Welcome to the Rising Tribe

Good evening everybody and welcome to our nameless podcast. Yes, that's right, we don't have a name for this yet, uh, but, uh, Jared and I decided to start this podcast together because we feel like there's a big need in our world right now, in our communities, where men just, men just need a place where they can belong, a tribe, a group of other men who support them and their goals and their aspirations to just be better men, husbands, and fathers. And so it's funny, A little while back ago, Jared had reached out to me about doing a podcast, and at the time I was so worked up in my current job and I was like, no, no, no, I have a job that I really want to put all my time and energy into. And while that's a good thing, there's so much more in life than our careers. And so we hope to talk about this today and share with you our mission and our vision for this podcast and where we want to take this. And I'm super happy to be here with Jared. He's a good friend of mine.

Well, Austin, thanks for the introduction. And yes, we don't even have a name for this podcast. We haven't purchased any website domains or anything. We just decided to hop on and start. And I've been thinking a lot about all of the, you know, all the big entrepreneurial podcast hosts, people who have started big businesses and everything. And, you know, when you listen to them talk, they say like, just get started. It doesn't matter. You don't have to have any of the details figured out. Just go start running and figure it out along the way. And I think over these last few years, that's something I've been trying to develop for myself, trying to get over that, that perfectionism, you know. And, um, well, you're talking about the, the, this need in the world for men to belong to groups, and I think that's, that's so true. Like, it wasn't until, it wasn't until I got married that I realized just how much of my whole life was like implicitly taught to me by society, just like in general, these lessons that weren't ever— that weren't ever explicitly taught, or like no one ever sat down and said, hey, this is how the world works and this is how things are laid out, and like they're just kind of rules of society. But instead, like, society just kind of teaches you these things, and a lot of times it's like stuff that's not even true. And, you know, we'll talk a lot about the way that, you know, like movies and media and TV and how that like impacts the way that we think. And it wasn't until I got married and my wife and I started to have conversations about stuff like that, I realized that, man, like, I, I've just been like absorbing things from the world. And I wish that I had been able to have more conversations with people whose results I really wanted to like imitate in my own life into the future. And so one of the big things that we really want to do is to start having these conversations. And, you know, start having them now. Like, we don't need to wait until we've spent our whole lives building these big businesses and making all this money and becoming really successful in the world. And then when we're like 55, then decide that we can turn around and start giving back to everybody. And I just, yeah, I want to start having these conversations today while we're trying to figure it out.

Which will happen. You know, we both have big visions for our lives and I think that doing this will also be sort of a journal for us to kind of look at our own growth. And one of the things I'm most excited about this for is to be able to look back and to see all the lessons that we've learned as we start our young families and as we raise our kids. And it— I learn new things every day and I realize, man, I made a really good decision there and I, man, I really messed up there. There's fun stories there, but to share in the future. But the cool thing with this is there a couple of years ago, there was a point in my life where I really just was thirsty for just— I really just hungered just to have somebody I could look up to and somebody I could look towards as an example in my life. And because of certain situations that, you know, we'll dive into here in a minute, like I didn't have that positive, um, I didn't, I didn't have, um, my, my dad to look directly to, um, because, you know, we'll get into this, but my dad had passed away when I was serving a mission out in Chile, and this is where we met. But, uh, I, I ended up finding several positive role models in my life that really moved the needle for me and ultimately allowed me to be just happy and successful now. And I still look up to them a ton. And so let's, I mean, let's hop into our vision for this. And our vision is to inspire young men to build strong families and discover their potential as men, husbands, and fathers. Jared and I have always had the best conversations over the phone, and we thought, well, we're going to be able to do this by having— our mission is to have authentic conversations about faith, family, health, and business as we strive to level up in our lives and the lives around us. And so Jared, share with me a little bit what you think about our vision and our mission, how we got there. It was a bunch of text messages back and forth.

