Be Where Your Feet Are - How high-performing dads win at home and at work. - Everything They Don’t Tell You

Episode Transcript
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(01:00:00):
Does she know you're in the
room be where your feet are?
When you're at work be there
mentally emotionally
Physically when you're at home at the
dinner table be there and that's the
hardest thing because so many guys they
come home and they're thinking
About work and then they go to work and
I'm thinking about home and there's this
duality where they never
fully feel comfortable with

(01:00:20):
Where they're at. This is what causes
this tension of like your what
when your wife is like, hello
Are you here? I know your
body's here, but are you here?
What you do as a man
husband father matters, right?
Allow me to share some numbers with you

(01:00:43):
today in the US one in four kids will
grow up without a father in the home and
So many parts of society would tell us
that men don't matter or
masculinity doesn't matter
But the numbers would
say otherwise for example
63% of youth suicides
come from fatherless homes
90% of homeless and runaway children come

(01:01:04):
from fatherless homes
83% of kids with behavioral disorders
come from fatherless homes and this last
statistic, which is crazy to me
71% of all high school
dropouts come from fatherless homes
And so what the truth is here is that our
kids need us our
spouses need us this world
Needs you and what you have to

(01:01:26):
offer not just in your career
Right because we find all of our value
and what we do and our
identity and what we do
but how you show up as a
brother as a son as a father as a
You know all those different ways
And so if you don't take away anything
else from this episode other
than the fact that you carry
Significance and you're important in this

(01:01:47):
world and that's that's what I want you
to take away from this to
be be encouraged brother
Now I really appreciate that man and
those are some startling
Statistics, you know,
I I do have questions
I did I did a lot of research on on you
and I do have questions,
but just in the spirit of that
helped me understand

(01:02:07):
What what's going on like I mean, that's
a big question, right?
But I mean even the very first stat that
you that you put out is one in four kids
grow up without a father
that's
That's almost unbelievable. Like what's
going on there? Mm-hmm

(01:02:28):
you know, I think it's a combination of
Where we've come from, you know our
Combination of where we've come from our
wiring and then also a culture that has
been saying that men don't matter anymore
right
And that we could get into a lot of a lot

(01:02:49):
of stuff about the feminist movements and
you know, all that stuff
But but understanding like first of all,
let's start with where we came from
You know, we're just two or three
generations removed from
Some of the most extreme trauma that
people have ever faced
in World War two, you know
these men came home from the war

(01:03:09):
completely traumatized and
You know, thank God that they paid the
price that they did for
us and for our freedom
But they didn't have
any tools or resources
And so the only tool they had really was
the bottle right and so those guys grew
up or they came home and they raised
Boys and said you got to stuff it real
men. Don't cry, right?

(01:03:29):
This is just deal with it
And then so those boys grew up and raised
men and those are some of us listening
today and some of the younger ones
They raised boys and here we are today
There's actually a term a psychological
term for this and it's called normative
male, Alexithymia,
which is a she's a mouthful
But really what that means is well
normative male is it's normal for a male

(01:03:51):
and then the word Alexithymia
Essentially means to arrest in their
speech when it comes to talking about
their emotions, right?
So what that means is men actually
struggle and we clam up and we do not
have the words to
articulate how we're feeling
Now that's an important thing to make
note of because number one
we have to understand that

(01:04:12):
Where we've come from so we've not been
great at identifying how we're feeling
and then really kind of
defending ourselves that way
And then we're living in in a time and
age where culturally even with other men
We're not comfortable talking about how
we're feeling and and so
when society might be saying
Well, we don't necessarily need men
anymore and we may be
feeling all kinds of crazy things

(01:04:33):
But we don't even know
how to talk about it, right?
So if you're here today and that
translates both publicly in the space or
and even in your
marriage and in your fatherhood
Which we can get into but
when a wife presses his husband
Like when she says things like I feel
like I married a robot, you know, or why
don't you ever talk about your feelings?
Well, if you've heard
that you're normal, right?
we're all we all struggle with that

(01:04:54):
because of what I was just talking about
and I think the third
thing is is this you
Know over over the course of the past,
you know five six decades
Seeing this rise in the feminist
movement, which I think you know in its
nature and how it
started was was very valuable
I think the great to create opportunities
for women, you know, I'm all for

(01:05:16):
equality, you know, I'm
all for all those things
But it's important for us to understand
our masculine essence
and our feminine essence
Okay. So what happened was
Women started to step into
more masculine roles, right?
Where women would normally not
necessarily be working then they kind of

(01:05:37):
took in they stepped in to start
Earning income to start getting educated,
you know, all those different things,
which is an amazing thing
But as that happened men sort of started
to well the role shifted really
Maybe not shifted but ago it
wasn't black and white anymore
It was gray right because now now my wife

(01:05:58):
is making a hundred K a
year and I'm making 80
Versus 50 years ago. I was making 80 she
was making zero and we're told and we're
brought up to believe
that that our purpose is to
Provide. All right. So this is probably a
very confusing thing for a lot of men
Exactly because that's been the narrative
that we've been taught
But we also don't have the courage or

(01:06:19):
language to even be able to talk about it
when we don't understand
right because of our wiring and so we
find ourselves in a
situation where the wife or the
mother is doing a lot of the things that
traditionally men would have done would
have taken care of and
so what happens is the
polarity kind of gets switched and
So the mat the feminine starts to step

(01:06:40):
into the masculine role and doing some of
the things that we've done
Which again is not is not a bad thing if
we're communicating well
But that's not necessarily how we're
wired and especially if we're not
communicating well about it
And so a man's two basic needs is to feel
is to feel respected
and to feel competent

(01:07:01):
Okay, if you feel disrespected or if you
feel incompetent in the home
You withdraw because you don't feel like
you serve a purpose anymore
Now wife's biggest needs are to feel seen
heard and safe, right?
A wife needs to be loved to be cherished
all those different things
but but a wife can do she

(01:07:21):
can exist in the home and
and you know be a provider and do all
those different things as well and so
what happens is as as a
as a man
See forgets or maybe is not in a lot
living in alignment with his purpose and
he starts to feel more incompetent
Maybe he goes to work more because he's

(01:07:43):
better. He's better there
He can measure success there because
there he feels competent there
He's respected by his colleagues by his
employees by his boss, you know, whatever
and so what we do is instead of facing it
and having a conversation about it
We don't do that because number one we
don't have the
language for it. It's scary
So we just go to work because that's

(01:08:03):
where we can quantify our success when we
come home. It's super blurry
You know, I joke about this all the time
I'm like your six-year-old son's not
gonna come up to you
and be like hey daddy
Here are five strategic reasons why
you're the most effective father
You know what I mean? And how do you
quantify your you know making progress in

(01:08:23):
your emotional health?
This is not tactical but you go to work,
you know revenues up in this quarter
You you know you close this many
contracts very very tactical and so
that's what happens and men just
Run away from the problem at home because
they feel incompetent and they go to work
I've had clients call me from the office
at like 9 p.m. I'm like, Mitch

(01:08:43):
I don't want to go home because I'm so
much more comfortable
in this empty dark office
Than I am at home
with my own wife and kids
But that's what happened.
They got caught in that cycle
And so then they they
don't show up at home
So then their wife doesn't necessarily
feel loved right seeing her safe
And then so she starts disrespecting her

(01:09:05):
husband more because she's in a need
She is she's in a deficit and she and
then which which makes him
feel even more incompetent
Right, which makes him crave going to
work where he gets those needs met
And this is what we call the crazy cycle
and before you know it
Then the man is more comfortable at work
than he is at home and we spiral away
from each other instead

(01:09:25):
of and then what happens?
Well, the woman says as women do well,
he's not showing up somebody has to
So I better step in and be both parents
I better step in and be the the wife and
the husband I better
take care of the mortgage
I better take care of the meals
I better take care of
everything and before you know
She is both operating in the masculine
and the feminine which then causes her to
resent her husband even more
And so what do we do we withdraw because

(01:09:49):
again, we don't have the language to even
have the conversation, right?
There's a statistic today. It's crazy
Seven million men are of working age in
the United States in the workforce, but
they're being numbed
they could be working but they're not
because they're on
Medicaid on medication and they're
Distracted, you know drinking whatever
the average man today as

(01:10:11):
of 2023 spends on average
2,000 hours per year in front of a screen
escaping reality. That's
almost I think that's 85 days, man
So that tells us that we are we are like
We're struggling in
silence. We're medicating or
Distracted we're avoiding and so this is

(01:10:33):
this is a stark contrast to how I started
off the conversation and
saying your presence matters
But instead of digging in we're actually
pulling away and this
is a really sad reality
And this is the whole reason why we're
here today and having this conversation.
Oh, absolutely. There's
there's so much to unpack there
I just gave you a lot bro. No, no, but

