The Masculinity Manifesto with Ryan Michler

You can't really fight a battle if you don't know what you're dealing with. You pretend that there's no chinks in the armor, that there's no issues, that there's no dragon out there and everything's good. And you put up these, these rose colored glasses, man, you're really in for some hurt. Because that enemy, it's there in a lot of different forms. And the sooner you recognize it, the sooner you can formulate a strategy to deal with it.

I don't find many thought leaders that care as deeply about making men men again or helping a man become a man. And I grew up without a father myself. And that's part of your story as well, at least early, early on. And I didn't have anyone to teach me how to be a man, so therefore I kind of stumbled along. How, how was your experience and kind of. What was your background?

Yes, sounds like it's similar. My dad was out of the picture primarily by the time I was three years old. You know, I had a, I had a little bit of a relationship with him, but wasn't real present just from geographical locations. And then I had a couple other stepfathers come into my life who were not great examples of what it meant to be a man. And I picked up a lot of traits and characteristics from them that still carry over to this day. And I've gone through a lot of different stuff personally, from relationship issues to addiction, to all sorts of business failings, health issues, I mean, you name it, I've gone through it all. And the more I talk about this stuff, the more I realize that there's other men going through a lot of the same issues and nobody's talking about it, so. Yeah, for sure.

Well, I mean, it seems to me, I can't, I won't speak for every man on the planet, but I know for me, one of the hardest things that I had to deal with in becoming a man was figuring out that I actually needed a community, I actually needed a brotherhood. I actually need a brother, so to speak to, to talk to about what, you know, the things that we were facing. And I find a lot of men who are really trying to figure things out, they spend a lot of time in isolation and end up in dark places because of that. Is that what you're finding in your work as well?

Yeah, like I said, I mean, I. I've opened up or even just over the past several months with some guys and shared some of my own personal struggles. And it's interesting because they'll come out and they'll say, you know, oh, man, I'm going through the same thing. Or I dealt with the same issue two years ago.

Yeah.

I'm like, really? Well, why didn't you tell me? And they're like, well, why didn't you tell me? I'm like, yeah, good point.

We want to put on this Persona in this show of. Of. Of being maybe better than we are or making the world think that we have it figured out and we don't, and we put on the facade and we pretend and it ends up doing more harm than. Than good by doing that for sure.

Well, it seems to me, too, that one of the things that people struggle with, at least I have, is at least early on in early stage, you know, we're. We're taught that we're supposed to be the kind of the knight in the shining armor. We have to slay all the dragons. We have to do every. All of that stuff and find a way to be a good dad, a good husband, a, you know, meaningful partner in business or whatever. And it seems to me one of the things that I've had to be okay with is just being okay with being me. Shortcomings and all. How much. How much? Is that your work?

Yeah, I mean, I. I hear what you're saying, and that makes sense. You do have to. I don't. I don't know if I would say okay with it, but you do have to realize that there are shortcomings and realize that you're human and you're not invincible and that there is chinks in the armor. But with. Along the theme of the conversations you have is we have to acknowledge and recognize that those things exist so we can actually do something about them.

Yeah.

And to use your analogy about slaying the dragon with the armor, you can't really fight a battle if you don't know what you're dealing with.

True. Yeah.

No, if you don't know what the enemy is. Maybe another analogy would be football. I've got three boys, they play football, and I've got a daughter, and she's in dance. So I'll use the football analogy. My oldest son, he's a freshman, and so this is the first year that he really spends time every week looking at opposing teams. Football tape. Right. Watching their previous games.

Yeah.

Well, why does he do that? Well, they do that so they can formulate a better offensive strategy and a better defensive strategy. And if they have, the opposing team has a propensity to run versus throw or go left. Versus Right. Or they have a couple of players the team needs to really keep an eye on. Well, they can do that by studying tape.

Yeah.

And it's the same thing in our lives. If you put the blinders on and you pretend that there's no chinks in the armor, that there's no issues, that there's no dragon out there and everything's good, and you put up these, these rose colored glasses, man, you're really in for some hurt because that enemy is there. I mean, it's, it's, it's there in a lot of different forms. And the sooner you recognize it, the sooner you can formulate a strategy to deal with it.

Yeah, no, that's so good. I think that's spot on too. You know, I'm, I am curious. What are you, what are you finding? Because I know you guys do events, obviously. You got an amazing book, the Masculine Manifesto. You've got all these amazing tools. What is the, what are you seeing men struggle with the most that are coming into your tribe?

I would say loneliness is, is a big one. That's kind of, that's something a lot of guys wouldn't just necessarily jump to. But there are a long, a lot of lonely guys because they're, they're doing their businesses, they might be successful. Maybe they have a relationship, they're married or they have children. Maybe they've got some buddies and yet they're still lonely. You know, they don't, they don't have these deep forged bonds around common struggles and where guys can call them out and they can call other men out and be accountable towards each other. So that, that's a big issue. That's definitely a big issue.

Yeah.

Relational issues, health issues, financial issues. Yeah, I mean, it runs the gambit.

Yeah, for sure. I know just me, myself, you know, I've, you know, obviously I had a similar upbringing with kind of a no dad around, broken home kind of scenario. And then, you know, somewhere along the ways ended up homeless and just bad decision after bad decision and, and then, you know, went on to build businesses and stuff like that later on down the road. And one of the things that I uncovered as part of that process.