Yeah, kind of trying to refine it and, and make it more concise and more clear. Um, well, I've listened to, um, I've listened to Jordan Peterson a good amount, and he was— listening to a lot of the lectures that he's put out, um, really helped me realize just, just what I was missing in my life. And one of those things that he talks a lot about is how important it is for us to take responsibility for our actions, to own up to what we've done, and to try to make our lives better, try to improve everything, starting with, you know, your own bedroom, starting with making your bed every day, starting with maybe eating breakfast and getting out and exercising and working, getting a job, working hard at that job, and finding a spouse or a partner for your life. And I, um, you know, we'll talk about a little bit too, but I've had a total of— I've talked to my dad maybe for a total of like 10 minutes over the course of the last like 6 or 7 years. He's, you know, he's not a part of my life anymore. And so I— but what I didn't realize was how, how much I was lacking even before my parents split up, lacking in that father figure for my life. And there's, there are several books written on the topic, a lot of research done. I know one of the really popular books is called The Boy Crisis. I can't remember the name of the author, but Jordan Peterson talks about it too, that the, one of the biggest factors for failing households and households and families falling apart is an absence of a father in the home. And it's like, we're kind of at this time in society where so many families are broken, just so, so incredibly broken. And a big part of that is fathers not taking responsibility and being present in the home with their wives and with their children. And something that, you know, we want to do is something that's very important to us, um, both like in a, you know, kind of in like a temporal earthly sense as well as from like a religious standpoint, is, is really to just build strong families as like the core unit in society. And, and then starting from there, because if you can get some things right in your home, then maybe you can, you know, earn the right to try and make changes inside of the broader community., and the world at large instead of having everything in your home completely messed up and disorganized and chaotic and thinking that you are able to go out and change the whole world, um, when you, you don't, you can't even get up and you're not even disciplined enough to make your bed in the morning, you know?

Yeah, well, and it, and it shows that the best investment we could ever make is within the four walls of our home. Right? I, uh, our next-door neighbors, uh, we're really good friends with them and they see me from time to time when I get stressed out about work or all these other things that, that, that can get in the way of what really matters. And one time our next-door neighbor, Shelly, she just paused me and she goes, Austin, and I was trying to make a big investment decision. She goes, Austin, the best investment you can ever make is within the four walls of your home.. And it's nice to have our next door neighbors. They actually helped me build a deck on the back patio. And we just like poke our heads over the deck and talk with each other. He's like in his 60s. And we just chat, feel like I'm retired, just talking about, hey, how you— what are you putting on your deck? What furniture do you have? But it's just cool people that when I told them about our vision for our podcast, they thought, wow, that's going to be so cool. Just because they really they really saw the need as well for men to just remember and to really just take pride in the fact that we have a responsibility to be examples to our family. And I think our stories with our fathers are both so different, um, but they both led us to kind of want to be part of a group where we could look towards men who inspire us, right? And yeah, I mean, I'd love to kind of share a little bit about kind of what happened while I was out in Chile around the same time when we met. And, you know, Jared and I are both members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and we served a 2-year mission out in Santiago, Chile. It was a lot of fun, and it was also hard, you know, and And, uh, but you'll notice Jared will talk about mate. If you ever hear Jared talk about mate, he picked it up out in Chile. And me too. So we'll get into that one of these days. But learned a lot of good things out in Chile. But one of the hardest things out there for me was, you know, going out every single day and talking about Jesus Christ. This is not a bad thing, but talking about Jesus Christ meanwhile, while my father was in critical condition with cancer. And that was such a hard thing to go through because, you know, I believe in this plan of salvation that God has everything under control. And I was kind of going through a faith crisis while on a mission where I was like, well, if God has everything under control, why is this going on? And I didn't really want to talk about it much. Well, man, and for the longest time, I wouldn't even talk about it after. So this has kind of been a new thing for me to talk about it. And our hopes is to kind of open up some doors of communication to feel more safe to talk about things as men, you know, like there's things in life that are hard and it's okay to talk about it. But, uh, you know, my dad was diagnosed with leukemia in 2000. I started my mission in 2015 and he was diagnosed Uh, later on in October— no, June of 2016. And then he passed away, um, later in that October.

Yeah, it was fast, you know, it was a matter of a couple of months.

