In this podcast episode, host Ralph Brewer (known as Dad Starting Over) promotes his Help for Men Brotherhood community and introduces his new book, Rebuild: The Complete Guide to Starting Over as a Man. He begins with a sales pitch for the Brotherhood, describing its private forums, live Zoom meetings, one‑on‑one coaching, and in‑person gatherings, urging listeners to join at help4men.com. He then announces the availability of Rebuild (Amazon and PDF) and reads a lengthy excerpt from its introduction. The excerpt outlines the book’s purpose: to help men who have experienced divorce, infidelity, layoffs, mid‑life crises, health scares, or other major setbacks rebuild their identities beyond the “nice‑guy” script. Brewer shares his own story of divorce and loss in his late 30s, describing how he felt weak, unadmired, and disconnected from a masculine identity. He lists the diverse men he has coached—executives, business owners, veterans, empty‑nesters, and those who have suffered personal tragedies—highlighting common themes of feeling betrayed by a system that promised security for hard work and niceness. He argues that the problem is not brokenness but a lack of proper masculine education: men were taught to provide but not to lead, to be nice but not strong, to avoid conflict but not manage it. The book is positioned as a practical blueprint, not a feel‑good or victim‑hood manifesto, offering research‑backed strategies for authentic strength, leadership, emotional mastery, financial resilience, and purpose‑driven living. Brewer warns that the work will be uncomfortable and requires personal responsibility, but promises that transformation is possible. The episode ends with repeated calls to purchase the book and join the Brotherhood.
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Okay, if you're a frequent listener of the Dad Starting Over podcast and you find yourself saying, "Yeah, that sounds like me," well, you don't need another podcast episode. What you need is support. The Help for Men Brotherhood is where men go when they're done pretending that they got it all handled. You know, your dead bedrooms, your divorce, your loneliness, your rebuilding life. We have private forums, frequent live Zoom meetings, one-on-one coaching courses, all my books at no additional charge. And yes, we get together in person. Real men and real conversations. So stop doing this alone and join the Help for Men Brotherhood today at help4men.com/join. I look forward to seeing you in the next member meeting.
Hello there, gentlemen. I have some good news. My latest book, Rebuild: The Complete Guide to Starting Over as a Man, is now for sale. I will put the link, uh, to the book on Amazon down in the description. You can also get it from the Help for Men website, or you can go right to readrebuild.com, readrebuild.com, and there you'll see an option to purchase the PDF for $9.99 or the link over to Amazon. And I thought I would read a little bit of the book for you here, see if this is something that may interest you. I think this, uh, the content of this book will apply to a large, large portion of you. It's not just for guys that are, you know, starting over from some like acutely painful life experience such as divorce, infidelity, which is really common in my world, as you know. Um, but it's for all those guys that kind of, you know, you look at yourself in the mirror and say, who am I? What am I? What do I stand for? How did I get here to this point? This isn't what I envisioned for my life. You know, something caused you to say, What the hell? I, I need to start over and do this right. And for some, it's a midlife thing. Like for me, I'm turning 50 years old here in about a month. Uh, it causes you to question your mortality and what got you to this point, and how many years do you have left, and what are you going to do with them? Um, and a lot of you guys unfortunately are going through some really tough times with divorce and your, your spouse stepping out on you, all that fun stuff, as I often say. So guys, here is a reading from my book, Rebuild. This is from the introduction, which is titled Why This Book Exists. My name is Ralph Brewer, but most people probably know me as DSO, which stands for Dad Starting Over. I've been creating content under the DSO name for over a decade now. You may have seen my bald but beautiful head yapping away in countless videos you can find on YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, wherever your mindless doomscrolling may take you. You may have also seen one of my 4 other books I've written, or the hundreds of articles I've penned about my take on life as a post-divorce man. The Dad Starting Over name came from one of the absolute worst times in my life. I was in my late 30s, cheated on, divorced, and completely lost. The life I had built Gone. The identity I had carefully constructed around being a husband, a father, and a quote good guy— kaput. I had no clue how to rebuild from the wreckage that my life had become. I had spent 30+ years building up a structure that was, at its foundation, extremely fragile. Enduring infidelity, divorce, and being a single parent showed me what I was really made of, and it wasn't pretty. Once I paused, put the suffering aside for just a moment, and looked at myself for what I really was, it was nothing short of mortifying. I was weak in every sense of the word. Yes, I was nice, as many people love to remind me on a regular basis, but I wasn't a man. I wasn't the