Order of Man - Adapt and Adjust, No Regrets, and Mitigating Risk

00:00:00.000 You got to move on, man. You got to drive on with your life. People do it with financial upsets.

00:00:04.640 You know, they have a bad month or a bad quarter, a bad year. They get a big tax liability.

00:00:09.720 And instead of just buckling down and you just blame it on circumstances when you should have

00:00:14.400 just blamed it on yourself. You didn't do what needed to be done. When the going got tough,

00:00:18.940 you buckled. Instead, what you should have done is doubled down and figured out a way to be better

00:00:25.340 because of the thing that happened to you, whether self-imposed or not.

00:00:30.000 All right, brother, we are back. We tried to do this yesterday. It didn't work.

00:00:33.800 Those small rural towns in Utah, man, the internet or something. I don't know what it is, but here we

00:00:39.040 are. We make do and I'm glad to be doing the Ask Me Anything with you today. Yeah, it's good, man.

00:00:44.760 How was your holidays? It's official, right? We recorded last. It was Christmas Eve, right?

00:00:52.040 Yeah. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Everything was really good. The kids liked their presence,

00:00:55.780 had some good times with them. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't anything out of the ordinary,

00:01:00.900 but it was, it was nice. It was nice to be with the kids and enjoy that time together. And

00:01:05.160 that's about it. You know, nothing too exciting, which I'm okay with sometimes. I don't need,

00:01:10.260 I don't need too exciting. How about you guys?

00:01:11.960 Same. I'm one of those individuals. I love the traditional Christmas looks the same every year.

00:01:22.340 Laid back, chill at home. That's kind of my style. I don't like to disrupt it too much, but

00:01:28.440 are you that way? Or would you rather like, man, let's have Christmas in Hawaii or the Bahamas or,

00:01:34.740 or mix it up? I've done that before. We took all the kids to Hawaii for Christmas and we were there for,

00:01:40.660 I want to say it was like two and a half weeks from Christmas to a couple of days after new

00:01:44.480 years. Yeah. And it was amazing. I loved it. Um, but I would say maybe every other year, I don't,

00:01:53.220 I don't need the same nostalgia. Like I don't, I don't have that. I mean, I do don't get me wrong.

00:01:57.540 I have things that were traditions and I think fondly of my childhood Christmases for sure,

00:02:01.680 but I've never had, and you know this about my personality. I don't want to do things the same

00:02:07.080 way all the time. Yeah. I just get so bored of it. So I do like to mix it up. Um, it's also

00:02:13.760 different to when the guys who are separated or maybe going through a divorce would understand this.

00:02:20.540 It's different when there's not a woman in the house. It's, and I'm saying it's better when

00:02:26.220 there's a woman around, she gets pajamas for the kids and does fun games and prizes and makes it

00:02:32.700 more festive. And, you know, I put up all the Christmas decorations with my youngest son and

00:02:36.900 we put stuff outside like the blow up lighted decorations. And, um, I do a pretty good job

00:02:43.580 with gifts. I try to be thoughtful about what the people in my life would want, but if you don't

00:02:47.500 have a woman's touch during holidays and things like that, it's, it's different and it's diminished

00:02:52.360 actually. Yeah. I totally agree. I totally agree. I remember in the early years with my two boys,

00:02:59.160 I was like trying to make it sentimental, you know, and I was just failing it all over the place.

00:03:05.640 I'm like, of course. Yeah. Because I know it's just not, it's not that you don't want to as a man,

00:03:12.020 it's just not in our wheelhouse for the, for the most part. And I know there's, I'm not like

00:03:17.300 detracting or taking away from guys efforts at all, but man, it is, it is different. At least that's

00:03:23.140 my experience. Yeah. A little bit harder for us to pull that off for sure. Absolutely. All right,

00:03:28.060 you know, we could have them, you know, change the oil in our truck and get things straightened

00:03:32.560 and cleaned up around the house and make sure we're there with our bag as a militant, making

00:03:36.500 sure that all the kids are putting their bows and their empty trash in the bag in real time.

00:03:41.200 So there's a lot we bring to the table too. Let's not forget. Yeah. Especially that, uh,

00:03:45.980 just in time cleanup during, uh, unwrapping of gifts. Yeah. That's, that's quality role there.

00:03:51.600 I actually didn't do that this year on purpose. I said, you know what? I'm not going to do that.

00:03:56.460 I'm just going to sit here in this comfortable leather chair, watch the kids

00:04:00.440 strew wrapping paper everywhere and just suck it up. Just let them have fun. So I didn't do that

00:04:07.760 this year. We did it an hour later. Yeah. Yeah. I was doing it. I was like, all right,

00:04:13.800 put your wrapping paper in this bag, you know, trying to make sure it's some, you know, order.

00:04:18.320 Yeah. Yeah. Well, Merry Christmas. Let's get to some questions, man. Let's get after it.

00:04:22.460 Yeah. Absolutely. All right. So we're going to field questions from the iron council, uh,

00:04:27.360 to learn more order man.com slash iron council, Shane Newman. Uh, where are y'all be hags for

00:04:34.420 2026 and what steps have you been taking to get there? Have you heard that term before be hags?

00:04:40.660 Uh, big, is that big, hairy, audacious goals? I'm assuming that's what it is. Yeah. Yeah.

00:04:46.560 Yeah. Uh, for 2026, I actually don't plan like that. Um, I plan in quarterly sections. So when we

00:04:52.620 tell guys in the iron council, our brotherhood to do a 12 week battle plan, that's what I do too. I

00:04:58.100 don't ask them to do anything that I wouldn't be willing to do myself. So yeah, I don't, I don't have

00:05:03.000 the, I mean, there's some things on the horizon that I'm excited about. You know, we've got our event

00:05:06.920 called the men's forge that's coming up in April. Um, I have some, I have some new actually. Okay.

00:05:12.980 That's not entirely true. I have this idea. I haven't really talked openly about it, but I really

00:05:18.860 want to go. I want to do 12 episodes this year where it would be as a working title. So if you guys

00:05:25.720 have better ideas, shoot them over to me, I'm open, but day in the life of a man. And what I want to do

00:05:31.580 is I want to take a man. It could be somebody who has a large following. It could be

00:05:36.800 somebody who, you know, doesn't, but they're charismatic or they're good at their craft or

00:05:40.320 their trade or whatever. And I want to go visit these individuals across the States, maybe even

00:05:45.780 across the world, if it makes sense. And I want to immerse myself in their life for 24 to 48 hours

00:05:54.620 and interview them on the fly, on the spot. I've ordered a bunch of new camera equipment,

00:05:59.020 and then we'll do our more formal sit down podcast while I'm there. But that could be guys like,

00:06:03.780 I just talked with Dale Brisby in Dallas about coming out and working on the ranch last year or

00:06:11.560 this year still. I was with Dwayne Noel in rural Kentucky and I helped him clear some trees and

00:06:19.120 debris. We were going to work on a gate, but he didn't have the right tools. And then we did a

00:06:22.540 podcast and we sat on the porch while he smoked cigars. And we just had some great organic conversations.

00:06:28.880 Just talked with Mike Chandler, UFC fighter about coming down to train with him sometime this year.

00:06:34.540 We did that before I trained a little bit, one five minute round, three, five minute round,

00:06:39.820 something like that. And that was hilarious because he just toyed with me the entire time.

00:06:43.960 Um, and I'm bigger than him, but he just toyed around with me. Um, and yeah, so, you know,

00:06:51.380 whether it's like a fighter pilot or a Navy seal or a bull rider or, uh, whatever, but I thought that

00:07:00.500 would be a ton of fun. So that's something I've been working on for the past 30 to 60 days, getting

00:07:05.840 all the camera equipment, thinking about the logistics, thinking about the timing and the

00:07:10.180 scheduling and all kinds of stuff. You know, I did that years ago with Josh Smith, with Montana

00:07:15.060 knife company. I went out to his place. Um, he was gracious enough to let me stay in his home and

00:07:20.080 we're friends. So, you know, but, um, yeah, I built a knife with him and it's like stuff like that.

00:07:26.760 I just want to do more of that because it sounds fun and exciting and I have the means to do it.

00:07:32.200 The insights would be super cool. How long would those episodes be?

