Order of Man - November 24, 2020


The Battle for Masculinity ｜ NICKY BILLOU


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 1 minute

Words per Minute

210.79453

Word Count

13,016

Sentence Count

915

Misogynist Sentences

46

Hate Speech Sentences

28


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.260 Masculinity is on the decline. I say that not just anecdotally, but also statistically.
00:00:05.120 If you look at testosterone levels, degrees of strength, and our increasing inability to delay
00:00:11.540 gratification for the betterment of ourselves and others, I think it's painfully obvious that men
00:00:16.100 generally aren't what we once were. And there's a myriad of reasons for this. And my guest today,
00:00:22.100 Nikki Billu, and I talk about what those reasons are from the changes that we see in society,
00:00:27.800 both positive and negative. The increasing lack of fatherless homes. We talk about
00:00:32.600 taking fault versus assuming responsibility. The third entity of the relationship with our wife,
00:00:40.440 we go through that concept. Also the undermining of the family unit and the man as the head of his
00:00:47.080 household. We talk about so much more, but ultimately we talk about this battle for masculinity.
00:00:52.700 You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly charge
00:00:57.400 your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time. Every time. You are not
00:01:03.240 easily deterred or defeated. Rugged. Resilient. Strong. This is your life. This is who you are.
00:01:10.420 This is who you will become at the end of the day. And after all is said and done,
00:01:15.180 you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Mickler,
00:01:20.540 and I am the host and the founder of the Order of Men podcast and movement. Welcome here. Welcome back.
00:01:25.300 If you're a man, this is the right place. If you want to be a better man, you want to improve your
00:01:30.220 ability to communicate effectively with the people you care about. You want to make more money. You
00:01:34.020 want to get strong. You want to get fit. You want to be capable, all things worthy of your endeavors
00:01:38.120 and pursuits. Then this podcast and this movement is designed to help you do exactly that. Guys,
00:01:43.960 we've had, I want to say close, probably even more at this point, over 300 interviews with some
00:01:49.920 absolutely phenomenal men, guys like Jocko Willink and David Goggins and Grant Cardone and Andy
00:01:55.400 Priscilla and Tim Kennedy. And we've got a very powerful lineup of guests coming up. So please make
00:02:02.620 sure you subscribe, leave a rating and review. I don't want you to miss anything that we're doing
00:02:07.060 here. And I want you, please, if you would, to share this show with other men who need to hear the
00:02:11.260 message of reclaiming and restoring masculinity. Now I've got a great one for you today with a good
00:02:15.660 friend of mine. But before we get into that, I just wanted to mention my friends over at Origin
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00:03:06.260 All right, guys, let me introduce you to my guest. His name is Nicky blue. He and I have been friends
00:03:11.400 for years. We've been trying to work on doing this podcast. He's been busy. I've been busy,
00:03:15.140 but we made it happen. We made it happen. I'm inspired by this guy's ability to speak
00:03:19.520 exactly what's on his mind. He cuts through all the clutter, the nonsense, the noise,
00:03:24.220 the BS that permeates much of our culture today. He's the author of finish line thinking how to think
00:03:31.060 and win like a champion. He's a highly sought after public speaker. He's a corporate trainer.
00:03:35.860 He's the host of the podcast, the thought leader revolution guys. You're going to hear exactly why
00:03:41.020 I think so highly of Nicky in this podcast today. And I know, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that
00:03:45.900 you're going to walk away with a ton of insight, a lot of clarity that you may not have had going
00:03:51.020 into this conversation. So enjoy my conversation with Nicky, Nicky. What's up, my man. It's been a
00:03:57.800 long time in the works, but I'm glad to have you on the order of man podcast, Ryan, man. It's a total
00:04:03.700 honor to be here with your brother. Thanks for having me on. Of course. I've enjoyed our
00:04:07.860 conversations about men and masculinity and I think you've got some powerful insight. And so I know the
00:04:12.440 guys will really resonate with what you have to share. Tell me a little bit about your thoughts
00:04:17.920 just in general, because we've had these conversations about the state of affairs for
00:04:24.120 men in society today. I know that's very broad, but I think that will allow us to go down some
00:04:29.140 different paths and different veins for this conversation. Absolutely. Thanks for asking the
00:04:34.880 question. So Ryan, we live in a curious time in history, you know, throughout history, men have
00:04:42.480 been, as you put it, providers, protectors and presiders, right? It has been our traditional role
00:04:47.700 yet in the last 50, 60 years, at least in large parts of the Western world, that whole paradigm seems
00:04:54.760 to have been turned upside down. And men today, frankly, are lost. A lot of men don't know how to
00:05:00.920 be. The women's live movement happened in the 60s. And while I think a lot of the impulses behind it
00:05:07.620 were good impulses, they wanted to have legal equality for women, give women opportunities to
00:05:11.820 get into the workforce and so forth, there have definitely been some unintended consequences.
00:05:16.320 And one of the things is that the whole concept of a man being a masculine man, a powerful man,
00:05:21.900 who's their first family, who's their first society in his community has been turned upside
00:05:26.860 down. And there's this horrible, sexist phrase called toxic masculinity that whenever I hear it
00:05:32.800 makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, that really, to me, is indicative of how society has
00:05:40.400 lost its way in terms of how it sees men, and really what the proper role of men ought to be in
00:05:46.520 society. You know what I'm saying?
00:05:47.960 You know, I'm curious what you think. I've got my own thoughts, but you know, some of the guys want
00:05:52.980 to hear my thoughts and some don't. So I'm curious what your thoughts are about specifically
00:05:59.640 the term toxic masculinity. Again, I have my own thoughts. Most people know what it is who are
00:06:05.480 listening to this podcast, but I'd really be really curious to hear it.
00:06:07.860 It's an anti-man sexist term, brother. It's an anti-man sexist term, and it needs to be banished.
00:06:12.160 Period. Full stop.
00:06:13.480 But let me say this, but is it though? I mean, look, maybe I'm playing a little bit of devil's
00:06:19.140 advocate here though, because I think what a lot of people say is they think to themselves,
00:06:24.940 well, you know, some of the atrocities that have been committed throughout history have been
00:06:33.020 perpetuated by men. And so I think what they're saying is that masculinity is, if it's used
00:06:40.360 incorrectly, can produce inferior results. Now, I don't happen to like the term either,
00:06:45.320 but I'm trying to see both sides of it to the best of my ability.
00:06:49.160 I totally understand. My thoughts on it are as follows, okay? If you're going to be fair to the
00:06:56.220 goose, you need to be fair to the gander. You know what I'm saying? If we don't want to use
00:07:00.840 pejorative terms about women and femininity, which I absolutely believe we don't, and I think it's
00:07:06.180 wrong to do so, we don't want to be using pejorative terms about men and masculinity.
00:07:11.640 That very term makes a lot of men feel less than that. There's something wrong with them,
00:07:16.540 even before they have an opportunity to demonstrate who they are through their character. And yeah,
00:07:21.120 for sure, men have done some terrible things throughout history, but let's face it, you know,
00:07:24.880 men aren't the only ones who've done terrible things throughout history.
00:07:27.180 Women have done some terrible things throughout history too, and it's,
00:07:30.840 it's not about putting people down. You know what, you want to uplift women and girls,
00:07:34.880 I'm a hundred percent for that, but you also need to uplift men and boys, right? You got to do the
00:07:40.120 same, because if you don't, you're going to leave one gender feeling less than, and I got to be honest
00:07:44.760 with you, if enough men start feeling that the world doesn't value them, there is a part of men
00:07:49.900 that will fight back, and you're going to see that. A lot of men are going down this whole crazy
00:07:54.640 MGTOW movement. You're familiar with the MGTOW movement? I don't think that's a good thing for our
00:07:58.980 society to have men going down that way. And then there's, there's young men who without the proper
00:08:03.660 type of guidance on what the right kind of masculinity is, lose their shit and go do some
00:08:09.140 really crazy, heinous things out in the world. They go shoot people, you know, they get involved in,
00:08:14.120 in other crimes, and that's not a good thing. And I, I think it's really important for us
00:08:18.980 to understand that, yeah, the world has changed, no question about it. We're not going to go back to
00:08:23.080 how things were 60, 70, 80, a hundred years ago, but we can go forward, bring in the best of what
00:08:29.860 being masculine is all about to men and boys and to society. And if we do that and we honor men the
00:08:35.220 same way we honor women and girls, it's going to be a beautiful thing for the world. And it's going
00:08:39.420 to be a beautiful thing for the relationships between the genders.
