What Influences Single Dads?

Hey, you're listening to the Single Dads podcast, a podcast for single dads by single dads. In this podcast, you're going to be encouraged and hopefully given some practical tools to be able to become the parent that you've always wanted to be and that you know you can be. Hopefully this podcast encourages you. Make sure that you download the Single Dads podcast app to join our community. Hope you enjoy the show. Welcome back to the Single Dads Podcast. Hope you're having an incredible, incredible day. We had our support group this past Monday and it was really dope, man.

Yeah. Is my voice crackling like yours?

I think it might be.

I don't know.

I think it might be the. I'm just messing with the audio processor.

Yeah, man. So we had our first support group that so many people have been looking forward to and asking about and we've been promising for.

Quite some time.

Quite some time. And yeah, I hope they don't mind, but we, we had, we. We didn't have a huge turnout. A lot of. And thank you for those of you who rsvp. That helped and we appreciate it. And we actually had some technical difficulties initially. There were some people trying to get in. We ended up getting Chris in. Chris Perkins, a great dude. James Bailey, awesome guy. Kyle, it's really awesome to get to know, get to know these guys. And it was, you know, unfortunately, like Miguel, there were a couple of people that missed it because they miscalculated the time zones.

Oh, yeah. And it's gonna happen a couple times.

So just kind of know what, what time it is in Dallas. It's Central Standard Time. And, and you know, if you're out on the west coast, California, you guys are two hours behind us. Yeah, east coast, you're an hour ahead of us. So that's, that's why we had it at 9pm on Monday. And those that did RSVP were honestly, I think 100% because they were spending time with their kids.

Oh, wow.

So can't be mad at him for that. Yeah, I, I honestly really enjoyed just. It was kind of a small, intimate group and I, I think we. We had to start over because of.

Ran out of time.

We ran out of time. That's. That. That will not happen again.

Yeah, we got that taken care of.

And then I figured out after the fact what the technical difficulty is. So that won't happen again. So moving forward, we will have a very smooth process, regardless if you were tuning in from your MacBook or PC, desktop, cell phone, Android, iOS, tablet, whatever.

Just no flip phones.

That'd be dope. Somebody has a StarTac out there, I'll buy it from you.

Or a Nokia, bro. Those things are gonna make it through anything.

Paperweights. But anyway, man, so we were glad to get that under our belts. We learned how to make things smooth moving forward, which is great. And again, I want to thank James and Chris and Kyle for showing up, being vulnerable. We talked about some really cool things. Yeah.

And some good conversations.

Excellent conversations. And I'm pretty sure if you. Those guys on there. I know Chris and James became donors right after the show, so thank you guys for that. And again, we did have to take the donation page down and switch Merchant. Switch back to our original merchant. And so those of you that I know, there's a couple of you that were donating and didn't switch back, we miss you. But. But thank you for all of you that. That do. Because it. It does cushion the significant amount of time and resources that we put into everything. So thank you. And the more the merrier. We hope to grow this community, and we will start having as many. As many groups as we need to to accommodate time zones around the world. If you're in Europe, if you're in Australia, we just need to hear from you, like, yeah, what works for you.

Yeah, it's gonna grow. Like, the more that it grows, the more that adjustments are going to be made, obviously. And it's exciting because we're, like, in the beginning stages of it all. And I really do believe that this is going to be something that's going to help so many single dads. Because if. If you were there, you know this man, like, the conversations that we were having, it was really, really good. It was way different than the convers. I mean, I just saw some dude post on Facebook today and something going on with, like, the baby mama. And then I went through the comments, and so many people are like, you know, just giving him some sympathy, and it makes sense. He's going like, the thing kind of sucks. You know what I'm saying? But I commented, and I was like, hey, bro, this sounds kind of borderline illegal. And then I said, get an attorney and handle it, because that's all you can do.

Yeah.

And then I see that he commented and he said, I'm going to drop this B and then start out the name. Name so that we can blow her up who's down. And I'm like, bro, what is that going to do? Well, besides feed. Feed your ego, right? And then on top of that, it's going to do nothing more than just to hurt your little girl or little boy.