00:07:36.740 Uh, it would be more of a vlog style. So those episodes would probably be long form, maybe an

00:07:44.380 hour to 90 minutes, something like that, where it's maybe not even that long, maybe 30 to 30

00:07:48.900 minutes to an hour. I mean, you can take a lot of content over a day or two and squeeze it into

00:07:53.300 something that's still relevant that doesn't get into all the details. So, you know, I have to have

00:07:59.680 a good editing team to do that. I have to have somebody who come out with me to get the film and

00:08:03.720 the, and the stuff. So there's a lot that goes behind the scenes that I think a lot of people

00:08:07.780 would probably overlook, but it's very exciting to me. Um, and you know, it could be a guy,

00:08:15.080 I think of a guy like a Joe parody, you know, you know, Joe out in, in Maine and he's Pete Roberts,

00:08:21.400 the founder of origin. Uh, it's his father-in-law and, you know, Joe doesn't have this huge social

00:08:27.300 media presence, but he's such a character and he's so capable. You know, he was, I think a chief of

00:08:32.820 the volunteer fire department. And then his job in the army was to race motorcycles. That was his

00:08:39.360 MOS motorcycle racer. And he was, he, he, he went around the country to, uh, recruit young kids in

00:08:47.260 the, I don't know, the sixties or seventies maybe. And he knows how to do everything. If anybody in town

00:08:53.560 needs anything, you just call Joe, you just like, why wouldn't you call Joe? Like, that's the guy.

00:08:58.280 So he would be fun to go out and visit him and spend a day with him doing odds and ends and

00:09:02.600 whatever else. So, you know, things like that. Yeah. I love it. Uh, Shane for me at BHAG wise,

00:09:09.380 uh, to be determined. That's my, that's my planning this week actually. So, um, I'll be meeting with

00:09:16.560 yep. I'll be meeting with my wife. We're going to plan out, um, our 20, 26 year, many adventures,

00:09:24.640 kind of some epic, um, epic plans that we have, what we're going to accomplish as a, as a couple

00:09:31.920 and as a family. And, uh, we'll flesh that out. So I'm not going to say anything quite yet. Cause I

00:09:36.980 don't want anyone holding me accountable to something that's not official. I do have some wild ideas.

00:09:43.400 So when you, when you meet with your wife, do you guys, do you guys make an ordeal out of it?

00:09:51.240 Or is it like, Hey hon, let's sit at the kitchen table tonight. Or is it like, Hey babe, let's go

00:09:55.140 to the cabin in the woods for two days and hash this out. What do you guys do? Yeah. So for the

00:10:00.440 last two years, what we've done is we go get a hotel at the little America and we get babysitter

00:10:08.560 for the kids and we just go to the hotel and we do our planning for, for a day and a half.

00:10:12.620 Yeah. So this Friday, uh, we're going to go to Delta. Um, and we're just going to bring our

00:10:19.680 calendars and work through everything. Um, and then even yesterday we started already asking the

00:10:24.980 kids, like what, what are things that you guys always wanted to try? What's something that you

00:10:29.240 want to be better at? Right. And so we got some ideas from them. We'll continue to do that probably

00:10:33.240 today and tomorrow. So then that way we have those ideas going into our kind of our offsite.

00:10:38.360 Yeah. And I think that's good. You know, it's, it's distraction free. It's good not to have the

00:10:44.180 kids around sometimes. You know, I was, I was married for 18 years and you know, when the kids

00:10:49.680 are around, bless them, you know, we love our kids, but when they're around your ability to focus on

00:10:55.100 something with your wife like that, something as important as that is diminished. So I think that's

00:10:59.600 a great idea. That's how I used to do it as well. Um, I still do it that way where I will go out of

00:11:04.680 town or, or sneak away for a day or two and not here in my office because there's no creativity

00:11:11.020 here. There's, there's nothing different about my day here. I'm so distracted with maybe the house

00:11:16.600 isn't clean or maybe I need to get groceries or maybe I need to work on this project or fix that

00:11:21.160 fence out there. I'm like, I don't want to worry about that. I just want to focus on the task at hand.

00:11:25.800 Yeah, totally. Totally. All right. Steve and Drew, what are some of the goals,

00:11:30.280 some possible changes coming to the iron council this year? Yeah, well, gosh, there's a lot. There's

00:11:37.320 always stuff. Um, I just started my own battle team, which is cool. So now we have a battle team

00:11:42.980 that that's led by me, which has been almost a decade since that's happened. Uh, we just hired

00:11:49.980 a battle team manager. A lot of this stuff may not relate to a lot of the guys. I'm trying to give

00:11:54.100 pertinent information to people who are listening, but they're going to be responsible for making sure

00:11:58.220 that we as battle teams and there's 50 plus battle teams at this point are all marching in lockstep to

00:12:03.660 the same, same drum beat, if you will, even though they might do it differently based on their team

00:12:09.180 dynamic and culture. Uh, I really want to do a lot more, uh, meetups, local meetups and encourage and

00:12:15.440 foster that between teams and other people who are not on teams, just in, in regional areas.

00:12:19.540 We also created what we, you Kip created the very first regional, uh, or geographical battle team.

00:12:27.700 So you have a battle team that you run that is entirely comprised of men in Northern Utah.

00:12:32.400 And that's it. If you're in rural Kentucky, you don't join Kip's team. So that's going to be cool.

00:12:37.440 Cause I think it makes it easier for men to get together shoulder to shoulder, face to face,

00:12:41.640 working on common things. So I want to continue to build out that program. And then what I also

00:12:46.980 realized is over 10 years of doing anything, there's always some diminishment in the way the

00:12:59.140 organization is run because it gets so big and complex at times. And as, as a person of my

00:13:07.020 personality, where it's like, yeah, that sounds good. Do it, figure it out. All of these little

00:13:11.120 attachments get added onto the program and they're good ideas typically 80% of them anyways, but

00:13:18.400 they're not really cohesive. They don't work well with the rest of the organization. And so even

00:13:23.700 though you might've solved one problem in the acute on the macro, it's a little clunky. So I'm really

00:13:31.960 trying to streamline all of the processes and systems that we have. For example, we've got our battle plan

00:13:37.880 that we talk with guys about every time we do a podcast, right? And I've gotten my written one

00:13:42.020 right here and I have it digital as well. I have a PDF for guys to be able to fill that out. But in

00:13:47.460 10 years, it's never been a fillable PDF. What in the world? So why not? Okay. That's something that

00:13:53.800 we need to go and fix. And so last night or a couple of nights ago, I stayed up late and fixed that

00:13:58.160 real quick. And so we're just trying to make things more cohesive and easier. The problem is I think

00:14:05.820 in business and maybe in life is we're on a, we're on a path and we're very excited about that path.

00:14:14.440 And then something happens over here and it catches our eye, right? Shiny object syndrome. We've heard

00:14:19.960 and we're like, Oh, that sounds cool. Yeah. Bring it over. Like, let's, let's do that too. And then you

00:14:26.780 add that to your thing and then you're going down and you're like, Oh, there's, well, that's interesting.

00:14:30.820 That guy's doing something cool. Bring that. Yeah. Bring that over here. It's kind of like a buffet,

00:14:35.280 you know, your eyes are bigger than your stomach. And so you're walking around and you're like,

00:14:39.740 yeah, roast beef. Yeah. Meatloaf. Sure. Mashed potatoes. Yeah. Oh, mac and cheese. Absolutely.

00:14:45.580 Salad. No pass. But I'll take the, uh, the gravy on everything. And it's like, you get back to your

00:14:51.900 table and the amount of waste that takes place because of it, because it just looked good when

00:14:59.580 it was in front of you. And so every once in a while, you need to look at your plate, whether it's

00:15:02.900 personally or professionally and say, no, that looked good, but it's not really in alignment with

00:15:10.720 the mission or with my life or with what I want to do or accomplish. So that's really what I'm going

00:15:16.120 to be focusing on in the first quarter. A lot of efficiencies in the systems. Yeah. It's, it's the

00:15:21.060 good, better, best and novelty has a tendency to look better than it is. Right. And sometimes it's good,

00:15:27.300 but then you'll, we'll compromise what's best, right. For the new shiny good that might show up

00:15:33.620 from time to time. What else for order of man as a whole regarding, I mean, I know the questions kind

00:15:39.220 of geared towards IC, but what can we look for forward to from iron, from order of man as a whole

00:15:45.700 events, those kinds of things for this up and coming year for order of man as a whole. Um, well,

00:15:52.520 one of the things I just said, the men's forge is going to be a huge event. That's April. I don't

00:15:57.800 quote me on this guys, but I believe it's April 13th through the 16th. Yeah. Maybe you can look

00:16:03.220 the men's forge.com. I think it's April 13th through the 16th in St. Louis. That's going to be

00:16:08.660 awesome. Second year doing this, we're making it way bigger and better than we did the first year.

00:16:13.720 So we have the men's forge. Uh, I talked about day in the life of as a man, um, with the YouTube series,

00:16:19.620 uh, regional chapters, kind of in conjunction and association with the iron council.

