Order of Man - March 24, 2015


OoM 001： Introducing the Order of Man Podcast


Episode Stats

Length

15 minutes

Words per Minute

202.35977

Word Count

3,070

Sentence Count

198

Misogynist Sentences

1


Summary

In this episode of the inaugural episode of The Order of Man Podcast, Ryan Michler shares his story of growing up without a strong male role model in his life and how he was able to grow into a better man.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly charge
00:00:04.860 your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time. Every time.
00:00:10.340 You are not easily deterred, defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is
00:00:16.960 who you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done,
00:00:22.660 you can call yourself a man. Hello men, my name is Ryan Michler and I'm so excited to be coming
00:00:29.960 to you today with the inaugural episode of the Order of Man podcast. It has been a long time in
00:00:35.140 the works. Today, what I thought I'd do is take some time to share with you a little bit about
00:00:39.660 what we hope to accomplish with this podcast and the website that you can find at orderofman.com.
00:00:45.420 I'm also going to share with you a bit about my story and why I think it's important for you to
00:00:50.500 know. In fact, it's my backstory is the real reason why I started this project and also a large part
00:00:56.340 of the future direction of Order of Man. We're also going to talk about what you can expect from
00:01:01.120 me and our team over the next several months as we get things launched. But the last thing I want
00:01:05.500 to do is I'm going to ask a couple of things from you. Among all the things that I want to accomplish
00:01:10.120 with this project, the first and most important thing is that I want to create a community. So
00:01:15.180 with that said, I'm going to tell you how you can get involved and how you can take action. At the end
00:01:21.420 of the day, we can talk about all this stuff until we're blue in the face, but nothing happens in this
00:01:25.840 world without action. So let me share with you a bit about my story so you can see where I'm coming
00:01:30.440 from. And if you're like many of the men that I've talked with, as I've discussed what I'm trying to
00:01:35.180 accomplish here, then I think you'll be able to relate to my story in some way. And at the very
00:01:39.920 least, you'll probably know someone who has been through a similar experience as I have in life. So when
00:01:44.920 I was three years old, my dad left me, my sister and my mom. And from the limited information that I
00:01:51.520 know about the story, he was into drugs and alcohol and decided that those things were more important
00:01:57.420 than his family at the time. Now, in all fairness to him, he has tried to build and maintain a
00:02:02.640 relationship with me over the years. But the fact of the matter is, is that there were 18 years of my
00:02:08.240 life when I was growing up that my father wasn't there and in the house. And I never really had a male
00:02:14.180 role model in my life. When I was eight or nine, my mother married again. This time, the man was an
00:02:20.020 alcoholic. And, you know, looking back on it now, I don't question that he cared for me and my mom
00:02:25.560 and my sister. But when you put alcohol or anything for that matter over your family, it just doesn't
00:02:31.240 create the type of harmony in a home that I think needs to be there. And it doesn't allow for the
00:02:36.500 father, the leader of the home to fulfill his role and his responsibility. So needless to say,
00:02:42.220 that relationship soon ended. And I was once again, without a father figure in my life.
00:02:48.220 Now, when I was 14, a new man came into my life as my mother remarried again. I remember when they
00:02:55.960 started dating and I remember him asking how I felt about them being together. And I was surprised at
00:03:04.280 how quickly and how frankly I stated that I did not need another dad in my life. I had been let down
00:03:10.120 before. And so my thought was, why would this be any different? And unfortunately, it wasn't. He turned
00:03:16.380 out to be a poor example in my life about what I think a man should be. He was verbally and emotionally
00:03:22.180 abusive. I still remember very vividly to this day that my mom and my sister and I ran out of the
00:03:29.340 house into the garage. He came running after us. My mom was so fearful that she literally drove
00:03:35.400 the car through the garage door that my stepdad had tried to close as we were getting into the car.
00:03:42.380 So you can see how my faith in men at this point, up until the age of 18, was pretty limited. But on
00:03:49.300 the flip side of that, there's been several men in life now that I look to as role models, examples of
00:03:55.240 what I really think it means to be a man. And the first one that I can think of is my high school
00:04:00.820 football and baseball coach, Matt Labrum. So Coach Labrum was hard on me and he was hard on us all,
00:04:07.740 but something was different. I could tell there was really something different about the way that he
00:04:11.500 approached it. It wasn't ill-willed. It wasn't mean-spirited. I could tell that he cared about us.
00:04:16.680 He cared about who we were as athletes and who we were as men. In fact, what I think is that he was
00:04:21.860 using sports as a metaphor for life. And he taught us that the lessons we learned on the field and the
00:04:27.520 baseball diamond, those were lessons that we could take throughout life. How to win, how to lose, how to
00:04:34.060 work together, what it meant to be disciplined and committed, and what it meant to have hard work and
00:04:39.780 dedication for something. You know, I remember baseball, my senior year, he actually benched me
00:04:45.760 in my senior year. And when I asked him why, he said it was because I hadn't trained in the off-season.