kind of man that people naturally turned to when things got difficult. I wasn't the husband who made other women think, "Now that's the kind of partner I want." I wasn't the employee who made executives think, "We need to fast-track this guy before someone else steals him." I was competent enough to keep my job, agreeable enough to avoid conflict, and reliable enough that people didn't worry about me. But I wasn't someone anyone particularly admired or wanted to become. And you know what? I knew it. Deep down, beneath all the pleasant interactions and surface-level success, I carried a quiet certainty that I was fundamentally disappointing, not just to others, but to myself as well. That self-awareness was both my curse and, and eventually my salvation. Over the years, thanks to the success of books like The Dead Bedroom Fix, I've been lucky enough to be able to talk to and mentor men from all walks of life. I've worked with executives who got laid off after 20 years of loyal service. These were men who defined themselves by their titles and company parking spaces, suddenly wondering who they were as men without a business card. I've coached business owners who lost everything in market crashes, fathers whose children died, and men who had heart attacks at 45 and realized that they'd been sleepwalking through life. I've talked to veterans who couldn't find purpose after retiring from the military, empty nest fathers whose kids moved across the country, and successful professionals who woke up one day wondering if all their achievements were just expensive ways to avoid living. And yes, I've spoken to hundreds of men who heard the dreaded, "I love you, but I'm not in love with you," and then were served divorce papers and probably found out about their wife's secret lover. Do any of these sound familiar to you? A couple of years ago, I expanded beyond my personal DSO brand and started Help for Men, and you can learn more at help4men.com. Our HFM organization has gotten me featured on mainstream press outlets like Forbes, NewsNation, and New York Magazine. Though for some reason, they always want to talk about politics, which is my absolute least favorite subject. Of all the important work we're doing to help men rebuild their lives, and they pick the one thing that I'd rather avoid talking about. Oh well, at least they help spread the word about HFM. But here's what matters. I've had one-on-one conversations with over 1,000 men. I've exchanged emails and messages with thousands more. Over at the HFM Brotherhood, our private support community for men, and you can learn more at help4men.com/join, we have lively discussions 24/7 on our private forums. We have also had over 1,000 hours of live member meetings over the years. All recorded, by the way. So yes, I've heard a lot of horrible stories. While every man's story has different details, the themes are all the same. The stories sound like this: I thought I was doing everything right. I worked hard, I provided for my family, and I tried to be a good husband and father. And then one day, she said she wasn't happy. She said she hadn't been happy for years. She said she needed space to find herself. 3 weeks later, she's posting photos with some other guy, and I'm sitting in a studio apartment that smells like someone else's life, wondering where I went wrong. Or, I gave 17 years to that company. I came in early, stayed late, never complained about anything. I trained replacements when people quit. I took on extra work without asking for extra pay. And then some consultant with a spreadsheet decided I was redundant. And they walked me out with a cardboard box and a severance package that won't last 6 months. Or I gave her everything. I never cheated. I never hit her. I never even— I never even raised my voice. I was a great father to the kids. I did my share of housework and even went to marriage counseling when she asked. But nothing I did was ever enough for her. She said I was, quote, emotionally unavailable, and that she felt like we were just roommates. And now she's taken half of everything I worked for, including half my time with my kids, and I'm supposed to be grateful that the court was fair to me? Or, I kept thinking if I just tried harder, if I was just nicer, if I just gave her more of what she wanted, things would get better. Instead, she seemed to lose more respect for me with every little thing I did for her. And one night after a big fight, she told me I was pathetic. And she was right, I was pathetic. And I didn't know how to be anything else. These are sad, angry, lost, confused men. Life did not go as planned. The script that they were handed— work hard, be nice, follow the rules, and everything will work out— well, it turned out to not be just wrong, but destructive. They followed the rules from an imaginary playbook, and they got punished for it. They played the game fairly, at least in their minds, and they still lost. They trusted what they saw as the fundamental system for life, only to discover it wasn't designed for their success. And now they're stuck, paralyzed by resentment, angered by those who wronged them, overwhelmed by the complexity of starting over in life, terrified of making the same mistakes again. Here's what I've learned: the problem isn't that you're broken. The problem is that you were never taught how to be a man in the first place. You were taught to be a provider but not a leader. You were taught to be nice but not strong. You were taught to avoid