(01:10:53):
you know what? Honestly,
this is a I think you know
This is an impactful and an important
conversation, you know,
especially for a lot of my listeners
I am curious, you know when you said that
that you know, a lot of men struggle to
verbalize or communicate
Their emotions or what they're feeling
Obviously, that's that's not a secret
right? I've been there myself. I've had

(01:11:14):
those same struggles. I'm curious. Do
they have the same difficulty
communicating
Joy happiness fun as they do
Being scared angry or or you know
Sad. Yeah, no
Because having fun and
being joyful and being happy

(01:11:36):
Isn't isn't possibly going to be
communicated as incompetence. Hmm, but
Yeah, exactly. So if I say if I say to my
wife, man, I'm having so much fun today
Together or this was a blast or I love
working on my car on the shop
She's not gonna hear that and be like
well, he's weak or he's incompetent
But if I say babe, I'm I'm actually

(01:11:59):
really anxious about this meeting
Or I'm really upset about what's going on
with me and me and my son or whatever
There's there's a fear that we may be
viewed as weak or incompetent or perhaps
You know if if you said something like
You know, I'm afraid I'm afraid of

(01:12:20):
something, you know, they
could use that against us
Right and so again, that's why those
emotions are hard to communicate because
we're afraid that we'll be perceived as
weak and society tells us
No, no, no, no, you must be strong.
Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,
or else you're not a man
Of course
So let's let's talk a little bit about
that, you know kind of to set the

(01:12:41):
framework for some of them
Maybe the rest of the conversation, you
know, there is a lot of
conversation and and talk around
Being a man today and masculinity and
toxic masculinity and
you know this kind of stuff
You know, what is what does this mean to
you and and you know, what's the
difference between
being masculine being toxic?
I mean, you know help me and help my

(01:13:02):
audience understand this. Yeah, that's
such a good question
You know, first of all, let's let's let
I'd have you on your listeners replace
the word toxic with immature
Okay, I don't believe in toxic
masculinity. However, I believe in
immature masculinity
Right, and I think that's what what
culture means when they say toxic

(01:13:24):
because immature masculinity is
Domineering right is demanding respect is
demanding control as being you know
You know asserting your dominance over
people whatever all those different
things a true man
understands the value of service
Serving his family serving his company

(01:13:45):
serving his organization a true man
understands the power of of
Leadership but being humble, you know,
I'm being emotionally resilient being in
control being a master
of his emotions, right?
Immature masculinity are men are boys
trapped in grown men bodies. You
understand what I mean?

(01:14:06):
They're men who are still behaving like
children who are throwing tantrums who
are trying to throw their weight around
Demanding I mean you can't these things
aren't going to get you a good reputation
But unfortunately society has taken that
version and exploited the
crap out of it, you know
And so so what would I I
would say the difference between?
What is traditionally known as toxic

(01:14:27):
masculinity versus true masculinity?
Is is is just some of those
things I mentioned, you know
I think being a masculine man
today is is both a combination
of some of the thing that some of the the
The the models of the 40s and 50s, but
not all of it because that's dated right

(01:14:48):
And then some of it
doesn't serve us anymore
But there's some things
from today's day and age dare
I say it that we can take from it and I
think that a modern masculinity or how to
be a man a modern man in the
2020s is really
living on that spectrum of
How am I and I love the phrase

(01:15:09):
Easy to love hard to kill, you know, am I
both am I both dangerous?
Like I can protect my family I can I will
you know, I will die on the sword if I
need to I will you know
fill in blank and
Can am I available to my
family to sit with them?
Do I do I have the strength to hold space

(01:15:30):
for them emotionally?
Can I have a conversation with my wife
and have her share about her feelings
without me feeling like I'm personally
attacked or getting defensive?
Can I sit with my children and like be
fully present with them home in the you
know in the living room on the floor?
Playing with them and their toys, you
know and also get up and

(01:15:51):
go lead a team of you know
A crew of 20 guys, you know, whatever
right? So I think it's
existing in this spectrum
And because the old the old model of
masculinity would have said
no, no you go away you work
You know eight to nine to five you come
home dinners on the table
You know, you have your cold beer after

(01:16:12):
dinner you watch TV and you go to sleep.
You're providing financially
That's about it. Not emotionally not
relationally not all those ways
But now I would say the new model is is
some of the things we
can take away from this
New way of living in the world is no. No,
I think it's important to show up for
your family emotionally as well and

(01:16:32):
Relationally which we can get into but
that's how I would kind of see it. Hmm.
That makes sense. It makes perfect sense
I've got a couple
questions around that. So
I like the word immature versus toxic. It
kind of paints a different picture. I
Wonder if it's impactful
enough if you know those things
Demanding and throwing your weight around

(01:16:52):
turn to violence, right? We see that as
well that to me that
seems like a different level
You know, maybe it is obviously it still
comes from an immature place an immature
state, you know, but
It's just the way that kind of your
you're framing it. I'm
trying to place these categories
You know on on different levels of

(01:17:13):
masculinity or maybe
that's just a you know
Human thing. I don't know but
That that's more of a statement not a
question. I I guess my
question in in what you said was
What do you say or what do you do for
somebody who doesn't even recognize that

(01:17:33):
they're operating in a way
That's not conducive
to modern masculinity
I imagine most of the people that you
come that you have come to you right
there. They're looking for something
Maybe they've recognized that they're not
in alignment in some way shape or form
and that's what
they're seeking your help for

(01:17:53):
But what about what about those people
who just don't know that they're there
how do you or can you help them?
Hmm
Yeah, I I think so what I think what
you're asking me here Josh is
How do you help a man who doesn't really
know what his role is? Is
that what you're asking?
How do you help a man that doesn't know

(01:18:16):
that he's stuck in a place of immature?
Masculinity. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean I would say
Spend time with more men number one,
right? Ask your wife what she thinks
Because at the end of the day we're lone
wolves, right and and there's

(01:18:38):
we we like to think it's noble
That I'm gonna I'm gonna put my head down
I'm gonna work and when I come up y'all
will see you know what I
was able to do or whatever
But the lone wolf dies alone, right a
strong wolf builds packs
and so there's a what the problem with
with being in isolation is you've got no
accountability you've got no

(01:19:00):
No one you've got no sounding board you
you could be struggling with something
That you think it makes you a monster and
the moment you get around other men
you're like, oh wait a minute
That's that's normal, you know
Or you start talking to other men about
what's going on in your marriage and all
of a sudden. They're like
Yeah, I struggle with that too or they

(01:19:21):
might say on the flip side now, man
You're being an asshole, you know and
getting called out on that which we need
Right. And so I would say
one of the simplest ways to
know
you know is to get
around other men and to like
to be accountable and to to
to be held accountable for your actions,

(01:19:42):
but also just talk about your life talk
about your struggles and what you're
going through because
dude, I I remember I was
three years into my marriage and
before it took me the courage to talk to
one of my buddies about
something I was struggling with and
and
I talked to him and
and and he was like, bro
I deal with that like every single week

(01:20:04):
and I was like, are you kidding me?
And I was like, I
felt like a total monster
But then being around other men like that
it just normalizes
some of these things in it
And we once we bring it
into the light we're like, okay
Maybe maybe I can deal with
this now or whatever right?
or and then the second thing is like I
said have the

(01:20:24):
conversation with your wife because
Everyone has when we talk about the
masculine essence
versus the feminine essence
Notice I'm not saying man and woman
because women can be highly masculine and
men can be more on the feminine side
And so when we talk about polarity, you
just need to make sure it works for you
and your partner, right?
And so for me, my wife is highly
feminine. I'm highly masculine

(01:20:45):
And so, you know, but her father is more
on the feminine side
And so when we got married
There was an issue because she was
expecting me to be
responding in a more feminine way
Because that was her experience of the
masculine you understand what I mean? He
was soft. He was gentle
He would sit with her. He would cry with
her when she would cry like you name it

(01:21:05):
very in touch with emotions
so when she got married to me, I
Wasn't doing that because I think she
married a rhino, you know
And I mean I grew up in a family of like
I told you I loved you when
you were born if anything changes
I'll let you know, you know
what I mean? That was that was
And so we my definition of masculinity

(01:21:26):
What it looked like to show up as a man
or husband in relationship
was entirely different than hers
And so we had to understand. Okay, what's
your family of origin?
What's my family of origin?
And what does it look like for me?
What does it look like for you to hold
space for me as the
man in this relationship?
And then what does it look like for me to
exist in this
relationship and to love you

