good or she
makes sure the husband is good. And if those two
things are taking care of the way they're supposed to be,
the kids are taken care of. Now, this doesn't mean that,
like if the house is on fire, that you save
your wife and not your baby. People want to get

(08:56):
really caught up in that, and you could even argue that, like,
you can always have more kids, as fucked up as
that is, you can't replace your wife. And that's that's
the whole last thing that I like just use to
trigger people.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
But yeah, I say that's pretty funny.

Speaker 3 (09:09):
That's one of those things though, that like do you
so prioritizing the kids beyond that means that you have
to put your your butt hurt secondary to your child's needs.
And that's where a lot of people, both men and women,
fail to serve their children. So, like, do you do
you believe that in a marriage the children comes second
to the marriage.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
I think if you're taking care of your partner, it
trickles down to the kids. If you're not so, especially
in the blue collar world working twelve fourteen hour shifts
and in the case of a state at home mom,
when you pour into each other in those situations, the
kids are going to see it. If you're able to

(09:52):
do what you have to do as a man, because
you have a supported partner, those kids are going to
thrive more. If you're able to pour into your partner
who to stay at home mom, and you're able to
support her and give her the things she needs, it'll
pour into those children too. The disconnect a lot of
times when it comes to that is if you are
just prioritizing the kids in your marriage, you're going to

(10:16):
start putting your partner second. Yeah, that's how the distance happens,
That's how the miscommunications happen, and that's how the separation
and the roommate phase starts to have.

Speaker 3 (10:26):
Right, Well, it'll also lead to divorce. You know, you're
going to get to a point where you're staying together
for the next you know, fifteen, sixteen, you know, twelve years,
however long you got to get to eighteen so that
you're not getting divorced while the child is in the house.
But the child sees the disconnect between the parents. They
see the frustration, they see the inability to work together.
They see a poor modeled relationship. So they believe that

(10:46):
that's the way it's supposed to be. And when you
look at like a young man's situation, a kid whose
father works a blue collar job ten twelve, fourteen hour
days sometimes and only has the weekend, and the only
thing they want to do on the weekend is Drake
Baron watch football. The kid doesn't know the dad. Dad
doesn't know the kid. Mom is overworked, overstressed, there's not
a real relationship happening. And this is the whole being

(11:09):
there but not present at those kind of days. You're
coming home and your kids are going to bed right,
and people don't want to admit that that you're not
like a part of your kid's life at that point.
You are a single mother when a blue collar worker
is working those kind of hours. That doesn't mean that
you are financially on your own. It doesn't mean that
your relationship has to be to the point where you
are a single mother, but you are running the household

(11:31):
and raising your children and doing those things, especially as
a stay at home like. There's a lot that goes
into that that gets overlooked, and that's where the argument
comes of, well, I work fourteen hour days and all
you do is stay home with the kid. Like that's
a whole ass conversation in itself, and things fall apart
really quick if the relationship is not prioritizing that aspect.
When you have women who are understanding of the sacrifice

(11:54):
that's being made and actually sees that the man is
not present with his child, like he's missing out on
the formative years and like kids need that, and the
man sees the sacrifice that the woman is making by
not working a normal job, not having a social circle,
not being able to just go and do the things
that she wants to do, just like he can't go
and do the things that he wants to do. You
have a stronger understanding of what the foundation looks like

(12:17):
that you're building to get the kids to where they
need to be, and that leads into like you said,
that trickle down. Like this is really basic understanding for things.
But as people start to get resentful because they're always
working or they're always taking care of the kids, this
disconnect happens. So when you have conversations like this, what
is some of the advice that you give for people?

Speaker 1 (12:37):
Oh so, especially with blue collars, So I tend to
be able to talk to the ones that are working
the crazy schedules, the twelve fourteen hour days, because I've
been on swing shifts since my oldest son was born
and he's eight, okay, And I always talked about being
forgiving of each other because when it comes to always

(13:00):
being gone or always being home, resentment can build up
whether you want it to or not. That's despite the
communications that you might be able to have and that
you know the small things you're able to do for
each other. So you have to be able to forgive
each other. But you also have to understand what the
other person is going through and not just write it
off to her. When you get home from work and

(13:22):
you need to shower and you're taking your decompression time,
that could be the time that she needs you down
there helping the most. Even if that's your default decompression time.
After you get off of work, that could be her
hail Mary time that that could be the make or
break for her that day. Or you can be coming
home from work and you could be dog tired and

(13:45):
you have nothing left to give and when you walk
in that door and she's instantly coming at you. When
y'all are fighting about something, there has to be understanding
in each person's situation, and too often, like you were saying,
it's easy for them to start nitpicking at each other.
And because you hear all the time, well, like you said,

(14:07):
she just stays home with the kids, I'm at work
all day. How many of those dads do you think
it actually do her job staying at home versus their
blue collar job.

Speaker 3 (14:16):
So physically, I believe that it's easier to stay at
home than it is to work at blue collar job physically. Right,
it's a very different conversation than this. Most blue collar
men don't have the mental capacity to deal with that.
We don't deal well with screaming and crying. You know,
if we fix something and it gets broken again right away,
it's frustrating, right, Like, that's our job is to fix

(14:38):
and build and do so Like for me, I've done
the blue collar thing. I think that mentally, I don't
think that I could handle it. I couldn't handle it
on a physical level. I could keep the house cleaning,
no problem, doing like the daily choor shit is easy.
Dealing with the children is a lot fucking harder for me.
But that's also because I don't have the same rapport
with my kids that she does, because I work the

(15:01):
way that I do. So this comes down to being
honest with yourself, right, And like you just said a
minute ago that when you come in the door and
she needs that hail Mary or your dog tired. This
comes down to basic understanding that if you don't communicate
your needs throughout the day, you can't serve each other.
If you had a day where you've been in the

(15:21):
sun for fourteen hours and you're dehydrated and all you
want to do is sit down, You have that conversation
with your wife on the way home, like, Hey, what
was your what did your day look like? Like I'm
at five percent battery. I need to shower and eat
and drink and relax for fifteen minutes. And if she's like,
the kids have been a fucking nightmare. I can't deal
with it. I need a break as well, then you
need to find a way to let the kids just

(15:41):
be kids. You get to sit down, she gets to
take a shower, and just make sure nobody doesn't die
in the house, doesn't get set on fire, right like,
we don't have to. Kids will normally find a way
to do what they want to do, Like you don't
have to give them undivided attention twenty four to seven.
Let them be children. Let them fucking run rampant. Let
the chaos, you know, rain while you're there having a

(16:02):
drink of water, sitting on the couch. Let her take
that downtime. There needs to be an understanding of how
to make that work. I am a big person, a
believer in the decompression. Excuse me, I'm a big believer
in the decompression time from work life to home life.

(16:22):
Blue collar workers talk to their buddies a whole lot
differently than they'll talk to their women and their kids,
and that's a good thing. Like we need to separate that.
You can't call your kid a cocksacker because they're screaming.
You can call your coworker that shit because they didn't
bring you the right wrench or whatever. You know, it's
very different dynamic, and we need that transition time from
work life to home life, just like stay at home
mom needs that transition time from being a mother to

(16:43):
being a wife. It's not the same dynamic. Then you
look at the way that women are touched out all
the time. If your wife is getting a break from
the children when you get home and she's able to
decompress and do some self care and you're able to
take a shower and relax, and you guys can have
intimate quality TV time afterwards, you're more likely to get
some play afterwards because you gave her that break. We

(17:04):
don't understand the psychological workload between the two people. I
can have an argument with my boss and tell them
to go fuck himself, right, Like in a blue collar field,
they're just gonna tell you to fuck you and then
you guys are gonna go back to your job because
shit's got to get done. You can't do that to
your wife, and your wife can't do that to the kids.
So like there is a very different thing now on

(17:25):
the other side of that, Like if your kids are
freaking out and your wife needs to nurture them, you
don't have that same capacity because we're not nurtures, we're fixers.
There's a lot that goes into this shit, dude, And
like that that all basically comes down to, like you said,
having a basic understanding of what the other person's going through,
and it's grace. And if you have that long workday
and you're feeling stressed out in your exhausted and you

(17:46):
come home and your wife starts nippicking at you, like
you said, it's very different than if she comes home
and goes, hey, I can tell you're tired, let me
take your boots off, and then you have discussions about
how bad the day was from each other. Like that's
going to give you a very different outcome throughout the night.
I appreciate you taking care of the kids. The house
is a wreck, You're a wreck, but I can tell
you did your fucking best to day and I love
you because of it. Those conversations look so much different

(18:07):
than I need to fucking break. These kids are too much.
The way that you guys interact, and this is a
choice is going to dictate the intimacy in your relationship
and it's going to change the entire dynamic of your household.
This is a fun conversation. I don't get to talk
to people like this normally. It's always peaches and we
agree on everything so much that like our our viewpoints
are very much the same, so like we say the

(18:28):
same things throughout the conversation. So this is fun for me.