Was this essence of having to have a mentor kind of mentor me and what a man was supposed to be. You know, I had a lot of it. I had a lot of men in my life ahead of time that my mom was dating off and on that weren't good men. You know, they, they weren't treating her very well. They weren't treating me Very well. You know, there's all these different aspects. At what stage in the game did you really decide that you were going to create a roadmap for men to kind of really bring out the best in their manhood?

I mean, the way you're saying it sounds like there was a certain date where I said, this is what I'm going to do, and. And this is going to. Then I'm done. Like, here's the roadmap. Here you go, guys. Here it is. That isn't the case at all, in fact, with the book, the Masculinity Manifesto. As I was going through it, reading it again, or even reading it for the audio version of the book, I was like, oh, man, I'm not doing that. Well, I'm not doing that. I struggle with that. I need to be better here. And it was actually kind of hard for me to read because I realized how much I fall short, and I realized that I wrote that book for me just as much as I wrote it for anybody else.

That's the way it normally goes.

Yeah. And it's good. I just need to make sure I take my own medicine. Yeah. I mean, I threw my hat in the arena. In 2015, I was doing another podcast. My background is financial services, so I was helping people with their investment portfolios and retirement accounts and realized I love the medium of podcasting, but I didn't want to continue to have that conversation. So I thought, man, doing a podcast would be a great way to talk with high achievers. Men I'm motivated and inspired by, and it would be a great way for me to learn. And in the meantime, I can publish these episodes and other guys can learn, and we can build this community. And so I've always built it on the idea that I'm not out ahead of anybody, but that we're walking shoulder to shoulder. So when I'm struggling, I can lean on a guy. When a guy's struggling, he can lean on me, and we can march through life together. So, yeah, I've figured some things out, but also, I run across things every day, talking with people like yourself about what I can do better, how. How I can improve, how I can fix past mistakes or. Or work through struggles I might be currently dealing with.

Yeah, no, it's so good. I think it's a great reminder to a lot of guys, too, I guess, Again, I feel like a lot of guys. So my defining moment was actually getting radically honest with myself, like, without judgment, without condemnation, without, like, you know, it's just being radically Honest, this is where, this is where I'm at. Is it where I want to be both in my relationship, my businesses and so on. And at the time, of course, the answer was no in pretty much every category. And then I asked myself what needs to change? And then one of the things I thought was really powerful in the book was this concept of the archetype. Right. Your. Your archetype of, of manliness.

The.

Talk to me a little bit about that because I feel like a lot of men, again, I feel like a lot of men make mistakes because they simply don't know any better, not because they're willfully trying to like, mess something up, if that makes any sense.

It makes a lot of sense. I don't. I think the overwhelming majority of men are trying to do right and good, but they just don't have a framework or an example for how to do that. And so we end up using our masculine characteristics for non productive and even destructive outcomes.

Yeah.

When we should be using those things for productive outcomes for ourselves, our loved ones, even complete strangers. So the framework I talk about, the archetypes you're addressing here is protector provider, presider. And the beauty of that is that there's a thousand. There's an infinite number of ways to fulfill those roles. And I know that's a little bit even taboo in today's society to say that there are gender roles. Well, this is unequivocally true.

Yeah.

As long as we've been walking around on this planet, men have been doing certain things and women have been doing certain things generally.

Yeah.

And it's only if in the ease of modernity, have we even called into question as to whether or not what we should be doing is right. Or maybe we should be doing this, or maybe we should be doing the woman's job, or maybe the woman should be doing the man's job. I mean, it can work in certain dynamics, but I don't think it's favorable generally. Yeah. And it ends up doing a lot of more harm than good. So to answer your question, men are protectors of ourselves and our loved ones. And like I said, complete strangers, providers. That's mentally, physically, physically, emotionally, financially, spiritually, and presiders, leaders, learning how to lead ourselves well. And in turn learning how to lead others well, again, an infinite number of ways to fulfill those roles. Yeah. But ultimately, if we know that's where we're trying to get, then we can navigate based on our own personality, our own skill sets, our own experiences, we can navigate the course to get to that point.

Yeah, absolutely. No, and I agree with you on the gender side of things. It seems like.

In their best aspects, they complement each other very well. Right. When everybody's kind of in their zone of excellence, male and female, like. And I find the most unified families or the most unified communities have attributes of your. This is. This is. These are roles of responsibility. These are roles of responsibilities. And this is how the bridge between the two actually helps both be incredibly successful, if that makes any sense. One of the things I was thinking about recently is I'm trying to raise two boys, right? So I've got. I've got two boys of my own. I. I married into my boys. So it was. I desperately wanted a family for a number of years. Was very fortunate. Got married about eight years ago. Boys were about 11 and about 12 and 13 at the time. Now they're 20 and 21, which I absolutely love. And I told my wife at the time, I said, look, because originally it was. There was this propensity to, like, over. Like, she was. She had been playing the father role and the mother role for so long.

Right.

Sit down. And I was like, look, if you would just let me work with them, just let me do my thing, I will turn over men, I promise.

Yeah.

You know, and that was a promise that I had to get her to agree to, which took some time. But over time, she began seeing them stand up for what's right, stand up for those who couldn't stand up for themselves, spend time with. With a high propensity of work ethic and trying to get clear on their. On their own internal superpowers. I've got one son that's incredibly gifted at. I got another son that's incredibly gifted at speaking and sales and all that kind of stuff and trying to get them in the roles that kind of.

That.

That kind of best suit them. But one of the things that I always struggled in. In raising and working to help raise them specifically is when I was applying too much pressure versus when I needed to kind of be the. The dad with the arm around the shoulder kind of thing.

Right.