Yeah. But yeah, it was tough. And I had a— like, I remember sharing a lot with Jared. Um, there weren't a lot of people that I felt like I could connect with because Yeah, I didn't— I felt like everybody I was out there with had like mom and dad, right? Like, they don't get it. So ultimately, with that being said, I do believe that God does have a plan. You know, I told you how I didn't really want to talk about the eternal plan that God had for us. And so our mission president at the time just threw me in the office where I just worked on visa paperwork for 6 months. So really good break from, you know, teaching about the gospel, and it gave me a time to kind of recover and ultimately was able to finish my mission on a high note. But there's so many lessons that I learned from that, and man, so many lessons I learned from my dad that I still hold on to to this day. And man, just, and we'll dive into that more, but my dad is just such a positive example of how to stay He was an introverted— he was an introvert, and I saw this extroverted positive side come out of him when he was facing cancer. And my whole life I thought I'm the positive one, my dad's just kind of the quiet guy. And I thought, wow, no, no, no, like my dad definitely— that's, that's where I get my positive outlook on life was from my dad. And, um, so man, and since then, uh, you know, not being able to have a dad to call is tough just because I want to be able to share news about, hey, I'm, I'm, uh, you know, proposing, or hey, we're having a kid, or, you know, I, I have people I can call in my life now, like my uncles, you know, my uncle's advice was when I was going to propose was don't suck, which I did. There's a good story there. Kaya had to turn me down the first time. Uh, she said yes 2 days later, but, um, You know, there's, there's these points in my life where I'm like, man, I wish dad was here. But, you know, ultimately that's where we're, that's why we want to create this group, um, where guys can feel like they have a, a tribe of other men to support them.

Yeah.

So I know you've had, you have a little bit different story with your father. Um, but well, yeah.

And I, and I wanted to mention, so I, uh, you got to Chile just a couple months before I did, but it was actually your dad that started. I was— your dad was the subject of the conversation that kind of got us talking because your dad was in the Air Force and he had been a group commander up at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. And prior to going to Chile, I had been at the Air Force Academy for a year as a freshman and, you know, basically just got my butt kicked for a year and then went to Chile. And my dad, we started—

My dad was strict. I don't know if you ever met him there, but he was, he was, he was, uh, everybody knew who Lieutenant Colonel Maser was at the academy. So I don't know if you ever got to meet him.

I never, I never talked to him.

Oh yeah.

Probably because I knew he'd been retired.

Yeah.