Speaker 1 (18:32):
I like it a uh shoot, I was part of
I was part of your men's group uh twice and
then I had added the premium I'll call it the
premiums group.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:47):
I was part of it twice or probably three times
before I had to dial back finances and figure stuff out.
And the conversations we had in there were I mean,
I would I would personally say life changing for me.
Definitely definitely pushed me to be a better man and
a better father and at the time a better spouse.

(19:07):
And I think a lot of it comes down to
having those men that will hold each other accountable. And
that also includes fathers. Most of the time you see
fathers having conversations and it's never you very rarely hear
another dad tell another dad when he's sucking up, and

(19:29):
that conversation needs to start happening a lot more often. Uh.
I had one day I had to scrap an entire
episode because he got on my show and he immediately
started spewing like the the alpha talk dude and about
how his kids are. You know, he is the king

(19:52):
of his house, and you know the kids are going
to listen to him and his wife listens to him.
And I was just like, this sounds terrible. He's like,
what do you mean. I was just like, is anybody
happy in your house? He's like, well, I think so.
I was like, that's not what I asked. I was like,
I asked, are they happy? If you think so, then

(20:13):
you don't know hip exactly. I was like this. I
was just like, I don't think I can continue this episode.
I was just like, our views aren't going to align
and you're already, you know, coming very aggressive. I was
just like, I don't care to have this out there,
and I stopped. And then we messaged back and forth

(20:33):
a couple more times and we talked a little bit.
Eventually I just quit talking to him, but I asked him.
I was just like, how do you communicate with your
family if you come in there and you say your
word is law and you're the king of the household.
Do they feel safe coming to you and talking to
you about the issues they're having? Is it a safe

(20:56):
environment or is it your environment?

Speaker 3 (20:58):
Right?

Speaker 1 (20:59):
And and he didn't reply to me for probably about
a week, and then he was just like, I talked
to my spouse and I realized that maybe I'm being
too aggressive. And I was like, yeah, dude, yeah. I
was like, you gotta it's okay to be the man
of the house, but it's not okay is to be
the dictator of the house. Yeah, And your your family

(21:23):
especially needs to be able to come and communicate with
you and talk to you. And it led to me
realizing how often that dads aren't calling each other out
and they're not holding each other accountable. Just like in
that men's group, it was all about accountability the entire time.
It needs to be the same thing for fathers and dads.

(21:46):
They to it to a certain point. Everyone has to
start holding each other accountable and if they do that,
it'll definitely help some of those statistics that we were
talking about.

Speaker 3 (21:55):
Well, so that speaks to mentorship, that also speaks to
accountability and leadership. So thank you for saying the kind
things of you about my men's group that men. I
really compare myself to my wife a lot when it
comes to what she does for her women. And I
have to remind myself at least twice a week, maybe
three times a week, that women need a very different
structure than men do. And like for us, it's very

(22:19):
much a here's what you need to do, here's how
you do it, Go get them tiger. Like for her
it's there's I understand that you're feeling that way. Have
you thought about this? And you know? I love that
you are able to share that, and like she's so through.
My wife is such a fucking gangster and I love
her so much and I'm envious of that with her,
But I know that my men don't need it. And

(22:39):
I think that the way that we structure things works,
and when the men have something going on, we're able
to be their form Emergency calls happen. But I think
that my formula works. But seeing what she does versus
the way that I do it always makes me question myself.
So I really appreciate that the did you delete that
Alpha Male episode? Do you have that content still?

Speaker 1 (23:02):
I have it? Yeah, I would have to go on riverside.

Speaker 3 (23:05):
And find it. I would download that and I would
play it back and I would react to your own
episode that it would be, and it would create a
whole lot of conversation. When you were in our men's group,
did you were you in there when we read it
was either the Dichotomy of Leadership or Extreme Ownership by
Jocko Willink? Have you read that?

Speaker 1 (23:25):
This was probably four years ago.

Speaker 3 (23:31):
Okay, so it was in the beginning though.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
Yeah, oh yeah, it was at the beginning it. I
think it was like your second or third men's group
that you decided to run.

Speaker 3 (23:38):
Yeah, So I would recommend that you read both of
those books. But one of those books talks about leadership
going up and downstream. If you have people that are
and this is from military perspective, but if you have
boots on the ground, and they don't properly give information
to you know, the higher ups, the officers and the
brass that are in charge of running things. They can't

(23:59):
effect it lead. And your household is no different. If
your kids aren't able to talk to you, your wife
is unable to talk to you, she feels unheard, not safe.
You're always defensive. You never really take them into consideration.
You are not effectively leading shit that becomes tyranny. You're
a dictator. You are pushing people out to make them

(24:20):
do the things that you want to do, which could
potentially get them killed. Your children could end up you know,
your daughters could end up pregnant as teenagers. Your wife
is going to find a man who's more emotionally vulnerable
or engaging, and you are wondering why you're ruling with
an iron fist, and everything's supposed to go the way
that you believe it should go while your world is
falling apart. I talk about on the podcast all the

(24:42):
time that you cannot my responsibility. I have the curse
of being the final decision maker in my home. If
Peaches and I have a disagreement on something, I can
override her and say this is what we're going to do,
and she will submit to that and allow it to happen.
And I've only played that card once, and it was
during a hurricane. It's not something that I take lightly

(25:03):
because in the event that I override her and everything
falls apart, there's no blame to anyone other than me.
That shit falls solely on my shoulders. The way that
we make decisions is I go, this is what I
want to do, this is what I'm thinking, Here's how
I think it will impact our life, our finances, our kids,
our home, whatever, whatever, whatever. And she gives me all
of the things that concern her. I will make mental

(25:25):
notes or sometimes even write it down, and then I
go to go about my life and those are things
that I'm working through over the next couple of days
or weeks or months, taking in consideration everything that she
had before I make a decision, because every decision that
I make or things that I throw back at her
will have impact everything, and all of the winds gets
trickled down to everyone else, and all the losses stop

(25:45):
with me because I am the decision maker. Most men
who have that I am the king of the household
don't have that problem because the only time kings ever
feel the weight of their decision is if they go
to war or they lose their kingdom. I don't want
to lose my kingdom. My home is my sanctuary, this
is my castle. I want this motherfucker to operate and
be good. I want it to be peaceful when I

(26:06):
come home. I want my wife to be proud of me.
And I can't do that if I can't lead effectively.
And that's the difference. I think that that episode, if you,
if you approach that the right way, would do really,
really well. It might hurt Dude's feelings a little bit
to be called on as bullshit, but like you said,
men need that like that. That could be something that
creates just a little bit of conflict, but it could
do very well for you on your your your content.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
Yeah, I like I like the way you said that
the king doesn't realize, you know, everything is falling apart
until he's he's lost it. That. I think a lot
more men need to hear that right now, especially.