Have you ever struggled with that? And if so, what kind of techniques have you used to kind of maybe navigate that a little better? Because I felt like a lot of. I know, at least for me, a lot of fathers that I've seen are. Are either overly aggressive or overly passive in many respects.

Yeah. I think there's a couple different strategies that have helped me. I'm not great at this. Just like any guy. I have a Natural tendency to push maybe harder than I need to, or, you know, stomp on their. Stomp on them a little bit more. When I'm actually, I am genuinely trying to help or help them realize their potential. And. And yet I end up diminishing it and devaluing them. So. So number one is just being aware of it, Right? Of course. Of course we're going to do that. The other thing that I've noticed is, and I'm just speaking for myself personally in this context, is that I tend to fall into comparison, even with my boys or I try to live vicariously through them, you know, and I think about my past performance, and then I'll say, well, you know, when I was your age, I was doing X, Y, and Z. And you're not doing any of that.

Yeah.

So that's a comparison issue you're talking about. You're one of your son. Sons who loves history. Well, I don't necessarily love history. So if I'm judging. If I'm judging his performance on. Well, you should be into jiu jitsu. How come you're. How come you're all into this? Hit these history books. Okay, well, that's a. That's comparison.

Yeah.

So that's. That's an issue that I. That I fall into. The other one is that we need to realize that although we don't understand the women in our lives, they actually bring something very valuable to the equation. A great example of this, something so simplistic as helping your son ride or daughter ride their bike for the very first time. And you're out there and you let go of the seat and they go. And they fall over and they scrape their knee. What does the dad do? Come on, son. Come on, daughter. Like, but brush it off. Like, brush off your wound. Get back. You can do this. And what does the mom do? She runs over, she washes it off with the hose and kisses it and gets like a little Flintstone flavored band aid or whatever and slaps it on. On the knee.

Right.

And so what do we do? We're like, don't baby them. And what does she do? Don't be such a jerk.

Yeah.

What if instead we work together? We're like, oh, you know what? I can see the compassionate side of things. And so mom comes over and she's like, hey, hon, you all right? You good? Okay. And dad comes over and says, hey, thanks, hon. Like, sounds like you're good. Cool, let's get back on. And you work together towards trying to have productive outcomes for your Kids. Because the reality is that all of us need some nurturing sometimes. Like, all of us need the mothering. Like, doesn't it feel nice when your wife puts your arm around you and says, hey, you know, you had a bad day. Let me make you. Let me make you a meal.

Yeah.

I mean, that's nice. Yeah, that feels nice. And, you know, even that gets a bad rap because we. Like when I say that, I'm like, oh, go make me a sandwich. Right? The misogynistic side that we hear so many people talk, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about your wife realizing, hey, he had a bad day at work. I want to take care of him.

Yeah. It's called relationship. Yeah. That's one thing my wife has done really well, even recently. So I've been traveling a ton. I just got back from San Diego. I was there for a couple days.

And I got back, and just long plane flights and the whole deal, just trying to get back. And as I'm sitting there with her, we're having a conversation, and I'm actually expecting her to be upset with me for getting in late. Right. Just because of, like, stuff that happened, like, years ago. It's just like a pre. Almost like a precondition, even though it hasn't happened in a long time. And she does the exact opposite. She's like, no, no, babe, you've been in the airports all day. No, I just want you to go ahead and go to sleep. Meant a ton to me. Meant a ton to me. Now she's also the same woman that will push me if I'm not getting the best of myself. Right. If I'm about to make a dumb decision. I was joking around with somebody at this mastermind we were at, and I was saying he were asking me about relationship advice. I guess one of the. One of the guys is getting, like, engaged or something soon. I said, well. He goes, so how do you know? I said, well, I knew when I knew, but one of the things I knew that showed me that I knew was the fact that she was willing to tell me my. Not shortcomings from an aggressive standpoint, but from a compassionate standpoint. And then I've had several instances where I've gone against things that she's had these urgings about, like this gifting, this intuitive gifting about, so to speak. And every single time I've done it, I was telling them, but I. It's cost me $50,000 every single time. She's like, that person's bad news. That person's bad news. I would not do this business deal. And I'm like, well, what do you know about business? Like, I'm over here running companies and hundreds of team members. Like, what do you know? And then every single time she's been right. Every single time, right?

Yeah, I look, we got it. We got to be able to embrace that, that feminine, nurturing side and the, the intuition that she has. I mean, I've had very similar experiences with my wife and she's right, you know, she's right about those things. So yeah, we, we need to, we need to be able as men to be confident enough to be able to take that feminine side in and, and acknowledge it, recognize it, honor it, respect it, and see that it is an integral part of the plan, the system.

Yeah. Well, I know that at least in the earlier days I had a hand in.

Turning her compassion. Like this example is a good example later learning turning that compassion into anger. So me, what I mean by that is in the early days, in the early onsets, it's a two way communication relationship. Like, I wouldn't do this. Everything's good, you know, going back and forth later on, I had already not done it so many times, like not followed her advice so many times that, you know, became like, well, I told you so kind of thing that then turned into later anger that we then had to work through. What causes us as men to not be vulnerable to those that we love the most, especially when it's our best interest.

I already knew the answer. When you said what causes us as men? Like, you didn't even need to fill in the sentence. I already knew the answer. It's ego. Yeah, it's ego. Anytime somebody asked me a question like that, what causes us to ego? Why do we ego, what makes us ego? It's all, it's always ego. We want to put on the facade. We want to put on the, like you said, the armor. We want to make sure people see us in the best light and we think that that's what's going to prop us up.