He, I think he had already left, but even if he had been there, honestly, I knew so little about the military that I couldn't even tell you what a Lieutenant Colonel or a group commander was, man. It, we could talk about that later, but yeah. Yeah, I'd gone to Chile. We started talking and we were like, oh, your dad used to work at the academy. I was— that's where I went to college. Like, um, and we started talking. So yeah, this was in 2015. I got there in October of 2015, and my parents had been going through some issues because when I was a senior in high school, it was the day before Thanksgiving, and I'm at home with my little brother and sister, and my dad comes downstairs and says You know, hey, basically your mom found drugs in my backpack and I have a pretty serious drug addiction to Xanax. And, you know, your mom's asked me to leave the house for the day to go get rid of this and I'll be back tomorrow. And they spent the rest of that, you know, that school year trying to go to therapy, trying to, you know, work things out. Turns out there was several years, you know, nearly a decade or so of lies, of hidden debts, lots of financial issues, tons of drugs, a lot more than just drugs. And just a whole, whole lot of, you know, the entire foundation of our family was shaken because it had been built on a series of lies and a lot of issues that my parents had that they, you know, they did their best to shield us from. And a couple months after I had gone to Chile, my mom and my siblings left the house. They could not be there with my dad anymore. But, you know, come Christmas time, so I'd been out there, what, like 3 months? That Christmas, my mom and my siblings went back to Chile— or sorry, went back to our house, the house that we grew up in. And, you know, they were there with my dad and they called me, you know, we did a little video call and they wanted to all be there for the video call because my mom didn't want to tell me yet that they had left. She had like written me a letter and she knew it wasn't going to get there by Christmas. So they wanted to kind of put on this show that our family is still together. You know, a couple of weeks later I get this, you know, backdated letter saying, you know, basically we left the house, things are not good. And that whole year was just, um, it was just like uncovering secret after secret after lie after lie. Um, so it turns out my dad actually had serious addictions to, um, black tar heroin, but there was a whole lot of speed and crack and, um, meth and everything under the sun. My mom would go back to the house all the time to kick people out. They turned the house— actually turned into, um, kind of like our city crack house. Tons and tons of homeless people were living in the house, and they're like ripping doors off. There's crap everywhere. Um, it was just— it was totally insane. And my mom had several conversations with, um, the homeless people there, and a lot of them, you know, they're, they're all druggies, they're all addicts. But, um, my mom would talk to some of them, and some of them would tell her like, hey, we're actually kind of worried about your husband because, you know, we all use drugs, right? We're all druggies, but he'll take anything from anybody. And it's like, we think it's gonna kill him. And so now, I mean, I've seen my dad a couple of times here and there. He went through some rehab. Last I heard, he was homeless up in Northern California. You know, he's got a new phone number every 2 months and he just shoots us a text saying, "Hey, you know, here's my new phone number." And then we don't hear from him. So, and you know, I always thought like my childhood, everything was good. You know, I had my mom, my dad, life is good. But as time has gone on, I've come to realize that, you know, my dad was there, but he's, he had actually been pretty absent for a lot of my life. Even when he was, you know, physically there, just not a lot of interaction, not a lot of, you know, you're saying like all these things that you wanted to just tell your dad about. I can't think of anything that I really wanted to tell my dad about. Like ever. Um, and I think, you know, I never really had that relationship where I like really looked up to my dad for anything. Um, and so yeah, we're, we're going to talk more about, um, more about, you know, all these, these stories and whatnot. But it was just crazy that during these, you know, these 2 years that you and I are living in Santiago, Chile, which, you know, it's pretty far away, um, that we were both going through these, you know, these crucibles that turned to be, or turned out to be really important turning points in our lives. Um, that have set us on a very different trajectory than we could have ever imagined. Um, and now we're super close friends and we're kind of all over the place now. Um, you know, so I know we'll talk a little bit about it later. Like, you're in Georgia right now, I'm in Texas right now, but I actually live in Italy with the Air Force. And, you know, we're, we're all over the place. But one of the things that we really want to do, um, kind of here with this podcast is just to share, to share some stories and to talk about the things that we're learning.

Right.

And because there's a lot of, it's not to say that there isn't anything that you need to learn if you already have a dad, like that you've got it figured out. Right. But yeah, we want to, like, we're, it's really important to us to be proactively seeking out better role models, um, in, in the realm of family, fatherhood, you know, being a husband, um, in the realm of business and, you know, having mentors and leadership, um, models to follow. So we, we want to be able to kind of draw on some of these experiences that we already have, but like you're saying, bring up these stories as they're happening, you know, as they're unfolding, instead of waiting, you know, 30, 40 years to have all these experiences and then finally start giving back and starting to share these experiences.

Yeah, I, I love that you, you bring that up, that, hey, we're going to share them now because we know that the things that we're learning aren't— they're really not A lot of the stuff that we're learning right now isn't going to be unique to what other guys will learn, you know? And, and so if we can share them together, we can, and, you know, we can work through on how to just be better men along the way. And yeah, I, I really am grateful for my uncles. Uh, you know, I have, I have coaches that have been great role models to me and, um, You know, I have, I have a buddy of mine who I found in my industry of door-to-door that, you know, I don't even work with, but he's always been that rock for me. And his name's Jeremy Davis. And, you know, I, you know, I, he, he'll be supporting me this week. I'm, I'm speaking at like a door-to-door convention that, you know, this is crazy, but I ended up going to, I went to Door-to-Door Con 3 years ago. I had no idea what door-to-door was with this guy named Jeremy Davis. He was kind of recruiting me into this gig. And man, it was funny because I was, I was kind of weird. Uh, I remember Jeremy and his buddy Dakota took me to this conference, and I went up to this onstage with, uh, Tim Grover. Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant's, like, athletic trainer had just given a speech, and he's like, come on up here. And I went up there, I was breakdancing, did a backflip, and Jeremy looks over at his buddy Dakota And he's like, this guy is either really, really weird or he'll be pretty good at this job. And, uh, turned out I ended up being pretty good at door-to-door. So I'm speaking there next week and, uh, really cool names up there like Jordan Peterson, Tom Bilyeu. And, uh, ultimately I ended up doing pest control and won like a Golden Door, which is selling 1,000 pest control accounts in a summer. And we can get more into that at a different time.