conflict but not how to handle it. You were taught to work hard but not see how to build something that matters. You were taught that loyalty guarantees job security, that hard work pays off, and that being a good person protects you from bad things happening. You were taught to follow instructions meet expectations, and trust the system would take care of you if you just did your part. You were handed a script written by people who didn't understand what women really want, what employers actually value, what children truly need, or what it takes to build a life worth living in the modern world. And that script failed you. Now you have a choice: keep following the same broken blueprint and hope for different results, or burn it all down and build something better. This book is for men ready to choose the second option. What this book is not: This isn't another "think positive and everything will work out" self-help kind of book. There are plenty of those already out there, and they are largely useless for men dealing with real-world problems. This isn't a "women are evil" or "the system is rigged against men" manifesto either. That typical victim mentality will keep you stuck forever. I'm not interested in helping you stay stuck. There are plenty of places online where you can go and bellyache about women and various man-hating conspiracy theories. If you're looking for more of that here, you're gonna be disappointed. This isn't about going back to some imaginary good old days where men were men and life was simple. Those simple days really weren't so simple. And nostalgia won't help you navigate the world that you live in today. What this book is. This is a blueprint for rebuilding your life from the ground up. The book is based on conversations with thousands of men who've been exactly where you are: divorced, laid off, business failed, empty-nested, and purpose lost. It includes research from some very smart people who devote their lives to studying what truly works. There are also hard-won lessons from my own broken-to-rebuilt journey. You'll discover why the nice guy approach destroys relationships and careers and learn to develop authentic strength instead. When everything you thought you knew about yourself turns out to be wrong, you'll rebuild an identity based on substance rather than performance. Instead of failing at leadership like most men do, you'll become someone others want to follow. You'll develop emotional mastery without being a therapy-obsessed wreck and build financial security that can withstand any setback life throws at you. Whether you're navigating modern dating or searching for work that matters, you'll approach both from strength rather than desperation. Most importantly, you'll build a mission bigger than yourself, something that gives your life meaning beyond personal comfort and trans— and transforms your pain into purpose for helping others. This isn't theory. This isn't academic bullshit. This is the playbook that thousands of men have used to rebuild their lives into something stronger, clearer, and more fulfilling than what they had before everything fell apart. Whether your collapse came through betrayal, layoffs, business failures, loss of a child, or just the slow realization that you've been sleepwalking through someone else's ideas of success, The blueprint is the same. The tools work regardless of what broke your old life. Yes, my friend, there is hope. Your fair warning: this book will challenge you. It will ask you to take responsibility for patterns that you've been blaming on everyone else. It will require you do some uncomfortable work on yourself. It will demand that you stop making excuses and start making changes. If you're looking for someone to tell you that everything is fine the way it is, that your problems are all other people's fault, or that you just need more positive thoughts, this is not your book. If you're ready to do work to become the man that you have the potential to be, the man your children will respect, the man other men will follow, and the man who builds something worth building, then keep reading. The journey from broken to rebuilt is not easy. But it is most definitely possible, and it's worth it. You are worth it. I know because I've walked this path myself. I've watched thousands of other men walk it too. And now I'm going to show you how to walk it yourself. Let's begin. All right, guys, that is the introduction to my latest book, Rebuild. I consider this book, as I mentioned in the introduction, just a culmination of all the things that I have learned over the years. I have talked to so many men. I've written 4 other books. So many posts online, so many live meetings with my members at the Brotherhood. Again, you can learn more at helpformen.com/join. We would love to have you. And, uh, it's always— everything's been kind of scattered in pieces, you know. This book mentions this, and this book mentions that, and we covered this really great thing in a meeting. And wouldn't it be great to put all this together in a blueprint, a plan for men that really want to do things what I think of as the right way? And that's what Rebuild is. So guys, I put the link down in the description for this podcast. You can also go to readrebuild.com. That's readrebuild.com. Or as always, jump on over to helpformen.com, go to books in the menu, and you will see it there. Guys, thank you so very much for listening. I do appreciate it, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.