Yeah.

And there are times where we do have to put on the armor.

Right.

And we do have to wear that, that, that burden. And I talk about in the book the Masculinity Manifesto, bearing the burden of masculinity.

Yeah.

Yes, there are times and there are other times. Just like any warrior that would take off his, his put a shield down, put a sword down, take off his armor, set it down in a safe environment.

Yeah.

That might be with his Brothers over dinner. Or it might be in bed with his wife or in his home. But you can't carry that around all the time. And I, and I have. And then as I do, I. Eventually you gotta let go. So what do you do? You turn to destructive habits, usually in the form of some sort of destructive addiction. Alcohol, drug abuse, pornography, etc. Etc. Maybe even work or working out. Like some of these other things that generally we would say are good become addictive behaviors because we're so tired and exhausted from carrying around all this weight all the time, never setting it down, never taking it off, that the only way to get a temporary little reprieve from that is to sedate ourselves with our drug or behavior of choice.

Well, that leads me to. I guess another question is how do we. Well, let me. Let me say this. It seems to me that ego is oftentimes tied to insecurity. So we. We feel like we have to come out of the gate super strong because we're insecure about something that's super deep. Have you found that to be true even in your past work or working with your clients? Is this something that you battle with? I know it's something I battle with from time to time. Is like, still, I've been very. I've been very blessed and very fortunate in my life currently today, but yet even in certain circles, I still feel insecure. There's a. There's times where I want to say, or something with my wife that I know I need to share with my wife, and I have to fight, like, with myself to share something with her because of ego or insecurity.

Yeah. I would even go so far as to say that anything that you're really, really good at might be a coping mechanism for your inefficiencies and ineffectiveness in a certain area of life. So we'll talk about what you said, the insecurities. But you could even take something like financial acumen, maybe you're super, super successful in business. Take yourself. You're a successful businessman. And five minutes ago you told me you were homeless at one point. Yeah. So there, there was something there that, that drove you to take a certain level of action over a sustained period of time so that you weren't in that position. That was a coping mechanism. Now, that's a healthy coping mechanism. It can be taken too far, you know. But another coping mechanism might be a man who constantly feels rejected by women, decides to go sleep around with a bunch of prostitutes. Yeah, that's a coping mechanism. Like, okay, now I'm embraced by women, I'm accepted by women. Except for you also have STDs and you feel horrible about yourself.

Yeah.

Okay. So that anytime that we're good at something, let's say you go out and you decide, hey, you know what? I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna get, you know, five. Five master's degrees in psychology and human behavior and all these kind of things. That's good. I think that's fine as long as you're using it effectively, but it could be a coping mechanism for past trauma that you've dealt with in your life.

Yeah.

So when it. When it comes to ego. Yeah. Those. Those are insecurities. I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not liked. I'm not worthy. That's one I deal with. Self worth is one I deal with personally. And so what do I do? Well, I go out and I make myself something. Right. And that's good. As long as it's. As long as it. I'm trying to think about the way to say it, as long as it has weight behind it. If I'm going out to fake it so I feel better about myself, then that's a problem. But if I go out and I say, well, you don't. I don't feel worthy, and I go out and I produce and I do something meaningful, that's good. But if I just go out and try to trick people into thinking I'm worth something or worthy, then that's. That's the issue.

Yeah. No, that's good. And I. I think that's good for a lot of different reasons. I think one of the things that I can tell you for me, early, early stage entrepreneur. Right. Early, early game, first decade.

Most of the mistakes that I made out of leadership came out of insecurity and ego. Most of the people that I accidentally hurt by being abrasive or abrupt or whatever, it took a long time before I had to be. I learned to be okay with me and my shortcomings and then work on them, of course, which I guess is Self Awareness 101. But I'll tell you something else that kind of stuck out to me that even talk about a lot in the book that I think is something pretty profound. And that's the need to be a superhero to everybody, to anything. Break down the superhero concept because I know you're super passionate about not us not having to be a superhero. Right. But I feel like a lot of our insecurities drive that need to stand out, stand in front, take on the world, that kind of thing.

Well, you got to think about what your motive is. So if your motive is to serve others, I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

That's a. That's a.

That's a pure motive to me.

Yeah.

Hey, I want to help people. I've been through this personally. I think about psychologists. You know, they've gone through some trauma in their life. A lot of times, they've dealt with past issues, and. And they don't want other people to experience it, so they get into that field of work, and then they can go out and serve other people. Nothing wrong with that at all. It's. When we do it to prop ourselves up, it becomes an issue. So when I talk about the superhero complex, we could talk about it literally. If you see somebody, you know, drowning in the pool and you go in to save them, are you saving them because you care about that individual, the worth of that person's life, or are you going it so people will pat you on the back and tell you how great you are?

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

And in that case, I think the majority of us hopefully would do it because we care about the worth of that. That. That soul. But there's a lot of times where we will take on projects, we will take on tasks, we will take on assignments, we will do things because. Solely because we want the accolades of doing it. Social media actually exacerbates that problem.

Yeah.

And you can see it when people are like, hey, guys, I'm thinking about running a marathon in six months. I'm gonna start training. And then everybody in the comments below, they're like, oh, that's awesome. You're amazing. You're so great. That's wonderful news. Like, well, hold on. They haven't even done anything yet.

Yeah.

Like, you. Literally all you did is you posted something that says you're thinking about training for a marathon in six months, and yet you're already receiving praise.

Yeah.