Speaker 3 (26:46):
Sheet.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
I thank you, and I probably need to hear that
a little bit, not because I'm like the dictator of
the house, but a lot of you know a lot
of the reasons why I got your book, and I'm working,
you know, I'm reading, and I'm working through all the
things because whenever I read books like this, I do
kind of like a quick read through, and then as
I go through, especially chapter three, I start doing the

(27:09):
breakdowns and I start doing the work. And while I
didn't rule my house with an iron fist, Nope, that's
not who I am. We had a great parenting relationship,
and we still have a very good co parenting relationship.
But I could easily say that a lot of the
issues were I was too money focused, which isn't always

(27:33):
a bad thing, but at a certain point, while you're
fighting so hard to provide so much, you're going to
neglect other things. And while I was focused on just
the aspect of providing, everything else was falling apart and
I didn't realize it. And that's something that I needed
to hear. But I think it's something a lot of
other men need to hear too, that are currently in

(27:55):
the thick of it and may not realize that they're
fucking up or their neglect other things. I think a
lot of men.

Speaker 3 (28:01):
Need to hear that. So what does provision look like
to you now that you're beyond that and your you're
co parenting in life looks differently now than it did
when you're focusing on money, What does provision mean to you?

Speaker 1 (28:12):
More often than not now, it's time with the kids providing.
So I still provide the finances that that's a that's
a given, that's a must, but it's being more intentional
with my time. It's uh, you know, going to boy
Scouts with my oldest, It's taking the time to play
with number blocks with my four year old, spending the

(28:34):
time with my two year old because she's little and
she just loves everything. Right now, providing as a father
is a lot more than just.

Speaker 3 (28:43):
Finances, absolutely, which is why I asked that question.

Speaker 1 (28:46):
I'm yeah, I'm learning it more and more as I
get into it, and I you know, I say it
on my show all the time. I'm not a perfect dad.
I'm just a dad that's going to ask you questions
and I'm still learning my self. And providing finances is
such a small part of being an actual, active and

(29:08):
providing father.

Speaker 3 (29:10):
It works the same way as a husband. To provision
and finances is a very small percentage of all of
this and That's what men get so fixated on because
our our fathers weren't there. They were working the twelve
fourteen hour jobs, and we that's what a man looks like.
That's what my dad or my stepdad did, or what
I saw other men doing for their families. And it
doesn't matter that they missed out on major holidays and

(29:33):
didn't come to graduations and all of these things. And
those men feel like I did the best I could.
You always had food, you always had clothes. Yeah, but
I didn't have somebody to talk to when I was
getting ready to lose my virginity and I needed a
conversation with my dad, right, That's why I asked about
that vision, right, Yeah, yeah, that's a big deal.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
How many how many young men especially well maybe not
so much this newer generation, but I know a lot
of the people I know that's how it was with
their dads I had. I had a great dad. I
will definitely say that he works swing shift the same
as I do. Actually we work at the same plant. Yeah,

(30:15):
but when he could go to day shift, so he
could go to have a regular schedule and which is
just Monday through Thursday, and get off of this crazy
night shift. The moment he could, he did, and he
managed to provide for us for all the years to come.
And he was a very active dad and he definitely
tried his best. Especially I come from a very broken, messy,

(30:38):
divorce family, and my dad always always was able to
provide and maintain.

Speaker 3 (30:47):
But he showed up.

Speaker 1 (30:48):
I think I definitely had that to look up to,
because even to this day, seventeen years later, you still
can't get my dad to say a bad thing about
my mom. It's awesome because he never would let his
personal image affect our image of our mom, and he
would he would. He was very much a man of peace,

(31:10):
and I definitely learned a lot from my dad, especially
when it comes to providing. So with that, because he's
not a man of many words, he very much he
provided the life skills, the love, the unconditional you know, caring,
showing emotions, all of that, which is pretty rare for
you know someone, even me, I'm almost thirty.

Speaker 3 (31:33):
Well, you most of us didn't have that, right you
said that he showed up though, like he actually was
there time wise, it wasn't just about provision, being that
your dad actually modeled that for you and you had
that role model. How did you get caught up in
the chasing the money things so much.

Speaker 1 (31:48):
One of my first jobs was working on farms and
being a farm hand, and it was a barn maintenance
and clean out, and that was with a brother in law,
and that was my first taste of blue collar work.
I was thirteen, and once I got used to that
hard work, it never really stopped. And then chasing the

(32:13):
money started from a very young age and it never stopped.
And then, especially once when you're in one of these
plant jobs and you get a taste of the overtime checks,
you don't want to go back to the regular paychecks
because you get used to seeing that number and you

(32:34):
get used to being able to do all those things.
And I was pushing myself because I was always trying
to get to the next goal. I wanted to build
a better life for my family. And I got tunnel
vision on my end goal and lost sight of.

Speaker 3 (32:50):
My near goals.

Speaker 1 (32:52):
And it happened. I mean this is over the course
of years, but it never it never stopped. Even now
with with me, you know, taking a step back and
focusing one of the other things. It's it's easy to
get tunnel vision but especially when you're raised around the
blue collar lifestyle and you start chasing the money. Most

(33:15):
of time it doesn't stop. You're always chasing the money.

Speaker 3 (33:18):
So let me ask you this, what did you do
with those overtime checks and that money? Were you reinvesting it?

Speaker 1 (33:23):
Like?

Speaker 3 (33:23):
What did you were you taking vacations? What did that
extra income actually do for your family? Uh?

Speaker 1 (33:32):
It got us into a bigger house.

Speaker 3 (33:34):
So is that a necessity or is that something you wanted?
So what was that a necessity or was that just
something you wanted?

Speaker 1 (33:44):
It's something that I thought would make my spouse happy
and did it.

Speaker 3 (33:49):
Now, Okay, I'm not grilling you. Were like trying to say, like,
look at this, but this is the.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
Reality of It's very important.

Speaker 3 (33:57):
This is the world we live in. We want bigger
houses for smaller families. We want bigger incomes to drive
nicer cars and to have nicer clothes, but we're not
doing the things that truly matter in those moments. If
you were working over time six months out of the year,
and the other six months you were taking vacations every
weekend where you were going on educational field trips with

(34:17):
your kids, or you were going to the beach with
your woman, you were having date nights. You were using
that money to create roth I raise, or to create
generational wealth or invest All of that looks very different
than working overtime year after year to have the bigger house,
to have the newer car, to put rims on your shit,
to like live outside of your means. Most people live

(34:37):
from a state of debt mostly. You know, did you
know that most Americans don't have a thousand dollars in savings? Yeah,
isn't that fucking insane?

Speaker 1 (34:45):
I heard it from you, but yeah.

Speaker 3 (34:48):
Absolutely crazy to me that people have that mentality of like,
it's just not sustainable. At some point, this is not
going to be sustainable anymore. The debt collectors are going
to call the debt do. Your credit score is gonna
get fucked up. You may lose a job, you might
have an emergency, you could fuck your backup, a kid
could break its arm, Like you have all of these
things that could go on in this check to check

(35:10):
thing that you're doing and living outside of your means
is going to fucking collapse. And at that point you're
not going to have anything, including a relationship with your
wife and kids because of the way that you're living
your life. So that's why I asked if buying the
bigger house mattered, if it was a necessity if you
had three kids in one bedroom for your children, that's
a very different concept than having one kid and wanting
a bigger yard, Like there's there's a reason for all

(35:34):
of that, which is why.

Speaker 1 (35:34):
I asked, Oh, no, it definitely, it makes sense why
you asked. I understand too. It started with the starter house,
or i'd call it a starter house, and I understand that,
especially in today's age, the young people, a lot of
them are going to struggle to buy a house. I
was blessed enough to.

Speaker 3 (35:52):
Be able to do it twice nice.