It's just dumb. We all know it's dumb. And anyone, any listener out there that listens to our show knows that we don't even need to go over the details as to why.

Yes.

But in fact, I'm pretty sure it was Kyle that, that brought it up. It's like, he's like, man, the, the, the Facebook groups, he's like, I just quit. You, like, they're toxic. You feel worse after, like, getting in there and reading what people write.

Yeah.

And then when you leave, you feel worse than you did when you came in.

You feel angry at the world.

The whole purpose is to go in and get support. Yes. And, you know, that's essentially what you know as, as our community grows and, and like, the guys that were on. On our, our first group, which actually went way longer than we anticipated, too. And Frank had to jump off early because.

Yeah, sorry, guys. Got kicked out of the office and Scott would not let me back in. He missed my text. I was like, let me in on my phone, bro.

Sadly, I didn't know how because I, I, I didn't know what. I didn't know what was wrong, but I do now. Yeah. So that won't be any.

Let this be encouraging to anyone who's listening right now. And you want to start something similar, or do you have your own idea? Just know that these are just two dudes that are figuring it out as they go, that are learning through trial and error. And so do the same thing with whatever idea you have. Whether that's a business or whatever, it doesn't matter. Just. That's for free. Just. Just take that. But what I love about the support group is that everyone who was in there left feeling, like, empowered, encouraged, happy, more than likely, hopefully looking forward to the next time. Right. As opposed to, like you were saying, Kyle, on these Facebook groups, where you jump into these Facebook groups and it's just toxic. It's so. It's like, bro, hurt people. Just trying to hurt people is all it is. And I'm like, dude, first of all, you're justified being angry 100% whenever you're. Something's happening to you that's not fair. Like, I told that dude, man, this. This sounds borderline illegal. You need to handle that because if you don't, then it's just going to keep on going. You're just going to keep getting mad. Right. But it's like you're justified in being angry, but it's what do you do with it, man? Like, at the end of the day, how can, how can you bring a solution to it? It's kind of like, you know what it's like, Scott, when you got an employee or a co worker or someone who all they do is bring bad news and they never bring a solution. Eventually you're just like, dude, if you don't start bringing some solutions, I'm gonna get somebody else. Like, I can't. I can't be doing this no more.

It's. It's a, it's crazy because, like, literally it, you know, in some of these groups that there's 30,000 people. It's like, man, if we could just have 500 of those people, like a tiny percentage.

Yeah.

That are, are positive people that want to be in there for the right reasons, but we can't even advertise or tell people about. So we're, we're relying on you guys to one, be an active part of our community and to spread the word to help it grow, because it's only going to get better. It's going to help more people. Yeah. You know, we, we've been at it for over a year now, which is crazy. Yeah. And it took us a year just to get the support group up, and now we've, we've got an app and we are moving in the right direction.

Yeah.

And I, I was talking with one of my mobile developers and the things that we want to do with the app are super doable. It's just not cheap to, you know, write code and do certain things that we want to do. So it's just gonna. But we're going to do it. But. Yeah, but we also, we want to, we want to start having consistency of people showing up to, to the meetings.

When we want to consistently show up, too.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And we hope that, you know, any coach or any. Most groups out there that you get something from are. Are not free and they're asking for a heck of a lot more than, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40 bucks a month. So, you know, the more we, more help we get, the more features we can add and the more we can, the faster we can grow. All right, we'll shut up about that because we've talked about too much. But we, we appreciate all of you genuinely, and we look forward to our next meeting. We. When are we going to have our next meeting or group?

I should say let's talk about it right now, man. That way we got to, we got to stay accountable to it. I'LL be honest with you, bro, I'm down to do it this Monday again because that was fun.

All right, let's just do it Monday, 9:00pm Central Standard Time, April 25, and let's see what the turnout's like. And we'll go from there and DM us if, if you have a suggestion on, on a daytime. And we'll just kind of keyword suggestion.