00:16:24.320 And then, you know, just continuing to level up the guests that we have on the podcast to get them

00:16:29.660 out to you. We're going to put together a lot more courses. Uh, we're working on a no more Mr. Nice

00:16:34.000 guy course. We're working on a, uh, financial, uh, uh, literacy course, not what I'm going to call it.

00:16:41.780 Cause that sounds lame and boring. Uh, but yeah, we've got a lot of courses that are going to come

00:16:46.400 online for people who are either in the iron council or not. So we've, we've got a ton going

00:16:50.480 on, but the biggest thing, the store, the store is a big part of that. The merchandise store.

00:16:55.480 Um, I think you have a order a man hoodie on the duck camo hoodie, I think is. Yeah. And then I,

00:17:00.320 you know, I've got my hat on. Um, I realized something we had, this is crazy kit. Listen to

00:17:05.600 these numbers. Uh, in the last 30 days, it's probably dropped off a little bit just because

00:17:10.100 Christmas is over now, but in the last 30 days we've done, and I'm just ballparking a little

00:17:15.120 bit about 550,000 sessions in our store over the past 30 days. So that means half a million plus

00:17:23.660 in the store. And I'm really transparent on all of this stuff. That's a big number for us,

00:17:30.280 maybe not for everybody, but for us, that's a, that's the biggest number we've ever had in a 30

00:17:33.620 day timeframe. But then I went and I looked at our conversion rate because we want to look at KPIs,

00:17:38.820 key performance indexes. So I looked at our conversion rate. It was

00:17:44.960 less than 1% of those sessions converted super low, never been that low. And I don't know what

00:17:51.960 it is right off hand, what, what it should be, but gosh, if it's not 20%, I'd have to look like,

00:18:00.100 what is happening here? So I did some reflection over the past couple of weeks. The problem is I

00:18:04.500 just don't have any inventory. So guys come into the shop and they're like, I want that hoodie that

00:18:08.580 keeps wearing in a large, we don't have it. I want that shirt that Ryan's wearing in an extra large,

00:18:13.000 we don't have it. And so I've spent tens of thousands of dollars over the past 30 days

00:18:20.460 reordering inventory. And I have a call this afternoon with one of our designers to design

00:18:28.700 three, three new shirts, because we're going to come out with a shirt each month of the year.

00:18:33.260 So 12 new shirt designs and other really cool products. I've hired Jay Gerdulo to manage the

00:18:38.760 store. So I'm excited about where this goes, man. I really am. There's a lot of cool things that

00:18:43.880 we're going to be doing. So to confirm the mensforge.com, that event is April 23rd through

00:18:50.900 April 26th. Okay. I said 13th to the 16th, but I was off 23rd to the 26th. Just 10 days off. Not a

00:18:58.240 big deal. Yeah. April 23rd and see how it works out for you. All right. Okay. Andy Collins,

00:19:06.300 this past year, I've had a lot of success in my condition quadrant down 40 pounds, healing blood

00:19:12.300 work, improving and feeling great. I've had momentum and things are looking good, but Friday

00:19:17.160 night I hurt my back. It appears to be a herniated disc in my lower back. I know what I need to do to

00:19:23.900 recover, but I was wondering how do you recalibrate when an event like this threatens, threatens to halt

00:19:29.760 your momentum. How do you keep from letting it keep you down? I don't think it, it doesn't

00:19:35.640 automatically, I don't agree with the premise of the question. I'll say it that way. You said that

00:19:41.960 this type of setback will halt your progress. I don't actually believe that. I might've believed

00:19:47.000 that years ago. And I think for most people, you're, you're probably not wrong,

00:19:51.740 but injuries don't have to halt your progress if you don't let them. So years ago, probably

00:19:59.940 four years ago at this point, I had a really bad injury training jujitsu. I ruptured my,

00:20:08.260 my pectoral tendon, complete rupture, a hundred percent rupture, balled up arm, black and blue is

00:20:13.620 nasty. And I remember when it happened, I heard the pop, the guy was training with Brian Littlefield,

00:20:21.160 black belt in Maine, heard the pop, felt the pop. And I, I got up, I laid there on the mat for a

00:20:27.560 second. I said, Whoa, whoa, whoa, stop, stop, stop. And he got up and I laid there on the mat for a

00:20:31.460 second. And the pain was just excruciating. I went outside and I threw up, I was nauseated. So I threw

00:20:37.500 up, came back in and actually the pain subsided relatively quick. And I said, guys, I'm done. I'm

00:20:44.680 going to go home. So I drove home and clearly I'm not, I'm done. And I walked out, I pulled in the

00:20:51.960 driveway. I walked out to where my ex-wife and my son were working with the bees and they could tell

00:21:00.660 immediately something was wrong. I guess I was pale faced and I was holding my arm weird. And,

00:21:04.640 and my ex-wife said, you know, she took her thing off or mask off or whatever. And she stepped away.

00:21:10.800 And she said, what's wrong? And I said, I'm pretty sure I tore my bicep, like a hundred percent sure

00:21:16.560 I've tore my bicep. And she's like, well, go to the, like, go to the ER. Like what? Like,

00:21:21.120 let's get you taken care of. And I said, all right, yeah, I should do that. Let me go take a shower

00:21:25.420 first. And she's like, no, don't take a shower first. Just go straight to the ER. I'm like, well,

00:21:30.320 I, I stink. I smell like that. She's like, just go to the ER. It's fine. So I go to the ER and he says,

00:21:37.780 I'm pretty sure this is a pectoral rupture and it was, and he confirmed and long story short,

00:21:42.560 ended up having to have surgery, reparative surgery had about 90 days or maybe even a little

00:21:48.820 longer of recovery, a hundred percent in a sling 24 seven. But the one thing I didn't do is I didn't

00:21:55.420 stop going to jujitsu. Now I didn't keep training jujitsu, but I went to every single class that I

00:22:03.280 would have gone to if I didn't have an injury and I would do lunges and I would do air squats and I

00:22:09.420 would do box step-ups and I would sit on the mat as they were teaching ideas and concepts. And I

00:22:14.260 would watch my training partners roll with the other training partners. And I would be, and I

00:22:19.240 became a student. I went and got the surgery, recovered, came back. And the first day I came

00:22:25.320 back, I was rolling with one of my friends and he says, man, you're, he's like, is this your first day

00:22:29.220 back? I said, yeah, it's my first day back. He's like, you're better than you were before.

00:22:34.540 How is that even possible? And I said, because I've been here every day for the past three to

00:22:40.620 four months, watching all of you guys studying all, I know what you're going to do. I know your

00:22:45.680 move. I know how you move. Yeah. The timing might be a little bit off, but I didn't lose strength.

00:22:50.660 I didn't lose stamina. I also recovered. It's really hard to recover your body when you're actively

00:22:55.220 training jujitsu. I have that, I had that luxury. You guys don't. So there's a lot, this is a really

00:23:01.780 long way to say, there's a lot that you can do where you can actually get yourself back in the

00:23:06.160 game after you recover your back, where you'll be better than you were before. In fact,

00:23:11.240 you'll be more well-rounded. You could be stronger. You could be leaner because you can still lock in

00:23:17.360 your diet. You can still train your legs or your arms in isolated movements. You might not be able to do

00:23:22.760 back squats, but you might be able to do a leg press or calf raises or leg extensions or leg

00:23:29.300 curls. You can do biceps. You can do triceps. You can do chest. You can do neck. You can do abs might

00:23:35.320 be a little hard, but you can do things. So don't limit yourself and don't start thinking of this

00:23:41.180 limited mindset just because you have, and I realized the back is a pretty essential part of the body,

00:23:46.240 but don't let it do that to you. Decide that you're going to be the exception, not the rule.

00:23:53.500 Yeah. This usually becomes an issue. He's right, right? Most guys, if they hurt their back,

00:24:01.460 what does happen? Well, Ryan, it doesn't meet the expectation of what my workouts typically look like,

00:24:07.320 and it's not how I want to do things. So what do I do? I throw it all out and I go, well,

00:24:12.900 it's just this injury. And then I started in Twinkies and sitting on the couch, right? I mean,

00:24:18.080 that's what typically happens. So don't let go of the expectations, deal in reality of your current

00:24:26.440 circumstance, and then double down on what you can do. Dude, that might be the best thing that

00:24:31.380 could happen to you. You start working on your stretching and your flexibility. It might be the

00:24:37.640 very thing that you needed to do and you needed to stop lifting weights anyway and work on some other

00:24:43.880 areas of your body. It might end up being a great thing. Not it might, it will. Can be. Yeah. If you

00:24:53.060 do it, if, right? But people do this all the time. It's a good point, Kip. You know, you go through a

00:24:58.640 breakup and what do people do? They mope and they cry and they sulk and they eat bonbons and Cheetos

00:25:06.580 and they watch romantic movies and they reminisce about the relationship. And sure, do some of that,

00:25:12.520 okay? I'm not saying you can't grieve or mourn a broken relationship, but also it's time to go.