00:08:42.700 I, I, I agree in that, uh, men and boys and women and, and young women need to be edified and uplifted
00:08:49.080 and honored for who they are specifically and uniquely. You know, one thing you said is that
00:08:54.820 we don't want to go back to 60, 70, 80 years ago. What do you see as being the problem with
00:08:59.980 reverting back to that form of masculinity, if that's the right term?
00:09:05.860 I don't think there's anything wrong with the form of masculinity that we had back then.
00:09:09.800 Absolutely not. But I think in terms of societal norms, I think in terms of the role that women play,
00:09:15.160 a lot of women today are not going to be happy going back to saying, look, all I want to do is
00:09:18.900 go be in the home. As much as I think it's important for, for, for men and women to make
00:09:24.360 their own choices. And there are women who are going to want to choose to be home. And I think
00:09:27.380 that's the great thing. Like when I was married and my wife and I had babies for a while, she stayed
00:09:31.720 at home with the kids and I'm so grateful that she was able to do that. But for a lot of folks,
00:09:36.180 you know what? The world has changed. They want to go be able to make their own way in the world.
00:09:40.040 And if women want to do that and they're all empowered in doing that more power to them.
00:09:43.620 But the form of masculinity that we had back then in terms of, you know,
00:09:47.380 men understanding their role as men in terms of men honoring their families, in terms of men
00:09:53.160 honoring women a certain way and being gentlemen, I think those parts of masculinity, we should go
00:09:58.220 back to and make them the new future. I just don't think we're going to go back to a world where a
00:10:02.400 woman stayed at home and men went out to work. I don't think that's ever coming back.
00:10:06.020 I agree. But at the same time, I actually, it's a little disappointing to me from my perspective.
00:10:12.720 My wife, for example, is a homemaker. And you know, what's funny is when you use the term
00:10:18.680 homemaker, I think everybody's kind of like, should I use that term? Like, does it have a
00:10:24.020 negative connotation? And I say it proudly. My wife turns this house into a home. She raises our
00:10:30.020 four children. She provides dinner. She has bees that she keeps. She cans food. She makes dinner for us.
00:10:38.560 Like I say that proudly. And I get so frustrated when I hear just societally, and I'm generally
00:10:45.040 speaking here, I'm using broad general terms here. It seems to me that society has diminished the role
00:10:50.740 of a woman in the home. And I think that's just as honorable, if not more so than a woman who goes
00:10:57.600 out into the workforce. And it's very discouraging and disheartening when I see collectively society
00:11:03.180 say that a woman needs to be a man in order to be valuable. And that's the furthest thing from the
00:11:09.680 truth. It's very frustrating to me, especially with a wife who stays at home and does a wonderful job.
00:11:15.120 I agree with you 100%. Kudos to your wife for what she does and for honoring that role of woman, wife,
00:11:20.960 and mother. And I think that's a great thing. Honestly, though, for a lot of people, that's not
00:11:25.500 really an option anymore. You know, there's a lot of folks today. Our world has changed. And that's a
00:11:30.260 really big conversation to have. But it's society's not teaching us to say, hey, you know what,
00:11:36.500 family formation is the right way to go. In fact, one of the things that society teaches us is,
00:11:41.220 you know what, you can get together with somebody, you can have kids with them. But if it doesn't
00:11:44.400 work out, just leave. It's all good. I think that's horrible. I think that's horrible. I'm a man who's
00:11:50.220 gone through divorce. I'm telling you, I don't recommend it. I absolutely don't recommend it. I have a
00:11:54.800 fantastic relationship with my ex-wife. I have a new lady in my life. You know, I get along with my
00:11:59.620 ex-wife. In fact, prior to all this COVID nonsense, my lady and I went on vacation with my ex-wife and
00:12:05.340 my kids together. And really? Yeah. Twice. Twice we've done that. It's pretty amazing. I know.
00:12:11.500 Interesting. But did she bring her, does she have a new husband? Did she bring him along?
00:12:16.460 She has a new husband. She didn't. He was welcome to come, but he's a musician and he had gigs. So
00:12:21.300 he couldn't make it. I'm just curious how this works. I mean, this is an interesting thing for me. So
00:12:25.580 I'm curious how that dynamic works. Yeah, no, for sure, man. He's a good dude. And I'm glad she found
00:12:31.940 somebody good to put into her life for herself. I'll tell you what, though, and I say this, you know,
00:12:38.120 I say this very clearly. I wish we would have been able to find a way to keep our family together and
00:12:43.400 to keep our marriage together. I think that would have been best for the kids. And I think that that
00:12:47.500 would have been, frankly, in the long term, best for us. And I say this as someone who's in love with
00:12:52.120 someone else, loves the relationship I have now. I'm really happy for my ex-wife. But I think
00:12:57.140 the best thing is for a family unit to be able to stay together. The reasons we broke up on the
00:13:03.060 surface of it, society today would say, oh, yeah, those are good reasons to break up. But honestly,
00:13:07.500 40, 50, 60 years ago, a lot of folks would have found a way to not break up over those reasons.
00:13:12.180 They'd have had some tough times, but they'd have had their community rally around them and help them
00:13:16.860 stay together. But it is what it is. It happens a lot these days. It's one of the reasons I'm a
00:13:22.860 champion for men. It's one of the reasons I like to participate in men's groups. You know,
00:13:28.620 I've got a men's group here in Toronto that I run. It's just a small group of a few men and I that
00:13:33.080 are together. I've done men's work. I've done Justin Sterling's Sterling Men's Weekend. I'm sure
00:13:39.260 you've heard of Justin and his work. He's been around doing this kind of thing since the late 80s for men.
00:13:44.000 Men need this work. Men really, really need to be around other men. That's why I'm so excited to be
00:13:51.040 here with you because, man, you are the biggest champion I know of men being with men, iron
00:13:56.800 sharpening iron. You know, the order of man allows men to do that. And you run a lot of fantastic
00:14:03.440 circles for men and you're at the forefront of making this happen. I just want to see the order
00:14:08.400 of men and other groups spontaneously around the world like this blow up in size so that every man,
00:14:15.120 every man on the planet has men that he can count on. He's got his men, men that he can call if he's
00:14:21.160 stuck at 3 a.m. in a Mexican jail. You know, because that sounds like you're talking from personal
00:14:26.500 experience there. No comment. But I'll tell you what, you need to have those kind of men in your
00:14:34.300 life. And those kind of men are the kind of men that you can talk to about anything. And if you
00:14:40.300 don't have those kind of men in your life, if you just got men that you sit around and shoot the breeze
00:14:44.340 and talk about the ballgame or how hot that woman looks or, you know, how funny that dude looks when
00:14:49.560 he's trying to approach that woman and she turns him down, that's not the kind of man that's going to
00:14:54.680 help you become a better man, that's going to help you become more successful in life,
00:14:58.200 in business, that's going to help you stop drinking too much, stop eating so much, get yourself in
00:15:03.660 shape. Not going to be the kind of man who's going to push you and say, hey, man, you're not protecting,
00:15:08.480 presiding, and providing the way you ought to be for the people that you care about.
00:15:11.980 You need the kind of men that are going to push you to be better than you currently are.
00:15:17.440 I want to talk about this idea of banding with other men. I think it's very important,
00:15:22.700 but I want to go back because I don't want to gloss over this. And I certainly don't want to
00:15:26.340 pry where my nose doesn't belong, but I think it'd be really helpful for the guys. You said
00:15:29.900 something interesting. You said, you know, the problems that you and your wife, your ex-wife
00:15:35.700 at this time had, you know, 60 years ago, maybe you've been able to work through those. Would you
00:15:41.480 mind disclosing what some of those issues were? Because I think that'd be helpful for the guys.