For anybody who doesn't know anything about door-to-door, that is insane. Like, that is, that is actually insane. And we're, we're going to talk all about how that was, how that summer was. But that's, that is, there are so, so few people who sell 1,000 accounts in a, in a day. The vast majority, and I would, I would say maybe 98, 99% of all door-to-door salesmen will never sell 1,000 accounts in a summer.

Oh yeah, it's, it's, uh, It's crazy. It is really crazy. And I think, I think you have to be a little weird. They were right. I am weird. I think you have to be a little weird to do it. But no, I, I, I think that, that relationship I've had with Jeremy has always been that person that I look up to, not just in business. Like, he's always taught me how to be a good door-to-door guy, but it's become more than that now. And he's one of my biggest mentors in life. But, uh, I, I, I think it'd be cool to, yeah, I think it'd be cool to bring some of these guys on in our lives that other people that we've found as positive role models on the show as well. But yeah, there's a little update and I guess, I guess I'm already talking about a little update on our lives right now. You mentioned that we live in, uh, Winder. We live in Winder, Georgia, 30 minutes away from University of Georgia. Where the Bulldogs just won back-to-back national championships. Great. Everybody out here is stoked. So it'll be a good year of selling bug spray out here. But now, so we moved out here a little while back ago, my wife and I met at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. And at the time, I was, I was so dead set on, on dating her. And when I met her, I was like, man, I really want to marry this girl. And I just knew I I'd found what I wanted, you know, like, I really, really like this girl. And so when we— one man, it took a while to get her to kind of be on board with dating me. But the key to her heart— she's a weightlifter. And so a lot of guys were like, hey, let's go work out, or they talk about her weightlifting. And I kind of found the key to her heart was through steak and guacamole and like grilled chicken. And so, and doing the homework. Prior. She had— it was her senior year of college. And so I would do the homework prior and kind of like, hey, I did the homework, do you need help? And by the way, I made dinner, look at this, I'd send her a picture. So, you know, like, just kind of be creative, fun. And eventually we started dating. But there was, there was a day where, man, we were on a walk. And she goes, yeah, whoever, whoever is gonna, you know, marry me is gonna have to move to Georgia. And I just said, cool. Let's do it. And so from there, you know, the ball started rolling. And, and I think she finally realized, I was like, man, this— she was like, wow, this guy is kind of serious.

And so he wasn't joking.

Yeah, no. And so we moved after we graduated. Uh, well, first of all, we got married, uh, the middle of my senior year. Uh, we moved to Georgia shortly after I graduated with You know, no jobs, no, we didn't really have any leads out here other than the fact that her coach was out here. And we really, one of the things I love about that move in our life is that we just decided the life that we wanted. We decided that Kaya wanted to do her weightlifting and then we built everything around it. And I just said, I'll make it work. Um, eventually fell into door-to-door and, uh, not by choice. It was out of desperation. I think there's a lot of things in life, either desperation or inspiration. This was pure desperation. But, um, we can get into that another time. But with, uh, recently, you know, in December 4th, 2021, we just had our first daughter. Her name is Georgia Grace. So she's the sweetest little girl ever. And I, a little— I mean, I know you guys just had your first daughter too.