00:04:52.900 And unfortunately, he was telling the truth. I hadn't done the things I needed to do. And he held
00:04:57.720 me accountable for my decision not to do the work that I knew that I should have done to better myself
00:05:03.120 when it came to baseball. And that's real life. That's a lesson that I'll never forget. And I think
00:05:09.820 sometimes we as men need to have those tough conversations with the people in our lives,
00:05:15.200 whether it's our family or friends or whatever it may be. But another man that I hold in very high
00:05:20.960 regard is my father-in-law. You know, I remember the very first time that I met him, he was sitting
00:05:25.900 in the chair in his office as I walked into my wife's house. She was my girlfriend at the time.
00:05:30.520 I said hi, and he quickly nodded and gave me a less than cheerful, hey, right back to me. But he's
00:05:38.040 6'3", and he is a man's man. He intimidated me then. And 12 years later, he still intimidates me.
00:05:46.880 He's a tough man. If you need to know how to fix something, you call him. But if you need help,
00:05:53.120 he's always the first person that comes to people's mind. I was always really intrigued by the way that
00:05:58.940 he raised his sons. You know, no one would ever accuse him of taking it easy on them. But no one
00:06:06.640 would ever doubt his love for them as he taught them about his business and life and everything
00:06:11.520 that he felt like he needed to share with them. So I have male friends, business colleagues,
00:06:16.720 neighbors, relatives, just like we all do. And some of them are good men, and some of them are not.
00:06:22.180 And as I think about my experience of growing up without a permanent male role model in my life,
00:06:28.220 I wonder what life would look like if I had. I wonder what the world would look like if we had
00:06:34.520 more men in it. And I'm not talking about males. I'm talking about men. And I really believe there's
00:06:40.240 a difference. And my mission is to set out and help you understand the difference between the two.
00:06:44.360 So now that I have sons, I see a need, a need to teach and reclaim what it means to be a man.
00:06:51.980 And that's where Order of Man comes in. So together, I think we can create, and what I'd like to do is
00:06:56.800 create a community where men can learn from each other. And I'm creating something that I would want
00:07:01.880 to be part of, something that my sons can contribute to and learn from. And so here's how we're going to
00:07:06.780 do this. First, I'd like you to head over to the website at orderofman.com. And you'll see that
00:07:12.640 we're going to cover five main areas for guys to learn from. And the first is self-mastery.
00:07:19.920 And I think that self-mastery is probably the most important one, which is why I put it first.
00:07:25.960 And when I talk about self-mastery, we're going to break that down even further into three sections.
00:07:30.040 So physical self-mastery, emotional self-mastery, intellectual self-mastery. You know, if you can't
00:07:36.380 figure out how to handle yourself, there's no way that you're ever going to make an impact in this
00:07:40.800 world. And what's interesting is that the world would have you believe that men cannot master
00:07:45.500 themselves, that we're animals, or that we're lazy, or pigs, or that we're idiots. It seems like
00:07:50.840 everywhere you turn, there's this assault on manhood. But I'm here to tell you that together
00:07:56.380 we can hold off that assault, and we can become the men that we were born to be. So the next topic
00:08:02.760 that I want to discuss is faith. Now, I don't want you to tune out just yet when you hear the word
00:08:07.100 faith. A lot of people might. I'm not talking about religion, although there are certain elements
00:08:12.000 of that. What I'm talking about here is faith in a higher power or a higher purpose, a calling for
00:08:17.880 you, a reason that you're here. And without that guidance or belief, what are we doing here? There
00:08:23.460 has to be a reason for this experience, and we're going to share what that is. The third topic that
00:08:28.640 we're going to cover is family and relationships. We as men believe that we need to go at it alone a lot
00:08:35.360 of times. That it's more noble or virtuous to do so, but that's just flat wrong. We need others in
00:08:41.600 our lives. We have a family that's there to work alongside us and to accomplish the things that we
00:08:45.880 want to accomplish. We can develop and nurture these relationships in a way that creates win-wins
00:08:50.920 for those that we care about. And so we're going to talk about how to build relationships with your
00:08:55.100 family and your colleagues and co-workers and all those things. Next is we're going to cover finances
00:09:00.040 and career. And this one really hits home for me. I'm a financial advisor. Men, it's time that we're
00:09:05.720 a little better with our money, that we're a little bit more deliberate in what we're doing as a
00:09:11.620 career. We've all heard the adage that money is the root of all evil. And I'm here to tell you that
00:09:15.940 money and wealth is not evil. In fact, I think it's the catalyst for all that can be good in this
00:09:21.840 world. Charity, creating value, accomplishing our goals, fulfillment, time to pursue your passions.
00:09:27.860 But money, however, I think it can be destructive when we don't harness that power and we don't
00:09:34.180 harness what a meaningful career can be in our lives. And so we'll talk about how to save and
00:09:39.360 invest and how to land that dream job and how to ask for a raise and how to retire wealthy.
00:09:44.860 And then the last general topic that we're going to discuss is community and contribution. The world
00:09:50.960 needs men to lead in their homes, in their communities, in their countries. We need to get