00:15:45.540 A hundred percent, brother. So back in, I have two sons and one was born in 2006, the other one in
00:15:55.940 2008. The one that was born in 2008, he was born with a condition called subglottic tracheal stenosis.
00:16:01.720 In English, that means his windpipe is too narrow. For you and me, it's not a big deal to have a
00:16:06.520 windpipe that's a bit too narrow. For a newborn, it's almost a death sentence. Not quite, but it can be.
00:16:14.080 Wow. So my son went to the hospital because he had a hard time breathing. When he was two months
00:16:20.160 old, he was in there for two weeks. We really got freaked out. And then again, at a year and a half,
00:16:24.660 it happened again. And this time, the doctor that originally looked after our son was on vacation.
00:16:30.780 So one of his colleagues took over and he was an alarmist and he freaked my wife out. And I mean,
00:16:35.360 freaked her out. This kid could die. We need to have this surgery. Now the surgery they wanted to have
00:16:39.840 involved sticking a tube down his throat, knocking him out,
00:16:44.080 opening up his trachea, making it bigger and adding some foreign material in there to permanently
00:16:49.400 make it bigger, leaving that tube down his throat for six weeks while he's knocked out.
00:16:54.700 Keep in mind, he's a year and a half old. And the chances of success are decent, 80%. But there's
00:17:01.320 a 20% chance of failure. And failure does not mean he goes back to where he was. Failure means he is
00:17:07.240 permanently damaged. He will have to have a hole in his throat for the rest of his life. He won't be
00:17:12.040 able to participate in sports or do normal things. To me, that was unacceptable. Now at the time,
00:17:17.940 my understanding and conception of how to be a man in a relationship as a marriage was not as
00:17:23.200 advanced as it is now. I felt that I had to be tough and strong. And I just was rough on my wife
00:17:32.080 verbally. I mean, not physically, but verbally. And I got angry with her. What I should have done is put
00:17:37.280 my arm around her and say, honey, I love you. This is our boy. I'm with you. We're going to get through
00:17:42.260 this together and guided her through that. What I did instead is I got into an argument and a fight
00:17:46.640 with her. And there were people around her. And unfortunately, this is something that a lot of men
00:17:50.320 are going to deal with. If you are married to someone and you've got a good relationship, sadly,
00:17:55.860 there are the kind of people that will come around her, both men and women, who want to break up your
00:18:00.200 happiness. And that's a fact. There's men who are going to want to try and take her away from you
00:18:05.280 and have an affair with her. And there's women who just are going to, they're going to hate to
00:18:10.120 see her happiness. And they're going to try and find a way to break it up. And they're going to
00:18:13.900 constantly be saying negative stuff in her ear. And I did not know this was going on. If I had,
00:18:20.360 I would have found a way to say, listen, these people are not pro-family. You need to not be
00:18:25.440 friends with them. Ryan, you know what I'm talking about? And she had these people around them.
00:18:29.540 And when we got into these fights, what they were saying to her, which had never really impacted her
00:18:34.160 before, fell on fertile soil. And she said, yeah, maybe you're right. Maybe this is guy. And I'm
00:18:38.780 from Iran. I'm from the Middle East. We're passionate, hot-blooded people. You know, never
00:18:42.760 raise my hand to a woman and I never will, but we definitely raise our voices and that can be equally
00:18:47.400 as bad, maybe even worse. And her friend said, this is not a good guy. You don't need to put up with
00:18:52.400 this, blah, blah, blah. And this other guy who wanted to frankly get into her pants, there's no better
00:18:59.120 way of putting it than that. He also got in and started putting little thoughts in her ear and
00:19:04.340 she just got to a space for like, nope, I'm not putting up with this. You're putting my son's
00:19:08.720 life at risk. You're from the Middle East. She went to the courts and said, hey, I'm worried you
00:19:13.500 might be taking the kids and not letting me do this. The surgery is necessary. It was rough stuff.
00:19:20.500 Initially, the courts all sided with her, you know, the story that she told him. And I don't blame her
00:19:26.980 because she was a mama bear trying to take care of her kids. And she, she had come to a space where
00:19:31.500 she thought at the time I was a threat. I absolutely was not. And I was going to do the
00:19:34.420 right thing for my sons, but that's how it came across. And I had to fight my way through that
00:19:39.460 to get my rights. Cause initially I wasn't allowed to see my kids. I had one of them, man. It was
00:19:44.480 awful for 41 days, brother. I could not see, speak or in any way contact with them. I wanted to crawl
00:19:49.640 into a hole and die. Not that I was going to kill myself. How did you not have, and maybe you did
00:19:55.580 initially, but any sort of animosity and contention towards her? I had tons brother. I had tons. I
00:20:02.980 hated her. I hated her. I went through horrible head spaces around all this, man. But guess what?
00:20:11.400 A friend of mine, a woman said, you need to join a men's group. Join a men's group. Why would I
00:20:16.200 join a men's group? No, no, no. You need to join a men's group. And there's this one man who works
00:20:19.580 with men who are in relationship distress. His name is Owen Williams. And Owen's an incredible man,
00:20:24.720 you know, um, it's, it's amazing how they say the best rapper in the world at the time was Eminem.
00:20:31.600 He's a white guy. The best golfer in the world at the time was Tiger Woods, a black guy. And the
00:20:35.380 best heterosexual relationship guy in the world was a gay guy named Owen Williams. So just hilarious.
00:20:41.880 And Owen, Owen ran a group for men. I joined that group. I was in that group for several years.
00:20:46.780 Owen saved my life. Owen helped me take responsibility. Owen helped me see that it wasn't
00:20:51.180 all her doing. He helped me. He helped me see that, Hey, yeah, she may have done some things
00:20:55.720 that weren't, you know, the best things from my perspective, but the only way I was going to get
00:20:59.540 out of this was to take a hundred percent responsibility. And it took me a while to get
00:21:02.860 to that space, but I did. And I remember I was in a, in a, in a circle of men and a group of men where
00:21:08.580 I was still angry with her. And one guy who I couldn't stand, Ryan, you know what I'm saying?
00:21:11.960 I couldn't stand this guy. And, and, and to this day at home, a great debt, but he's not the easiest guy
00:21:16.620 to be around. He just got up in front of me and he was just needling me, needling me. And I wanted
00:21:20.280 to deck him. I was so ticked off. I wanted to deck him, you know, and four guys got in the way
00:21:26.120 because I was going to do it. And then he looked at me and he just said, Hey man, when are you going
00:21:30.200 to stop blaming her? When are you going to man up and be a man and start seeing what you did to
00:21:34.580 contribute to this? When are you going to be a man? And he looked me in the eye again, as I was trying
00:21:39.540 to punch him and I just, I dropped my hands and I started to ball, man. I bawled and I bawled for like 15
00:21:45.620 minutes straight and all these men are watching me and they put their arms around me. And, and,
00:21:49.660 and, and, and the guy said, you done blaming her and Ryan in that moment, man, that was five years
00:21:55.760 later. After five years of dealing with this, all the venom left me, all of it, that instant,
00:22:01.660 we had a break because we were in a workshop with men and I, my phone had been turned off. I turned it
00:22:07.700 on. There's a call from her. She hadn't called me in months. And so I called her back and she started
00:22:14.280 to cry and she said, I'm so sorry. I've been trying to make you suffer and this is wrong and
00:22:20.060 you're a good man. And I know it didn't work out between us, but I am done making you suffer. I'm
00:22:25.060 going to sign the divorce papers because you know, she'd been pushing for the divorce. Then she
00:22:28.160 wouldn't sign him, even though I gave her everything she wanted. She signed him that day. The moment I,
00:22:33.020 I energetically let go of the venom, it hit her man. And that's when she did all that. And since then,
00:22:38.700 honestly, she's the easiest person in my life to deal with the easiest, easier than my kids,
00:22:44.480 easier than my current lady, easier than my mom. Well, look, a little contention is a good thing.