Yeah, yeah. So, um, I'll jump into, uh, into a little bit about me. So I Like I said, I'm in the Air Force. I do— I'm an aircraft maintenance officer. So basically what we do is kind of like logistics around the maintenance of aircraft. So it's more of like an administrative role, really. And I, I graduated, graduated college in 2020. So was it Christmas time? That was December, December 5th or 6th or so. We were doing this Christmas party for our church out in Colorado Springs, and that's where I met my wife. So we were doing— so I was doing a musical number, playing the guitar and singing with this other girl at church, and she was like, hey, I've got a friend who's going to be in town. She's living in DC right now, but she's going to be in town for the winter. So you know, maybe she could join us. And I was like, yeah, sure, bring her on. So I remember we met up at this girl's house and, you know, there was my wife Marisha at the time, you know, don't know anything about her. Turns out we had actually had a couple pretty negative interactions a few months prior that we didn't know. It was super funny. Like, I guess a few months before, I had seen her at church. Oh man, this is gonna sound terrible, but basically my first impression was she could probably— like, she's kind of cute but could use to could, could lose a couple pounds. And her first impression of me was, that guy, that guy looks like a douchebag. And we hadn't had any conversation, and we could talk all about that later. Like, oh dude, Maya's probably gonna be mad that I just said that on the podcast. And anyway, we, we ended up re-meeting after that, right? So, and we sang— my wife has a beautiful voice and she's very, very musically inclined, so we kind of put together this arrangement of I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. And then at the, like, Christmas party, we sang, it went well, and then we hung out afterwards and hit it off. Asked her on a date, like, a couple days later. Asked her to go get nachos with me, and we go get nachos, and then she drives me to the airport and I fly home to California for a month. That was our first date. We just, like, went out to dinner, and then she took me to the airport and I left. And we talked, you know, that whole Christmas time, and just like really, really hit it off. I came back, she picked me up from the airport, and she doesn't just pick me up, she picks up me and my mom because I was gonna have knee surgery the next day. And I was like so embarrassed. I was like, I am not asking this girl to come pick me up with my mom at the airport. Like, how uncool is that, right? So, but she was— she like insisted. She's like, no, that's ridiculous, I'm picking you up. So She picked me up. I slept in the back of the car the whole drive. She had just— she just talked to my mom. They're kind of like, you know, literature nerds. So they talked about books like the whole time. Yeah, we started dating and we ended up getting married later that year.

That's great.

We got married that summer in July and then drove straight down to San Diego. And I was at grad school there for this Air Force program. So I was there for 2 years and then I got sent to Italy. You know, huge bummer having to go to Italy where it is absolutely gorgeous all the time. So, uh, we got in Italy— we got to Italy in August of this last year. So August of 2021— or sorry, August of 2022. Um, we were there for about 4 months, and then I actually had to come back to Texas for some training. And so my wife and my, my baby girl are still over there, and I'm here in Texas for the next few months. So kind of hard to be apart from them. But yeah, so I have baby girl, her name's, uh, Talitha. Talitha Mariam. And she is, I think, only like 6 weeks younger than Georgia is, um, because you said Georgia's birthday is what, December 4th?

Yeah, December 4th, dude.

Yeah, so Talitha was born on January, uh, January 19th, so she actually turns 1 like in a couple days, which is kind of crazy.

Congratulations, man.

Thanks, man. And to you too. Georgia's a cute little girl.

I have— you shared with me one time, uh, her, her name means— it, it, uh, is it Arabic? Am I—

yeah, so, okay, so her, her first name is Talitha, and that's actually my older sister's name. So Talitha is Aramaic. Okay, which is another, you know, older Middle Eastern language, um, and it comes from the Bible. There's a story where Jesus raises the little girl from the dead, and he says to her in Aramaic, uh, Talitha cumi. Which there's kind of a debate on what it means exactly, but it kind of means like little girl arise. And there's a debate over whether Talitha was the girl's name or if it was a term of endearment for, you know, like a sweet little girl, or kind of— it's supposed to invoke the feelings of like sweet little lamb, you could say.

Yeah.

So that's her first name. And then her middle name is Maryam, which is Mary in like every Middle Eastern language. My wife and I love the Arabic language. We both studied Arabic a little bit in college, and so That's kind of where we fell in love with that name.