Means we might not be able to do it, but you're suggesting it and we're going to take it into account because I like. Here's why I like Mondays. From my side of things. Your site is a little different, obviously, but as a divorced dad, Mondays, normally you don't have your kid. Most people like visitation rights. It's like, you know, Wednesday or Thursday and then it's the weekend and then you drop the kid back off at school on Monday if you have extended visitation. So I like Mondays because my side of the spectrum, the divorced single dads, it's like most of us don't have our kids that day. And so it kind of frees us up. It gives us a chance. And also it's really cool because if we just dropped our kids off that day, then that, that whole entire day, we start, you know, missing them, thinking about them this and this and that. And then guess what? You have something to look forward to that Monday night. I get to go with the boys. If you're anything like our boy James, you can just bring that rum and just keep on pouring it into your glass and have a good time with us, you know what I'm saying? And just look forward to that moment where it's like, man, you know what? Like, I'm gonna go in, talk, talk some good stuff about my kid love. Like, learn how to, like, love them just a little bit more and then share some experiences. And so I think it's awesome. Mondays. And we can add also, obviously, more times. But yeah, I really like.

All right, so. And we'll. And we'll send that out via push notifications, emails, as well as Instagram. So what was I about to say? I just went blank. Oh, I know. Please make sure if you're going to join that your camera on whatever device your camera works.

Yes. And tell them about the profiles, bro.

Yeah. And if your profile for the app is incomplete, it doesn't have. We prefer to have your photo up there so we know you know who to look for. Just so we don't have anybody that's, you know, trying to slip in that doesn't belong. Yeah, that's the whole reason. So if you don't have a device that you can use a camera, unfortunately, you know, we're gonna have to boot you out. And we're doing that for the safety of everyone in the group, so just know that. So we're not trying to be dicks and kick people out. We just want to make sure that everyone is. Knows who they're talking to.

Yeah.

And at the end of the day, we want you guys to be able to kind of get to know each other. That way you can start, you know, if you want, you can. You have a toggle switch. You can decide if you want people. Other people in the group to message you. If you don't, then you, you know, just turn it off and don't worry about it. But you have the ability to message and reach out to people if you need to talk or whatnot. If you guys want to share phone numbers, that's totally up to you. And so, see, that's why we don't have the rules like Facebook.

So, yeah, you actually have freedom of speech over here.

In choice, we want to bring you guys together and obviously, hopefully, you know, create some. Some friendships and. Yeah.

And you get to see, like, the distance of the. Sorry, I know we're talking about this a lot, but I'm actually pretty excited, bro, because you get to see the distance of the people that are in the app. So the more that people begin to use it and the more that we share it and it goes like. And it spreads around, the more you're going to start seeing, oh, wow, there's this single dad that's actually, like, in my same area that has the same mentality as me. Because if you're in this app and if you're joining the support group, it is because you have a specific mentality. Not like that dude that was on Facebook. Right. That's not. That's not the dude that you want to go grab a beer with because he's just going to want to talk smack about baby mama. You're not interested in that. You're interested in how can I continue to develop? How can I continue to grow? How can I become the best father that I can be? How can I play the cards that I've been that. Oh, wow, that's sick. Pointed to the camera that way. Whenever we post this on YouTube.

So you can kind of scroll out and see the entire. See the entire map. Map of the world, but you can see where everyone is. Obviously, most people are in North America, so But yeah, you can see where everyone is.

Yeah, man.

There's a lot of people that are closer to Texas than I thought.

And it's, it's going to be cool because you'll find people around your area that you can connect with. You can. Like, there is no excuse now for as a single dad to start feeling alone. There's just no excuse because now we're, we're giving more tools. Like, I'm excited, bro. I don't know anyone who's done this for single dads like this, this much. Just trying to like, be there for each other. I know for single moms, it's, there's a ton out there, but for single dads, bro, like, this is the first time that I've really heard of something where it's like, we just really want to link arms and like move forward together and not combat the single moms, but just empower each other. Like be there for, for one another. So I'm really excited for that.