(01:21:46):
As a man loves a woman, you know and how
to meet your needs so and that
Is tricky because that
looks different for every person
Right. So I would say the combination is,
you know getting around community having
that conversation with your partner
And then also if you really are
struggling with it find a coach, you know
Talk to somebody about about how to find
that balance because as we've been

(01:22:07):
mentioning it is so important
Right. Yeah. No, absolutely and and i'm a
big advocate for uh for finding coaches
You know and people who can hold you
accountable as long as you can
internalize that feedback
You know, I think that's
a another step of of of
You know rising above that immaturity is
can I actually hear those words? Can I

(01:22:29):
actually you know understand what what
somebody else is saying?
so yeah, great great advice there, so
You said that you uh, you kind of grew up
in in that type of household that uh,
That hey, I told you I loved you when you
were born if anything
changes i'll let you know
right, so am I to understand that that uh

(01:22:50):
That maybe you grew up in an environment
where it was difficult to
express
your feelings
Yeah, man, I grew up in a very
dysfunctional home right crime alcohol
Abuse was just
littered throughout my family
And I grew up stuck in

(01:23:10):
the middle of it all and um
And I thought I had it figured out. I was
the baby boy. I was the golden child
But I grew up with cops coming to the
door. I grew up my sister in prison. My
dad went to jail, you know
you name it, um tons of stuff and um
And I thought you know, I had it all
figured out and I

(01:23:31):
thought I had it on lock
But there were a lot of
wounds that I didn't deal with
And so when I got married those unhealed
wounds began to bleed into
my marriage
and my relationships
and
What happened was when it all hit the
fan. I was always in
senior leadership positions
very type a high control

(01:23:53):
um
When I got married three years in we I
lost I lost the I was let go from the
senior leadership position
I was in and I spiraled dude
And I went into
depression. I gained 60 pounds
We were a hundred grand in debt
uh, I was medicating
Drinking trying to you know drugs and

(01:24:15):
alcohol trying to cope
um and
We were on the verge of divorce. We'd
never up until three years into marriage
We'd never used that word and said we
never would that day. We had a huge
fight. That was the turning point for me
and um
And I knew that if I didn't change the
wounds from my past would keep
bleeding into this relationship and I

(01:24:35):
would keep torpedoing the rest of my life
and um
And actually the second part of the
transformation was at uh at a funeral
So there's two points a
fight and a funeral the funeral
I was asked to sing at this funeral of
this wealthy philanthropic man
And it was about 2 000 people there and
as I was wrapping up

(01:24:55):
I was getting ready to sing the last song
the minister asked the congregation there
He had said are you living
a life worthy of imitation?
If you were to die today, would you be
proud of the legacy that you left?
And that day in that moment, I was like
I'm not living a life worthy of imitation
if this were my funeral

(01:25:18):
Nobody would be saying I want to have the
body. He had I want the marriage
He had I want the bank account. He had I
want the confidence he had
And my life was a disaster
And so that day I went home and I did was
determined that I would
die to the man that I need
That I was in order to become the man. I
needed to be not just
for me, but for my family
And I began to write new chapters

(01:25:38):
Because up to that point the first
chapter of my life was my
childhood and that was a sad one
The second chapter of my life was my
marriage and that was a struggle
And so I was like, you know
what? I'm taking the pen back
And I'm rewriting my future and I'm
rewriting my what my past
Meant i'm giving it a different meaning
and this all ends today

(01:26:00):
And so yeah, dude to answer your question
short story long. I grew up in
immense dysfunction
I was not taught any of these things and
I just dude I sabotaged everything and it
wasn't until I took full ownership
That was able to turn my life around and
then honestly, maybe
you talk about community
I got five guys around me

(01:26:22):
And I looked out and i've actually i've
actually curated this into a framework
with my clients. I call the iron five
Every man has to have five men around
them. These men my
ceiling was their floor
Right where I ended they began they were
living where I wanted to go
And so they rallied around me. They held
me to the standard that I said I wanted

(01:26:43):
not just for me, but for my family
They didn't just call me out. They called
me up and they showed me what was
possible for my own life
And so within 18 months
after making that decision josh
We completely restored our marriage who
paid off the hundred grand
in debt. I lost the 60 pounds
built a strong body was like clean of

(01:27:03):
substances and focused
and confident and just like
Laser focus on the future man
So that was that was kind of how I got
started out and a bit of my
transformation story
Which you didn't ask for but you got so
no, that's all right
No, that that's that's why we do this
long form man because we get to learn so
much about about you. You know, I am
It's interesting to me because oftentimes

(01:27:25):
in stories of transformation like this
There's a pivotal turning point you
mentioned to a fight and a funeral
And I often say that
there is actually three
That that will that have the capacity to
change people and you check two of these
boxes death disease and divorce

(01:27:46):
Right. And so you are at the brink of
divorce. You are at a
funeral. Thank goodness
There's no disease that I know about I'm
not gonna ask that question
You know, I'm good. Yeah,
yeah, good. All right. Good. So
But you know, it's
I guess, you know, i'm curious
Do people have to wait until something

(01:28:08):
like this happens and and if they don't
What can they do instead, you know, there
are so many people like you
I think that
something has to change them an external
event or a source or
Something, you know flips that switch
i've had it happen to me

(01:28:29):
you've had it happen to you
You know, but man the thought of having
to wait for something like that
It really fucking sucks if i'm being
honest, you know, and
and maybe it's necessary
Maybe that's maybe maybe you have to do
that in order to to get there. But what's
your opinion on that?
I'm gonna write a couple things down

(01:28:50):
because I I tend to think
Faster than or uh, yeah
talk faster than I can think so
No problem
But yeah, dude
Yes, so good. So that's a good question
No, they they don't have to wait and I
would say if you're
listening to this today
Don't wait if anything i've said is
resonating with you.
There's a fire growing on your gut

(01:29:12):
Listen to your intuition. Don't wait to
the point where your wife is walking out
Don't wait to the point where you get a
bad diagnosis from the doctor
Don't wait to the point till you're so
far in debt that you don't know how to
get your way out, you know
But here's the thing man
trauma leads to transformation
It's just it's just the way it is
And so i'm thankful, you know, it's
messed up, but i'm

(01:29:32):
thankful that my dad, you know
Wasn't around and and i'm thankful that
you know, it sounds weird to say but i'm
okay with the fact
that he was an alcoholic
I'm, okay with the fact that there was
abuse in my family because it led it
It's that what led me to where i am today
And honestly dude, if it wasn't for that
i'd probably be some entitled prick
somewhere, you know what
i mean? Like I don't know
But but the reality is

(01:29:53):
no no you don't need to
Get to that point
But if you're here today and and you feel
like I want to make a change
before it gets to that point
Let me share a couple
things that might help you
Really kind of start on your journey.
Okay, we'll talk a little bit about
relationships and we'll
talk a little bit about

(01:30:13):
Like how to start. Um, the first thing we
need to understand is in the u.s today
70 of all divorces are initiated by women
Okay, which is wild
Now it gets even worse in situations
where the wife is a high
earner or she's educated
That that number jumps to 90 percent

(01:30:35):
Of women or divorces in the u.s are
initiated by women now of that
Uh of those divorces 80 of the time
The main reason stated for the divorce
was that the wife feels disconnected
emotionally from the husband, right?
So now what does that tell us?
The odds aren't in our favor. Okay

(01:30:55):
So if you're listening to this and you're
in a long-term relationship, you got kids
or you got, you know
Wife whatever that looks like for you and
let's remember the statistics. We just
heard about the fatherless homes in the
beginning of the episode
We understand what we do is important,
but we also understand that the vast
majority of the time women initiate this
means that

(01:31:15):
We need to take action and just because
we don't think there's anything wrong
doesn't mean that that's true
Because your wife might also be
completely unhappy and because of our own
awareness our lack of
emotional intelligence
Which which we've talked about we might
not even necessarily understand right
what's going on right
in front of her eyes
Okay, so that's one thing to acknowledge

(01:31:36):
and I know this to be true josh because I
can't tell you how
many guys have called me
In tears when they found out one of my
last clients was he found out?
I mean this guy owned multiple
seven-figure businesses and he found out
his wife had a bunch of
money runaway money saved up
She had a down payment on a new place and
she was taking the girls
And he called me in tears because he was

(01:31:58):
about to lose everything and he had no
Idea
You know
So it's important to understand that the
second thing you should do and the first
thing that I do with a
lot of my clients is this
Start with the end in mind. You're gonna
love this begin with the end
of my steven covey in his book
The seven habits of highly effective
people chapter two. Yeah, you got it
there. I got it there, too