So that feels really good. And then what do we do? We keep making those posts to get attention. Or another one is, oh, I'm just having such a bad day. Like, life sucks. And then people in the comments are like, what's going on? What's going on? What's everything okay? What's going on? And that person doesn't answer. Mm. It's like, okay, are. Is that really the reality of the situation, or are you doing that to get attention because you need to prop yourself up in some way?

Yeah, no, that's very true. Nah, that's very, very true, actually. I see. And I, I think we're all guilty of that at some level, of course. Especially as we're like, you know, we're growing and maturing and stuff like that. It was interesting. I was at a, I, I'm at, you know, I do philanthropy as much as I can, and I had an interesting awareness thing that happened to me probably seven or eight years ago.

And that was that I was giving to causes in a public environment because they were recognizing you publicly for giving in that environment. Right, right. So here I am, given considerable resources away, thinking, telling myself I'm doing, I'm doing it for the good of the people, only to find out that, no, I just, I was actually getting recognized and I enjoyed getting recognition. And it wasn't until, like I said, you know, probably six or seven years ago that I had this epiphany. It was like, wait a minute, if I'm going to give, I need to give like the Bible tells me to give. Which is the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing, not for the praise. And it wasn't until then that I actually started having joy in the giving of itself. Where before it was like, oh, that felt good, man, that feels so good. Oh my gosh, it feels so good. You know, I think it seems like it all goes back to worth. You mentioned it earlier. I think a lot of men struggle with self worth. And I don't know if it's, I don't know if I struggle with it because of the lack of the early stage father. I'm not sure if you, you struggle with it because of the lack of the early stage father, or if men in general struggle with self worth issues, even if they have a good dad already in place from, you know, the time they're born to the, you know, a good friend of ours at Mylett, and he was super close to his dad. Right. And, you know, trying to think through those dynamics of how that plays into how we feel about worth, about ourselves.

Yeah. I think the father thing is, is definitely something that is, is a big deal for a lot of guys.

Yeah.

And then also society is telling men that they, they aren't needed or wanted or they need to redefine masculinity and all this kind of thing. And so, of course, we don't know where we stand. That's an issue. I do want to go back to what you were saying about the, the donating and the charity and things like that, where you were getting recognition for that some people might be tempted to say, well, what's wrong with that? The people who need it are still served.

Yeah.

And that is true. Those people still are served. And so that's good. There's nothing wrong with that. The problem is, is that if you're doing things for external validation that is beyond your control and external validation goes away.

Yeah, yeah, it does.

Right. And so if you're validated by your wife or you're validated by your boss. Let me say it like this. If you're validated by your wife and you guys go through a divorce.

Yeah. Your security line is gone. Your anchor.

If you're validated by your boss and you lose your job, or even your job or your title and you lose your job, now you're dead. Right. So that, that's the problem. The problem is, is if you're, if you're relying solely on external validation, it's an inferior source than internal validation, which is, I feel good. I donated this money and I don't need anybody to tell me it's great and wonderful. I just see how it's being used. I feel good about that. And you validated yourself. When you do work, a project at work, if you do it because you think your boss is going to notice it. Well, what happens if your boss doesn't notice it or somebody else gets the credit for it?

Yeah.

Then you're like, well, well, shit, that sucked. I wasted all that time. Or here's an idea. You could have validated yourself by saying, I'm going to do the best, best I can on this project. I'm going to do it with exceptionalism, mastery. It's going to be beautiful.

Yeah.

Because that makes me feel good.

Yeah. Yeah.

Or I'm going to treat people a certain way. I'm going to treat my wife a certain way, or I'm going to treat my children a certain way. I'm going to treat these relationships a certain way. Not because they'll tell me it feels good or I'll be able to have sex or. Or I'll get a compliment, but no. Just because it feels good.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's intrinsically valuable. And you can always, always control that. Doesn't have to go away. It's kind of the premise of Viktor Frankl's book, Man Search for Meaning. If you haven't read that, another great book. Not to compare myself, my book to his, but that's a great, great book.

Yeah. No, that's so good, man. It's so good on so many levels, you know, I was just thinking as we were talking about the tethers, you know, what I call a tether, which is, you know, what you tie your identity to and how many times men get it wrong and how that plays into men having the highest suicide rate in the country, at least in the United States, at least the last time I did, I looked at the study. Anyway, I'm curious to know, do you share that maybe that belief that maybe it's what they're tethered to that that's causing that. That extreme drop in identity and that extreme drop in identity takes them to some very dark places?

Yeah, I like that. I've never heard it referred to as a tether, but I like that. I like that visual. We can look at the military, you know, look at the. When these guys get out of service, that's rough because they've tied their identity to being a service member, right? Like actually being a warrior, and that goes away and they have a hard time. There's studies that have shown that men's suicide rates are four to five times that of women. So, yeah, these, these are real issues. And go out and do a little. Do a little project, a little experiment and go ask your 10 closest friends, hey, man, tell me about yourself or a stranger. Like maybe you're on the bus or you're on the subway or whatever, you're out in public and you're. And. Or at a networking function, you say, hey, tell me about yourself. What are they going to do? They're going to tell you about their job, right? Yeah, I would probably do that too. I'd be like, okay, this person wants to know about my job or how many kids I have or how long I've been married or especially when the.

First question is, what do you do? Like men, first question out of the gates, what do you do?

What do you do? Right. Which also then is like, well, how much money does this guy make?

Right. Yeah.