00:25:19.460 You got to move on, man. You got to drive on with your life. People do it with financial upsets.

00:25:23.960 You know, they have a bad month or a bad quarter, a bad year. They get a big tax liability. And instead

00:25:29.420 of just buckling down and saying, hey, babe, we're going to tie all of our loose ends up and we're going

00:25:35.040 to do beans and rice, the Dave Ramsey beans and rice thing for a couple of months. No, they're

00:25:39.260 like, they, they, they acquire debt. They make stupid purchases that are based on emotion and

00:25:44.600 they exacerbate the problem. People do it in business breakdowns. The business failed. And

00:25:49.320 so like, I'm a loser. And they go back to being an employee, to a job they hated, to a career or a

00:25:54.680 line of work that was miserable. Like, I guess this was just what I was supposed to do. And they cry

00:26:00.360 and they sulk and they complain. And then life gets worse, right? You, you find yourself,

00:26:07.540 if it's a breakup, you find yourself alone longer than you want to be. If it's a financial

00:26:12.080 issue, you find more creditors beating down your door. If it's a business thing, you find

00:26:15.920 yourself in greater despair because you went back to the thing that you were doing that

00:26:19.680 you hated before. And you just blame it on circumstances when you should have just blamed

00:26:23.980 it on yourself. You didn't do what needed to be done. When the going got tough, you buckled.

00:26:30.360 Instead, what you should have done is doubled down and figured out a way to be better because

00:26:34.820 of the thing that happened to you, whether self-imposed or not. Yeah. Dude, I have to share

00:26:40.300 this story because I think it relates perfectly to with what you're saying. So we talked about

00:26:45.220 this, right? I I've stepped away from, um, my current employment and I made the decision.

00:26:53.140 I had a meeting scheduled for Friday at 3 PM. Look at me, HR guy scheduling meetings for Fridays at

00:26:58.920 three. So I scheduled this meeting for Friday at 3 PM Friday morning. I woke up and I'm taking my

00:27:05.200 pre-workout, getting ready to go to the gym. Everybody's asleep in the house and I'm sitting

00:27:08.900 in the kitchen. I'm thinking about what's ahead of me that day. And I literally said this out loud.

00:27:13.480 I said, man, I sure hope I don't regret this decision. And then it hit me. We don't regret

00:27:22.660 decisions. It's not the decision that I'll regret. It's the actions I take after the decision that will

00:27:30.760 cause me to regret it or be happy with the decision I made. It's not the decision itself. It's what I do

00:27:38.000 with the decision. And that is up to me, regardless of the decision.

00:27:45.180 I like that. I actually thought you were going somewhere else with it. I, and I would wholeheartedly

00:27:49.180 agree. We, we don't, we regret what we did or didn't do after, but also I don't think most of the

00:27:55.400 time, I don't think we regret our decisions. I think we regret our indecision. Right? Like when,

00:28:03.040 you know, you have to have a difficult conversation, but you're too cowardly to have it, you regret

00:28:07.740 that. Yeah. You hold on. You have, it eats at you. When you have a business idea and you don't

00:28:13.780 pursue it in some, at some point, whether it's five days or five years down the road, you are going to

00:28:19.640 regret that. Yeah. It's very rarely the decisions that you've made. Cause there's this thing of

00:28:24.520 intuition, the sixth sense. Wim Hof talked about it on a podcast we did last week. And he said,

00:28:30.460 we need to be able to tap into that sixth sense. Your intuition is at least in my experience has

00:28:36.040 not failed me. I know, I know when decisions are to be made or not made or which way I should go.

00:28:43.340 And then logically I either talk myself into or out of that decision when my intuition was spot on.

00:28:49.980 And if I, when I go with that, it's good. When I don't go with that, it turns out poorly.

00:28:54.320 Yeah. I like that. Next question, Chad Scott, man. It's, it's been a while actually. Yeah. Um,

00:29:01.200 when starting a new entrepreneurial venture, how do you determine a reasonable amount of loss risk?

00:29:07.860 I hear success is built upon numerous failures and for every great idea, there are many flops

00:29:13.560 with that in mind. How do you determine the acceptable risk amounts?

00:29:18.420 Uh, man, I might not be the best person to ask because I'd say, throw it all on red and

00:29:27.000 see what happens. And I don't, that's not, yeah, that's not prudent because look, even if I did that,

00:29:33.360 then, and I lost everything, then tomorrow I just re I would rebuild. Like I'm not going to be

00:29:38.880 homeless, you know, but yeah, we also have responsibilities. Right. And so I think you

00:29:43.920 have to take into consideration your wife and your children and how they might be affected and

00:29:47.660 impacted. And this is part of the reason that I tell men, get your financial house in order now,

00:29:53.520 because if you don't have your financial house in order, then you can't take advantage of these

00:29:59.120 opportunities as they arise. And they will, they will come up and you'll either miss them and be

00:30:04.400 bothered, or you won't even see them. That's way more deceitful. You won't even see the opportunities

00:30:09.280 because you're not in the position to handle them. So get your financial house in order.

00:30:13.160 Debt's got to be paid off. Taxes need to be managed. Um, investments need to be taken care

00:30:18.500 of. Cashflow needs to be addressed. Um, having, having money savings, emergency fund, that sort

00:30:24.500 of thing needs to be taken care of. Your network is going to be huge. Continue to build your network

00:30:28.700 always because you can rely on that. So I don't know what the formula is. Maybe, you know, Kip,

00:30:35.440 but, but I think if I'll say it this way, if your financial house is in order, you are going to be

00:30:42.260 able to take greater risks with these types of things than you would otherwise. Totally. Here's

00:30:50.160 what I think, Chad. I think most of us don't deal logically, right? I, I, I believe humans are

00:30:57.680 emotional beings that use logic to justify our emotions. And so when people feel like there's a lot

00:31:04.280 of risk, it's very emotional. So eliminate the motion, focus on the facts. So as an example,

00:31:11.580 um, let's just say, we're going to start a new business venture, get clear on what the top of

00:31:18.360 funnel looks like. All right. How many do we have to sell a month? Oh, just two, two engagements a

00:31:24.820 month and we're good. Okay, great. Um, for me to make those two cells, let's assume that my sales rep

00:31:31.160 can only do a close rate of roughly 20%. All right. How many solid opportunities does he have

00:31:37.880 to have to be able to close to? All right, great. How many leads convert to those opportunities? Okay,

00:31:43.820 got it. Okay. So how many clients and reach outs and impressions do we have to have each month? Like

00:31:49.020 get down to the logical, what's required and use standards within the industry, right? All good

00:31:57.280 close rate or whatever, a good standard return is X percent. Okay. Are we close to that? Are we in the

00:32:05.700 same industry? What's the market doing? Just get really logical both ways. Cause sometimes what we'll

00:32:12.660 do is we'll be overly positive and say, Oh, Ryan, we only have to sell two deals a month. That's easy.

00:32:17.200 We can do that. And then we, and we forget all the other things that's required to get to those two.

00:32:21.620 So get down to the logical facts of what's required and then address it logically. All right,

00:32:29.040 this is a risk. We have a X percent chance of losing money. Are we willing to do that? Yes or no?

00:32:36.900 And let go of, Oh, what I really want to happen or what would be really amazing. Like focus on, on,

00:32:44.500 on the reality as much as humanly possible and then, and then commit to it and then go all in

00:32:49.740 and see if it will work and also figure out how deep you're willing to go and what the rollback plan

00:32:57.880 is. In it, we always call this a rollback plan. We'll, we'll do an upgrade or a conversion. And

00:33:05.240 then we have a checklist. All right, these things have to go green. And if they don't go green,

00:33:09.840 guess what we do at 2am in the morning? We roll back the system back to the way it was,

00:33:14.720 have a rollout plan and a rollback plan of saying, okay, if we don't hit these numbers,

00:33:21.320 we're not going to double down and keep losing money. If we don't hit these numbers,

00:33:25.440 it's not working. And we're going to roll back and go and make a pivot or an adjustment. That way

00:33:32.140 you're not approaching this too emotionally. Hmm. I like that. That's interesting. Yeah. And you hit on

00:33:37.960 a couple thoughts that I had too, is, um, well, one thing you said, oh, you just two sales.

00:33:44.560 Be careful because two doesn't sound like a lot, but it might be in your industry or people might

00:33:51.640 not like what you're offering, whether that's two or 20 or 200, I don't know, but just be careful.