Speaker 1 (35:54):
So I bought. I bought our starter house and it
was just it was a three bedroom, wanted a half bath,
or I guess it was a two bath, and it
just had a nice backyard. And it might have been
on the main stretch to our town, but it had
a nice backyard for the kids to plan. And we
had two boys. I had a boy from a previous relationship,

(36:16):
and then she stepped in and became I would say
the mom too. He doesn't really know very much about
his biological mom. Thankfully, but I won full custody for him,
and then we had our second boy, and it was
when we found out we were having another girl that
it was she wanted a bigger house, and as I

(36:38):
did back then, I said, Okay, I'll make it happen
because I knew it would make her happier. And you know,
I did see the benefits of us having a bigger
house once we had three kids. I understood it. I
just didn't want to do it, but if it would
make her happy, and she was a stay at home mom,
I was going to make it happen. And I did,
And now I have a second house and it's been

(37:03):
a absolute disaster for that second house because of foundation
issues and things like that, which I only mentioned that
because it goes to show that it's when you're living
paycheck to paycheck, it's one disaster away from everything crumbling. Yep,
that house is my crumble.

Speaker 3 (37:21):
For sure.

Speaker 1 (37:22):
I tell people all the changes of money and not
managing my money properly. It's it's what all came down
to be realizing, Okay, it's time to take a step
back and reevaluate what I'm doing.

Speaker 3 (37:33):
Yeah, I tell people all the time that broke. Things
happen to broke people. And when you have a cushion,
those those emergencies aren't a crisis. They're just something you
have to get through. And when you are living, check
to check, those emergencies are fucking emergencies. It's a crisis mode.
I'm curious because you said that she wanted the house
and you wanted to make her happy. What did that

(37:53):
do to you long term psychologically, marriage wise, et cetera.

Speaker 1 (38:00):
Well, me and her aren't together anymore. We are we
were working on our co parenting and she's working on
getting back into the workforce and things like that. But
we're we're very much a for the kids co parenting
relationship and we don't we don't let any of the
other noise bother us when it comes to that. But
psychologically it I was very depressed. I had I had

(38:25):
a lot of different mental issues and I was going
through a lot of different things. I gained weight, I worked,
you know, I worked myself crazy hours. I would stay
up you know, one or two full days, you know,
forty eight plus hours just to spend time with the
kids while I'm working these crazy shifts. And it wore

(38:46):
me down to the point where eventually I just got
burnt out. I got burned out to the point where
I gave myself.

Speaker 3 (38:52):
Double them pneumonia. Wow.

Speaker 1 (38:54):
And and the doctor was just like you, I can't
find a reason for you to have this besides maybe
you work and yourself sick. And that that's exactly what happened,
and they cut I was I was pushing myself that
hard until they cut overtime at work. And it's when
they cut overtime at work that I really truly realized

(39:16):
how much time I was losing with my family, because
like right now, I'm on a seven day break. I
get I'm blessed enough to have seven days off in
a row once a month because of my work hours.
And this this seven days off, especially in the in
the break times and you know, the school break time,
the summer vacation, There's so much we can do. There's

(39:37):
so much value at this time. And it's it's something
I didn't realize I had before because I was so
busy chasing that dollar and hoping these seven days would
be filled with six days of overtime. Yeah, I missed out.

Speaker 3 (39:51):
On a lot.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
Yeah, And looking back on it, it's it's hard.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
Yeah, I missed out on a lot building. I used
to call it my empire. And where I am now
compared to where I was then, that's such a stupid
fucking thing to say. I've owned almost twenty businesses in
my life. I've made a lot of money, I've done
a lot of really dope shit, but I've also missed
out on a lot of critical moments. And Peach's kids
are not mine. I'm a bonus dad and I'm getting

(40:17):
to have a second chance at raising children, and I'm
not making the same mistakes that I made the first time.
But I'm also I hate the term privileged, but I
am privileged in the choices that I've made to be
able to do these things. The reason I asked about
the way that that affected you is because a lot
of men get caught up in this happy wife, happy

(40:39):
life bullshit, and we want to make sure that our
women are happy and taking care of because as long
as they're happy, everything else is good. Well, the reality
is is if we are giving more than we can give,
and we are stretching ourselves so thin that we become
a shell of a person we once were, and we
are depressed and overweight and physically making ourselves sick the
way that you said that you did. Your wife isn't

(40:59):
getting a version of you. They're getting the benefits of
your sacrifice, but they're losing their partner in the process.
And I was guilty of that. And you know, I
had become a shell of a man because I just
wanted somebody else to be happy for so fucking long
that I no longer believe that I deserved anything. And
when I met my wife and we started building this,

(41:22):
this the foundation of what our relationship looked like. I
had very clear expectations of what I would and would
not expect accept, excuse me accept from a relationship moving
forward because of my single time and like the knowing
who I am and what I value and what I'm
capable of doing, And like I learned to love myself

(41:43):
while I was single, and I never wanted to go
back to that depressive man who wanted to kill himself
multiple times a week, to the point where like I
had a gun in my lap, sitting in my car,
ready to end my life. I want to be able
to come home to a woman who values me and
loves me and wants me to be here and sees
my mental health struggles and wants to to listen to

(42:04):
all of the things that I've got going on and
not throw the shade in my face. And like, there's
a disconnect that happens when we focus solely on their
happiness and not on the quality of the marriage. And
that's why I think podcasts like these matters so much,
because we get we don't have a mentorship, we don't
have a whole lot of men that are going hay Son,
I think you're really fucking up right now. Like what
you're doing is running yourself ragged. How is your family.

(42:26):
I don't want to hear about your work life. I
want to hear how the kids are doing. And if
you can't tell me how your kids are doing, that's
a much bigger problem than you missed a fucking paycheck
this week. Yeah. Yeah, there's a whole lot that goes
into our mental health that gets overlooked because we happy wife,
happy life. It's fucked up.

Speaker 1 (42:43):
It is fucked up the happy the happy wife, happy life.
I call it a plague. Yeah, I was talking. I
was talking to a dad the other day and he
was working while we were talking, and he told me
I was I was just not alive on TikTok. It was.

Speaker 3 (42:59):
It was.

Speaker 1 (42:59):
It was one of my debate lives. I don't know
if it was a serious one because I've done I've
done a handful of them to test the waters on
how it was going to go. But he came up
in a box and he was talking about what we were
talking about, and he said that that day, just being
able to come on there and have a conversation with
other dads and other people, even if it was just

(43:22):
about a situation that wasn't his, and being able to
feel hurt and connected was what took him off the
edge that day.

Speaker 3 (43:31):
It's crazy, isn't it. Think that's all we need, Like
we don't have this. This is why I did the
men's groups and granted, like if the guys are like, hey, guys,
I need help right now, I need a call, and
like I can take the call. I'll be the one
to take the call. If some of the other guys
in there are free, they'll take the call, or we'll
all jump in a call. But but like we don't

(43:51):
have physical touch right it real shit And like you
guys listening to the podcast or watching this, you can
take this. However, you want to take this, I don't
care if you you have to hug your best friend
or your brother and be like, no, homo, that's some
host shit. Like there's nothing wrong with being like I
fucking love you when I hang the phone up or
hugging your friend. Having to high five somebody is the
only accept acceptable physical touch like the handshake that that

(44:15):
men get nowadays, which is why physical touch is such
a huge love language. The ability for other men to
get around people and just be able to let something
off their chest could be the thing that keeps their
pop from fucking exploding, like the top exploding off of
the thing that they've been stuffing all their shit into.
It's amazing that something as simple as a livestream is
able to provide that release for people. I think it's

(44:38):
dope that you're doing this shit, dude, Like, I know
your platform is not as big as ours, but like
it'll get there. You just got to find your footing
and like this is a necessary thing. We need space
for this. It's hard. You're gonna have a much harder
time getting men to tune in than women, But if
you make enough sense to the women, they'll get their
men watching the podcast.

Speaker 1 (44:59):
Yeah, Yeah, that's that's what I've noticed. And it's funny because, uh,
I was on I was on the discord the other
day and I was in the public men's area and
I saw two names pop up that I hadn't talked
to in the years since it had been since I
was in the private discord or the private men's group,

(45:19):
and I was like, oh shit. I was like, I
haven't seen that name pop up in a long time.
And I asked him how they were doing, and you know,
they were doing good. And after I saw that, I
just called my buddy. He's he's a he's a trucker
right now. I called him and I was just like,
what's up, man, He's like, what's up? Everything okay? I
was like, yeah, man, I just wanted to ask how
you're doing.