00:22:49.980 If it was easy, it wouldn't be fun. You know, that that's how I look at it. Like my wife and I,
00:22:54.880 she's hardheaded. She's stubborn. I'm hardheaded. I'm stubborn. And I like it because it's challenging.
00:23:00.600 It's fun. If it was easy and she was passive, I'd be like, Oh, this is boring. Like how boring and
00:23:06.520 lame would that be? So I like the contention. You know, one thing though, I'm interested in is
00:23:11.700 as you're talking about this, like taking ownership, taking responsibility for your
00:23:17.800 part to play in your relationship struggles. There's a lot of calloused men out there who I
00:23:23.900 know, I know of the hundreds of thousands of men who are listening are saying, well, yeah, but you
00:23:29.740 know, women are bitches and she did this and she was vindictive. And so she had a part to play in that.
00:23:36.520 Which I actually agree with, you know, it's a, it's a, it takes two to tango.
00:23:41.700 So what do you say to the calloused men who are like, yeah, but yeah, but my wife did this
00:23:47.700 and my wife did that. And, and, and it's not a hundred percent my fault. What do you say
00:23:53.740 to that guy?
00:23:55.040 Nothing's a hundred percent anybody's fault and fault and responsibility are distinct
00:23:58.940 and separate from each other. And I think it's really important. If you go into fault,
00:24:02.880 you're going to blame somebody else. You're going to blame yourself. I don't want you
00:24:05.840 to blame yourself. I don't want you to blame somebody else. Responsibility is you're able
00:24:10.540 to respond. Responsibility is a position of power. Taking a hundred percent responsibility
00:24:14.740 for anything, regardless of what somebody else did means that you have the ability and the power
00:24:20.880 to change the way you respond to that situation and make it different. Well, if you blame anybody
00:24:26.920 else, if you blame your ex-wife, if you blame the client who won't pay you, if you, and that's,
00:24:32.240 that's happened to me by the way, many, many times, including someone I'm dealing with right
00:24:35.480 now, if you, of course, yeah. And if you blame other people and you say, oh, it's their fault,
00:24:40.340 then there's no power there for you to be able to turn the situation around and make it better
00:24:45.100 and make it different. While if you take a hundred percent responsibility, then all the powers with
00:24:50.300 you, which means that you have the ability to reframe things in such a way that they can work better
00:24:56.700 for you. And that's what I have to say to those men. So number one, being a man, being a masculine
00:25:01.160 man is about being a hundred percent responsible. If you're the kind of man who doesn't take
00:25:05.960 responsibility, then I'm sorry, man, you're a soy boy. You're a beta male. You're not an alpha male.
00:25:10.560 You'll never be an alpha male. You're never going to live the kind of life you want to live
00:25:13.560 because you're always going to be at the effect of other people. Real men are not at the effect
00:25:17.920 of others. Real men are the ones who create effects for other people. You know, uh, mad dog
00:25:24.200 Mattis, when he was secretary of state under president Trump, one reporter asked him one day,
00:25:27.780 what keeps you up at night? He looked at her and he said, nothing keeps me up at night. I keep other
00:25:33.260 people up at night. I love that. And I just like, I'm like, God damn, that's me, man. I keep other
00:25:39.360 people up at night. I don't stay up at night. I sleep soundly. And that's the way it needs to be.
00:25:43.960 And I say this to men. Hey, listen, you know what? If you want to go and say women are bitches,
00:25:48.080 women are this, you know what? Women say men are bastards, men are pricks. So who's right. Who's wrong.
00:25:53.060 I mean, yeah, I've got, I've got a sweetheart in me and I've got a bastard in me and it's up to me
00:25:58.940 to regulate what those are. And you know what? The, the thing you need to understand about a
00:26:03.460 woman is hell hath no fury, uh, like a woman scorned or a woman that's that, that that's lost
00:26:09.300 faith and belief in you. And if that woman's being a bitch to you right now, there's at least a part of
00:26:14.420 that that you're responsible for. She fell in love with you because she fell in love with your
00:26:19.040 potential. She fell in love with the way you were behaving and treating her. Owen Williams taught me
00:26:22.960 this. Owen Williams is a genius. You ought to have him on your show sometime. That guy is
00:26:26.400 the most brilliant man when it comes to a relationship that I've ever met by far, bar
00:26:30.940 none. And he said, and she'll fall out of love with you based on your behavior. So if you married her
00:26:37.360 and then you decided, Hey, she won the lottery. I don't have to do anything else. I don't have to
00:26:41.820 court her anymore. I can just relax. You're wrong. You need to court her every day. You need to remind
00:26:47.820 her why she made a good decision in picking you because whether you, you believe it or not,
00:26:52.360 she did pick you. She may have made you feel like you picked her, but it was her that picked you that
00:26:56.820 allowed you to pick her in the first place. So make sure this woman feels on a day-to-day basis
00:27:02.380 that you are the right guy, that she did good. And I messed this up with my ex-wife. I should
00:27:09.200 have kept courting her. I should have kept making her feel she was special every single day. I should
00:27:14.660 have made her believe in me and continue to believe in me by my behavior and not just say that and sit
00:27:20.280 back like so many dudes do. So many men do this and go, she won the lottery. She got me. I'm married
00:27:26.840 to her. I don't need to do anything. I can sit on the couch, drink beer, get fat and not really work
00:27:31.880 too hard. And when she says, honey, will you, will you clean out the garage or take out the garbage?
00:27:36.620 I'll just grumble rather than say, yes, ma'am. Absolutely. Cause you're my princess and it's my
00:27:41.260 privilege to make my princess happy.
00:27:42.860 Men, as I do every week, I got to hit the pause button real quick. We're approaching the end of
00:27:48.920 the year. You know, that we're very close now. Many of you are looking for ways to make this new
00:27:54.320 year, 2021, the best year that you've ever had, especially on the back of one of the most
00:27:58.480 interesting that you've ever had, I guess would be the word interesting to put it mildly.
00:28:04.540 But the best place to start your new year on the right track is with our free battle ready program
00:28:10.140 over the course of the next 30 days. When you sign up, we're going to walk you through the exact
00:28:14.980 steps and strategies and tools. And we're going to give you a bunch of resources that you need to
00:28:19.940 reach maximum performance in every area and every facet of your life. I'm not going to beat a dead
00:28:27.120 horse here. If you want to improve your life, you want to get better and you want a system for making
00:28:31.420 that a reality. Then our 30 day battle ready program is the place that you need to get started.
00:28:37.640 And if you start today, here's the best part, because as of the release of this podcast, it's
00:28:42.740 the end of November, I want to say maybe the 25th. I don't know what I have to look,
00:28:47.660 but somewhere around there. Anyways, we're at the end of November. So if you start today,
00:28:52.000 you're going to be in a prime position at the end of December, going into 2021 to absolutely crush that
00:28:58.020 year. Unlike you have any other year. So get signed up for the battle ready program. You can do that
00:29:03.100 at order of man.com slash battle ready again, order of man.com slash battle ready. Do that right
00:29:10.040 after the show. Right now, I'm going to get back to it with Nikki. What's the difference though,
00:29:15.180 between doing these types of activities, you talk about being fat. So the antithesis of that is
00:29:19.940 continuing to train and work out and get strong and fit and everything else. What's the difference
00:29:25.120 in your mind between doing that for another individual, even if it happens to be your wife
00:29:30.020 and doing it for yourself? Honestly, it should be done for yourself. 100%. It should be because
00:29:36.820 that's who you are. And that's who you want to be as a man and as a human being in the world.
00:29:41.280 But the beauty, the beauty of it is that if you do do that, if you continue to try hard,
00:29:46.220 as it were in life, that's probably the type of behavior you were exhibiting when you were
00:29:50.820 courting her that had to be interested in you in the first place. While if you are a lazy slug,
00:29:56.300 women don't like lazy slugs, man. Women like men who are ambitious. And ambition doesn't mean you
00:30:01.620 want to be a billionaire necessarily. You know, you could be a guy who's got a job for the city,
00:30:06.020 but if you're ambitious to be the best father you can be, if you're ambitious to be the best
00:30:10.760 member of the community you can be, if you're ambitious to frankly build the best model cars
00:30:16.200 in the whole neighborhood, she's going to look at that and say, this man's got it going on.