00:33:56.220 And the way that you'd be careful is you enlist other people in the industry

00:34:00.580 who've already done it. And they're like, bro, two's hard a month. Just so you know,

00:34:06.560 two's really hard a month. Okay. That's good. That's good to know. Because if I build or attempt

00:34:13.100 to build my empire and faulty data, that's going to be a problem. Or they might say, Hey, two,

00:34:18.400 you're selling yourself short. You could do 20. Okay. That that's good to know that I need to know

00:34:25.040 that information. And then the other one is you talked about playing it out logically. What,

00:34:29.860 what I would do too, is I would play out the risk logically as well. So for example, let's say

00:34:35.640 I invest 50 grand into this business startup. Could be a lot to some people could be a little

00:34:42.520 to some people, but let's just use 50 grand. If you lost everything, let's play it out.

00:34:48.740 If you roll the thing out, you pour all the money into it. And six months down the road,

00:34:51.740 nothing happened. You never got paid. Nothing happened. It went away. And all of a sudden your

00:34:54.720 $50,000 is gone. What would happen? Would you lose your house? Cause you stopped your job and

00:35:00.720 you kept doing this and everything. That's a, that's a big risk. I don't know if I'd be willing

00:35:04.800 to take that risk or would you have to like go back to your current previous employment and bust

00:35:11.420 your tail and put some overtime in and maybe do some side work. And okay, I think I can manage that

00:35:16.780 worst case scenario, but actually play out what the risk is in a logical way and see if it's something

00:35:23.680 that you can swallow or not. And if it is, and it would just suck for a while, I would do it.

00:35:28.420 If it's going to be devastating, I'd think twice about it.

00:35:32.500 One thing we haven't mentioned, Ryan, and we talk about it. We've talked about it over and over,

00:35:37.080 over the years is minimal viable product, right? Test it out too. That's the other thing,

00:35:42.520 right? Everyone always is like, I got this amazing idea. It's like the.com area. You remember

00:35:47.280 that.com area? Everyone felt like, Oh my gosh, if I build a website, people will magically just go to

00:35:52.900 it and buy stuff. And we're all going to be rich. That, that is what the mindset was during the.com

00:35:58.340 and not to get on a soapbox, but the same damn things happening again with AI. Oh my gosh. Once

00:36:03.620 we have AI, we'll just like magically save all this time. No, the, the reality of it is, is you need to

00:36:10.640 vet it that your idea. Can you even sell one? Can you even sell it to one person? If you can't,

00:36:18.520 maybe your idea is not a great idea. So that the idea through, uh, uh, through the process of a

00:36:25.360 minimal viable product tested out that way you mitigate a lot of that risk as well.

00:36:30.180 Well, and you also have to be careful of listening to potential consumers because I don't think

00:36:37.380 they'll lie. I just think until they actually pay with their, their wallets till they put money.

00:36:44.420 Yeah. Yeah. Right. So, you know, I remember early in order of man, I was like, Hey guys,

00:36:51.160 I want to make this shirt. If I made the shirt, would you buy it? And like a hundred people are like,

00:36:54.240 yeah, we'd buy that. That'd be awesome. Like sweet. A hundred people. I could sell a hundred shirts.

00:36:57.940 That's cool. And then I went and had it designed and that cost me $300. Then I had them printed and

00:37:03.680 that cost me, you know, $500, like whatever. And then I rolled it out and guys were like, Oh yeah,

00:37:09.020 like money's tight right now. And like, I don't know, like, ah, it's not as cool as I thought it

00:37:14.080 would be. It's like, bro. So whenever anybody says, Hey, yeah, I would buy that. Say great. It's

00:37:21.540 $50. You can Venmo me right now. You could, you could pre-order it from me.

00:37:28.540 If they do. Okay. Maybe you're onto something. If they don't, it's like, I'm going to take that.

00:37:33.740 Yes. With a, a bit of a healthy skepticism. Cause I've had that happen all the time and it's,

00:37:41.680 it could be financially devastating and frustrating at the same time. And it also make you pessimistic.

00:37:47.420 You don't need to be pessimistic towards others. Cause you would do the same thing,

00:37:50.200 but unless they're paying for the thing, they're not interested in the thing.

00:37:53.720 And they're, they're, they're words of interest. Don't mean anything.

00:37:58.460 Yeah. They're just being nice or maybe telling you what you want to hear. Right. Right.

00:38:03.620 Uh, Joe Gunter, since starting the order of man, have you seen changes in the views on masculinity

00:38:09.100 in the community, meaning outside the IC? If so, what changes would you have make to the overall

00:38:14.780 message to drive it forward? I wouldn't have changed anything. Um, yeah, I wasn't smart enough.

00:38:23.580 If I was just stumbled into it enough to get our messaging on point the first time, protect,

00:38:28.560 provide, preside. That's our role. It has always been our role. And I was insightful enough to

00:38:34.340 realize that that's what men do. And that's going to be, that's going to stand the test of time,

00:38:41.440 protect, provide, preside. In fact, people try to knock it off all the time,

00:38:44.480 but that's what we do. So I don't think

00:38:49.680 generally societally views on masculinity have changed, but not biologically. And we'll always

00:38:58.580 revert back to biology when things go wrong. This is that good times create weak men, you know,

00:39:06.860 hard times like that whole thing. Right. We're in relatively good times right now. And so that's,

00:39:12.380 and we have been over the, I would say 10 years ago, really good times. And so people were, um,

00:39:18.540 pretty weak about it and like, Oh, we don't need men. Men are the enemy. Like this is a problem,

00:39:24.460 toxic masculinity. And so what happened, and I wrote this analogy in one of my books is that we were put

00:39:30.060 up on the shelf. You know, when you go into an office building and there's a glass red box and it

00:39:34.340 says in case of emergency break here and you break it and you pull the ax out, men are the ax it's in

00:39:40.860 diehard too. I just watched diehard as well. Like Bruce Willis breaks it and he grabs what he needs,

00:39:45.560 the hose to be able to jump off the edge of the building. Right. That's men. Society will put you

00:39:51.940 in that glass case and say, Hey, just be a good boy and stay right there. We don't need you.

00:39:56.760 You're unwanted. You're, you're not needed. And then the minute the building's on fire, it's like,

00:40:01.200 Oh shit, go, go break that glass over there. We need help. And that's what men have been.

00:40:06.680 And now we see a lot of turmoil. We see a lot of chaos. I think people are very unsteady and

00:40:12.220 uncertainty with global affairs and politics, American affairs with finances and everything

00:40:16.780 else. And it's like, maybe we got out ahead of our skis a little bit and maybe men are actually

00:40:23.760 more needed and useful than we previously thought. And this will be a cycle. So I love that in 2015,

00:40:32.520 we started this organization and movement to reclaim and restore masculinity and it's working.

00:40:39.740 Think about how many men's movements that are out there and how many people you follow and how much

00:40:46.160 information you hear as a direct result of the work that we've done for 10 years. It's working.

00:40:54.680 The conversations that we started having 10 years ago, people see that people acknowledge that

00:41:00.500 people recognize that and it's working. There's people doing this type of work who've never even

00:41:04.680 heard of us before, but we did that. And I will take credit for that because there wasn't anybody

00:41:10.440 else except for, uh, Brett McKay with art of manliness doing it. And our conversation was

00:41:16.480 slightly different, a lot different actually. So I love to see the awareness. I love to see that men

00:41:23.400 are more interested in stepping up and returning back to their roots of protecting and providing and

00:41:27.960 presiding. And I love that society has embraced that more than it has in the past. And I see that

00:41:32.420 continually continuing as long as society is in a little bit of chaos and turmoil and people are

00:41:39.960 uncertain, but the minute that the men stabilize and straighten things up is the minute we'll be put

00:41:45.960 back in the glass. We don't need men. Men are toxic. We don't need no man. We can do without men.

00:41:53.240 And it's just cyclical. So I wouldn't change anything. Um, our application of the, of the

00:42:01.320 principles might change, you know, social media, there's, there's social media businesses and

00:42:06.000 accounts and programs and features. There's technology, there's AI, there's all of this

00:42:10.400 information and access to resources and technology with microphones and cameras and lighting and

00:42:16.280 everything else that I'm using. But the message is, and will always be the same always because that's,

00:42:22.720 what's going to stand the test of time. Love it. TJ Poe. In the last year, I have been working on

00:42:31.040 a high demanding job. I work and work and still two weeks behind at all times. Work comes in faster

00:42:38.300 than it goes out, even putting in 14 to 15 hour days. It's beginning to cause problems at home.