Speaker 3 (45:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:42):
He got quiet. He's just like, it's kind of hard
right now, being out of the road. I was just like,
I can only imagine. I was like, I don't, I
don't know how that is, but yeah, I'm here for
you in whatever way I can be. And it's the
simple calls like that, thirty seconds of your day could
be life changing to someone else, especially when it comes.

Speaker 3 (46:06):
To that yeap. I send gratitude text messages every day.
A different guy in my life gets a gratitude text
message every morning. Hey man, it's you know, whatever day
it is. I hope that you fucking make today your bitch,
and that your life is good. If you need me,
I'm around and like I will. A lot of these
guys are people that, like, we don't have regular communication with,
so I'm like, you don't have to reply to this.
I get it, you're busy. Like, just know that I'm

(46:27):
thinking about you right now and I'm here if you
need me. That shit goes a long way knowing that
you're still in our actual discord. I'm going to add
you to our WhatsApp group chat and like get you
back into the private men's group. That might be a
way for you to get other people on your podcast
and create more dialogue. I think that this is important.
We are forty eight minutes into this and I've been

(46:49):
talking a lot and like trying to drive topics. Do
you have things that you want to talk about with
me or things that you might want to get into.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
Uh see, I definitely said it with yes real quick.
I do want to point out four probably four and
a half years ago around when you did the second
Men's Group, you asked us what something we there was something,
if there was something we wanted to do, and if
we hadn't done it yet, why Okay, And four and

(47:19):
a half years ago, I told you I wanted to
start a podcast for dads and it was going to
be it was it was going to be called the
Dad Panel, and it was just going to be a
bunch of dads talking and going through life decisions. Obviously
it's not the Dad Panel. And it might have taken
me four and a half years. But whenever I told
you that I hadn't done it yet, everyone in the

(47:41):
group was just like, why, you can do that on
your phone. Yep, you can start it on your phone.
And I'll be damned if I didn't start it with
a phone mount in my car in AirPods.

Speaker 3 (47:51):
Yeah, man, it's all it takes. There's not a reason
to not do anything that you want to do in
this world anymore like other than your own bullshit, your
own excuses, your own I'm tired, your own made up
stories of why it's not going to succeed. Dude, If
you're recording to one person, that's still one person that's
watching that one life could change the world one day,

(48:14):
it could trickle down into their kids. You have no idea,
and like over time you're going to build a community.
You just have to be able to talk to people.
So I'm glad that you did it, and I am
big on that shit. I will ask people all the
time when they're like, I want to do something, why
haven't you done it yet? I believe that I believe
a manifestation, truly believe a manifestation, and I also believe
that how do I word this? I believe the universe

(48:39):
is going to try to throw obstacles at you to
see how bad you really want something, and if you
start doing things, the universe gets out of your way
and God or source, whatever you want to call it,
starts giving you things to get you to where you
want to go. When I open my first tattoo shop,
I was like, I'm going to own a shop one day,
and I know I'm going to need an autoclave, So
I bought an autoclave. No reason for me to spend

(48:59):
that money on an I was working for somebody, so
twenty three hundred bucks, but I bought the autoclave and
I had it when I was ready to open a shop.
And after I got the autoclave, I was like, I know,
I'm a need chair, So I bought some salon chairs.
And over the course of two years, I just started
buying all this shit. And then one day there was
an issue with the shop I was working at, and
I was like, all right, I want to do this,
and I went and drove around and looked at units,
and I made a couple of phone calls, got hung

(49:21):
up on a couple times, and one dude was like,
I can be there tomorrow to show you the unit.
And I signed the lease. BHere, I was broke. I
had no business to do any of that shit. But
I signed that fucking lease, and within three months we
were opening running. And like I opened my business on
October twenty seventh, knowing that rent was due November first,
and I had seven cents in the bank. I was
fucking broke, dude. I made three days. We made all

(49:41):
of the rent that we needed for my personal rent,
all of my car payments, and my tattoo shop to
get me into November. And like we've been going like
that ever since. And it's not a matter of I'm afraid,
because of course I'm going afraid, like what if I
lose everything? And the universe is like, yeah, what if
you lose everything? And I'm like, all right, bitch, let's go.
I'll put my box and gloves on to go toe

(50:01):
to toe with you. And there have been a lot
of losses, dude. There's been times where I've invested in
businesses that cost me over one hundred thousand dollars, lost
that shit in a matter of months, sometimes overnight, and
those are major, major hits. But I have success in
everything that I'm willing to do because I'm not waiting
for an opportunity. I'm not waiting for the right time.
Have you ever read The Art of War? No, you should.

(50:23):
Everybody that reads the Art of War believes that this
is a book about war. It's about mastering yourself. And
when you read it from a point of understanding that
that mastering yourself aspect, it changes the narrative of the
book and it becomes about you and not about your opponents.
Son Zuo said that you need forty percent of a
plan to act. If you wait until you have one
hundred percent of a plan, your enemy has already made

(50:45):
enough of an attack plan to implement and you will lose.
And this speaks on people putting off till the time
is right, or until I get a sign, or until
my money's good to start doing something, versus going I
have forty percent of a plan, I know what I
need to do. I'm just going to start doing it
and see what happens.

Speaker 1 (51:03):
Like I say all the time, if you're waiting for
the perfect time, it's never gonna happen.

Speaker 3 (51:07):
Yeah. I tell people that perfect time was when you
thought about it the first time. Second, perfect time to
start is right now, because you can't get your time back,
and if you wait five or six months or six
years from now, you're you know what happens to all
of the things that you could have been doing this
entire time?

Speaker 1 (51:23):
One hundred percent? Yeah, I say if if the show,
if the podcast, or the tiktoks or the TikTok lives
help one dad or one person a day, then it's
a success.

Speaker 3 (51:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (51:35):
And now granted that guy on that Tichok TikTok was
was the first like open example, you know, someone telling
me that, and like I sit there and I was
like tear it up and ship I was just like wow,
but it starts with a conversation and there I just

(51:57):
feel like, if there's one thing men need to understand
is that other people are going through something similar and
you're not alone. But you have to be willing to
open up and have that conversation to find out you're
not alone. Uh. We can segue off that into building

(52:17):
yourself into better men, especially since we talked about your
men's group. Too. Many men aren't comfortable talking about what
they need to do to become better men. Uh. And
you you were a huge you and the men's group
are a huge part for me, especially down to even

(52:39):
just like weight loss, learning, you know, learning health and
how to take care of yourself and things like that,
and mentally we're a big part of me becoming a
better man. Uh. So I wanted to talk about that.
You've you've talked about being better men before, You've you've
had full episode and like checklists on it before, so

(53:02):
I definitely want to hit on that. But like for me,
it changed my life completely. I'm down like one hundred
and thirty five pounds from whatever I started that men's group.

Speaker 3 (53:11):
Yeah, did you get your hormones checked?

Speaker 1 (53:14):
Oh? Yeah, I'm on TRT.

Speaker 3 (53:15):
Yeah, so our our grandparent.

Speaker 1 (53:17):
I remember starting you were on I think you were
with Titus Titan Titan, and I was just like TRT community.
I remember messaging that in the discord. I was just like,
go go check out Matrix, go check out Brandon and
the TRT community.

Speaker 3 (53:32):
Poadcast well and that got that got us connected to
Matrix hormones and we've done a lot with them since then.
But I I so our grandparents had three times the
testosterone that we do. Our grandfathers did and that's because
of diet. Our food's not real food, ecological like your
environment environmental, I mean that that's uh, you know, plastics
and lack of sleep, all of that shit plays a

(53:55):
role in our hormones. And people unders stand estrogen for
women because it's such a talked about thing. Testosterone is
taboo because people believe it's steroids. Yeah right, well women
have testosterone too, Like it's the abuse of something that
makes it a steroid. Taking other compounds, it's not testosterone
that are technically steroids, right. But knowing that our hormones

(54:17):
are not optimal affects our mental health, It effects our sleep,
affects depression or weight loss, so like, I am a
huge proponent for everybody that's over the age of twenty,
go get your blood work done. If you're over twenty six,
know that your hormones, your testosterone is decreasing at that point.
If you got your blood work done at eighteen, nineteen,
and twenty and you know what your panel is supposed
to look like, and you go at twenty six, you
have something to compare, like, Look, Doc, my testosterone is decreasing.