Yeah. And I changed. Change a couple of things up. Just FYI on the I, I called. So there's a members chat room and there's a room that says meet other members. Meet other members. Will show you in the bottom right corner. You can click on it and it'll go to a map or it'll show you where everyone is and their kind of, their, their face on the map, which is cool. You can click on their profile and whatever they've shared on their profile except their phone number. The phone number, if you put your phone number in, it is private. So just know that and. But you guys can message each other and then on your profile you'll, you'll, you'll see my information and then. Well, actually mine shows my phone number, but maybe that's just because I'm control the account. But anyway, it shows my messages and my push notifications so I can go back and see all the push notifications I've received, all the messages I've received, which is cool. So you can kind of set it up and kind of make it your own and do what you want. There's a toggle switch allow users to contact me. So if you don't want to be messed with, you can toggle it off.

Yeah, yeah, I want to chat about this, bro. I'm going to flip it a little bit.

Cool. Okay.

About the, the topic that we were going to hit on because we've been hitting so much on the support group and I don't know, I just, honestly, I felt like, God, just kind of put this on my heart to talk about, like, the necessity for community and the impact that community has in our lives. Like, I mean, bro, we've heard it said time and time again. Show me the people you hang around and I'll show you where your future is going to be or who you're going to be like, or what you think of yourself.

Yeah, I mean, a number of things.

Yeah, everything, bro. Like. And so. And this isn't to promote our group. I just want to be very clear on that. Okay. I'm never trying to convince people to work with me to join our group. No. I'm just convincing people that the power of community is massive. And so whether it's our group or another group, it doesn't matter. Just find somewhere to get plugged into because there is power in that. For example, Monday, Kyle and James, both single dads that have about the same situation going on. Hello. Help each other out, connect. There's connection. You know, now we. Now we have not just rapport, but we can relate and we're wanting to head in the same direction.

Yeah. I'm saying those guys both have daughters, like 2 and 3, very close to the same age. Yeah. A few months apart, maybe. And. And then Chris, who's on there, who's actually here in Dallas, literally lives like a few miles from me.

Yeah.

Wish I sent you a message in the app that you didn't respond to, seeing if you wanted to grab a beer sometime. Feelings are hurt, but. Just kidding. But. But, you know, he's got two boys, so I think 6 and 8, if I remember correctly. But. And all that information's on people's profiles, and the more you put on there is the better because you want, you know, everyone in the community wants to know who they're dealing with and who they're going to be talking to when we do get on these. Like, I need community not to. But cut you off. But community is, is. I mean, people beg for it. I mean, I get DMs about when is this going to start? When is this going to start? And then, of course, they don't show up. But. But I mean, I. I mean, I have paid, over time, I have paid to be part of mastermind groups. Just, you know, what. Multiple reasons. But this, you know, whether. Whether it's for reasons to hold yourself accountable if you're building a business or it's. It's crucial, especially if you're like an entrepreneur or a solopreneur or a single. A single dad. I mean, it's like, we're all. We're all, like, going down new avenues and of life. That we are. There's. There's no, like, rule. There's not a book that tells us, you know, what to do when we run into this. So if you're involved in community, I promise you that you're able to talk to somebody and somebody will allow you to see it from different perspectives.

Yes.

Or maybe they've experienced and they similar.

They've been there, done that. They're like, hey, this works, this doesn't.

Yeah. And we had a lot. We had a lot of that happen. Just. I hate to keep going back to it, but.

Well, I don't. I don't. Because that's what all of this is about.

Well, I mean, you know, we were able to, like, give some. Some solid advice. It's like, I. You know, to. I remember to Kyle, like, he brought up a concern, and I'm not going to get into details because I'll leave that at, you know.

Yeah.

In the group, we want to put every.

Yeah, exactly.

But, you know, I was able to say, hey, think about this, because, you know, in hindsight, I wished I had done.

Wow.

So it's really good. Hopefully it helped him, but if it didn't, it at least provided a new perspective and.

And got him to explore it in different ways. And that's what it's all like. Community is so massive for all of us. I can. I can literally pinpoint when my spiritual journey, like, blew up in a good way. Obviously, it was because of the community that I was in. I can actually remember when my body blew up in a bad way, and it was because of the community that I was around. You know what I'm saying? And. And then when I started my business, I remember how everything started to change, and it was because the people that I was consistently putting myself around.

Right.