(01:32:19):
Chapter two is called
begin with the end of mine
Napoleon hill one of the greatest thought
leaders of our time constantly talked
about beginning with the end of mine
My funeral moment my transformation
moment was me literally
beginning with the end in my mind
Right. Yeah, and so the question you need
to battle with is to get honest with
yourself and ask
yourself. What do you want to be?
known for

(01:32:40):
Because there's a hundred percent chance
that you're going to
take a last breath one day
You're you're you're not your body can't
defy the laws of physics
when you take that last breath
What are what are you going to be known
for? What do you want to be known for?
I'll walk my clients
through a eulogy writing exercise
And it's visceral. I know you're smirking

(01:33:01):
because maybe you've done it before you
do it as well powerful. It's so powerful
Yeah, so for your listeners
I basically say I want you
to take where you are today
And I want you to write a
eulogy in the words of your wife
The words of what would she say about the
man the husband the father you are today
if she was standing over your coffin

(01:33:21):
Now let's write that out
And then we're going to write a 2.0
version of this eulogy
If you were a hundred percent the man
that you knew you could be that you were
called to be what would she be saying?
Right now you're going to read that
eulogy out to your wife
And you're going to read it to those you
care about the most and
you're going to say this is the man
The 2.0 version. This is
the man that I will become

(01:33:43):
And I get them to read it to me and dude,
it's visceral and it's raw
But that is how we
begin with the end of mind
That is clarity. That is honesty and you
can't escape truth.
You can't escape honesty
so when we know truly what we want
And where we're going, you know
And if we don't like where we're at and

(01:34:04):
we're observing the the
trajectory like where I was
If I kept going on that
path i'd be single today
You know i'd be miserable and probably be
a drunk on the side of the road somewhere
I I wasn't able to change until I
visualized that future
until I got painfully honest
With the decisions that i've made right
and so that's what I
would say if you want to

(01:34:25):
If you want to take action and find some
motivation to to pivot now
Let's think about it. This we know this
way. We know that our lives are
Uh are a result of the decisions we've
made over the last three to five years
So josh, when I think
about where I am today
And I think about what the decision was
making three or five years ago. Well,
that makes total sense

(01:34:46):
Now if I like where i'm at, okay
Well keep doing the same thing
But if I don't like where i'm at then I
got to learn how to make different
decisions and learn
how to think differently
Otherwise, it's einstein's old definition
of insanity, right doing the same thing
and expecting different results
So I got to think about three to five
years from now. Do I
want life to look different?
Well, I better learn how to elevate my
thinking and elevate my decision making

(01:35:08):
or else i'm just going to get
More of the same because we know at least
90 percent of our decisions we make every
single day are subconscious
That means only five to ten percent of
the decisions we make
are conscious decisions
This is why we can drive to work and not
even know how we got there
But unfortunately, this is why we can
wake up a year from now and not know what
happened to the past year

(01:35:28):
Or even worse we can wake up one day when
our wife serves us the divorce papers
We have no idea what happened while we
lived out of life on autopilot, right?
So that's what I would encourage your
listeners with today man.
Like begin with the end of mind
That's i'm so glad you brought that up
because that's such a powerful exercise
and especially in closing
the gap between who you are

(01:35:49):
And who you want to be
honestly, and and
that's something that I do
Annually, if not, if not more frequent
Because every single time I do it
I feel like I learn
something else and I feel like I I
It's so easy, right? Right Mitch? Like,
you know, there are so many different
aspects of your life

(01:36:09):
And I think the the full exercise is
right. What would your
wife say? What would your
Uh co-worker say your your colleagues
say? What would your friends say? What
your brother says, you
know something like that
and you know
It seems like even if even if you
are intentional about
One or two of those things like there's
only so much bandwidth you have

(01:36:31):
So what I've found is if I don't
revisit that
You know i'll inevitably focus on the
thing that I put the priority on and the
others will fall behind
And i'll still be out of
alignment in that sense
Um, but just such a powerful exercise
Honestly, I get it it it brings tears to
my eyes every single time I do it
And i'm sure you've seen your fair share

(01:36:52):
of you know, people, you know, and the
impact that truly makes if
they're doing it correctly
Um, so, you know, I appreciate you
bringing that up truly
Um, I think I read I want to say it was
on your website something that
stood out to me. Uh, you said
Correct me if this isn't accurate, but
something around the lines of your legacy
is built in the everyday ordinary moments

(01:37:15):
um
That really that really hit home with me
especially with a lot of the the work
that i've been doing
lately and I think it speaks to
Kind of what you were just talking about
right how you can live life on autopilot
if you don't check
yourself and remain present
as ceos entrepreneurs business owners
highly driven

(01:37:35):
motivated ambitious individuals
We have a tendency to
just go go go go go, you know
And we do forget or ignore certain
aspects of our life, you
know, sometimes it's at home
Sometimes it's with extended family, you
know, sometimes it's with friends. We
don't hang out with our iron five anymore
You know what? I mean? So these there's

(01:37:56):
these things that get
lost. So help me understand
That quote your legacy is built in the
everyday ordinary moments what that means
to you and your clients
Yeah, I think there's a couple a couple
different ways I draw meaning from that
There's there's and i'll say this so I
don't forget to come back to it, but

(01:38:17):
uh, there there is a
component of this where
We need to
We need to become focused on the present
instead of the the future. I mean, it's
important to focus on the future
I just said begin
with the end of mind but
um
to not lose
Lose the family that we're
working so hard to provide for
You know and that's the great irony

(01:38:39):
Is you get you talk to men and they're
working their asses off to provide for
the family and the
great irony is that a lot
Of these guys
statistically will lose that family
Because they're so focused on work that
they don't show up where it matters the
most and we can talk about why that is
But another nuance to that is and I
actually posted about this
on instagram this morning
And i'll read it here to you, but uh,

(01:39:00):
your legacy is built in the everyday
ordinary moments not in luxurious
vacations or grand gestures
never underestimate your presence
And so it's not built in
the all-inclusive trips
It's not built in the bedtime or it's
built in the in the red bedtime routines
It's not built in the expensive gifts
gifts, but it's built in the way that
you'll listen when they talk

(01:39:22):
It's not in the special occasions
But in the way you carry
yourself every single day
right luxurious vacations and grand
gestures create memories
But your consistent
presence shapes who they become
As individuals
Right. And so I think guys get that
wrong. They try to buy

(01:39:42):
Their love they try to buy like i'm gonna
make i'm gonna make a bunch of
money and i'm gonna come home
I'm gonna take them on a big trip or i'm
gonna do this lavish thing
Which actually in fact if you're not
showing up in your present
Actually cheapens the whole thing and it
pisses your kids off or pisses your wife
off if that's what you're doing
That was what I that was what I
experienced when I was a kid, too
My dad was gone all the time and he'd

(01:40:03):
show up with like a new quad
or something and i'd be like
Really, you know and I'd
actually want to torch it
And that's that's the mistake we make
because we spend so much
time building our empire
That we forget about the true empire that
we should be building
is our homes, right?
And so so there's that nuance and i'll
come back to the reason why

(01:40:24):
we struggle with this idea
in losing our families just because
Again going back to we don't necessarily
understand our worth is in what we do
All right
So here when we talk about the masculine
versus the feminine the
feminine is about all about being
Right. The masculine is all about doing

(01:40:45):
Right. We're not really all that about we
don't really care too
much about being who we are
We're more and we're also
judged in the world by what we do
So what do we do? We
just keep doing more, right?
And we're really good at doing we're
really good at making strategies and
being super tactical
Right. And so this is why again, like we
talked about the crazy sucker, right?