I think this is a couple things worth mentioning. So I think it's incredible. You and your wife are both big language buffs, you know, you speak all these different languages and I just think that's so incredible and that you guys can have these conversations about dialects and the different words and the grammar behind the languages. But I love your, I had to bring that up cuz I love your guys' daughter's name. And you shared that story with me one time. We were— we got George's name out here. Yeah, we were up at this pumpkin patch up in northern Georgia, and the leaves were changing. Beautiful area, but we just loved the atmosphere up there. And so while we're up there picking pumpkins, there's all these families up there with little kids, and it just made us happy. But there's this mom, and She yelled out to one of her kids, she went, "Georgia!" And then this little blonde girl popped up from behind a pumpkin and then ran and gave her mom a hug. And so I melted and I looked at Kaya and I said, "We have to name our daughter Georgia." And so that's the story about how Georgia got her name. And then we just have Grace as the last name just because we like the implication that we need grace, we need God's grace. And so Georgia is just such a miracle in our life just because, man, we weren't expecting to have a daughter because of my wife's weightlifting career. That was our, you know, we moved out here for that. But when God says something, you do it. And we did it. Now we have a baby. So now we have Georgia Gray. So that was an incredible story that I can share more one day about how my wife felt prompted to, yeah, you know, pursue that as opposed to going 100% in her weightlifting, 1,000% weightlifting. And what's crazy is that her weightlifting is going a lot better now because she— I feel like she has more purpose in life, you know. So, but yeah, I, I, it's, it's, it's cool. I think it'll be cool for us to share what we learn as fathers and then also to If we're talking about it, we're going to be more aware and more, more aware of how we're doing as fathers. And I like the idea of us checking in on each other too, and to ask each other what we're learning. And on a daily basis, it's so important to just be present, whether you're a father or husband, or whether you're just, you know, you're not married at all, you know, just be present with who you are with at the moment. And I really feel like that's where the beauty is in our lives.

So yeah, and so some of the things that we've talked about doing with this podcast, um, so right, we— you talked about how a couple years ago we were, we were on the phone like every week, um, and we were kind of accountability partners. We had goals that we were setting. You were telling me about how things were going in door-to-door and, um, every week you were slowly increasing, you know, that your average daily number of sales. I remember talking about that when you first started hitting some of your like some of your ceilings, some of your lids, and you're like, yo, I just, I just broke through. Yeah, I just broke through my lid of having 5 accounts sold in one day, you know? And yeah, and I, I remember that, dude, when you had your first week of 40 sales, your first week of 50 sales, 60, like, yeah, yeah, I remember all of that. And at the time, yeah, we just, we were having such great conversations about whether it was about the, you know, the books that we were reading about, um, conversations or, or struggles. That we were having with our, with our wives. And then when it came to like you guys getting pregnant and then us getting pregnant and having the baby, and we, we had talked about it like, dude, we should just start recording these conversations because I think, um, you know, we are by no means experts in anything. No, but we're willing to talk about these things and willing to, um, have these tough conversations and to learn, to kind of dig deep and learn about ourselves. Every time I talk to you, man, I just, I I feel so much— I feel uplifted. I feel like maybe I better understand my own thoughts. I better understand who I am. Or maybe the— if, let's say, my wife and I are kind of not agreeing on something after you and I talk, I better understand both where I'm coming from and where my wife's coming from. And I think it's important for us to be able to have these kind of conversations. Who is it? Oh, there's, oh man, basically everyone said, I don't know who said it first, but when they talk about how you are kind of the aggregate of the 5 people that you talk to the most, you spend the most time with. First off, I'm a firm believer in that. And it doesn't have to be, the thing is now in this digital age, it doesn't just have to be the people you're physically with the most. It can be whoever you're listening to the most, especially if you're listening to podcasts like this that are kind of conversational-based podcasts. Where you're like participating in the conversation and those voices can become part of those, you know, 5 people that you spend the most time with. And so I know that there are a lot of people out there who don't have good role models, who don't have men in their circles who they can talk to about this kind of stuff, who can talk about the struggles that they're facing or the challenges that they want to tackle in life, the dreams that they have. Man, this is a big one. Like, and we'll have to talk a lot more about this in the future, but like, just the notion that you can't actually share your dreams with everybody because not everyone's going to treat your dreams the way that you—

you—

that they ought to be treated. Um, I don't know if you've ever experienced telling someone, hey, I kind of really want to do this thing, and then they tell you you're an idiot, they tell you you can't do it, they tell you all of their feelings about your dreams, and then you just feel like deflated and like, yeah, you can't do anything.