00:30:20.720 He's sharp. I'm glad I'm with a man like this rather than Jenny's husband who just sits on the
00:30:26.980 couch, drinks beer, watches a football game, and never ever does anything to make her feel like she
00:30:34.140 is a woman who's lucky to be married to him. Nicky, one of the things that I appreciate you
00:30:39.540 and we've known each other for years now is I appreciate your enthusiasm and your excitement and
00:30:44.820 your assertiveness. How does the new woman in your life, maybe not new, I don't know how long you
00:30:50.800 guys have been together. Nine years, man. Nine years. So not new. Okay. So how, how does the woman
00:30:55.640 in your life deal with this level of assertiveness? Does she like it? Is it difficult for her? What are
00:31:02.160 the challenges or contentions that you guys have in your current relationship? You know, that's a very
00:31:07.220 good question. So, um, she would probably say she both likes it. She hates it. Yeah. She likes the
00:31:14.480 ambition in me. She likes the fact that I want to make a difference for people. We work together
00:31:18.340 inside my company. You know, she, she's, I know it's crazy. So I don't think my wife and I could do
00:31:24.120 that, brother. I don't think it's possible. Yeah. This is our logo that we got here for the company.
00:31:29.820 And she and I, we wear these, we, we, we, we work together. We love to, we, we love to work together.
00:31:35.580 And she's also, she set three Guinness world records for running 12 hours on a treadmill
00:31:40.000 brother. So she's a, she's, she's a, she's like a, she's like a girly David Goggins, man. She likes
00:31:44.660 this extreme stuff. It's pretty crazy stuff. Um, she loves doing that sort of thing. She's into it
00:31:51.860 and she likes that. I like that sort of thing. But part of me that she doesn't like is when I'm
00:31:56.560 in business mode, sometimes I forget she's my lady and I talk to her like she's a guy, which is not.
00:32:00.780 You know what? Look, I know what that's like. My wife has said, my wife has said in the past,
00:32:05.140 she says, you know, you're, you're, are you talking to me right now? Or are you talking
00:32:10.200 to your guys? Like, do I need to turn the camera on and hit record? Or are you trying to have
00:32:14.340 a conversation with me? I'm sure you relate to that.
00:32:17.300 A hundred percent, man. So this morning when I was talking to her, she called, I called her
00:32:21.600 about something for work. And I said, okay. She says, can you give me five minutes? 15 minutes
00:32:26.140 later, I'm looking, I'm going to listen, honey, I got to go. I got stuff to do. And she's like,
00:32:29.480 but wait a minute, this is important. And I'm like, I'm getting impatient. And I'm going,
00:32:33.040 I got stuff to do. I, you said five minutes. It's been 15 right now. I got to go. That's
00:32:38.120 the wrong thing to say to your lady. It's been 15. Really? The truth is the truth. Look,
00:32:44.080 the truth is the truth. That doesn't mean we can't be tactful about it, but the truth is
00:32:47.820 the truth. She hung up the phone on me. She was passed. She hung up the phone on me. I'm
00:32:52.760 like, okay, I did what I had to do. Cause I really did have to get some stuff done. I called her
00:32:56.740 back and I apologized and said, honey, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that. I just, you
00:33:00.440 know, I just need to get some stuff done. I know sometimes I treat you like one of the guys. I
00:33:04.860 apologize. And she says, no, no, no, it's good. You're great. I love you too. I'm sorry too. I
00:33:09.720 was just, you know, I wasn't mindful that you had to do stuff. So it worked out, but like in the
00:33:13.520 moment it can get pretty rough. You know, one of our friends, I don't know if I should say this,
00:33:18.860 but one of our, one of our friends, one of our friends said, you two are Leo's. This is the crazy
00:33:23.720 thing. We're both born on the same day, August 12th. That's insane. Really? Wow. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's crazy.
00:33:28.900 And my friends said, you know what? You two, your energy is like, you guys are going to either F or
00:33:34.320 you're going to fight. I'll let you figure out what the F is. So you guys need to do,
00:33:37.960 need to figure out. Hey, both are fun though, right? Both are fun.
00:33:42.780 So, all right, let me go back to the relationship with you, with your ex-wife.
00:33:48.200 You said she had some people in her life that, that were, you know, planting these little seeds
00:33:52.740 of contention and discontent in her, in her mind. Yes. How do you inoculate
00:33:59.020 a woman against that sort of thing? And look, I want to say this with a disclaimer. I'm not saying
00:34:07.200 that she needs to be protected or bubble wrapped or coddled or anything like that. It's not what I'm
00:34:12.600 getting at, but how do you ensure that these little seeds of discontent that other people would love to
00:34:18.620 so don't take root and that you're actually leading the relationship effectively?
00:34:24.320 What a great question. I'll tell you. So, and having been someone who didn't do a good job of
00:34:30.460 that in the past, I've given this a lot of thought and I've talked it over with a bunch of men.
00:34:36.680 And here's the best answer I've come up with. First of all, I think you both need to have a
00:34:42.300 conversation that there are people in your periphery and both of your peripheries who are not
00:34:47.560 going to be pro your family and pro your relationship. That's just the way it is.
00:34:51.220 And that you both need to keep a sharp lookout for them. And that if you notice that there's
00:34:55.780 someone who's not pro family and they're, they're just around you, but they're always making comments
00:35:00.660 and they're always inviting you to things that are not family oriented. I've got, I've had guys who've
00:35:06.080 said, Hey, you want to come out to the strip club with me? And I'm like, no, man, I'm in a long-term
00:35:09.600 committed relationship. I don't go to strip clubs. You know what I mean? But I like that guy cannot be
00:35:15.760 one of my regular friends. He cannot be one of my regular friends. Like, listen, we can talk once
00:35:19.940 in a while if he's part of a bigger gathering and I'm there. But if I hang out with them,
00:35:23.840 you, you become who you hang around with. And that's really important for you to understand.
00:35:27.280 And it's important for her to understand as well. So I don't hang around those types of people.
00:35:31.580 And I want her not to hang around the type of person who again is doing things to weaken the
00:35:37.840 relationship and weaken her bonds with me. And we both have had this conversation together. My current lady
00:35:43.580 and I have, and we both have an agreement that we're not going to be hanging around certain types
00:35:48.160 of people. She's a very beautiful woman. I mean, she's stunning, stunningly gorgeous. My lady,
00:35:53.240 right. She's like, she looks like a bloody movie star, you know? And, um, the truth of the matter
00:35:58.000 is because she looks like a, like a movie star, a lot of guys are into it. And a lot of guys show
00:36:02.700 that they're into it. Right. So, you know, I, when that happens, right. And she tells me that this guy's
00:36:08.520 doing this, I go, honey, what are you doing to hang around with this guy? She goes, I don't know.
