In this episode, Ryan Michler talks about what it means to be a man and why we need to reclaim the role of being a strong man in society. He also talks about the benefits of writing your own book and some of the things that have worked well for him.
00:00:00.000You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart your own path.
00:00:06.020When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time. Every time.
00:00:10.440You are not easily deterred or defeated. Rugged. Resilient. Strong.
00:00:15.500This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you will become.
00:00:19.760At the end of the day, and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.
00:00:24.720Hey, gentlemen. What is going on today? My name is Ryan Michler, and I am the host and founder of this podcast, The Order of Man.
00:00:31.800I am glad that you are joining us today.
00:00:34.320If you're new, this one's a little different than our interview shows that we do each and every week.
00:00:38.380Typically, on Tuesdays, we're interviewing guys like Jocko Willink, Lewis Howes, Andy Priscilla, Grant Cardone, Tim Kennedy.
00:00:45.260I mean, you name it, we're having conversations with some of the most successful men on the planet.
00:00:49.880We're extracting their wisdom, and we're delivering it straight to you, to your earbuds.
00:00:54.720So I'm glad that you're here. But again, this one's a little different.
00:00:57.720This is our Friday Field Notes, where you get to hear from me for about 10 to 15 minutes or so, whether you want to or not.
00:01:04.000I guess if you didn't want to, you could just tune it off.
00:01:05.720So hopefully you want to listen to me about some things that I've been thinking about from throughout the week about masculinity,
00:01:12.580what it means to be a man, and how we can be better fathers, husbands, business owners, community leaders, and just better men in general in our lives.
00:01:19.840I've got a good one lined up, I think, today. I've had a lot of questions lately about the new book I just came out with,
00:01:25.560Sovereignty, The Battle for the Hearts and Minds of Men.
00:01:28.100And I get emails, and I get messages, and I get texts from you guys who want to learn a little bit more about the process.
00:01:34.640Because I think a lot of you probably have, or at least believe that you have, a book inside of you.
00:01:39.900So today I'm going to talk about the goods, the bads, the things that worked well for us, the things that didn't go so well.
00:01:44.920And then just give you some guidelines, some systems and some processes in a system that you can use to decide whether or not you are going to write your own book, your own work.
00:01:55.060So before I get into that, let me give you a couple of quick announcements.
00:01:58.020Number one, if you would, we need to grow this, guys. We really need to grow this.
00:02:01.520It's been amazing to see the growth and the trajectory that we're on right now.
00:02:04.680But of course, I would like to see that grow even more.
00:02:07.340I realize that comes with time and patience, but I also want to be aggressive in the growth that we're seeing here because I think this is a message.
00:02:14.820And I wouldn't be sharing this message if I didn't believe this was true, but it's something that we just, we need so bad in society.
00:02:21.840You know, I look around and I see a lot of wonderful, amazing things.
00:02:25.180And I think generally speaking, we're more educated, we're healthier, we're wealthier.
00:02:30.740I think also peace is spreading, democracy is spreading.
00:02:35.140I mean, there's so much good in this world, but I also see on the other hand, a dismissal.
00:02:41.560It's a general dismissal of this notion of masculinity, what it means to be a man, why men are so valuable in society.
00:02:49.800And what I've been thinking about this week is not only is it an attack on masculinity itself, but it's also attack on femininity.
00:02:57.940Because if there is no importance in what it means to be a man, then quite honestly, there's no importance in what it means to be a woman either.
00:03:04.900And so as much as I'm not talking necessarily about damaging thoughts about what it means to be a man or a woman,
00:03:11.920I am suggesting that we maybe consider reclaiming what each of those means, because there are definitely, definitely a need for strong men and strong women in society today.
00:03:23.880And what we're doing here is we're covering one side of that equation, which is to help us, me included, become the men that we are meant to be.
00:03:31.500And when we do that, guys, when we do that, we are called to be protectors, providers, and presiders.
00:03:38.020And when we step into that calling and we arm ourselves with the tools and the skills and the abilities and the processes to step fully into that role, I think life gets better.
00:04:09.720It's better for humans in general when there are strong, noble, virtuous, honorable men who know exactly, exactly what it means to be a man.
00:04:22.180And they're willing and capable of stepping into that calling.
00:04:27.560Again, this one's a little bit different because you're hearing from me.
00:04:30.500I'm going to be talking about writing a book, which isn't necessarily a masculine thing to do, but I think it's something that you guys want to hear from.
00:05:14.760I'm pretty good about responding back and, and just having conversations with you guys who engage with me on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
00:05:21.160Outside of that, just a couple of other things.
00:05:24.540This is our band of brothers, 360 men inside of the Iron Council right now.
00:05:28.900We're talking about this month, the idea of vision and values, because I believe there's a lot of men out there who probably know what it means to be a man.
00:05:36.260And yet they have no vision for the future.
00:05:38.600No real clear sense of direction and purpose for what it is they're supposed to be doing with themselves, with their families, with their businesses, all those areas that we talked about earlier.
00:05:48.120And inside the Iron Council, we're having these discussions where we're doing challenges.
00:05:52.140We're holding each other accountable and we're doing, frankly, what men do when we band together, which is to improve.
00:05:58.500You know, you can go at it alone and you can pretend that you have this thing all figured out, but the reality paints an entirely different picture.
00:06:04.920When I was going at it alone, I was producing significantly less results than when I was operating with, and currently a band of brothers, guys who want to succeed, who are doing the things to succeed.
00:06:17.100And then they're helping me do the things to succeed as well.
00:06:19.740So you can check that out at order of man.com slash iron council, order of man.com slash iron council.