(01:41:05):
We begin focusing on work
And we start to say because we're not
necessarily valued in
society by how we what we can bring
You know emotionally or relationally, so
we say well i'm going to
bring home a fat paycheck
I want to build this company. You'll you
know, you'll you'll love me more than
right? We work for our love
Right where we perform for our love

(01:41:26):
because whether it was how we were raised
or what culture says society says
It's what we feel like.
That's all we have to contribute
right
but then what happens is
You know
We come home and we we totally lose track
of the things that matter the most
because we don't know our kids
And we don't know our our wife. We don't
have the respect of our
wife. And so when we talk about
legacy being built in the ordinary

(01:41:49):
it's like
man
When you come through the door after
work, are you still wrapping up emails?
Are you sitting on the
floor playing with your kids?
Are you heading straight to your office
to do something on your computer?
Are you giving your
wife a hug and a kiss?
And asking about the hardest part of her
day and how you can
support her or saying hey

(01:42:09):
Thank you so much for how you're showing
up as a mom. You're an amazing woman. You
understand what I mean?
Though you you get to make that decision
every single day and the
legacy isn't built by going in
Like to bring those analogies
The legacy isn't built by coming home and
getting back on the computer
Or staying on your
phone and wrapping up emails
The legacy is built when you get on your
knees you play with your kids or you grab

(01:42:30):
your wife and appreciate her
right
That's where we get it wrong
But we we go to the office and we stay on
our phone because we feel like we got to
work and we got to perform
But our wives don't give a
rip. You know what I mean?
It's it's it's not about our perfection.
It's about our presence

(01:42:51):
Does she know you're in the
room one of the most profound?
Statements that might that that I that
i'll use with my clients that resonates
with them the most is
be where your feet are
When you're at work be there
mentally emotionally
Physically when you're at home at the
dinner table be there
You know psychologically emotionally all

(01:43:11):
those different ways
And that's the hardest thing because so
many guys they come home and
they're thinking about work
And then they go to work and
they're thinking about home
Right. I know i've been there and so many
guys and that's and there's this duality
where they never fully feel comfortable
with where they're at
Right. Yeah, and this is this is what
causes this tension of like your what
when your wife is like, hello

(01:43:32):
Are you here? I know your
body's here, but are you here?
Right. Yeah. So anyways, that's what I
mean by your legacies built in the
ordinary moments. Does that make sense?
It makes perfect sense. I appreciate the
explanation. I think it resonated
You know with me so well because for
years this is something that
I struggled with personally
You know and and it wasn't until I got

(01:43:52):
intentional about presence
that that it truly changed
But you know, I spent
I spent 17 years building an eight-figure
business and then
multiple businesses around it
You know, i'm literally the poster child
for what you're talking about, you know
walking through the
door still on the phone
answering emails
You know phone face

(01:44:13):
up on the dinner table
Waiting for something something to pop so
I can respond and if I don't respond the
whole thing's gonna
come crashing down mitch
You don't understand
You know
And this is something that you know
I put so much so much emphasis on because
I know that my listeners and my audience
struggle with the same thing
Especially if they're in the early stages
of business and they're a
founder and entrepreneur

(01:44:34):
you know
And somebody actually a coach that I had
put it to me the best and it
was when I heard this phrase
That you know, it kind of got me to snap
out of it and it's because I was
operating out of this
This mindset of fear
Right that if I didn't continue to not be
present in that way that I

(01:44:55):
was going to lose what I built
And you don't realize
that as you move through life
You redefine
What fear means and you
set a new baseline, right?
So the way he put it to me was josh
You're you're walking a tightrope and you
don't know if you're six inches above the
ground or 600 feet above the ground
I think uh, tim ferris was

(01:45:16):
the first one to say it but
Once he said that to me in the context in
which I was like
operating. I was like, holy shit
Yeah
If I fall off i'm not
gonna i'm not gonna die
Right. I just I can step right back on
and if I can do that
then I can be here now
You know with my kids with my wife

(01:45:38):
Or to your point where my feet are if i'm
at work, I can have the hard conversation
I can lead the team. I can you know, I
can do all that stuff here in in the
moment because i'm not
Wondering and worrying about
the things that are happening
Where i'm not
so now I think that's just
You know, that's why that
resonated with me. So I I really

(01:46:00):
I really appreciate you putting that
context behind it and and really kind of
Leaning into that explanation be where
your feet are is
something i'm going to remember
I got posted notes up on my desk like
just that remind me how to
operate every day, right? And uh,
That's going up there.
So thank you for that, man
Yeah
You know another another little one-liner

(01:46:21):
for you that you might like
Is your job as a man is to be the lowest
heart rate in the room?
Hmm when we talk about masculinity
When you say immature masculinity is
someone who reacts to their environment
Right, but as a man your responsibility
is not to be the
thermometer but to be the thermostat

(01:46:42):
All right. So when you walk in the house
A thermometer respond reacts to the room
the wife stressed out
the kids are screaming
And what do you do all of a sudden you
react you're like, I don't need this. I
don't need this shit
I've had a crazy day work now i'm
stressed out too. What do
you do? You add to the chaos
You're reacting to the
environment your thermometer
You as a man have to understand that you

(01:47:02):
have an emotional
significance that you carry
To every room that
you walk into especially
With your family you have the ability
your presence has the ability to be a
soothing balm to your family
And so if you can understand to be how to
be the lowest heart rate in the room
Before you walk into the room and ask
yourself that question.

(01:47:22):
What does that look like?
Show up bring the calm be the thermostat
and you get to set the tone
the emotional climate in the room
When that happens and your wife
When she hears the reaction when you walk
through the door you
want your wife to think
He's home I can relax
I can turn my brain off not

(01:47:44):
Oh shit, he's home like now i'm gonna
walk on eggshells.
It's gonna get even worse
You understand what I mean? And and I
think that is one definition between
Immature masculinity and true
masculinity. Does that make sense?
Makes a lot of sense. Let's let's play
through a scenario here because I know
this is a scenario that i've
been in and a lot of people
I'm sure that my listeners and so i'm
gonna ask this question on behalf of them

(01:48:06):
Right say, you know, we we are uh, we're
at work and we are
operating a million miles a minute
We're playing fireman where we're growing
scaling building business, you know, and
uh, and you know, we're on
decision overload we've got decision
fatigue, you know, we hear that that
Turn being thrown around and you know
The weight of the world the weight of the
company the weight of 70 families that we

(01:48:27):
oversee are on our shoulders and then
We come home and we come home to chaos,
right? The dog is barking. Maybe it's
running around with the towel
You know and and the kids are chasing it
But you know your wife is you know
getting angry because
that's a really nice towel
You don't understand how nice of a towel
that is, you know, and it's a oh, thank
god. He's home you deal with this

(01:48:50):
So, you know in the state that you're in
and I think this probably speaks to like
before you go in right
try to be intentional but
Can we talk about the difficulty of that?
Yeah
Yeah, super difficult
um, and and here's here's
Here's where we get it wrong
is

(01:49:11):
And and rightfully so because we're paid
to fix
For eight ten twelve hours a day
It's not only does the society say that's
where your value comes from
But you're getting paid to do it all day
every day. So you're really good at it
Right now you mean to tell me that I
gotta walk I gotta walk through the door

(01:49:31):
and flip flip a switch
And now all of a sudden i'm
not supposed to do that anymore
Right. Well, that's really hard to do.
And so what do you do?
Is you walk in and you start shoving
solutions down everyone's throat, right?
Yeah, and you start
treating your family like employees
Hmm
I know that all too well, man

(01:49:52):
Right
And this is what happens. And so
You know and and on a on a side note, I I
stay the time guys all the time
You know when we talk about intimacy in
the relationship and stuff and why you
Lose the desire of your wife. Well your
date nights just look like
board meetings with alcohol
Right, you're talking strategies. Why
aren't we picking up the kids? What needs

(01:50:12):
to be taken care of
talking about the budget?
You know, it's like really
You know, so anyways
going back to the thing. Um
Five ten minutes man
You can't you can't put enough value on
taking five minutes
before you go into the house
All right. I call the preparation pause.
I don't care what you
got to do like set an alarm

(01:50:33):
Put a sticky note on the garage door
before you walk into the house
Whatever you need to do and and all we
all we do is we take five minutes
And then we say
In that moment we're going to
take two or three minutes to
wrap up any
Emails wrap up any text conversations,
you know all those different things. It's

(01:50:55):
called the ziger neck effect
If we have uh open loops open
conversations open things going on
It it actually takes up mental real
estate in real estate in our mind
And it decreases the capacity for other
things like having a critical
conversation with our wife when we come
into the door or whatever
So we want to close as many loops as
possible, right? Number one. Number two

(01:51:17):
is you just take a
couple moments to breathe
right
and if you're listeners
You can google like box breathing or the
something that I like
called the four seven eight
Which is you inhale for four seconds. You
hold it for seven seconds. You exhale for
eight you do that three times
And then so you're actually
and this is not woo. This is

(01:51:40):
Neuroscience, right? This is how you go
from an elevated state of you
know, fight or flight whatever
And you get to a place of calm
And then you ask yourself before you walk
in and this is called an externalizing
psychological principle here
Where you actually get yourself out of
the present situation and say
what would a present father?