So what if instead, and I'm just thinking out loud is that when people tell. It asked us to tell them about ourselves, is we tether it to our value systems as opposed to what we do. And I don't know what you do in this when you're talking about tethers, but again, just thinking out loud, value systems. Well, I value, you know, being a man of my word. I value doing things with. Doing things exceptionally well. I value being an integrity. And you tie your worth to your values and your boundaries, and then the rest is a result of the values and boundaries you've enforced.

Yeah. No, that's good, because I feel like using that theology. What, what happens is as long as you're practicing your values on a consistent basis, you always have security in your identity.

Not always.

No. Okay.

No, I don't.

Well, of when it wouldn't work, I think I miss.

I misinterpreted that. Actually, I was going to say, I thought where you were going was that if you take care of the internals, the externals will always take care of themselves. And that. That isn't what you were saying, I don't think. Yeah, because there are people who believe that and that. That's cute. On an Instagram post.

Yeah.

If, like, if you do everything right, everything else will take care of itself. And that's where I was going with that. No, it won't.

Yeah.

Over the long term, I would say probably. Yeah. But there's still going to be a lot of bumps and hiccups and, and, and getting banged up along the way. But, yeah, if you tie it to your internal values, you're always sure of yourself, because those aren't going to go away. Yes, I agree with that.

Well, and I think, like, I'll use a business example of kind of what kind of threw up on my mind a little bit, and that is in business.

Especially as I've been in business for 25 years with multiple, with multiple businesses. So I've been. Been in business a long time. I have been forced to grow. Forced to grow. Not. Wasn't given the opportunities per se. It was a, it was a force. It's either you, you grow as a human being or you stop building what you say you're trying to build to help. Help and serve other people.

There's been lots of times along the way where competitors are coming to the marketplace and, and they'll, they won't believe in integrity and they'll do all the wrong things to get quick wins and to try to get market share. And lie, cheat and steal, for lack of a better word. I've even been through embezzlement in my organization, you know, and go through all of that. But I found that one of the things that changes is do I let that define how I'm going to behave in the future? In other words, do I naturally say, well, they cheated, so it's okay for me to cheat, or they did this, it's okay for me to do that, or they did this for the. Rather than going back to your core value set. Like, if I stand for integrity, I stand for integrity. Right. It's a non Negotiable, like if. And so meaning that if I have a chance to be dishonest by the virtue of that principle, by the virtue of that, if I believe in integrity, I naturally have to choose not to be dishonest. Even if it's easier to be dishonest.

Yeah, agreed. And it's, it's very tempting to be dishonest when you get yourself into bad situations. The sooner you can make a bet, a good choice, the better the outcome in the long run.

Yeah, for sure. You know, one of the things I also loved about the book is this, this concept of rendering yourself obsolete. I know we spent the last time talking about, okay, well, this is how you build kind of some emotional security in yourself and health. But what does it mean to render yourself obsolete?

I think about it in the context of fatherhood most often that I want to get to a stage in my life. I know your kids are grown and out of the house. Do you have any at home still or no?

No, unfortunately all mine are now doing their own things.

Okay. So mine are still, all four of them are still at home. And when I see, my oldest is 14, when I see him doing things and taking responsibility on his own or even spending more time with his friends but being responsible about it, that makes me feel really good. And so in the context of fatherhood, my job is to put myself out of work. I always want to be wanted by my children. I want to be around, I want to be a joy around them. I want them to be a joy around me. I want us to find happiness in each other and each other's company. But I don't want them to need me. I don't want them to have to want to stay at home or call me because they can't make their car payment or they're dealing with a certain issue and so they have to rely on me in some way. I don't want to create that at all in my children. I want to create completely self reliant human beings. And part of that means, I think the hardest part means that I need to let them suffer. But I hate that.

Yeah.

You know, when my children are suffering the consequences of their decisions. Oh, it's gut wrenching. But what's better, them suffering the consequences of their decisions in a semi controlled environment at home? Yeah. Or not addressing it and not putting myself through the, the grinder, if you will, so that they can struggle later on down the line. And I think that's the real issue.

Like it'll be, it'll be 10x worse than would have been to deal with it now.

Right. And you know what's really interesting? At least this is my summation of. It is all too often the reason that we aren't willing to render ourselves obsolete has nothing to do with our care or love for the other party and more to do with our own ego and sense of worth. Because here's the deal. If, let's say I've got my son and he does something wrong.

And instead of having a difficult conversation with him, I just let it slide. Okay. Am I really so bold to say that I'm trying to serve him? Or is it that I'm trying to serve myself and spare myself from the awkward, uncomfortable conversation or the griping and the moaning and the complaining that comes with me administering discipline.

Yeah.

Has nothing to do with the other party. It's. It's self preservation.

I don't want radical honesty. I was talking about earlier. Yeah, just being willing to go there for yourself.

Right. I don't want to deal with that. I don't want to have that. I don't want to feel bad. I don't want to have a sleepless night. So you know what? Let's just kick that can down the road a little bit.

No, that's so good. I was thinking just now, too, one of my proudest moments that I've had with my youngest son in recent years was about two years ago. We did a live event here in Raleigh called Transform you Live. And a good friend of mine, Evan Carmichael, was one of our speakers. Evan just happened to kind of participate in the event for three days straight and whatnot and be super helpful to a lot of the folks in the audience. But he had this interesting thing that he did intentionally. He refused to go on stage on day three unless I did a panel discussion with my son and myself on stage.