00:06:26.240And then the last thing before I get into my thoughts for today, we are talking about the book writing process.
00:06:31.540A lot of you guys know a couple of months ago, or I think it was about a month, maybe six weeks or so ago.
00:06:36.680I released the book sovereignty, the battle for the hearts and minds of men.
00:06:52.940The subtitle is the battle for the hearts and minds of men.
00:06:55.580So pick up a hardback cover, a paperback, the ebook, the audible version, which I read myself.
00:07:02.100And again, that's a great way to support what we're doing, but then learn some of the tools and the skills and the things that I've been developing and implementing in my life for the past 10 years or so.
00:07:10.040So check it out again, order of man.com slash book, order of man.com slash book.
00:07:15.340And then you can pick up a book there.
00:07:17.220All right, guys, let's get into this subject, this discussion today.
00:07:19.940I thought I would pull back again, the curtain, uh, and just share with you a little bit about this, this process of writing the book.
00:07:27.520You know, I've received again, a lot of messages since we published sovereignty, the battle for the hearts and minds of men, uh, about what it's taken to write the book, the challenges, the victories, uh, the things that went well, uh, and the things that didn't go so well in making this book available to you.
00:07:43.520And I want to start here that writing a book is not, it's not an easy process.
00:07:47.600It's a painstakingly slow journey that really causes you to question your own sanity in, in some way.
00:07:57.040You know, sometimes you run across days where you feel a hundred percent committed to the process and other days, I mean, there was just days I wanted to quit and I wanted to throw in the towel and scrap the whole idea altogether.
00:08:06.840Uh, so again, since I received so many questions about the process, uh, I figure I'd give you some insight and then you can decide, you can decide from there.
00:08:14.820If writing a book is something that you want to take part in, uh, we're going to cover the reason that you need a strong why, when it comes to writing a book, the actual process, including some of the tools that I use, which were very, very simplistic.
00:08:27.080I'll mention that later, uh, the timeline that you can follow, uh, what format you should consider publishing in.
00:08:33.900And then whether or not you should find a publisher or go ahead and self publish it.
00:08:37.600So those are the, the topics, those are the areas that I want to address.
00:08:40.660Now, guys, I got to give this disclaimer and I don't like giving disclaimers because I hope most people can figure this out, but not everybody can as evidenced by the emails and messages that I receive from people who find exceptions to everything I say.
00:08:52.440Uh, but the disclaimer is this, I am not guys, this subject matter expert on this.
00:09:10.380If you're genuinely ready to write a book and you want detailed instructions or the intricacies of the process, there's plenty more qualified resources than what I'm going to share with you here in the next 15 minute podcast or so.
00:09:34.300So first let's talk about the why I truly believe that you have to have a strong reason for writing a book.
00:09:41.140I don't really like the term find a why because it's so overused and I think the meaning is lost, but really you've just got to have a strong reason for doing what you're going to do.
00:09:51.160If you're going to successfully write a book, you have to know why you're doing it and has to be emotionally driven and it has to be strong just because someone told you that writing a book was a good idea or you saw my book and you thought, well, I'd like to do that.
00:10:06.580Or you think you quote unquote should write a book.
00:10:09.720It doesn't mean that actually writing a book is in your cards.
00:10:13.420The truth is that it's not always the most enjoyable experience as with anything, right?
00:10:19.180Anything is going to have its ups and downs.
00:10:21.420So in order to keep the, the movement and the process alive and sustainable, you're going to have to find a strong reason for continuing to move through that process, even when you don't want to.
00:10:34.360And there will be days that you do not want to write.
00:10:37.700I'll tell you more about that in a minute.
00:10:39.300But for me, I took this book as, as a challenge.
00:10:47.100Even in high school, my reports weren't all that great when I had to write and do those sorts of things and book reports and all of that kind of stuff.
00:10:53.400So the challenge for me was appealing.
00:10:55.300I try to put myself in positions where I'm challenging myself and doing things that I normally wouldn't do.
00:11:00.940But I also firmly believe in what our mission here is.
00:11:04.560I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't believe wholeheartedly in what we're doing.
00:11:09.040And because I believe so strongly in my mission, I knew that writing a book was one additional way to spread this message.
00:11:17.100To the men who would not otherwise know what we're all about.
00:11:20.800And so when there were days when I thought, I'm going to throw in the towel, I'm not going to do this.
00:12:02.960But at the end of the day, if you can't find time to sit down in a chair and behind a computer screen and just crank out words and do that every single day, you're just not going to complete your work.
00:12:39.280There were some days that I didn't write 1,000 words or only a couple hundred or not at all, but I more than made up for those missed days the following day.
00:12:47.100I didn't let those things compound because again, I wrote those 63,000 words in 60 days.
00:13:57.700You know, people ask me all the time, what's the best workout?
00:13:59.580Well, the best workout is the one you'll do.
00:14:01.400So if you're doing strength training and you hate strength training and you're not going to do it and you're going to sit on the couch or sleep in instead, well, that's not really a great workout.
00:14:09.080If CrossFit is something that you've heard is good and you're not going to get up and that doesn't motivate you or inspire you.
00:14:14.580And so you're going to sit around and be lazy and do the things you've always done, then CrossFit isn't the workout for you.
00:14:19.340So find something that works for you, Microsoft Word or Scrivener.
00:14:24.080There's a ton of programs out there that you can use.
00:14:27.200Now, outside of that, once I got about halfway through what I thought was about halfway through, so about 30,000 words or so under my belt, I started to research graphic designers.
00:14:40.680Don't do it yourself or don't hire your uncle or your cousin who one time made a crappy logo for your son's lawn mowing business or something.