00:42:45.700 That's a no go for me. I can't quit this job. So I need to adapt in order to take care of my work

00:42:51.600 and be there for my family. When I'm at home, instead of staying in work mode, how do you

00:42:56.900 efficiently manage your time at work? And how do you keep your work separate from home? I have a

00:43:03.140 feeling that the answer to the second question is managing your time at work efficiently or

00:43:08.520 effectively. Yeah. And that's true. Right. And I, I think I won't say that's the cop out answer,

00:43:14.720 but that's the answer, you know, like, just make sure you're busy at work and you are,

00:43:18.160 who am I to tell you you're talking about 12 to 14 hour days. Who am I to tell you

00:43:22.780 that you're not being busy at work? I kind of hate that stuff. And I used to give that advice. Like,

00:43:27.460 we'll just manage your time effectively. No shit. Of course we need to manage the environment.

00:43:33.080 Yeah. And sometimes the environment's going to, yeah, it's going to give you 15. It's going to give

00:43:37.520 you 20. If you're going to put in 20, like if you're constantly behind, like that's not you.

00:43:42.660 Yeah. And, and if you don't have a plan that other people will make you part of their plan.

00:43:50.020 Yeah. And that's not malicious by the way. I don't think most people are out to like abuse and use

00:43:55.640 their employees. I think they want, I think most good entrepreneurs are like, no, I want to take

00:44:00.260 care of my employees. I want them to do work. I want to pay them a good, a good wage in order for

00:44:04.560 that work. And I want them to be productive and I want them to have a good family life. Like,

00:44:08.160 I think most employers are like that because that just makes it's, it's aligned interests is what it

00:44:14.180 is. But you, there's only so much of you and it could just be a resource issue. In this case, time,

00:44:26.840 you, you can't, you can't do it all. So something's going to give this is TJ, right? Yes. Let me tell you

00:44:35.600 this TJ. Something's going to give, I promise you, you are marching towards a cliff and you don't

00:44:44.560 even know it. And I'm not, I'm not using hyperbole. When I say this, you're going to lose your family,

00:44:52.120 bro, or you're going to lose your job. One of those two things is going to happen. And, and she may not

00:45:00.800 ask for divorce, but you're going to, you're going to be emotionally separated. Your kids probably

00:45:05.800 won't hate you, but they're definitely not going to be connected to you because you can't make their

00:45:09.620 games and the recitals at a minimum on the far end. She's going to divorce you or you're going to

00:45:19.200 lose your job because you're doing so much and you're so overwhelmed and you got your head focused

00:45:23.040 on different things and you're going to drop the ball and your boss is going to fire you like that

00:45:27.140 because you messed up one time, but it was kind of catastrophic.

00:45:34.080 So until a man learns to put boundaries in place, he is susceptible to all sorts of risks.

00:45:42.300 So I would talk with your wife first and I would say, Hey babe, I know I've been super busy with work.

00:45:49.020 I've been frustrated. I've been putting all these hours and this is what it requires. And I, and I need

00:45:53.860 to do this for two months, but if I'm going to do this for two months, then I need to know you're

00:45:57.280 on board and what we can do to make sure this is okay for the next 60 days. That's a conversation

00:46:02.760 that could take place, but you know what? If it's 60 days, then you need to be done in 60 days. It

00:46:06.620 can't go 90 or 120. And then she says, okay, I can do 60 days because she's a trooper and she probably

00:46:14.020 is. She's like, I can do 60 days, but I need you to be home on Wednesday night at a normal time

00:46:19.160 because I need a break and I need to take care of the kids. And I'm supposed to go out with my

00:46:25.060 girlfriends or my sister every Wednesday night to spend time with them. Okay, babe, I can do that.

00:46:30.840 I can do, I can work late Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, but I can be home early on Wednesday

00:46:35.860 for two months. And she's like, okay. And then you do it. And then you go to your boss and you're like,

00:46:43.060 Hey boss, look, man, we've been burning the candle at both ends. And I hope you've been happy

00:46:48.560 with the work that I do. I love this job, man, that we're, our interests are so aligned.

00:46:54.140 I have to set a rule. I'm only, I'm not available on Wednesday night.

00:47:00.920 I will put in one extra hour or half an hour extra. I will skip lunch breaks if I have to

00:47:06.020 Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, but I'm done at five on Wednesday. I just want you to know that

00:47:12.060 you're not asking for permission. You do it respectfully. You don't go in there and March and

00:47:17.540 demand all these things, but you say, Hey, this is a, this is a thing for me. This is a

00:47:21.380 something I have to do. And you start setting the boundaries and you put the rules in place

00:47:27.740 and you'd let people know how they're going to be treating you and how they're going to be utilizing

00:47:31.400 your skillset. And, and this goes back to a previous question. Part of what you need to do

00:47:36.400 is you need to make sure your financial house is in order and you're always networking and you're

00:47:40.020 always communicating with other people and there's opportunities for work in other places.

00:47:43.420 So when you go to your boss and say, Hey boss, I can't do Wednesday night. And he's like,

00:47:47.860 no, you have to. It's like, no, I don't buy. I got X, Y, Z company. That'll pay me just as much,

00:47:55.100 maybe a little bit more. And they're going to be flexible on Wednesday nights. Happy to give that

00:47:58.820 to you. Cause I like being here, but I'm out. If not, that's what we call sovereignty. That's the

00:48:04.960 book that I wrote in 2018. You need to be a sovereign individual. You need to have these

00:48:10.660 boundaries in place and you need to communicate with the people who will be impacted by the

00:48:13.660 decisions you're going to be making easier said than done. Easy for me to say, but that's,

00:48:18.720 what's going to be required. Totally. There's so much to this. I mean, obviously TJ, it's like,

00:48:24.760 why are you always two weeks behind? How long has it been that way? Are you in a position where you can

00:48:31.080 delegate? Are you taking on or re over promising and under delivering, right? Like there's a lot of

00:48:37.140 things, at least on the work front. I would encourage you to address it though. Like if I

00:48:44.240 were your boss and you came to me, TJ, and you're like, Hey boss, man, it's been six months. We're

00:48:48.880 constantly behind. I can't, I like, I don't see a path to get on top of things. I care about that.

00:48:57.580 As your boss, I would care about that. I don't want us to be late. I don't want us to be two weeks

00:49:01.940 behind. I know you're working hard. So you communicating it up front and saying, Hey,

00:49:07.280 how can we address this or bringing it up is good. Just don't go in this path of like, Oh,

00:49:14.400 I'll just work harder. I'll just work harder. That's not helping us. Right. And so be mindful

00:49:19.140 of that. I would have the conversation, you know, whether it's with your boss or if you're in a

00:49:24.380 position, you know, are you over, over committed to things? Are you saying yes to too many things?

00:49:30.540 Do you need to say no and say, Hey, I can't do that. I would rather have an employee,

00:49:34.940 me personally, that says, that says no to me and says, Hey, I can't do that kit. Because if I do that,

00:49:42.700 here's the price on the backend, I won't get these other things done. So you tell me what you want,

00:49:48.020 boss. Do you want me to hit those other deadlines or do you, is this the priority? But you got to tell

00:49:54.820 me which one that's valuable to me because now I can go, well, they're both a priority. So let me,

00:50:00.940 delegate, let me get some more resources involved or whatever, but don't operate in the space of like

00:50:06.040 being a victim to people requesting work of you address it. I can't hit those commitments. I can't

00:50:12.940 honor those commitments. We're two weeks behind. What do you want me to prioritize as these other

00:50:18.400 things will be late and be really clear up front? You know, Kip, I would also say, make sure you're

00:50:25.300 offering solutions. So if I'm you TJ in this, in this situation, and I'm going to go to my boss and

00:50:30.660 say, Hey boss, like we're behind six months. We have been, we continue to be, um, we need to hire

00:50:35.340 one more guy like immediately, like yesterday. And I know it's going to cost us 80 grand. I'm fully

00:50:42.240 aware of that. And I, and I know, I know that, and that's a hard pill to swallow. But what I want

00:50:47.100 you to know is I've been looking at the numbers and our efficiency over the past six months has

00:50:53.120 dwindled 25%. And because it's dwindled 25% over the past six months, we've lost $300,000 in

00:51:00.180 potential receivables over that timeframe or quality. And yeah. And I also want you to know,

00:51:06.260 I'm starting to hear some morale grumblings going on. And if we don't bring somebody in,

00:51:12.400 I fear, and you're not throwing, don't do not throw anybody under the bus. Don't say,

00:51:16.020 yeah, Tom was talking about quitting. No, don't do that shit. Cause now you're just hosing Tom over.

00:51:21.640 Just say, Hey, I've heard some grumblings with morale and boss. I'm really worried. I think we

00:51:26.400 might, if we don't figure out a way to, to handle this situation, my fear is that we're going to lose

00:51:30.880 two or three guys. And I think the solution is to bring one extra person on to do these few roles.