So interestingly enough, my son, who was managing the chat windows for us at the time for the virtual side, finally agrees to go on stage. He gets on stage with myself and a couple other speakers, and, you know, I'm. It was interesting because a lot of the stuff that I had said to him three years earlier on walks or at a baseball game or at his first heartbreak. Like, a lot of the stuff came up and I thought it was in. In your. In one ear and out the other the entire time. It's like, you. You know, it's like I'm telling my son this. I have no idea if it's sticking. I hope it sticks. Right. Well, he gets up on stage And I forgot our, our moderator, a guy by the name Mark Drager, good friend of mine who was acting as the mc, asked a question to the group and my son goes, can, can I add to that? And I actually have it all on camera. I started crying like crazy. Like they, they got all that on camera too. Because what, what came out of him was the conversations or the lessons that he learned during the hard moments and during the hard conversations that we had had earlier. And like he was Talking like a 35 or 40 year old man that had had wisdom and life experience, you know. And the reason I wanted to go there was because I want to kind of stay on this fatherhood just for another second or two is because I feel like our children, right. Boys and girls, probably will emulate more of our behavior than necessarily what, you know, it's. My dad used to have this comment that was wrong back in the day. He's like, do as I say, not as I do. Right?

Yeah.

What I found myself doing and what I'm trying to be an illustration to my kids about was a little bit different in, in that it's okay to do what I do because I, I need to step up as a man so I can trust that what I'm doing is right for you to follow, if that makes any sense. Talk to me a little bit about that, that kind of, that, that role in fatherhood relationship. Because I feel like a lot of guys were trying our best, but we're getting it twisted.

Yeah. I mean, look, whether we said it or not, very, very similar to what I think you said, your dad said, do as I say, not as I do. Yeah, we've all been there. We may not have vocalized those words, but. And we do it, I think we do it for the right reason because we know, hey, this doesn't work, or this is, this is my mistake or my mess up, or this is my baggage. And so I don't. Son, I don't want you to have this. So do what I'm telling you, not what I've done myself.

Yeah, right.

That's, that's the, that to me is the true, the more accurate context of that. Not that he was trying to be hypocritical or be out of, out of alignment, but that's just the reality of it. Like we want our children to be better than us. So. Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly with you is that we really need to evaluate their performance and evaluate ours. And there's been a lot of self reflection for me even over the past several months about what I've been doing and how I've been showing up and where I've been good and where I have not been so good. And I mean, we all know that. Yeah, this isn't new information that we need to be an example, but, yeah, rather than just always looking at our kids and what they're doing, maybe we ought to evaluate what we're doing and how we're showing up.

Yeah, for sure. Well, I was thinking through the ego side too. Like, you know, one of the biggest transitions I had in fatherhood was actually going back. Going back and being able to sit down with my kids and say, tell them I was sorry for not leading them well or not. Or not handling a situation well, communicating to them in a good place. And I find a lot of men struggle with that. Just going back and just being accountable.

Right.

They're accountable at work, they're accountable on sports teams, they're accountable with their buddies, but they're not so accountable to their kids or accountable to their spouse. How important it is, how important is it for men as a whole if they're going to be accountable? To be accountable in all areas?

I mean, it's crucial. Like you, You. You can't.

Here's what I would say, is that it's naturally going to spill over into one area. If you're not accountable and an integrity in one area of your life, it's naturally and inevitably going to spill over to another. And that's also really. That's really advantageous because if you're struggling with your business, you could actually fix it by going to the gym. Yeah, that's the beautiful thing. If you're struggling with a relationship issue, you can fix that partially by being more disciplined in other avenues of your life. Because they're all so interconnected. You can't extrapolate one facet of your life and think, well, I'm knocking out of the park here, but I'm struggling in every other facet. No, it's. I remember years ago, I was driving on the freeway and I looked over and there was a used car dealership. And it looked like it was cars that were probably under like 10 to $15,000.

Yeah.

Nothing wrong with that. But that's the market they serve, that's the demographic they serve. And then they had this like, brand new. If I remember right, it was like a brand new Escalade sitting on the, on the, on the car lot. And I thought to myself, does the. Does, does that escalate? Drive up the value the market price of all the other cars on the lot or does it all the other cars on the lot drive down the value or the market price of the Escalade? Well, it's the latter, right?

Yeah.

Like that Escalade doesn't make everything else more valuable.

Yeah.

Everything else brings down the value of the Escalade. So if you're killing it in business.

But you're struggling in everything else, like everything else isn't getting better just because you happen to be crushing it and knocking it out of the park here, you've got to focus on all of these areas and that will help you in the other facets of life as well.

Yeah. Well, it also seems like when you start the journey of trying to. Of trying to manage and be accountable in all those areas, it seems like at least early on for me, it was extremely difficult to do that early on. But the more I practiced it, the more muscle memory built in. And now it's easier. I wouldn't say it's easy in some days, but it's easier to kind of hold myself accountable to many standards because they're non negotiables. They are standards. Just like this is who I'm going to be when I grow up and I'm deciding who I want to be when I grow up right now, every day, every time I make a choice.

Yeah.

I think it's one of the things that I love most about your book and why I think every man should pick it up is because I feel like there's a lot of men walking around blind. Right. They're, they're blind in their relationships, they're blind in their fatherhood. They're blind in how they pursue success and excellence and, and the things. Because I don't think there's anything wrong. I think there is a part of a, of a man that has functions better when aspirations are present. I mean, there's something they're aspiring to do greater. Where I've got off track is not having the aspirations balance with the other areas of my life, my wife, my kids and that kind of thing. When you set out to write this.

I kind of believe that books call us to write them, so to speak. Like, like the book literally calls you to write it. In what way did this book call you to write it and why did you write it?