(54:40):
That's a really big one for me. So plug you know,
shout out to Matrix Hormones. If you guys go to
Matrix Hormones and the use of the code to be better,
tell them we sent you get I think it's one
hundred and fifty orwo hundred dollars off your initial visit.
So I would definitely recommend doing your labs. What was
the thing that you had read because you had said
something else that I wanted to touch on, lost it

(55:01):
on your notes.

Speaker 1 (55:04):
See I put building yourself into better men, setting a
standard for your sons and daughters.

Speaker 3 (55:10):
Okay, well we didn't get into the setting the standard thing,
but the building yourself into better men. Did you read
the new book that I wrote out or did you
listen to the episodes that I read.

Speaker 1 (55:18):
From the new book I have. You are not broken?

Speaker 3 (55:21):
Okay, so the first book you were Nobody's coming to
save you. I talk about the five pillars of what
I believe a man is supposed to be. The first
one is the warrior. That's our teenage years, that the
little kid age where everything is a wrestle in a flight.
Our hormones are high, we're testing each other to see
where we fall in the hierarchy of manhood. We're warriors.

(55:44):
So that's the first, the first pillar of being a man.
The next part goes into being a husband, and then
a father, that a mentor, and then an elder. And
I think that once you've accomplished the first three, you're
capable of doing the fourth one, and that is mentoring, teaching,
trying to help other people go through the things that
you've gone through. And this is very tribal. Our discord

(56:05):
is called the tribe for a reason. The more things
that I have gone through in life that I can
properly convey to you in a way that is going
to make you get it, the less you're going to
have to suffer in struggle. But That comes down to
my ability to teach my life experiences and my ability
to communicate effectively to you. That falls back on leadership

(56:26):
and a whole lot of other things, But this also
speaks on my ability to learn. If I have somebody
like Steven who's in the men's group, who's been there
since the beginning, if he brought something to me and
it was something that I needed to hear or something
that I didn't know already, but my ego got in
the way and I shut that shit down and I
wasn't receptive to it, then there's not a communication there.

(56:47):
He's lecturing me and I'm not listening. We can't build
each other up at that point because there's a block.
I feel like I'm too good to take information from
somebody else. The mentoring aspect falls into the abit to
engage and learn. Just because you're in your early thirties
and I'm forty five doesn't mean that we can't have
a conversation and you have a life experience that I

(57:08):
could benefit from if I just fucking listen and don't
try to interject my life experiences onto what you're going through,
you know what I mean? So, like the building up
of other men comes down from a place of understanding
that we are a tribe, and without us being a
community and working effectively with each other, we will die.
And all of human history, when we had people kicked

(57:29):
out of our communities, kicked out of our clans or
our tribes or whatever however you want to word that,
your survival rate dropped to single digits because you will
likely die come winter. We need a community, We need
people to work together to be able to get to
those things, and it's more prevalent now than ever in
human history because we've isolated ourselves and everything is digital now.

(57:49):
So with what you do, how do you propose men
go about building other men and creating the better man,
as you put it, building each other up.

Speaker 1 (58:00):
Well, it starts you can obviously the Internet is a
really great tool to use, but it starts with you individually.
Like you said, you have to be able to be
receptive what other people are telling you. You also have
to understand yourself because you can't. You can't sit here
and try to help other people or mentor if you're
not actively learning their faults, either the fault you have

(58:22):
and the lessons you have because from all your failures,
there's lessons to be had if you have to be
able to put your pride and ego to the side
to be able to teach about those things. Right, So
it starts with yourself, but then it also it comes
with putting your pride and ego aside. I feel like too,

(58:43):
And once you're able to do that, that's when you
can start helping other people. And a lot of cases
it's going to be through the internet, just like through
my podcast and the way I'm talking to other men
and engaging with other men. But it also comes with
the people you surround yourself too. If you're trying to
be a better man and you're trying to level up

(59:05):
and you're trying to build yourself up, but you're still
surrounded by dead beats or you're surrounded by workless people,
you're never going to build yourself into a better man
because you're going to be held back by all those
people you surround yourself with. And you can try to
help those people, but most of the time you're not
helping a workless Yeah no, I agree, so well, hold

(59:25):
on the people you need to surround yourself.

Speaker 3 (59:27):
I want to touch on that because this is a
really important conversation and I'll let you take back over.
I just want to add that on the social circles,
our perception of is reality. If you have a group
of people doing the same shit, and you look at
the drug game, right, like when people become addicts and
they go to rehab and they get out and they
get back around their friend group, that's normal shit for them.

(59:48):
All of these people who are getting high and robbing
people and doing all the shit that they need to
do to continue their high, that is normal existence for
them their day to day That's just what they do.
And if you live in those social circles, that becomes
your normal life. If you have people who are leveling
up and making deals, and you got a friend who's like, bro,
I just made fifty grand I just did this. My

(01:00:10):
fucking kid just won an award. We're doing these things,
we're about to travel, and that is what you see
as normal day to day life. You go, I'm not
how how is this normal for them? I need to
get to that point, and then that social circle starts
to elevate and you become one of those people that's
doing those things that's motivating the people around you, and
you are creating that echo chamber of success. That shit

(01:00:33):
is fucking one of the most important things that men
need to understand. Your social circle one hundred percent dictates
your existence period one hundred percent. I'll give it that
to you.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
Now that that was well, note you in a segue
off of that. That was a big thing with uh,
the people I surround myself with even to this day.
I had my first time at nineteen, and I was
whenever I found out I was just a mechanic at
an auto shop making I think it was nine to
fifteen an hour or thirteen fifteen an hour, one of

(01:01:08):
the two. Either way, it wasn't enough, and I was
just like, shit, how am I going to provide a
life for myself? And then I happened to get the
job that I'm at now. I got lucky as shit
because I'm an eagle Scout and they liked the fact
that I'm an eagle scout, and that's what let me
get my job, a high school deployment, my eagle scout.

(01:01:32):
But it led me as much as it was a
necessity for me because I was about to become a
father and I didn't want to stay at the level
of living I was at. It allowed me to level
up a hell of a lot for a nineteen year old.
And as the years went on, you know, I had

(01:01:55):
more kids, I bought houses, I bought cars, and I
did these things. I had friends that weren't doing those things.
But it wasn't because of them not wanting to do them.
It wasn't. It wasn't because of uh, just different life
priorities or anything like that. It was I was just

(01:02:18):
the one that had a kid first, and so I
had to I had to get my shit together first.
So then my friends saw me buying these houses, they
saw me buying these cars, they saw me, you know,
raising my kids. And I would hear all the time, like, man,
that looks that looks really cool that you bought that house,
or that you're in that big house. That's the same

(01:02:39):
neighborhood my parents live in. How'd you get a house
in there? And I always tell them, I was just like,
I worked, You work, and you try to reach the
next level. I was like, it's your choice to do it.
I was just like, you're young, you don't have any kids.
If you choose to do it, that's on you. I
was like, but you're you know, like we're young, Like

(01:03:01):
I'm so, I'm not. I'm not thirty yet. I'm twenty
seven actually okay, but at twenty by twenty seven, I've
had three kids, and I've bought two houses, and I've
been through the home ownership mess. I've been through the
separation mess. So I like to say I got it
out of the way earliest, because then now I could

(01:03:22):
spend the other half of my life living it right.
But I don't like to say that. I try to
set the example. But why not when I have?

Speaker 3 (01:03:35):
Why not? Don't don't get back at that? Why not?
Why don't? Why don't you want to say the example?

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
Because the subconscious voice in my head says, I don't.

Speaker 3 (01:03:44):
Deserve to be Why not?

Speaker 1 (01:03:47):
Why?