That's. That's all it is. And so it's not even. Do you want to be a business owner? Yes, obviously that. Single dad? Yes, obviously that. But do you want better mental health? Yes, that's gonna. You can find community for that. Right. And I think we're gonna cover a lot of that stuff in our own support groups as well. Do you want to get in better shape, the community, for that? You know, I'm down if you guys are down to do the 75 hard challenge. Still have not done it. 75 days, you work out for 45 minutes twice a day, one indoor, one outdoor. You read one chapter of a personal development book. You do Any type of diet that you want, and then you drink a gallon of water. You do that for 75 days, I'm down. And then, boom. There's another community for that.

Right.

It's just all, what result do we want in our lives? And I'm tired. Like, I don't know, bro. I don't want to live my life by default in all these other areas. When I become aware of something that I do not like, first off, I accept it. Like, I am terrible at paying my bills. I need a personal assistant eventually in my life that handles paying my bills because I'm terrible at it. And I admit that. And as soon as I can admit that, guess what I get to do? I get to start changing it if I want to.

And that's another thing community does. It allows you to realize you're not the only one.

Yes. You're not broken and dysfunctional.

Well, that's. You're not the only one that's broken in certain areas or have issues in certain areas. And you learn that real quick. But there's also people that were broken how you might be now and can share how they.

Yes.

You know, transformed out of that. And at the end of the day, that's a prime example of what community is all about. Right. And you know that I honestly hope and believe that what we are starting, what we have started a year ago, but what we're starting now is kind of like a next level.

Yes, it is.

When I first told you, hey, man, I'm going to start an app company again, and once I do, I'm going to build an app, bro.

Okay. And Scott doesn't know I'm going to do this. He might get mad at me, but I don't really care. This is how good of a guy Scott is. Just to let you guys in on a very personal level, this dude wanted to start a company building apps, and the first thing he said was, I'm gonna build the single dads podcast an app instead. Most people would say, I need to go out and get clients, get enough profit, so then. Then I can eat that cost. But Scott did it the complete opposite way. So if that doesn't show his heart for, like, this community, for you men, for me, for everything that we're. I don't know what does. And again, he doesn't know that I was going to do that, but that just shows you. Like, this is the kind of com. This. This is the kind of dude that I want. I want to be around. And I hope it's the Kind of dude that you want to be around because he's been through a lot of stuff and he's got a lot of wisdom and do I have wisdom? Yes, I, I do believe I have wisdom. The only reason I believe that is because I've been through some stuff. But I've also read a lot of books and if you want to get wisdom, read a book. You take somebody's 50 years experiences and you grab it all in two weeks, which is pretty incredible. But that's the power of community. The power of community is being literally in touch with people like that. Right? Like, I mean, we got the, the dudes that were on there were just incredible dudes. All, all three of them. And I can't wait for who else comes in and they've conquered specific areas in their lives. Like one of the dudes, I'm not going to say his name because again, want to make sure that, you know, we protect the group and the privacy of it. But he was just talking about how he was carrying so much weight for family in general. And I was like, bro, I know, I know what that feels like. And there was a moment of being able to relate. And guess, guess what I get to do now. I get to pray for my brother now because I don't only have empathy for it, but I feel what he's felt before and what he's probably continuing to feel. So I get to now support him in a way that I believe it's just more, even more powerful than just being in the support group. Right. But this is what, this is what you're unlocked to and what you open up yourself to when you join and keyword join. Like Scott said, we get messages all the time. People, oh, I can't wait. I need this, I need this, I need this. But if you don't make the choice to join, nothing's going to change. But when you make that choice, it's just like when you make that choice to open up in these groups, things can begin to change.

And honestly, there's more than one reason why we call donors members. Sure, money has been spent and probably more so than I'll ever see back, but it doesn't matter. The point is, the reason we want you to donate is because we want you to have some skin in the game and we want you to, you know, it's, it's kind of like when you, when you pay a trainer, you're more likely to show up and.

Yes.

And train. When you've, you know, when you, when you got what you Know, X amount of dollars going to that trainer every month or week or whatever. And you know, we're providing a hell of a lot of value, not just with our podcast, but now with a completely new add on that will continue to create more community. More.

It's going to be my favorite. Yeah.