Now I got so sick of hearing the public discourse as masculinity is toxic and, and all of these characteristics that we possess are damaging and destructive. The American Psychological association talked about it in a quasi study they did years ago. And then you just see it permeated, like the sitcoms where the father's always the bumbling buffoon and he can't get anything right. And it's just. It's just nonsense. You know, women are stepping up where men would step up in the communities and at the home. And that's great. They have to. But I don't want that to be the case. I see that all the time. And so, yeah, I just felt like I needed to create or at least formulate a message, or maybe not even formulate, but compile a message that shared how we can take the characteristics that society would generally and typically deem as destructive or toxic, like dominance, aggression, violence, stoicism, all of these things that again, generally society looks at as negative and show us how we as men can use the propensity for violence, for example, or vigilance or to dominate or to be competitive as positive characteristics that we can harness for productive outcomes for ourselves and other people. And that. That's really where it came from. I felt compelled to do it because nobody's talking about it in that light. Everybody's talking about discipline and integrity and honor. Those are all good, but nobody's talking about those that kind of dance on the line of virtuous and maybe could be potentially destructive if used incorrectly.

Yeah, no, I think that's really good. And I think. I think. I think your book and the way in which you come at everything is really, really powerful because it is a fine line. It is a dance, so to speak. Right. Of winning. Winning to kind of be aggressive. Because the moment calls for aggressive behaviors not being, like, argumentative, but, you know, like, really going, what I. What I. Aggressive in a. And a refined form for me would be grinding. Like, I got to be super dedicated right now. I got to be super focused right now. My family, my friends, my community, my business depends on me being focused right now. You know, to me that. That comes at it from the dominance angle or the aggressive behavior because you're. You can't be lax in those moments. You can't get distracted in those moments. You know, you've done a lot of work with men. I love your. I love your live events, especially like you put in everything from coaching to jiu jitsu to all kinds of stuff.

All of it.

Yeah. I mean, I think that's the coolest thing ever. I love the wide range. Why was the putting together. Why a wide range approach like that so powerful?

Because I don't like going to events and sitting in a. In a Hotel conference center for eight hours a day listening to, you know, seven presenters 40 minutes at a time.

Yeah.

I mean, that's. That's the reality.

Yeah.

I didn't enjoy that. I don't want to sit there and listen to somebody lecture at me for that time. But if I could get in jiu jitsu, or I could get an airsoft, or I could get in hatchet throwing or archery, and in the meantime, those messages are related to a particular topic that serves us as men, then. Yeah, let's. Let's do that. So it was my own selfish desire, because I don't want to sit in a conference like that. I want to be in something active and something that's fast paced, something that's moving, that has different speakers. Sure. But has lessons in real world scenarios. I mean, one of the first things we do is we put these guys on teams, and rather than sitting in our. In our event center, rather than. Which happens to be the barn of our property, rather than have them, like, stand up and introduce themselves, it's like, no team. A, B, C, D, abcd. Abcd. All right, grab your gun. We're going out. And then you guys have five minutes to formulate a plan. Because we're playing capture the flag.

And they're shooting each other. I mean, that's how we lead off our events. And what a great way to break the ice. What a great way to have some fun. Set the precedent for the rest of the weekend, but also get these guys to talk to each other. You know, like, you start seeing who the leaders are. You start seeing who has some experience in this. You start seeing who doesn't, but who's humble and who isn't. You learn a lot about a person when you're playing airsoft capture the flag against another team. And they're complete strangers, most of them. They don't even know each other.

Yeah.

And yet they forge very tight bonds very, very quickly.

That's so good. Yeah. I was just thinking it also kind of takes you back to being a boy again, Right. Think I don't know about you, but for me, like, I. I was surrounded by my dudes, like, almost like my little I. The easiest way to do it is us. Jenna Kutcher put a message not recently on. She's like, if you could be anything when you were growing up as a kid, what would you want to be? And the only thing that would come to my mind was I wanted to be one of the Goonies. Like, I wanted to be on a good. Like, one of The Goonies going. Going on an adventure, like going to the pirate ship, trying to. And that. That. That air assault, I think, just reminded me of that because you immediately go into that mode where you're like, you're. You're together, and this is. I love it. I just love it. I love everything you're about and what you guys are accomplishing.

Appreciate it, man.

Absolutely. Well, look, I don't. I don't want to take up too much more of your time, but where can everybody find out more about you? The book, obviously.

The. The.

The. The events, all that good stuff.

Yeah. So the Masculinity Manifesto is the book. Wherever you get books, you can find it there. As far as our events, probably. And our podcast is Order of Man. So if you go to order of man.com or search order of man, wherever you're listening to this podcast, you can find it. And then I'm pretty active on Instagram at Ryan Mickler, and my last name is M I C H L E R. So that between those resources, you can find everything that we're doing.

Rock on, dude. Well, man, I can't thank you again for coming on the show, man. I got a ton from it. I know the audience will as well. You're always welcome to come back and visit anytime you want.

Thank you, brother. Appreciate the opportunity.

All right, dude, take it easy.

Peace.

I hope you liked that video. And if you did, make sure you check out this next video right here.

If you're building a business because you.

Want to build a business, you're probably going to fail. If you're building a business because you.

Found a need and you want to.

Serve it, then you're probably going to be fine. You have to be passionate about it, because there have been years at Hawk.

That I didn't make any money because we were reinvesting.

You can't just do this because you.

Think you're going to get rich. You have to do it because you really love it.