Speaker 3 (01:03:48):
Well, you've been through it, like you've had a divorce,
You've bought two houses, and you're not even thirty years
old yet you you've learned the lessons about chasing money
instead of spending time with your kids. You're working on
being a good dad. What more proof do you need
that you have the ability to help others that are
below you get to where you're at, Like, this is
this is mentorship? You did, the warrior, you did the husband,

(01:04:11):
you did the father. You're at a mentor stage now
where it is your duty to pick up the other
men and you're dealing with the podcast. I'm not shitting
on you, but that that mindset is a detriment. Like
you should absolutely take on that role. You should wear
that bitch like a cape. I'm gonna call you on
your ship, bro, Like I know.

Speaker 1 (01:04:29):
I was. I was telling uh, my kid's mom. I
was telling her. I was just like watch. I was
just like, he's gonna find something. He's gonna call the
other I was like, I, no, he is, He's done
it before. This is just in person.

Speaker 3 (01:04:40):
Yeah, with other people watching. Yeah, that imposter syndrome shit
is is is it's it's the enemy in your head
preventing you from reaching the next level that you're supposed
to reach. We went through it with the podcast. There's
still times where we're doing shit where we're like, this
is what we do for a living. We're not imposters.

(01:05:00):
So like, don't allow that that voice to stop you
from doing great things. And you will if you let
that re like regress you. If you don't believe that
you're chasing your purpose or you don't believe you're worthy
of those things. That's negative self talk.

Speaker 1 (01:05:17):
Yeah. I worked a long time to get away from
that negative thinking. Uh but you're right, you are right there,
you are. That's that's that's I mean, that's also for
me to say that I'm not able to be the example.
I don't feel like I'm able to be the example
counteracts what I'm doing with the podcast too, because at

(01:05:38):
the entire time that's exactly what I'm doing. Uh So, yeah,
you're definitely right about that.

Speaker 3 (01:05:45):
Yeah, these are the things that we tell ourselves, dude.

Speaker 1 (01:05:49):
So the book that helped me the most with that
was it's called The Secret. I've read The Secret, yeah, yeah,
and it was It was funny because I'm I'm a
Norse pagan and I had a therapist who was a
very small, old Southern Baptist woman and she was just like,

(01:06:11):
I'm not going to preach itch you. She did, she
was very sweet about it at least, and she was like,
I want you to read a book and I was
like okay. She was like, it's called The Secret. It's
kind of a Christian book. I was like, okay, I'm
okay with that, and she was like, I think it'll
help you, and I mean within the first If you

(01:06:33):
read that book and you're actually serious about changing the
way you think and changing the way you think about yourself, that.

Speaker 3 (01:06:38):
Book is a very powerful books.

Speaker 1 (01:06:41):
Even if it's just like the negative thoughts and breaking
down your negative thoughts, but also just positive thinking and manifestation,
it's a really powerful book. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:06:49):
I'm really big on manifestation. Have you read as a man?

Speaker 1 (01:06:52):
Thinkth no on my reading lists. Every time you mentioned
a book, I throw it on a reading list.

Speaker 3 (01:06:58):
I'm just like, shit short. It's not a very long book.
If you get it on audible and read it at
two times a speed, it's like forty five minutes. But
it's got a lot of gems in it. I'm so
big on manifestation and speaking things into existence. Being Norse Pagan,
I'm a spiritual person. I don't call myself religion and
that religious. And even though I'm a follower of Christ,

(01:07:20):
I am definitely not a Christian. I believe that every
faith has some sort of creation story, and it always
starts with the word right. Things are spoken into existence.
We're created by our creators, and we have a divine
spark in us. And I believe that that word and
that vibration and the manifestation in the way that we

(01:07:40):
talk not only alters ourself because we're made of water,
and we know that frequencies affect water, vibration affects water.
We know that water remembers, it holds negative charge, it
holds positive charge. Like our voice is such a huge
thing for us, and if we don't speak powerly for ourselves,
who's going to right? So, like, the negative self talk

(01:08:03):
thing was huge, and I full credit to my wife, Dude,
she puts such a stop to that shit because I
used to call myself stupid and fat and ugly and
all the fucking negative things. And like I could do
something really simple like drop something and be like, oh,
I'm such a piece of shit, she like, excuse me.
And she she physically checked me, verbally checked me every
single time I did that for years, to the point

(01:08:24):
where I don't even think those thoughts anymore because I
know if she's standing there, she's just gonna say something
like And that's how it started. I don't want to
hear this shit, like just leave me alone, let me,
let me do my life. But her correcting me and
those things eventually changed my patterns, and now I do
positive affirmations for myself and it's and this is really
off topic and very silly almost, but like I started

(01:08:48):
using beef tallow for my skin because I'm getting old, bro,
like I need to. I want to. I got a
good looking woman. I need to continue to maintain my
youthfulness as best as I can. So I'm in there
using beef tallo and my wrinkles are starting to go
away because I'm doing in care. And while I'm in there,
I'm like, yeah, fuck you wrinkle. Like I'm starting to
look good, Like I'm I'm talking myself up and it
changes the way that I feel about me. So like

(01:09:08):
now I feel more confident, like you know, funny dancing
in front of my wife, and like those small things
like that go a long way for our psyche. We
just don't realize it, and so the opposite is very prevalent.

Speaker 1 (01:09:20):
Yeah uh me. Learning about positive affirmations came in such
a silly and fun way that I still I still
listen to it all the time. And it was something
that my kid's mom did with my boys when they
were first starting to go to daycare and school, and
it was the affirmation song with Snoop Dogg.

Speaker 3 (01:09:42):
I don't think I know that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:44):
Yeah, And it's just it's just a song and it's
just talking about loving yourself and how smart you are
and how you're gonna have a great day. And I
caught myself targeting out of my car.

Speaker 3 (01:09:55):
I wouldn't work.

Speaker 1 (01:09:58):
And it was just it was it was just it's
just like, good morning, today is going to be a
great day.

Speaker 3 (01:10:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:10:05):
But it's like a two second song. And I'd played
them between my heavy meatal music or between my podcasts.

Speaker 3 (01:10:11):
It's funny, but it's.

Speaker 1 (01:10:13):
Those small things, the affirmations and speaking positive can start
with such a small thing and it's going to echo
throughout the rest of your life. But you have to start.
And for me it was soup Dog, which is normally
not how that starts. Yeah, I still love that song
to this day.

Speaker 3 (01:10:31):
My wife does the positive affirmations with the kids every
morning before she drops them off at school. What are we?
And she makes them give them three or four things,
and sometimes the things that they give isn't enough, or
that's been repeated a lot this week, so give me
something different and it makes them think. And we've seen
a change in the way that they conduct themselves because
they understand their value and who they are, and like

(01:10:51):
they are becoming. Our kids are six and seven, almost
seven and eight, so like we're watching them become a personality,
Like they're no longer the little kids. They're starting to
come in to their own little human existence over there.
And it's really cool to watch. But positive affirmations matters.

Speaker 1 (01:11:06):
So, yeah, I have I have an eight year old boy,
and uh, he's getting big. I'm not a very tall person,
but he's he's already right here on me, and all
I can think about is four more years I'm had
to kick him down the stairs or something fuck up
at me. Yeah, uh that's normal though, Oh yeah, yeah,
oh he's gonna buck up. He had a we thought

(01:11:29):
he broke his hand one time, and they did a
scan of his growth plates and they can they they
were just like, do you want to know how tall he's.

Speaker 3 (01:11:36):
Going to be?

Speaker 1 (01:11:37):
I was like, what are you talking about. They're like, well,
we can kind of tell based off their growth plates
how much they're going to grow and how tall they're
going to be. He's like, okay, yeah, shoot, what is it. It's
like probably like five eight, five nine, Like his dad
six one to six three. Wow, And I know his
biological mom was tall, but I was like, damn. I
was like, he's going to try to whoop my ass

(01:11:59):
when he's like fourteen or fifteen.

Speaker 3 (01:12:00):
It's yes, he is.

Speaker 1 (01:12:03):
I just gotta I gotta stay prepared for it. I
was like, this is why I had kid young have
a colladiator for an eight year old.