00:51:36.920 And you start coming up with these solutions. If you're in the position to do it, I think that's

00:51:40.660 really powerful. I will give you an example of what you had just said, Kip, about the saying no

00:51:45.500 to things. So years ago I was in retail management and I had just taken over temporarily a buckle

00:51:51.080 clothing store. And I can't exactly remember why maybe, maybe my manager was gone for an extended

00:51:57.080 period of time. I can't remember, but I did the schedule and I put out the schedule for,

00:52:03.020 for the, the workers. And there was a kid, I think his name was Logan. I think it was Logan. This was

00:52:09.260 almost 30 years ago now at this point, which is crazy. And I, and I, and I scheduled Logan for Sunday

00:52:17.040 and Logan got the schedule and came to me and he's like, Hey Ryan, I, I don't work on Sundays.

00:52:22.620 Like that's my day off. That wasn't an agreement that I made with him. The, the boss did the manager

00:52:29.980 did, but I was filling in and I said, sorry, we need you. And he's like, well, then I'm going to

00:52:33.880 have to quit because I don't work Sundays. And I was like, damn, like, okay. Like I'll, I'll see what

00:52:43.940 I can do. And I reworked the schedule cause he was a good, a good worker. I reworked the schedule

00:52:48.420 and took him off Sunday. And he was a great employee. He was one of our best. Like when he

00:52:56.680 was there, he worked hard, his average sale per customer, his average sale per hour were through

00:53:02.880 the roof better than anybody else, which gave him a leverage to be able to say, no, I don't do that.

00:53:10.200 Now, if he would have been a weak employee and his numbers were low and he was kind of showed up on

00:53:14.600 time sometimes, but not others. And he's like, I don't work Sundays. I have to quit. I'm like, cool.

00:53:17.580 See ya. Thanks. You were the anchor and I didn't have to fire you. So I don't have to pay you

00:53:23.160 unemployment benefits. Appreciate that. But in this case, he wasn't. And that gave him leverage to be

00:53:30.000 able to have some boundaries that he was willing to stand by and enforce.

00:53:35.720 It's about on. All right. Chris Henningsen, what are some of the more specific topics you're wanting

00:53:44.000 to cover in your interviews this year? Do you plan it out or arrange as inspiration comes?

00:53:51.360 Yeah, I mostly do it on inspiration. I mean, that's pretty much what I do. Um, I really want

00:53:55.860 to plan towards and around more events, whether it's like father's day or Christmas, or, um, I

00:54:01.680 remember, you know, like, well, this is an interesting, it's kind of weird. It's, I have to be a little

00:54:07.860 bit sensitive about how I talk about this. When Charlie Kirk was murdered, um, I re-released the

00:54:13.180 Charlie Kirk episode that I had done a year earlier because it was good. Like it was really good. The

00:54:19.060 information that he shared and the conversation that we had was powerful and it was relevant to

00:54:23.040 people. And I was looking through the numbers. Um, that episode that I re-released in 2025 was our

00:54:30.220 number one, most downloaded episode of the entire year. Uh, I did another one and this just happened to

00:54:36.340 be, it was just happenstance, but, uh, it was when there was an assassination attempt on Trump in

00:54:43.020 Pennsylvania. And I just happened to have recorded a podcast with Clint Emerson who did security for

00:54:51.520 Trump's first inauguration. And he is a former Navy SEAL and knows all about this stuff. And we had talked

00:54:59.040 about that issue in particular. That was the second most downloaded episode of the year. So I really

00:55:06.280 want to get into, I don't want to come at it from a political standpoint. I just, I don't want to do

00:55:12.280 that. I think there's principles that naturally gravitate more towards conservative principles

00:55:16.680 that we believe in, but I don't want to come at it from that perspective, but I do really want to

00:55:20.460 address and hit on cultural events because it's relevant. And that's when you guys care about it.

00:55:25.400 That's when it's pertinent. That's when other people are talking about it. So I think not only is it a

00:55:28.840 good business decision, I think it's relevant to what you guys are after. So you're going to see a lot

00:55:34.400 more content like that come 2026, where it's going to be time-based in whatever's happening in the

00:55:41.120 environment, in the economy, in global politics, et cetera. Got it. Hence Solemn, what tactics do you

00:55:50.960 see as being effective in dealing with seasonal depression? This winter has been especially

00:55:56.180 difficult and has dramatically affected my daily routine from exercise to sleep patterns. I'm struggling

00:56:03.360 to break out of the slump and get my workout sleep and daily routines back on track. I don't want to

00:56:08.940 use a medication if I can avoid it. Have you ever dealt with this kid personally? Yeah. I mean, we've

00:56:15.860 talked about over the years, man. Like, I mean, we've, we've used terms as like entrepreneurial,

00:56:21.640 uh, uh, PMS. Um, you know, I use the term slump. I'm in a slump, you know, I, I, I feel stuck. Um,

00:56:32.740 absolutely. Absolutely. I can relate to it. I don't know if I've ever dealt with it from a seasonal

00:56:37.340 depression. I don't know if it's seasonal. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, seasonal depending like what you mean

00:56:42.680 by seasonal, it could mean, um, I'm in a slump. I'm having a bad time right now, but I, I think more

00:56:47.820 what Hans is talking about is like seasonal winter depression, potentially, you know, that, that is,

00:56:52.840 that is very common. It's nothing I've had to deal with, but what I would say is for me is to still

00:57:00.660 be productive. You know, when I was in Maine, we'd have these huge winter storms and I loved being

00:57:05.820 outside and I loved working on outside projects and I loved being out in the garage and working out.

00:57:10.760 And it's like, and I love driving around and being out. And it's like, you can't, you just can't.

00:57:15.700 Um, and so one thing that helped me is that's when I actually started the canoe. I think if I

00:57:20.060 remember correctly is okay, I need, I need a project. I need something to do. And it was in

00:57:24.440 the basement and it was cold down there, but it wasn't like outside, but it was productive and it

00:57:28.380 was exciting. And I was building this thing and it was a lot of fun and it kept me in the game.

00:57:34.200 I think that's what you need to do when you're facing these types of situations is at a minimum,

00:57:39.560 keep yourself in the game. So maybe it's not going as hard to the gym as possible, but maybe you're

00:57:44.180 mixing up your routine and you're thinking to yourself, well, I think maybe I'll start jujitsu

00:57:47.920 now, or I'm going to start some cardio stuff. We had gym equipment in the front room of our house

00:57:53.560 that looked out the windows that were in the entirety of our front house with a treadmill

00:57:58.400 and a Peloton and all kinds of different machines. And we put those out there so that we could still

00:58:03.720 work out and train, even if we couldn't get somewhere in a snowstorm. So I think the biggest

00:58:10.040 thing that you can do is just keep yourself in the game by mixing it up and giving yourself

00:58:13.480 permission in the season to do something different. Because a lot of the advice that you'll hear from

00:58:18.820 men's movements is discipline, commitment, consistency, day in and day out, hunker down and

00:58:24.900 do it. And I agree with all of that. But if it's not getting the job done, then maybe discipline isn't

00:58:30.560 the problem. Maybe consistency and hunkering down isn't the problem. Maybe it's what you're doing

00:58:37.900 or not doing. And so how can you mix it up and create a schedule, create an activity, create a

00:58:46.400 hobby, create a project that is going to be enticing to you in the seasonal moment that you happen to

00:58:51.300 be dealing with. And I can tell you with regards to the canoe, I've gone back to building the canoe

00:58:56.360 and I'm excited about it. I actually want to go out there right now. I don't have a whole lot of

00:59:00.640 appointments today. You know, this week is kind of slow for me. I'm going to go out and work on the

00:59:04.320 canoe. That's exciting. Normally I'd be all bothered because I'm not having appointments and being

00:59:07.840 productive, but now I can just go out there and work. And I like that. It's a project. I see the

00:59:12.220 growth. I see the progress and it's a skill that I'm developing. So reconsider, you're talking about

00:59:19.620 recalibrating, but reconsider your current path and give yourself a little bit more permission to

00:59:25.200 explore the fringes of what you've previously been doing. Yeah. I love that, man. When I think about

00:59:31.700 it's like, you know, it'd be fun to go to the gym tomorrow and say, Oh, my workout today, I'm going

00:59:38.540 to shoot some hoops. That's my workout. I'm going to do layups and shoot around and count that and

00:59:46.400 feel good about it and be playful with it or go snowshoeing. Yeah. So maybe you look for the, for

00:59:52.960 the play, but, but still do something, right? Don't result in just, well, I'm just not going to do

00:59:58.600 anything because it doesn't meet the expectations that I have. Yeah. I think men just want to be

01:00:04.280 productive. We just, we want to produce things, solutions, buildings, train our dog, build our

01:00:15.120 bodies, build a business, develop a relationship, get close with somebody. Like even, even like it's

01:00:25.440 maybe a funny example, but even when it comes to wanting to have sex with your wife, like think

01:00:29.620 about the effort that you put forth into wanting to have sex with your wife. Like you put forth some

01:00:35.280 real effort. And I think that's, what's so great about men is that we're aspirational. We're ambitious.