(01:52:02):
Do when he walks through that door
What would a loving husband do when he
walks through that door?
What would a man who is the lowest heart
rate in the room? How would he show up?
How would a man who's who is truly where
his feet are? What would he do?
And so this is our
way of asking ourselves

(01:52:23):
What would that person do and it's
because of something called the Solomon's
paradox, which we
could get into another time
But what it means is that we it's it's
almost impossible to take our own advice
But we're really good at giving advice to
others and because we see
our own lives with a microscope
But we see everyone else's
lives through a telescope
And we can't think clearly about what we

(01:52:44):
should do because it's it's
It's confused with insecurities and fears
and all those things because of our own
mental garbage psychological garbage
And so because of the Solomon's paradox
You can combat that by externalizing and
giving yourself advice
Right, so you ask yourself those
questions answer them

(01:53:04):
From a place of regulated being in a
regulated state and
then walk through the door
I mean, that's just a
really tactical thing
Yeah, and you can have that conversation
with your wife like hey, if you see me
parked in the driveway for five minutes
Ten minutes. This is very
likely the most ten most
impacting powerful ten minutes
Uh of the day and I and I I need them

(01:53:25):
Right because this is what's going to let
me show up powerfully
for you and the kids
And this is going to make that
communication, right?
You have to learn how to actually
verbalize to to your spouse
And this is self-leadership the stuff
you're doing with yourself
And this is leadership in the home having
that conversation ahead of
time with your partner saying hey

(01:53:46):
This is something
that I need to do for us
You know, what does it look like for
because remember respect and competency?
You know, what does it look like for you
to respect this sort of boundary that I
have right so that I can meet your needs
Which are to feel seen heard and safe
And if you want me to
show up and have the capacity
To be able to see you to hear you to love
you the way you need

(01:54:07):
I have to create the space and regulate
myself before I walk through the door.
Does that make sense?
Yeah sure does
No, and and you know what this reminds me
of something that uh, another post-it
note I have above my desk, by the way
um
And and someone once told me that uh that
freedom lives on the
other side of discomfort
Yeah, and and I love that saying I love

(01:54:28):
that phrase because you know
if I look back at my own life
And I see you know all the places that I
wasn't making space for myself or others
You know
It always took the discomfort of a
conversation of a situation of a
transition of something
In order for me to to to
make that space or achieve
That freedom and so, you know what i'm

(01:54:50):
hearing from you now like, you know,
there's there's going
to be difficulty in this
There's going to be discomfort,
especially if this is
not something that you're
used to doing and it's
not something that you're
uh You're really built to do or that you
ever had to do right and this is so it's
going to be uncomfortable
but the but the result of that discomfort

(01:55:12):
is
Having this space and and creating this
freedom in in this area of what you're
Uh of where you're existing really
Yeah, that
Yes, you've nailed it and and for for
every reason that we mentioned
Earlier in this episode we've been set up
for failure in many ways

(01:55:33):
Not to mention, you know
We talked a little bit about the feminist
movement and and and
and and they say well
The only way you have value is you show
if is if you show up on our terms
And they're demanding that we be this
incredibly feminine version of ourselves,
which feels so unnatural
And we're lost
We don't understand
how to live in this world

(01:55:55):
In with with their definition of what it
looks like to be a man
Right. So that's why it's so important
for us to like be rooted and grounded and
because masculinity is caught not taught
You cannot be taught how to be masculine
You have to be you have to catch it from
other men. You understand what I mean?
and and and so in relationships

(01:56:16):
This is this is key you talk about how
freedom is on the other
side of challenge or adversity
You know, I love
I love this idea that like
Everything is hard
right, and I think the problem I know
you're gonna love this, you know, but
the problem with another big challenge, I
don't say a problem another

(01:56:36):
big challenge we face is that we
Are waiting we think that one day it's
going to be easy, right?
David data in the in the book the way of
the superior man. He calls it
Because of the great
masculine error, you know
That one day will rest one day. It'll be

(01:56:58):
easy that one day will sit
on a beach sipping a margarita
But I tell you what living on a deserted
island drinking margaritas all day is
going to lead to insanity and diabetes,
right? You don't want that
Yeah, but here's the thing I tell my
clients all the time listen the sooner
you can stop expecting it to be easy
The sooner you're going
to find true contentment

(01:57:19):
because here's the thing
Making great decisions is hard, but
making bad decisions is also hard
Being out of shape is hard
Being fit is hard
being disciplined is hard
But being lazy is hard getting out of
your comfort zone is hard but staying in
your comfort zone is hard

(01:57:39):
Right starting a business is hard working
for someone else is hard
Having friends having a lot of friends
can be hard having no friends is hard
Fighting for your marriage is hard
Divorce is also hard
So at the end of the day
You have to understand that there is no
easy and the moment
you stop waiting for it
Because every great diet

(01:58:00):
starts on monday every day
We're gonna do the new thing next year or
january 1 because then then the
conditions will be perfect
Then it's going to be right. No, it won't
it's never going to be easy
The timing is never going to fully work
you either commit or you don't and you
stop waiting for it to be easy
Right when you can when you can stop
waiting for that and anticipate

(01:58:21):
That whatever you do whenever you do it
is going to be a challenge and perhaps
that's the entire point
Then you'll be happy
Because actually as men we've been
designed not just emotionally but
physiologically. We've been
designed to carry more weight
We've been we have the ability to
compartmentalize psychologically
We've been designed to carry more of a

(01:58:42):
mental load. We are built for adversity.
So stop looking for the easy way
Does that make sense? I love that. I love
that man. That's uh, that's fantastic
You know and and you know, we see this
stuff floating around a lot
But essentially it it still rings true
right and choose your heart. Yeah, right.
I mean like you said working out is hard
You know being unfit is hard, you know,

(01:59:04):
which one do you want to be?
You know, and it's never gonna be easy,
which I think is a really great lesson a
really great takeaway
You know, especially with people out
there. Listen, I do a lot of work too
with like the the
drama triangle, you know
the the victim persecutor rescuer
mentality putting on that kind of
framework over some stuff and

(01:59:25):
People don't realize like how how true
this is, especially in the
entrepreneurial world, you know
and and if we start to believe the
narrative to your point that something
Is eventually going to be easy or should
I hate that word right should be easy
Then, you know inevitably we fall

(01:59:47):
somewhere into this drama triangle
Because it to your
point it's not gonna be
And so if we lie to ourselves we tell us
tell ourselves that little tiny narrative
And it's too easy to slip
into that victim mentality
Or even you know become a persecutor for
somebody else who might be in that
mentality or whatever it may be

(02:00:08):
Um, hopefully my listeners
know what i'm talking about
I've talked a little bit about that on
this show already a couple of times, but
uh, but no absolutely
that makes sense and um
It's an important takeaway. I think for
the show you still good on time. Yeah,
man. All right. Good. Good good
Good good. Good. So I got I still got
questions for you, man. This is
incredible stuff. I truly appreciate this

(02:00:30):
Um, i'm curious you do
a lot of work with men
um
You know and a lot of the work in
particular I i've come to understand men
doing well in business, right?
And so i'm i'm curious
How do they influence you in some of the

(02:00:52):
things that you talk about
how do you learn from them?
Yeah, man, that's
that's so good I I think um
I learned a lot of stuff man because
But I think the biggest lesson that I
learned is i'm i'm i'm
constantly reminded that

(02:01:12):
That i'm normal and that that i'm that I
make mistakes that we all make mistakes,
you know that no one's above
No one's above
Divorce no one's above
You know a bad health diagnosis. I'm one
decision away from obesity
The day I start to say no to myself

(02:01:33):
And start sleeping in you know the i'm
one decision away from divorce the day I
start saying no to my wife
Is a day, you know as the saying goes the
road to hell is paved with good
intentions or you know, whatever
It's like you start getting lazy you
start getting
apathetic, you know, whatever
but
In coaching and I joke all the time, you

(02:01:53):
know people ask well, why did you start
the podcast? Why did you start coaching?
I'm like, man. I am my
skull is six six inches thick
You know what I mean? Like I learned
every lesson the hard way
And I almost lost everything and the best
and I I refuse to do it again
And to get to that point again, so the
best way that I know

(02:02:13):
How to stay on track and to be the man to
live a life worthy of imitation
Is to surround myself with
other men who are doing the same
You know to get on podcasts with other
guest speakers who are an
inspiration to have them teach me
To have them inspire me to be able to
coach men and have them
talk about their challenges
And me be able to help them through, you

(02:02:35):
know, all these different things
But also while simultaneously dealing
with my own challenges
because truly it never goes away
You just get better at carrying the
weight and you learn new tools and you
know, maybe you have
You fight less or you struggle less or
you you know as your
discipline increases, but
man, I've just learned the value of
of
vulnerability and the value

(02:02:56):
of honesty from my clients
It's because you know
They they just show up and they're and
they're so honest and real and these guys
High net worth very powerful men and are
like i'm putting it all on this table.
I'm like, man, that's
You've got balls
I don't know if I could say that
And it encourages me to just carry that