Speaker 3 (01:12:11):
Yeah, yeah, that's normal. Ship. Every every kid at some
point in their life thinks that it's time to test
the old lion to see where he stands.

Speaker 1 (01:12:20):
He did it the other day. He wanted to wrestle yeah,
around for like two hours straight.

Speaker 3 (01:12:24):
That's funny.

Speaker 1 (01:12:25):
It's good that we had. We just had a blast.

Speaker 3 (01:12:27):
You know that that's how dads bond with their children
is physical play. Women women connect through nourishing and those
types of emotions where we are a physical contact, you know,
rough play with our children. And it's said the study
that I read said that it happens faster for us
because of that play than it does for mothers because
of the way that they go about it. But that
also speaks to our DNA and the way that we

(01:12:51):
have throughout the years had to leave for long durations
to bring back food. So like we've had to find
ways to connect with our children on a much quicker
time scale. And that's that was the way that it
worked for men, which is pretty wild.

Speaker 1 (01:13:02):
So that is pretty cool to think about.

Speaker 3 (01:13:05):
We are an hour and fifteen minutes in. My back
is starting to bother me from sitting in this stupid
fucking chair. Do you have anything that you want to
get into before we wrap up?

Speaker 1 (01:13:13):
Healing from your own choices? If you can give advice
to dads that there are choices, or whether it was
chasing the money, not being a good father, not being
a good husband, whatever it is. If you could give
advice to a person, specifically a man that needs to
heal from his choices later on down the road, what

(01:13:34):
would you say to him?

Speaker 3 (01:13:35):
Oh, man, I would say, the beauty of choices that
you made, those choices you can make new ones. Past
doesn't exist, It really doesn't. The one thing that will
always come that never shows up is tomorrow, because tomorrow
will not be tomorrow, Tomorrow will be today, and tomorrow
will still be waiting for you. Everything that we do
in life is a choice. It's a decision that we

(01:13:56):
make consistently and our life is an echo of this
is that we've made the past doesn't exist. The present
is the only thing that truly matters. In the future
will eventually become the past. So if you made bad
decisions and you chase the money, and you weren't present,
and you did all the things that you view as
fucked up and made you less of a man, you
have the opportunity to start right now making better decisions,
being present, making better financial decisions, and doing things that

(01:14:19):
allows you to have a better future, so that when
you look back in the past thirty years from now,
the last thirty years has been really fucking dope, and
you don't live with regret. I actually propose to a
post this morning in the discord. I don't believe in
a physical hell in terms of the way the Bible
explains it. And even though I am a follower of Christ,
I want to be christ like, I want to be awakened.
You know, there's a whole thing that gets into that.

(01:14:40):
I'm not going to do that right now, but I
don't believe in a physical hell. I believe our hell
is our regrets. I believe it's looking back on all
of our shortcomings. I believe that when we meet our
maker at the end of our life, and we have
to have our our life weighed all of our regrets,
and that infinite moment of or that very quick moment
of your life flashing before your eyes, that's going to

(01:15:02):
be hell. All of the things that you paid attention
to you that you shouldn't have, all the things that
you did that you know you shouldn't have done, all
the harsh words that you gave your children and your
wife that you know you shouldn't have given. You're going
to have to feel the way that they felt in
those moments. That's going to be hell. You have the
ability to make sure that the first purse portion of
your life, or however you long long you've lived up

(01:15:22):
until now, is the only part of that that feels
like shit the rest of your existence, until your death
and until your rebirth. If you believe in that, if
you know however you believe your spirituality is, you have
the opportunity to have a really good fucking life. But
it is choices. And don't get me wrong, We've all
made really stupid fucking decisions, especially young men, because we

(01:15:42):
don't have the proper mentorship and we need to learn
our own lessons. We have to have our own hurts,
our own shortcomings, our own aha moments. If we were
able to live from other people's experiences, we would never
break bones, we would never go to war, we would
never have divorces, we would never make any type of
mistakes whatsoever. Because other people have felt that pain. We
have to learn these lessons. We have to experience this

(01:16:03):
pain to come out the other side of it, to
become better men and better mentors. We have to learn
and communicate. All of this comes down to choices. So
don't beat yourself up over your past. Understand that those
things happened, you did those things, except that you did
those things, and that you don't have to be that
person anymore. You might have done some shit that at
fifteen years old is one of those things that you

(01:16:25):
were like, I can't believe I did that, or I
can't believe I said that, And that's something that changed
your core values. It's made you become the man that
you are, because you don't want to ever make somebody
feel the way that you made them feel in that moment.
You don't want to have to look at your kids
knowing that you missed a birthday or a graduation, or
you know, not being able to show up for them
because you were working out of town and there was

(01:16:46):
a broken bone or whatever the case may be. Like,
all of those things make us who we are. Those
life lessons were necessary to get you to the point
where you can be a better man. Don't beat yourself
up over it. Let those choices be what they were,
and know that today matters. Yesterday doesn't. The future absolutely matters,
and the goal is to have a really good future.
But if you don't learn from those mistakes, you will
repeat them. You're not going to have a good future.

(01:17:07):
You will live a life with regret, and you will
live a life of hell. That's my answer to your question.
Yesterday doesn't matter, dude, It really doesn't. The thing that
matters is the lessons that you took from it. All
of your failures are not failures if you learned, they
are lessons. If you quit, if you didn't learn anything
from it, that's a failure.

Speaker 1 (01:17:25):
Oh yeah, that was a good answer. That was especially.
Learn from the lessons, yeah, or sorry, learn from the failures, ye,
learn the lessons. Yeah, I know what you meant. Yeah,
learn from the failures. Understanding the failures, being able to
let go of the failures while rotating the lesson and

(01:17:47):
not letting it a weigh on you. I definitely agree.
I really appreciate you having beyond that.

Speaker 3 (01:17:51):
Yeah, man, I enjoyed the conversation. I wasn't sure how
this was going to go. Pieces is interviewing Roma from
Roma Army. Chloe d Yeah, and she keeps going, Babe,
I don't know what I'm going to talk about. I
don't have anything planned. I'm like, I don't plan any
of my interviews and she's like what, And I'm like,
I don't. I have like three things that I kind
of want to talk about, and when we start talking,

(01:18:12):
I just don't shut the fuck up. And it works
for me because, like, we'll get people going here, and
if you get people who are also on a platform
where they have to talk for a living, that's what
they do, it's very easy to have conversations with people
that do this for a living because this is what
we do.

Speaker 1 (01:18:27):
Yeah. I tell I tell people all the time. They're
just like, how how's it going to work. I was
just like, we're going to go on. I was like,
I'm going to do the spiel of welcome back. I'm
going to ask you who you are, and then we're
just going to talk.

Speaker 3 (01:18:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:18:38):
They're like, we're just going to talk. I was like, yeah,
I'll ask you some questions that'll lead you know, I'll
be able to lead it so that you can keep
going because I know it's kind of weird talking to
a camera. I was like, but we're just going to talk,
just a conversation.

Speaker 3 (01:18:49):
That's the way I've done every single interview and it's
worked out pretty.

Speaker 1 (01:18:51):
Well for me, so it works every time.

Speaker 3 (01:18:54):
Yeah, all right, brother, I'm going to wrap up. If
you can you plug your social medias one more time
so that people can follow you. I'd like to see
your podcast get some numbers.

Speaker 1 (01:19:02):
I would really appreciate that. I am the Modern Fatherhood Podcast.
I'm on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube all under the Modern
Fatherhood pod. Uh and yeah, yeah, YouTube's Modern Fatherhood Podcast.
I'm on Spotify, Apple, podcasts on all the all the platforms.
So yeah, I appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (01:19:22):
Okay, with that being said, guys, remember that you were
you were the author of your own life and you
get to dictate your existence. Dude, thank you for tuning
in today, and we will see you guys on the
next one.

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Modern Fatherhood, Co-Parenting & Blue Collar Dads | Men’s Mental Health, Marriage & Mentorship

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