01:00:43.000 We have targets that we desire and we come up with plans to have it. And in the absence of a target,

01:00:49.540 you're going to have some wandering in, in, in the wake of a target that you can't currently hit

01:00:55.300 because of a seasonal type thing, you're going to have a problem. And so use that to your advantage.

01:01:00.820 Think about what is my target? What is my aim? And what am I going after? What is my enemy? We love,

01:01:05.780 we love to have an enemy. I mean, how many of you, myself included are making enemies on social media

01:01:11.060 every day. So we have something to fight against. Yeah. Like we'll get into dumb arguments with

01:01:17.280 ridiculous people, probably very low IQ dumb people just so we can say, well, you know,

01:01:22.720 I'm working towards something. What does that tell you? Fix your aim, change your aim if you need to

01:01:30.620 and get to work. Yeah. Yeah. Love it. All right. Micah Conway, thinking about my battle plan for Q1,

01:01:40.360 how small would you go making a 90 day objective in a quadrant that isn't a huge priority right now?

01:01:46.380 I feel like I'm pretty locked in on connection right now. And the other three quadrants need

01:01:50.740 more work. However, I don't want to neglect any quadrant. I always want to be growing. So I'm

01:01:56.180 thinking of having an objective that would push me less here. What are your thoughts?

01:02:03.560 Yeah, I think, I think that's a good assessment because we talk about balance as being a verb and

01:02:09.260 sometimes certain aspects of your life don't need as much attention. I wouldn't completely do away with

01:02:13.940 it, but if it's connection, you know, maybe it is the status quo for a little while, you know,

01:02:19.020 for example, date night with your wife, I think should be a non-negotiable, but maybe not two,

01:02:23.000 or maybe not a vacation. Um, and I don't know what your connection objective would be. If I knew that

01:02:28.000 I could give you better insight, but yeah, I think it's completely acceptable to reduce the aspiration

01:02:34.960 in one of your quadrants because you're focusing heavy on others.

01:02:38.060 The only caveat or word of advice or even word of caution I would give is that you need to include

01:02:45.140 people in the decisions that are being made if they're going to be impacted by it. So for example,

01:02:51.180 if you're deciding, Hey, I'm going to scale back a little bit in connection this quarter because I

01:02:55.180 need to get into contribution and really get our financial affairs in order. You can't just not take

01:03:00.440 your wife out on a date and expect her to understand what the hell you're doing. You need to say, Hey,

01:03:06.360 babe, we really need to lock down in the financial department. And so we need to think about the way

01:03:11.300 we're doing our date nights for the next quarter. So what I'm proposing is that we don't go out and

01:03:17.120 spend a bunch of money or get a hotel or go to this restaurant or do that. But we do this instead.

01:03:21.100 We go for a walk in the park. We go for a hike. You know, we go for a drive. We get, we go for a drive

01:03:27.040 and get ice cream, but we eat dinner here at the house with our groceries. So you make those pivots

01:03:31.400 and adjustments and you include the people who are going to be impacted by that. We don't do that

01:03:36.360 as men because it's clear in our minds. Like, no, I'm good. Like this is, and you're actually making

01:03:41.380 the right decision. You are, you probably are making the right decision. I got to focus on this.

01:03:47.120 She doesn't know that kids don't know that until you open your boss. Doesn't know that he's like,

01:03:53.560 well, why isn't he putting an effort at work? He used to work all the time over time.

01:03:56.900 Now he's not what's going on. Maybe he's getting lazy. Maybe he's, he had an expectation of you and

01:04:01.600 now you're showing up differently and you didn't connect the dots for the person. So you can make

01:04:06.240 your pivots and adjustments. Just make sure you include other people in the process. If they're

01:04:10.280 going to be impacted by the decisions you're making. Got it. Got it. And I think, by the way,

01:04:16.140 that analogy I used with, with your wife, I think she'd be on board with that because you're leading,

01:04:23.620 you're still telling her she's a priority and you're leading the household finances. That's

01:04:28.260 what she wants you to do. Be the provider. Hey babe, we're going to lock it down. And here's why

01:04:33.120 I'm still going to take you on dates, but we're going to do cheap dates so we can still get our

01:04:36.700 time. And I love being with you and I love learning about you and asking questions and being involved

01:04:40.560 together, but we don't need to go to the Ruth's Chris. Every time we go out, we're not going to do

01:04:47.000 that for the next quarter. And here's why. And now you have an ally. You have a partner. Somebody

01:04:52.260 who's like, yeah, cool. And when she wants to go to Ruth's Chris, you'll say, Hey babe, remember what

01:04:56.820 we talked about? She's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right. And when you want to go to

01:05:00.500 the steakhouse, she's going to say, Hey, remember three weeks ago, I wanted to go to Ruth's Chris and

01:05:05.080 you said no. And so I'm saying no to the steakhouse tonight. Yeah, you're right, babe. Okay. Let's go for a

01:05:10.960 walk together. You enlisted her in the cause. She wants to be your partner, man. And she wants you

01:05:17.140 to lead. I love it. Talk to me about iron council and, uh, enrollment or being open for, uh, enrollment.

01:05:29.020 Yeah. So iron council, our brotherhood, we talked about it quite a bit. And all these questions I

01:05:32.560 think came from members of the iron council. Uh, we are open until the middle of January. So come band

01:05:38.760 with us, check it out. Um, let us know what you think. You know, as if you're on the fence about

01:05:44.640 it, then just come join us. I had a guy messaged me the other day and he's like, Hey man, I, this

01:05:48.600 wasn't what I was looking for. Can I get a refund? I was, he was with us for like three days. I'm like,

01:05:51.880 yeah, sure. Like, I don't, I'm not here to convince you to change your mind on a decision

01:05:57.440 that you already made. I'll ask you why. Cause I want some feedback, but I'm like, yeah, cool.

01:06:01.380 If it's not a fit for you, no problem. Here you go. And I think there's a lot of guys who

01:06:05.560 have those questions, like what exactly goes on behind the scenes and what's taking place

01:06:10.240 and how does this work and come, come try it. You know, the guys who get the most stuff done,

01:06:15.360 do the most stuff. They don't sit around and ponder and pontificate and wonder and hope.

01:06:21.240 And maybe this day, or maybe someday they just do it. And then they figure it out along the way.

01:06:26.060 So learn about the accountability, pour all in, get yourself a battle plan, work the battle plan,

01:06:30.960 find some guys who are on the same path as you and work together with them. Be connected with me,

01:06:35.840 join my battle team, join Kip, your battle team. If you're in Northern Utah and let's get some stuff

01:06:39.980 done in 2026. It's hard because I know a lot of guys are either like, Oh, I don't have the money.

01:06:44.900 It's like, you, you might not have the money you think you do, but you definitely won't if you don't

01:06:48.600 do something different. And so in 2027, you're like, I still don't have the money. Yeah, I ran it. I know.

01:06:54.040 Cause you did the same thing this year as you did last year, or I don't have the time. Really?

01:06:58.480 If, if I were to take a ledger around and follow you around for, for your day, you know, how, how

01:07:04.700 much, how much time would I be spending outside of the bathroom while you're taking a dump playing

01:07:10.320 around on your phone, half an hour, an hour, two hours a day in nonsense. Don't tell me you don't

01:07:16.660 have the time, be more efficient with it. These are the things that we talk about inside the iron

01:07:20.380 council. Absolutely. That's order of man.com slash iron council. And then of course you can connect

01:07:26.920 with Ryan on X and Instagram at Ryan Mickler. Um, any other call to actions? I mean, we talked

01:07:32.720 about the men's forge, the men's forge April 23rd through the 26th. So make sure you check

01:07:38.060 that out. That's going to be outside of St. Louis. It's going to be an incredible event.

01:07:40.820 Dwayne Noel is coming out and we've got a couple other speakers, keynote speakers that we're

01:07:44.680 working on getting headliners. So join us over there. The men's forge.com.

01:07:50.600 Excellent. All right, brother. All right, guys. Appreciate the questions. Kip. I appreciate you

01:07:54.640 go out there, take action and become a man you are meant to be. Thank you for listening to the

01:07:59.500 order of man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant

01:08:04.520 to be. We invite you to join the order at order of man.com.

Order of Man - December 31, 2025

Adapt and Adjust, No Regrets, and Mitigating Risk ｜ ASK ME ANYTHING

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