(02:03:17):
message to be honest to be truthful to be
humble to be authentic
You know and to never wear a mask to be
fake. That's not going to get me anywhere
You know
I'm never going to be alone. I will i'm
to the point where i'll
never be a lone wolf again
Because I see the damage in it. I see how
it doesn't serve me. Well, it doesn't
serve my family. Well, you know

(02:03:37):
Um, and so those are some of the things
that they've taught me i'm
so far beyond having ego, man
Because i've done so many
things the wrong way, you know
I hear you. What about what about
You know, I think that there's there's
been this, uh, maybe it's a narrative.
Maybe it's a societal
expectation. I don't know
But there's this there's some kind of

(02:03:59):
dynamic around guilt
for
Say say a guy wants to go hang out with
his his guy friends, right?
And and to your point community and
hanging out with other men and you know
surrounding yourself with that
But uh at some point in the
relationship it almost became
Hard

(02:04:19):
I guess I don't know, you know, we're
talking easy and hard but you you
understand what i'm saying?
This dynamic has has been
there where it's like, oh
You know someone so doesn't hang out
anymore. He's he's married, you know
How does somebody pull themselves out of
that and and what is
what's going on there?
if if maybe they had a group of guy
friends and had a group of

(02:04:40):
friends and and you know,
they entered into a relationship and
they're trying to manage and and uh,
You know balance their time, you know,
but that's the thing that fell by the
wayside. What's what's happening?
Yeah, they lose focus
Right. They they they start
majoring on the on the minors
You know instead of majoring on the
majors like we we all we we need

(02:05:02):
community. We need brothers, you know
We need guys to lean on and this has
always been the case,
but we lose focus and
We get egos we get we we
have a career we get married
We get a mortgage we get children and all
of a sudden we become
concerned about what society thinks
But what our father-in-law thinks about
what our brother thinks

(02:05:22):
about what our neighbor thinks
It's like well, I could go I could hang
out with my buddies tonight
Or I could stay home and work and push
this contract through
Or I could you know fill in the blank,
but but I could work instead, you know
Because that because that's where i'm
gonna really going to be respected
Right if I make an extra 50k this year

(02:05:44):
People are going to respect me more than
if I go out for a couple of my buddies
and I talk about having a tough time
on my marriage
That's not gonna make me look powerful
Right, but if they see the new bmw i'm
driving. Well, that'll
make me look successful
Right. So it's this this
this dealing with the ego

(02:06:04):
and dealing with the pride
and dealing with this
This need to be perceived as powerful and
strong and a producer which
are all great things to have
But at what cost?
I would ask
Right. Are you are you perceived as
powerful and strong and producing at the
cost of your social life at the cost?

(02:06:27):
Your brothers or your wife or your
children then that's too high a cost.
It's not worth it. Right and and I think
That's what happens. We we
become and then not to mention
You know
Social media and the highlight reel and
and and where we should be should our
favorite word, right?
Um, and so we're constantly comparing

(02:06:48):
ourselves to some someone else's
definition of success
Okay, you're letting other
people to find success for you
And so you don't even
know what success looks like
And so basically what happens is we start
We start living for other people's
success and we lose track of what it
looks like for us our

(02:07:09):
friendships the brotherhood
Our marriage, you know
all those different things
and so that's a that's a framework that I
you know talk about a lot is is
Just just this idea of defining success
for yourself having
success statements by saying
I will be successful when dot dot dot
And there is a filter that we use to run

(02:07:31):
through it. It's called the prime success
filter and essentially it's just
Five filters that you run every statement
through to make sure
that it's true to you
To make sure that it's relevant to make
sure that's actionable, you know
All measurable all these different things
But the idea is that you need to define
what it looks like to be successful
And if you want to have friends in your
life and brothers around you that that

(02:07:54):
needs to be one of
your success statements
I'll know i'm being successful
When I have five men in my life that I
can call in on at any time. I'll know i'm
being successful when I can go
Seven days without snapping at the kids.
I'll know i'm being successful when I can
train three times a week
I'll know i'm being successful when
You know
When i'm when i'm being intimate with my

(02:08:15):
wife once a week, you know
You fill in the blank with whatever it is
that that you define a
success and live out of that
Instead of what everyone else is doing
Understand what I mean. Yeah. Oh,
absolutely and and my listeners right now
are like, oh my gosh because uh, my my
previous sign-off question to the
Pre-rebranded show was uh, I was asking

(02:08:36):
people how they define success
You know, and so, you know
It just it's amazing that it kind of came
up organically in that and and so I I
really truly appreciate that perspective
so i'll all kind of pivot this into a
leadership thing now because
You know, I I really i'm
intrigued by the idea of

(02:08:57):
you know
People being driven by outside
perspective right by external influence
and when I say intrigued
I don't mean in a good way
Right. I just mean it's it's evident.
It's there, you know,
we all experience it
And you know, we we talk to a lot of or
there's a lot of leaders listening, you
know to to this conversation
And so I want to point this to

(02:09:19):
Self leadership because
we've talked about in the past
Before leading others you've got to be
able to lead yourself
Can you talk me through what that means
to you in this context?
The importance of leading yourself
Yeah leading yourself before you can
before you can lead others. Yeah. Yeah,

(02:09:40):
that's I mean everything begins with self
Uh, I mean you have no business leading
an organization if you
don't know how to lead yourself
That that might be strong
But it is what it is. I I'm convinced you
have no business leading anywhere
If you're not leading it in your own home
first if your wife doesn't like you and
you don't know your kids start there
And then start talking about

(02:10:02):
how you can lead other people
but here's the reason why
is
This also massively affects our
self-confidence as well, right? So
You know a lot of times guys will ask me.
How do I become more self-confident?
Number one i'm like, how are you not
self-confident? You're running these
businesses your type a your whatever
And so you you're I know you've probably

(02:10:24):
heard expressed this way before but
We lose self-confidence when we stop
break when we start
breaking promises to ourselves
Right. And so so let's play it out. Josh
if I were to say to you man
I'm gonna meet you at the pub every
tuesday night 7 p.m.
We'll have we'll have a pint
And then tuesday. I don't show up until
7 30 and then the next week I show up at
eight and the third

(02:10:45):
week. I don't show up at all
Eventually by the third week you're going
to be like I don't have
confidence in this guy anymore
I don't have confidence in this
relationship. The same thing
happens with ourself, right?
So when you make a promise to yourself,
even if you don't tell anyone
And you break it
What happens? So say for example, if you
said i'm going to get up at 5 30

(02:11:07):
And i'm gonna train
Now you might the alarm goes
off at 5 30 and you might say
Ah, i'll sleep in i'll work out later on
i'll take a break, you
know my lunch break i'll train
But what happens is you think that nobody
else knows. So what's the big deal?
But your mind understands
and knows what's going on
So there's a couple reasons why this is

(02:11:27):
important because you do that enough time
and you break enough promises to yourself
Your mind begins to say things like why
should anyone else trust you
if you can't trust yourself?
If you can't even trust yourself that
when you say you're
going to get up at 6 a.m
You don't do it. You don't follow through
you're a non-trustworthy person. You
can't lead other people. You
can't lead yourself, right?

(02:11:48):
So number one we break
promises to ourselves
And the second reason why this is
significant is because that first thing
you do in the morning
when you say no to yourself
When you say no to a commitment you made
Psychologically, you're setting yourself
up to continue saying no to the other
promises you made throughout the day
So it all starts with that first decision
I know jock will link talks about the

(02:12:09):
alarm test, you know
It's like that's the
first test of the day
Because if you say yes to that then
you're promising
yourself to say yes to the rest
Right. And so the reason why that's so
important josh is because if we can't
follow through and lead ourselves
That way and say yes and to
rebuild our self-confidence
Then we can't lead others because we're

(02:12:31):
leading out of a place of well
We're not being authentic because we
can't trust our own word. We
can't trust that we are being
Authentic and that our
insides don't match our outsides
Because our outsides say
say do this do this do this
But on the inside when I tell myself to
do this this and this I don't do it
Right, that's not that's not integrity

(02:12:54):
And so that over time if
you if you build an empire
You know by leading other people, but you
don't know how to lead yourself. It's all
going to crash and burn
Yeah, right because your life will just
you'll torpedo your life because you're
not doing the deep work. You're not being
um
You're not having integrity with what's

(02:13:15):
going on on the inside and
the outside and self leadership
Is all about that being like I do the
things I say I will do
I make great decisions for myself and for
my family. I lead my home myself
emotionally mentally physically
You know and I follow through then I can
in good conscience lead other people.
Does that make sense?