00:09:57.520 off of the sideline and get involved in the groups and organizations that we believe in.
00:10:02.620 I just volunteered. In fact, what I was doing a lot of that this morning is helping with my two
00:10:07.800 sons' baseball teams. And we're starting this week. Last year, I coached baseball and football for them.
00:10:13.780 But it's amazing to me to see the lack of involvement from men in sports. It's scary to see that men just
00:10:21.480 aren't getting involved. And I'm here to tell you that we've got to be involved in charities, politics,
00:10:27.500 business, sports, family, all the things that make a family, a community, and a country run.
00:10:33.380 Now, about this time, I think a lot of people, and you might even be asking yourself,
00:10:39.080 what makes me the expert on all of this? And I'm here to tell you right now that I am not the expert.
00:10:45.840 The only thing qualifying me to do this work is that I'm a man. And I'm someone who wants to learn
00:10:53.680 and wants to improve. And so if you want to learn and improve as a man, then I think you're at the
00:10:58.420 right place. And if I can be the catalyst for growth in our lives, in my lives, in my boys' lives,
00:11:05.320 and even in your lives, if you're interested, I think the better question is not why me,
00:11:10.120 but really, why not me? So that being said, I have big plans for what we're going to do with
00:11:15.400 Order of Men. First and foremost, we're going to get you the very best men the world has to offer.
00:11:21.500 The men that are absolutely crushing it in their lives, in their line of work, or their field of
00:11:26.460 study. And we're going to bring those guys on this show for you. We're also going to create a
00:11:31.120 Facebook group where guys can come together. We can be resources for each other, ask each other the
00:11:37.260 tough questions and get real and authentic answers back. So we've started organizing quarterly
00:11:41.900 retreats. We call them mancations where guys can get together and just escape the world and take
00:11:47.500 some time to get back to our roots. In the fall of last year, we had a retreat at my cabin in Southern
00:11:52.200 Utah. And we've got some other golf outings planned. We've even considered going to Las Vegas and renting
00:11:58.500 the track at the Motor Speedway to race their cars. But we're also going to do that, not just those fun
00:12:03.660 things, but we're going to couple that with opportunities to learn live from the men that
00:12:08.840 you want to hear from, from whether it's politics or how to advance in our career or how to be better
00:12:16.240 fathers, whatever it may be, we're going to cover all of those topics. We've got a ton planned and
00:12:21.480 we're just getting started. So I told you that I'm going to ask you to take some action. Here is what I
00:12:27.540 need from you guys. Three things today. First, subscribe and rate the podcast. You can do that
00:12:34.500 at orderofman.com slash iTunes. And that's how we're going to get the word out to the millions of men
00:12:40.700 who need to tap into the network that we're going to be creating. And then secondly, connect with us
00:12:47.500 on Facebook. You can go to facebook.com slash order of man. We're going to post some questions
00:12:52.100 there and really start engaging with you. And then last, I'd like you to head over to the website
00:12:58.100 at orderofman.com. Subscribe to the newsletter. We're going to be sharing exclusive content from
00:13:03.060 successful men. We're going to hold contests. We've got promotions and giveaways to the brands
00:13:08.900 that you guys love. So one last thing is we are currently looking for guest contributors. So if you
00:13:15.440 write and you've got some information or a platform or a brand that is catered towards helping men become
00:13:20.820 better men, we are looking for people to guest post. So you can head to orderofman.com and communicate
00:13:27.400 with me on what you'd like to write about on our, on our blog. And if you'd like to be on the podcast,
00:13:31.900 we're also looking for men to interview as well, who are, like I said before, just having a ton of
00:13:36.940 success in their business. So if that's you, or you know, somebody again, head to orderofman.com
00:13:41.520 and you can connect with me there on what you have in mind as far as contributing to order of man.
00:13:48.180 So this first 30 days is crucial as we launch order of man. And I'd really like you to join our
00:13:55.220 cause and our mission of building better men. And so I've got seven podcasts lined up so far.
00:14:01.500 They're all interviews with men. Like I said, that have been very successful in their careers and
00:14:07.220 their line of work. And so I'm going to be releasing one of those each and every week. So again,
00:14:11.400 be sure to subscribe at orderofman.com slash iTunes. I know this is a quick episode, a lot quicker than
00:14:18.440 we're going to do in the future. Most of our episodes will be roughly 45 minutes, but I just
00:14:23.700 wanted to give you a taste about what it is that we're trying to accomplish. What my story is briefly,
00:14:29.240 I'll be going into that more and delving into that more about some of my experiences and why I think you
00:14:34.480 should know that and how it can help you become a better man. And I think frankly, how those experiences
00:14:39.580 in my life have helped me become a better man, even though some of those are hard. Now, I know a lot
00:14:44.140 of you guys are very similar. You've had hard things in your life, but those are the types of things
00:14:48.620 that make us stronger. If we band together and we work together and we learn from each other. And that
00:14:52.840 is the goal of order of man. So men, I look forward to being here next week. Thank you for listening to
00:15:01.240 the order of man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant
00:15:06.400 to be. We invite you to join the order and order of man.com.