Don't cast your pearls to I mean, that's— people don't cast your pearls to the swine. I mean, there's that scripture verse where there's something dear to you, you want to take care of it. And so, man, I think that's so important to have people in your life that really cherish those pearls in your life. And, you know, we're always going to have people talk down on some of our dreams. But the, as long as you have enough, as long as you have enough people supporting you and backing you, um, you can make it happen. And I think me and you both have, have had things where, you know, we've had people thought we were crazy, but we did it anyways because we had the support system. And, um, yeah, I think it'll be really important to share some of those things that we're learning and we're striving to do. And then also provide, eventually we'll provide a platform where people can share some of their goals and what they're working on. And, and we want to extend and challenges as we do these podcasts to help people improve. And those challenges will change depending on what we're talking about, but it's how we're gonna uplevel as a tribe together.

Yeah. And that, uh, that idea, right, we don't even have a name for this podcast yet, but something that we know is important to us is building a tribe specifically, right? Building a tight-knit community, group of people, group of, you know, men who can, who can talk about, and support each other when it comes to the challenges that they're facing. And, you know, there's a lot of people in this space, there are a lot of people doing this kind of thing. But, one of the things that, that's just been kind of in my head over and over again is, is the notion that, you know, you are you and I am me and no one is us. You know, like there's no one else out there who's going to approach life exactly the way that we are. And, and also no one out there who's had these same experiences that we've had. And so, Our goal is to, you know, is to be ourselves and to improve who we are and to have these conversations together, to bring other people into the conversation, right? I would love to have more people in my circle who are willing to hold me to a higher standard, who are willing to push me past my limits, to help me improve and to tell me when I'm not showing up in my life and where I could be improving. You know, I would love to have more people in my life like that because I don't, You know, I've got lots of friends in lots of different places, but I don't think all of them can do all of those things for me. And I also, you know, we also shouldn't expect everyone to be everything for us. But we want to create this community where people can come and say, hey, I want to improve. Here are my dreams. How can we work together to make this happen?

I love it. And that's what we'll continue to do. I think, you know, you hit the nail on the head when you said me and you have very different lives. We're by no means the experts. But our lives are very, very different, and we have a lot of stories and experiences to pull from, and we'll continue to get more as we continue to strive to hit our goals. And I think it'll just be so rewarding to be able to look back on this a year or 2 years from now and to see the, the tribe of, of men that we've been able to pull together and, and the difference that we're being— we're able to make. And so I, I love that we don't have a name for it yet. We'll get that. But all you need is a mission and a vision, and, and, and that— and we're clear on that. We want to inspire young men to build strong families and discover their potential as men, husband, and fathers. It's pretty straightforward to the point, but it's very vague too. Well, it's very broad, I should say. It's very broad. Yeah, there's a lot of topics that we can, that we can tackle over the next year. And so, uh, Jared and I's goal for the year is to do this once a month at least. And if we can do that, I think we can really build this culture that we want, that we are envisioning right now.

Yeah. So, uh, to everyone listening, thank you so much. I know we— there were a bunch of other things that we, we thought about sharing. I guess we'll just have to save some of these stories here for, um, for, for next time. We've got lots of, lots of stories queued up. I know that we'll, uh, we'll dive into, but Um, yeah, stay tuned. We, we're gonna have some awesome conversations, and like Austin said, we're gonna throw some challenges out there, and we're just gonna try and improve, um, and try to close that gap between who we are now and the potential of who we could become.