00:36:11.980 I get it. I'm not hanging around with this guy. You know, I'm just letting you know this,
00:36:15.220 this, the kind of thing that happens. And it's, it's, it's an agreement that we've made
00:36:19.660 that if someone is showing interest, sexual interest, relational interest in the other
00:36:24.840 person, no matter how good a friendship we have with that person, we're going to get that person
00:36:28.420 out of our life because there's just too much of, I don't want to say a temptation, but too much
00:36:34.840 of a possibility of being around that kind of energy eroding, eroding the energy that you have
00:36:40.440 that, that keeps you solid and strong. You need to, you need to make sure that your environment,
00:36:45.020 I think is so strong that these types of, of seeds, if you will, can never fall on fallow
00:36:52.740 ground because it's possible for you and your wife to have arguments. It's possible for her to
00:36:56.880 be feeling bad about you a hundred percent. And you don't want to set the deck against yourself and
00:37:01.520 your family. Well, okay. So I'm going to piss a lot of people off, especially our female listeners,
00:37:06.680 as I say this, but you know what it needs to be said. And I'd say it to my wife too. And I've
00:37:10.100 had said it to my wife. Women tend to be in my experience, a little bit naive about sexual
00:37:16.880 interest from other men. They totally are. A hundred percent. It's just friends. Oh no,
00:37:22.120 he's not interested. They don't understand either. They don't understand or they don't acknowledge
00:37:26.220 it or they're, they're, they're, they're, they refuse to acknowledge it. I don't know what it is,
00:37:29.960 but women tend to be a little bit ignorant about that. I say that with all the love of my heart
00:37:33.940 for my women in my life. So when you have an attractive woman, like you say, your wife is,
00:37:40.480 or, or your, do you, what, what is it? Your girlfriend? Is it your, your partner? Like
00:37:44.600 that's her. Take a look. Beyonce. Okay. There she is an attractive woman. Okay. So you've got
00:37:49.560 your fiance. She's an attractive woman. She probably doesn't see advances from men the same way that you
00:37:56.540 see them. So I'm wondering if she feels like you're being, uh, overbearing or irrational when
00:38:06.100 it comes to these kinds of requests from you. Look, you're a hundred percent correct. Women tend
00:38:12.300 to give men the benefit of the doubt, maybe when they shouldn't certain men. And, um, they like to
00:38:18.960 see the best in people. I'd see the best in men. That's probably why they fell for you.
00:38:22.320 Yeah. Because if she had to fall in love with who I was, that would be a miserable proposition.
00:38:29.620 She fell in love with who I could potentially be your potential. That's it. Well, then fall in love
00:38:33.760 with a man's potential. Owen Williams taught me that too. So I, I totally get that, but they need
00:38:38.980 to understand that men, you know, when it comes to relationships and, and, and, and, and sexual
00:38:44.360 interests are really predators. They're the ones who go after, um, what they want. And sometimes,
00:38:50.740 uh, they're not above or below or beneath playing a role, pretending to be your friend when that's
00:38:57.620 not at all what they want. I've had this discussion. Yeah. I've had this discussion with my lady and
00:39:03.600 she, she, uh, she has not always seen things my way at the beginning, but I, I just, I sat with her
00:39:10.480 and I said, look, how would you feel if there was a woman who was interested in me that I hung around
00:39:15.960 with and went running with and had phone call and text conversations with, I asked her, how would
00:39:20.700 you feel? She took one look at me and she said, okay, I got it. It's done guys out. And just like
00:39:26.940 that, she did it because there have been some women who've shown an interest in me. I'm not as good
00:39:32.140 looking as she has to women as she is to men, but, but she has seen it. She's come to me really upset
00:39:39.240 and said, Hey, that girl wants you. And I've said, really? Cause sometimes I haven't noticed
00:39:44.840 that I've been pretty clueless about these things sometimes myself. Uh, but she said,
00:39:48.900 yep, a hundred percent. And I'm like, she's out, she's done. And, uh, some of these, you know,
00:39:54.600 some of these women have texted me and called me and said, Hey, you want to get together? And I said,
00:39:58.140 you know what, honestly, you know, I'm in a long-term committed relationship and I totally
00:40:02.080 appreciate that. That's maybe not your, even an interest on your end to try and explore anything
00:40:06.420 else. But my lady's uncomfortable. You're, you know, you're an intelligent, vivacious,
00:40:10.180 attractive woman. And out of respect for my lady, I can't hang out with you. And that's that. I say
00:40:15.180 that to women. And if it upsets them, it upsets them too bad. You know, that's how I feel about
00:40:20.400 it. I want my woman to feel good about me and how I comport myself when it comes to the respect that I
00:40:26.900 show her in our relationship. It's very important. Yeah. And I can appreciate that. I mean, if,
00:40:31.040 you know, if you're, if you're telling her, she needs to behave or, or act a certain way,
00:40:34.940 and yet you're not willing to uphold yourself to the same standard, then obviously you're going
00:40:38.640 to lose influence and credibility. And isn't that what being the man of the relationship is about,
00:40:44.560 is about credibility, authority, influence, but it's all voluntary. It's not like you're,
00:40:50.360 you're demanding that, or you're, you're seizing that you're requesting that. And then she can decide
00:40:55.960 whether or not she wants to voluntarily follow you or not. But the idea is that you can, I hate to say
00:41:03.160 it this way. It doesn't sound right, but that you can get her to follow you without having to
00:41:08.400 manipulate, coerce, or force her to. Listen, in a relationship, you both need to lead each other at
00:41:16.560 times. You know, uh, the, I'm a man. I like to say that I really don't have any relationship skills
00:41:23.160 compared to her. She's a relationship pro. I'm a relationship amateur. And there's a lot of things
00:41:28.020 that she knows about how to make a relationship run that I, that I just don't know, or don't have
00:41:32.520 the same skillset as her. And I follow her lead on a lot of things, but there are certain things
00:41:36.620 that I, you know, she needs to follow my lead on. And that's, that's the give and take of a
00:41:40.520 relationship. I really strongly believe that you need to show respect to each other, but there's the
00:41:45.980 third entity. Um, this Owen Williams calls a relationship, the third entity. So there's you,
00:41:51.680 there's her, and there's the third entity, the relationship, and all of them need to be nurtured
00:41:56.260 and respected. And you can't have a relationship last. If you know, the basic rules of how to keep
00:42:04.100 a relationship solid are not followed. And one of the basic rules is you don't let people in there
00:42:09.020 who are not pro the relationship. If there's people who are trying to damage the relationship,
00:42:13.460 those people got to go. That's like having a bad apple as an employee, somebody who's sowing
00:42:18.100 dissension in the ranks. You got to get rid of that person as soon as possible, because if you don't,
00:42:22.220 they're going to destroy all the good morale you have in your company and destroy it for you.
00:42:27.160 I agree. I agree. I think sometimes there's obviously resistance to that from one party
00:42:33.360 or the other, or sometimes a little bit of a voluntary blindfolding. Like I don't want to
00:42:39.800 acknowledge that this is what is happening. And so we don't deal with it. And then we say,
00:42:43.560 Oh, I was blindsided. Were you, or did you just refuse to acknowledge what was actually happening?
00:42:49.860 Right. I think that happens a lot of the times.
00:42:51.660 I felt blindsided too. That's what I said when, when my wife left me back in 2009. And in retrospect,
00:42:58.280 I shouldn't have been blindsided. I, I was messing up. I was messing up pretty badly in my
00:43:03.060 relationship. And if I had my eyes open, then I wouldn't have messed up and I'd have been able to
00:43:07.380 turn it around. Men need to understand. That's one of the reasons it's so important, Ryan, to be
00:43:11.820 part of a group of men, group of men who have your back because you can bring these kinds of issues to
00:43:16.400 them. And you can, you can nip it in the bud. You know, Owen said to me that by the time a woman
00:43:21.920 tells you she's thinking of leaving the relationship, she's been thinking about it without sharing it
00:43:27.180 with you for two years. That long. Wow. Interesting. So by the time she tells you she's 98% made up her
00:43:36.740 mind that it's over. And once she's fully made up her mind and closed her heart to you, your chances
00:43:41.780 of getting her back are nil. You don't want to wait for her to say, I think we've having problems
00:43:47.220 in our relationship. You need to pick up on those cues well beforehand. If you have any commitment
00:43:52.720 to keeping your relationship strong. One of the reasons I'm in a group with men right now is
00:43:57.740 because I buy, I tend to buy my own bullshit. I'm a man, you know, I weave a load of good bullshit out
00:44:03.900 in the world. It's part of how I'm successful in the world. And, and, and it's dangerous when you
00:44:09.340 start buying your own bullshit. Cause when you buy your own bullshit, you're done, you're done.
00:44:14.080 And having a group of men around me means I don't get to buy my own bullshit because these men are
00:44:19.240 going to call me out and they're not going to be gentle about it either. Not that they're going to
00:44:23.660 deliberately try and hammer me, but you know, if I'm, if I'm around the group and I'm saying some
00:44:29.320 crap about my lady, one of the men's going to go there and say, Baloo, that's the biggest load of
00:44:33.560 crap I ever heard in my life. Can you even listen to yourself? You listen to how you sound.