(02:13:36):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, if if you can't
You know if you can't convince yourself
that you're gonna do
what yourself is gonna say
Then how are you supposed
to convince others to do?
Anything of the sort?
Yeah, and so self leadership. I mean you
could split that up into
Any area you talk about setting up
healthy boundaries with

(02:13:56):
your family or at work
Self leadership means taking care of your
physical body. It means taking care of
your emotional health, you know, all
those things start from within
That's why i'm not an executive coach
I'm a i'm an executive whisperer. I talk
to executives who are
great at building businesses
Because I coach them on the things that
matter the most is self leadership

(02:14:18):
I teach them how to see I teach them how
to show up as powerfully
at home as they do at work
I teach them to to be able to lead board
meetings and lead teams or sorry
They know how to lead board meetings and
lead teams. I teach them how to
um lead their partners
and lead their children
And live a life worthy of imitation
something that they can be

(02:14:39):
proud of how to lead themselves
Well, that's the business i'm in right
and that has enormous
effects professionally
I mean it's crazy because you when you
when everything's dialed in at home
Man, you're showing up way more
powerfully at work. You're
tuning you're locked in right?
So I I understand and resonate with that

(02:14:59):
so much. I mean it's you
know, I I can be 10 times
the entrepreneur and the ceo
that that I am
If I know that at home everything is
good. It gives me the
confidence. It gives me the drive
It gives me the ambition. I mean it is
truly when i've come to find
find in my in my later years

(02:15:20):
Here is that it is that is truly the fuel
that that that you know
Um fuels the fire that I use to
accomplish and provide
and do those types of things
But I don't think we're often taught that
right? It's almost like we
think it's the other way around
So, um, you know bringing this thing kind
of full circle to your point.

(02:15:40):
So i'm i'm curious, uh, mitch
What do you want dad nation to stand for
five years 10 years 20 years from now?
Hmm, that's a great question
Yeah, man, I I want to make a dent in the
world to help men
understand that they have a place
That their value that that
you know when they show up
I say at the end of every single podcast

(02:16:02):
episode i've ever recorded. I say
When the dad gets
better the whole family wins
It's it's equivalent to like a rising
tide raises all ships
Again, you carry an emotional
significance. Your
children will do what you do
They won't always do what you say, but
you better believe
they're going to do what you do

(02:16:23):
and so
When the dad gets better everyone
benefits generations
Benefit, right? And so I
tell people this all the time
Um, and I get in trouble for it, but
they'll say what do you
I'll get in trouble for they say what do
you want your son to know?
And I say I want him to
know that he's number two

(02:16:44):
to my wife
Right and like well, you can't say that
you're supposed to love your children
like you're supposed
to be your big priority
I'm like no, no, he's not she is
because
The best chance that he has of having a
healthy relationship when he grows up is
to see a model for him
To see a man who loves his bride
Right. And so here's the

(02:17:05):
thing we know statistically
That our sons will grow up to become the
men that we are right?
We know that if you have if you listen to
this and you have a daughter
Your daughter this is true that your
daughter will grow up to crave the
attention of a man who is just like you
And so if you want your your daughter to
come home to bring
home a great man one day

(02:17:26):
You have to model that greatness for her.
So she knows how to recognize it when she
sees it in another man
You understand what I mean what you do
matters and so five years
from now 10 years from now
You know, I just I just want to impact
more more men help men restore their
marriages restore their
relationship with their children
Show up powerfully, you know part of our

(02:17:48):
mission is to help 500 000 men
restore their homes
Through media and mentorship. So media
being the podcast and mentorship through
the coaching, right?
That's that's what I'm in the business of
and when I go when I flash
back to my my turnaround moment
Are you living a life
worthy of imitation?
My in my mind that's a that's a that's a

(02:18:08):
life worthy of imitation
Yeah, I know that when I draw my last
breath if I can say at the end of the day
I've helped hundreds of men
You know change the trajectory of their
families and break generational curses
that they otherwise weren't able to do
I'm all in for that
Yeah, man. I've got two daughters by the

(02:18:28):
way, so I I that that
hits that hits for me
All right, man, what's the most important
or impactful thing that that we haven't
talked about any questions I didn't ask
You know, I do have obviously one more
question my audience knows and you know,
but before we get to
that what what didn't I ask?
Ah, man, I mean, I love this long-form

(02:18:50):
content or long-form podcast. I think you
hit you hit most all of it, man
All right. Good deal.
Well, then I will ask you mitch
What is a truth that took you years to
fully understand but
changed everything once you did?

(02:19:10):
Hmm When we are children
We allow you know when we're children we
our environment shapes our attitude
Right the environment we grow up. It
shapes how we see the
world. It shapes how we think it
Shapes how we speak it shapes how we love
But unfortunately as we grow up we still

(02:19:33):
continue to think that our environment
And we still allow our environments to
shape our attitude as grown men
But we must understand
that we can flip the script
And we can now use our
attitude to shape our environment
Right we get to decide
what rooms we go into
We get to decide what kind of impact we

(02:19:55):
have we get to decide what kind of
meaning we associate to our past
We get to decide if we
move from victim or victor
You know
We get to make that decision. So
So the biggest turning point for me was
understanding that my environment
No longer has to impact my attitude
In fact, I can flip that script and I can

(02:20:15):
I can change my perspective change my
attitude to completely shift
my environment
And to to take my
life to levels i've never
Imagined before you know to transform my
life and the life of
others if you were to ask me
When I was 12 years old
If I was able to do this, I would have
laughed in your face because I was told

(02:20:36):
I was told you're going
to be drunk like your dad
I was told
Uh, you're you're not
the smart one in the family
You're you're kind of
the dumb kid, you know
And so I grew up believing that narrative
and I for most of my
Young adult life I I
josh, it took me three years
I mean to launch this I was so passionate

(02:20:58):
but I was convinced
that I wasn't smart enough
I was convinced that no one had any now
that I had nothing valuable
to contribute to the world
right and so
When I finally did it I was able to
rewrite some of those lies that I
believed and I allowed
my attitude to shape my
Environment does that make sense?
Yeah, sure does man
And I I can say just after this

(02:21:18):
conversation that the world is going to
be a whole lot better off
because he made that decision
So thank you for that
Where can people find you where can
people learn more if they uh, if they
want to get in touch?
Yeah, oh, that's a great question. I keep
it real simple man. I do three things
uh content
courses coaching three C's
Um, you could check it out the content is

(02:21:39):
the dad nation podcast real
simple. Just google it find it
I'm on all anywhere you
listen to podcasts courses
I have something called a high
performance husband, which is essentially
everything I teach my one-to-one clients
in a online trilogy self-guided
But if you're the kind of person who
Wants to take action today then we can
have a conversation about what coaching
looks like which is the
third thing I have a group

(02:21:59):
A community called the dad nation
coalition, which is a
community of high performing men
Who are on the same mission who want to
show up as powerfully at
home as they do at work?
I'm a successful man who want to level up
in their home their health and their
happiness. So yeah, any
any of those ways, you know
Just honestly without sign of vain if you
just google the dad nation
You'll see my face
plastered around a few places

(02:22:20):
So, but I you know, I can give you the
links to all that stuff
If you could put them in the show notes,
and if you're okay with it, i'd love to
give your listeners a free gift today
please
So as we've talked a
little bit about, you know
There's emotional intelligence and
emotional awareness and you know
We stated that 80 of divorce is the major
reason is because the wife feels
emotionally
disconnected from their partner

(02:22:41):
well, I created a
Simple list of questions that men can
literally pull off the page
And use it to engage with their wives on
an emotional level and I call it the
connection code. Okay
It's just 50 questions
That are designed to spark
the fun and bring the fire back
And I don't care if you go out on a
bougie date, you know
Pull some questions off that or you just

(02:23:02):
put the kids down pour up a glass of wine
And then pull some questions off. The
only rule is the only questions you can
ask her. How's it come from this list?
and
I'm telling you man. I'm giving it to you
on a silver platter.
I've had women email me
The next day and be like who who was that
man that took me out on a date?
Because he showed up like I don't even

(02:23:23):
know who that guy was
You know, so it's a powerful tool totally
free for you and your listeners who are
listening today just to say
Thank you for your time
You know and i'll leave i'll leave your
listeners with this time
I think i'm not sure if I said this in
the beginning but time is the only
currency we spend without
knowing the remaining balance
right
I don't know how much time I have left

(02:23:43):
man, whether it's 60 minutes or 60 years
So time is precious
And so i'm thankful for you josh and and
and for your listeners who who've given
me so much of that precious asset
And so this is just a gift to give back
to you to say. Thank you
Well, thank you so much mitch for the
work that you do for uh for the wisdom
that you've shared

(02:24:03):
today much needed message
Uh, I think especially to you know, the
listeners of this show and and to me so
Thanks again for uh for what you do, man

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Be Where Your Feet Are - How high-performing dads win at home and at work.

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