And it's just going to get better and better and better. And for those of you who are part of this and, and experiencing the, the, you know, I guess the, from the beginning, the, the infancy of this community, you know, hopefully a couple of you guys will want to help, help out and kind of help us lead as it grows and. But who knows? I. We haven't. We stuck to it. We. There was, there's been many times where we've been beyond busy and.

Yeah. Or life. Life was just kicking our tails, man. And we continued to. Bro. I know there's been episodes that we film where I have not felt like filming, bro. Where it's just like. But then I remind myself, man, there's, there's people relying on us.

That.

Not relying, that sounds, that's not relying. But there's people that are hoping that we show up. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. And we've all had those days and it's like. But once you do it, you feel better. And that's what we want to do, is provide information and content and share our experiences. So when you're done listening to our 30, 30 minute episode, you feel a little bit better about something. We've helped you in some form or fashion and I know today we've talked just a lot about a community and we're clearly excited about, you know, building this app and, and people, you know, becoming part of the community. So we don't have. This is kind of where we're going to start weeding people out. If I can think of, top of my head, at least half a dozen people that have literally said, I need. When is the support group. I need it. And so Monday night, 9pm yeah. But be there. Update your profile. Put, put, put the information in so people know who you are, how many kids you have. You know, just a quick little blurb where you're from and a picture and it can be viewing your kid or you or whatever, but. And then donate 10, 20, 30, 40, $50 and whatever you can afford. And I think anybody can afford 10 bucks.

Yeah.

And that's why we do it.

And I'm a donator because I want skin in the game and because I believe, because I. This is, this is my philosophy. On. On money. And I get this from. From church, if I'm being honest, because people hate when churches talk about money. But this is my perspective on it, okay? My perspective on it. And you can take it, you can leave it, you can do what you want with it. I just feel like it's a really good perspective to have. Like, if you can show me, bro, like, where your money goes, I can show you where your heart is a hundred percent. That's, that's. And. And I can show you where you're going. Same thing. Like, my money goes towards a little girl and towards health and fitness and towards my mental state and my personal development. All of my money goes in those directions and to obviously, donations for, like, nonprofits and churches. Like, so that's. That gives me a clear roadmap and probably anybody of where my life is going to be later on. You see what I'm saying? And more than that, it's like the Bible talks about money so much, because God knows that if. If I have your money, I have your heart. So whatever has your money has your heart. And so that's why I love what you were talking about. Like, the skin in the game. It's like, get some skin in the game, man. Like, that's, that's. That's one twelve pack. That's one twelve pack. That's first of all going to save you about five pounds. And then you just get another 12 pack, you know, and just bring it onto the group and gain those five pounds in the group.

Yeah, do. Do it and have. Enjoy doing it. Don't drink it alone.

And then maybe one day I was telling our brother, like, hey, man, we need to do a retreat, because James is, like, an incredible cook. And I was like, it'd be sick to have some, like, single dad's retreat. And we got like, a professional chef who's just, like, showing us the best of the best foods. You know what I'm saying? Like, I don't know, man. Community's massive. It's incredible. You. You become who you surround yourself with. You. You really do adapt to your environment. So be intentional about the environment. And if you're listening to this podcast, you're already. You're already doing that because your mind is the number one environment that you have. Your brain is the number one environment you have. So what goes in through those ears affects your personal environment that you are creating for yourself, and then on top of that, the people that you surround yourself with. So that's all I got, bro.

Cool. Well, we're gonna wrap it up. I'm gonna go down this list real quick. Miguel, now, I know you should know the time, so I hope to see you Monday night, man. And somebody else, there's a few you guys that showed up because of the time zone mix up, but that's on you. I'm just kidding. A new guy that just found us, Andres Pulley, he has joined. Don't know if I've seen a donor donation. I'm gonna let. I'm gonna let anybody in one more week. This is it. And then if you're not, don't. If you don't feel that it's worth 10 bucks a month, then, you know, I'm not gonna tell you not to listen to our podcast because I. I hope everybody gets something out of it and. But if you want to be a part of these groups, you got to have some skin in the game.

Yeah. Yeah.

So look forward to seeing you guys Monday night. And until next. Sa.