00:44:37.820 And then at first I get ticked off and I go, man, what the hell are you talking about?
00:44:41.940 Then I sit back and I go, yeah, wait a minute. He's right. He's completely right. I'm buying my
00:44:46.560 own crap. No, it's important to have men like that. Cause if they sugarcoated everything,
00:44:51.940 and this is actually one of the problems I see in society generally is I see a lot of women trying
00:44:56.380 to raise boys. And I know this anecdotally through the own, my own emails I receive from women. And if
00:45:02.520 you're listening and you're raising boys on your own, I'm telling you, you, you, you likely do the
00:45:07.600 best job that you can, but you're a woman. That doesn't mean you're inferior. It means that
00:45:11.820 there's something that's missing. You're not a man and you cannot raise a boy to be a man
00:45:18.560 any more than I could raise on my own, a young girl to be a woman. I don't know what it's like
00:45:24.600 to be a woman. A woman doesn't know what it's like to, to deal with the issues that boys have
00:45:29.600 and how to become men. And so you might raise a good and decent human being, but a woman cannot
00:45:34.700 raise a man. So ladies, if you're listening, and I know there's a lot of you, if you're listening,
00:45:39.180 you've got to get your boys around other men who can say the things that need to be said
00:45:45.860 and do the things that need to be done. I watch, for example, my last year, my, my son was playing
00:45:52.420 football and I watched that coach get right in his face and do the old knife blade right at him,
00:45:57.140 right in his face, man, just getting after him. Cause he missed his assignment. And I could see
00:46:01.340 my wife just like mama bear, just like, kind of like tussled up. And she's like,
00:46:06.820 I'm like, just take him out. She's going to take him out. Relax. Just sit there and be quiet
00:46:12.320 and let the boy learn from a man. And sure enough, he picked up his assignments. The coach came over
00:46:19.380 later, put his arm around him. I didn't hear what they said. I talked to my son after he said, yeah,
00:46:23.620 he just told me I missed my block. He gave me some instruction and gave me some coaching and all was
00:46:29.040 good. That's going to be hard for a woman to deal with, but men need to learn from other men how to
00:46:36.200 be men. It's, it's not going to happen any other way. You know, that's so true. And again, when I
00:46:42.040 was, when I was working with Owen back when my marriage first broke up, he, he made a very powerful
00:46:48.320 point. And this guy is just so brilliant, man. He said that between the ages of nine and 14,
00:46:53.960 uh, a boy needs a man around a boy needs a man around. Those are formative, powerful years for
00:46:59.680 him. And if he doesn't have good, solid, uh, men around role models who can teach him and set them
00:47:07.040 straight, he is, he's in for a rough ride. And those are the, those are the years in which single
00:47:12.560 mothers who don't have good men around their boys are going to have a rough time. You know, a couple
00:47:17.200 years back, I was talking to, uh, Warren, uh, Farrell, who I believe you've had on your show as well.
00:47:22.040 Yeah. The boy crisis. Yeah. Yeah. So he and I were talking about kicking around the idea of
00:47:27.340 putting a course together for single women, uh, single moms who had boys to, to help them with
00:47:33.880 this stage of a boy's life, to how to raise good men, men who would be able to go out in the world
00:47:39.000 and win. And I still think it's a good idea to do something like that because there's so many good
00:47:44.500 women out there who are single women and have, have boys who just at some stage don't get it.
00:47:50.560 Don't understand how, how to do what they need to do in order to help that boy navigate
00:47:55.160 that very precocious and difficult and challenging time where he transitions from being a boy to being
00:48:01.560 a man. Yeah. Well, you know, look, boy Scouts used to be that boy Scouts has lost its way.
00:48:07.920 Uh, competitive sports used to be that, but in the wake of this COVID, you know, agenda here,
00:48:13.240 uh, that that's been pushed by the wayside, all these institutions that, you know, first the
00:48:19.960 father was replaced and then everything that was replacing the father is now being replaced. And
00:48:23.920 it's a real travesty to our young men. It's very frustrating. And the things that Dr. Farrell talked
00:48:28.720 about the thing that Dr. Uh, Leonard Sachs talks about in his books, boys at drift and why gender
00:48:33.800 matters. These are all things that are only getting worse, which is why what you're doing and what
00:48:40.700 we're doing is so crucial, not only to men, but the boys who will be eventually become men.
00:48:46.520 Amen, man. Amen. A hundred percent agree. And you, you know, you, you, you talk about this a lot,
00:48:52.120 Ryan, you talk about holding the line and we need to hold the line and we need to make sure that we
00:48:57.560 raise the next generation of boys and men to be the kind of men that really the world has seen
00:49:03.440 throughout its history. The kind of men that, that go out there and, and protect the people that
00:49:08.600 come out of them, that provide for their families and that preside and help raise those families and
00:49:14.160 raise the children so that they can be productive, great members of society. We got to do that.
00:49:19.500 Um, I'm a big believer that, you know, maybe this didn't happen by accident. You know, there's a
00:49:24.860 fellow that I, that I come across, uh, I actually interviewed him not on this topic, but, uh, his name's
00:49:30.020 Kent Clisby. He wrote a book called willing accomplices. It's a really powerful book. And in it,
00:49:35.460 he talks about how when the Soviet union came into being in 1917, uh, Vladimir Lenin saw, uh, the
00:49:44.980 biggest obstacle to the goal for worldwide revolution, which was what communism was all
00:49:49.260 about back then was the United States. He called the United States the main adversary. So he had one
00:49:54.560 of his chief lieutenants, a guy named William Unsenberg, who was a German communist come to the
00:49:58.880 United States with a cadre of committed communists and say, look, we're never going to defeat the United
00:50:03.860 States from without, but we can defeat it from within. You need to go and destabilize its
00:50:08.880 institutions. This is going to be a decades long process, but you need to destabilize, uh, its, um,
00:50:14.820 school system, destabilize the media and destabilize Hollywood because Hollywood was just coming into
00:50:20.280 its own back in those days. And William Unsenberg did exactly that. And in that book, if you read that
00:50:26.040 book, you'll see that was planned. They had a plan to come in and change all the norms that have turned
00:50:34.720 America into a great solid society. And over a period of 50, 60 years, we're left with political
00:50:40.980 correctness, political correctness being the norm. We're left with schools being a place, not to
00:50:46.720 celebrate America and celebrate the virtues of masculinity and manliness that made America great,
00:50:51.500 quite frankly. And, and now deriding America and deriding masculinity and Hollywood has used to be
00:50:59.220 a fabulous place that made incredible movies that, that told the American story in such a beautiful
00:51:04.240 way and told the story of men, men that created and did great things inside the world. And now it's
00:51:09.420 turned into something that, that crops all over that. And the less I say about the media, the better,
00:51:15.360 because I think the media right now is just a dumpster fire of epic proportions. And it's very
00:51:21.140 important for people to understand that these types of things don't happen in a vacuum. Other
00:51:25.940 folks have had a role to play in this. And if we want to change the world, if we want to create a
00:51:32.180 world where masculinity is celebrated, we're going to need to understand that we've got to go step by
00:51:38.380 step through the institutions, retake them and start having people like Ryan Mickler stand up and talk
00:51:45.380 about masculinity to the largest possible audience possible. And then to also help other men be
00:51:52.520 inspired by what you're doing. So there's not just one Ryan Mickler, but there's 10 million Ryan
00:51:56.660 Micklers around the world doing what you do. That's, what's going to change our world and put it on the
00:52:01.020 right path. I think you're spot on, which is why I think we resonate so well and, and, and, and agree
00:52:08.120 on a lot of these issues. I made a post on Instagram the other day about the undermining of religious
00:52:12.380 institutions, the family unit and small business, because those represent the greatest threat to the,
00:52:17.880 the, the powers that would be. And, you know, a lot of people agreed, certainly a lot of people,
00:52:22.600 tons of people agreed, thousands and thousands of people agreed. Uh, but there was an overwhelming,
00:52:27.060 uh, percentage of people who, you know, didn't agree or were, were, were refused to acknowledge
00:52:33.960 this or saw it different. And I just thought, man, what a shame that we can't recognize that
00:52:39.720 I'm hesitant to use the word attack on masculinity. Again, I think vernacular vocabulary is very
00:52:46.700 important, but there's certainly an undermining of it. Certainly an undermining of it because we as
00:52:52.060 men and the boys that we will raise to become men represent the first and last line of defense
00:52:57.820 against those powers that would be in, in 1917 and on, like you had talked about, maybe it was communism.
00:53:03.480 And, and I think that has made a significant resurgence in the form of, uh, democratic socialism,
00:53:09.700 which is socialism, which is Marxism, which is communism, all blanketed and veiled under this,
00:53:15.360 this, this, uh, these, these words that we try to disguise the agenda in. I'm careful of talking
00:53:21.980 about that because I, I, I have a lot of people say, well, that's conspiracy theory. It's really not.
00:53:27.200 I mean, we know that men are being undermined at every turn from the family unit to our religious
00:53:32.400 institutions, to boys, uh, being stripped of their, their rights, uh, to be around their fathers,
00:53:38.960 uh, to them primarily being raised by single mothers and being taught by female school teachers.
00:53:46.100 It's really actually right there in front of us.
00:53:49.580 A hundred percent, man, 100%, you're a hundred percent bang on, which is why the work you do is
00:53:54.740 so important. And the fact that you get to reach so many men is so important. Honestly, I have a vision
00:54:00.840 for you, man, where you reach a hundred times as many people, a thousand times as many people.
00:54:04.940 And that honestly, there are literally millions and millions of people who are inspired by what
00:54:10.260 you do to want to do that themselves inside other communities of men, men that maybe otherwise
00:54:14.480 wouldn't be able to hear of you and the work that you do. I think it's so, so important. And you know
00:54:19.340 what I do for a living is I'm a champion for entrepreneurs and free enterprise, right? I believe
00:54:24.640 free enterprise is the most moral system of economics and governance the world has ever seen in the
00:54:30.160 United States of America as the avatar of that system. It has created so much abundance, so much
00:54:36.000 prosperity and brought more people out of poverty and into abundance than everything else combined
00:54:41.120 throughout history has done. And that's why I'm so passionate about serving entrepreneurs,
00:54:47.180 helping them win because governments today aren't doing that. And the powers that be, as you say,
00:54:51.520 aren't doing that. In fact, they're actively undermining them. That's why they need champions
00:54:55.620 like myself to be able to stand up and say, hey, free enterprise matters, freedom matters.
00:55:01.420 And to me, the United States of America is the one indispensable nation. It is the single greatest
00:55:06.700 nation in the history of the world. Twice in the last century, twice. The so-called civilized nations
00:55:15.160 of the world in Europe and Asia dragged the world to war in flames. And who had to come and save
00:55:21.460 their butts and restore peace and prosperity? But the corn huskers from Iowa and Nebraska,
00:55:27.140 the garment workers from New York, the surfers from California, the cotton pickers from Alabama
00:55:32.300 and Georgia, and the auto workers from Detroit, Michigan, where would the world be without the
00:55:37.360 United States and freedom loving people, freedom loving men like you? It would be in a hell in a
00:55:42.960 handbasket under the Nazi jackboot and the Soviet hammer and sickle. And right now, this generation,
00:55:49.800 once again, is being called upon to stand tall and stand strong against the forces that call
00:55:55.220 themselves tolerant, but are anything but the forces of so-called democratic socialism.
00:56:00.340 The only difference between democratic socialism and Marxist socialism is one of them uses unfree
00:56:05.560 elections to get their way, then the other one doesn't bother with that and just uses guns and
00:56:10.120 weapons. America's great. America's wonderful. We need to stand up for who she is. And we need to
00:56:15.760 make sure that men understand that men, men are the ones who need to stand up for these things.
00:56:21.060 We got to stop taking a backseat and stop pretending this is no longer our role. This is our role now
00:56:25.840 more than ever. Amen. Look, there's, there's no question I can ask and no point, no finer point
00:56:35.780 that I can make than what you just said. So I think we'll end it right there because that's a powerful
00:56:40.460 note to end on brother. It really is, man. I appreciate you. I knew this pat, this conversation
00:56:45.380 would be powerful. It's been a long time in the works. Nicky, tell me how the guys can get ahold of
00:56:50.040 you. Some guys are going to resonate. A lot of the guys, obviously you're going to resonate with
00:56:53.240 what you're doing and they're going to want to know more about your work and how to connect.
00:56:58.060 A hundred percent brother. Um, so listen, there's a, there's a, there's a couple of things people can
00:57:02.560 do. I I've got a podcast as well. It's called the thought leader revolution. Uh, you've been a guest
00:57:08.360 on that show a couple of times. Probably going to have you back on because we got to have you
00:57:13.300 talking about the book again some more. Cause I think that the book's really fantastic. And I
00:57:17.680 actually think I'd love to maybe even have you on once a quarter to talk about like a quarter of the
00:57:22.180 book and what we do. Let me tell you this, Nicky, there is a new book that will be coming out very,
00:57:27.960 very soon. So let me tell you that as well. We'll have these conversations. No doubt. Okay. So we'll
00:57:32.380 definitely do that. I think that's great. I think that's important. So the podcast,
00:57:35.560 the thought leader revolution, which is on all the podcast platforms and also the thought
00:57:39.860 leader revolution.com. That's one way people can get ahold of me, but I'm going to make an offer to
00:57:43.320 you. And this is a bit of a crazy offer. You're going to think I'm crazy for making it, but I'm
00:57:46.360 very sincere in wanting to make it. If you want to have a conversation with me and you're a man and
00:57:53.280 you, you are having issues in marriage and you just want to have a conversation, or if you're a
00:57:58.200 business owner and you're thinking, man, this crazy cat, maybe he's got some things I want to,
00:58:01.660 I want to, I want to find out about, I am going to offer this. I will give 45 minutes of my time
00:58:08.960 for free to any man who wants to do it. And the way for them to do that is they can go to,
00:58:13.660 to one of my company website, East circle academy.com. There's a button that's there that says book a
00:58:18.820 call. All they got to do is click on that button and say, I listened to it. I listened to the order
00:58:22.860 man podcast and I'm claiming my free call with you and fill in the rest of the information.
00:58:27.260 I will get on the phone with you. We'll have a conversation and I will give you all my heart
00:58:32.120 and soul to help you. If you're dealing with a relationship issue, or if you just want to talk
00:58:35.620 about business or just talk about freedom and how great America is, whatever the reason is,
00:58:39.480 take advantage of that. My friends, tell me the website again. Sure. It's E circle academy,
00:58:46.560 E circle academy. You know what? Let me, let me show you the spelling of it. Just so
00:58:51.960 here we go. It looks, it looks like this. There you go. E circle academy. Yeah. And there's a
00:58:58.800 button in the, there's a button on the homepage. It says book a call. Just click on the button.
00:59:03.060 Right on, man. We'll sync it all up. Nikki, I appreciate our friendship and,
00:59:06.480 and, uh, your continued guidance and your insight. It's been invaluable for me. And I know it's going
00:59:11.020 to be invaluable for the men who are listening to this podcast. Thanks for joining us, brother.
00:59:15.820 Thank you for having me, man. It's totally been an honor. I had a blast.
00:59:18.720 Gentlemen, there you go. My conversation with Nikki blue. I hope that you enjoyed that one.
00:59:24.460 We had a very candid conversation. We agreed on some things and not that we disagreed, but
00:59:29.340 I think we challenged each other well and talked about some things from some different points of
00:59:33.880 view that maybe we haven't in the past. And these are all conversations that need to be had. And it's
00:59:38.820 my goal in these podcasts to make it feel like you're actually part of the conversation because
00:59:42.380 what you have to say and your input is valuable as, as is ours. So please make sure you connect with
00:59:48.280 Nikki. He gave you a tremendous offer to, uh, do the coaching, the free consult and coaching.
00:59:53.140 Uh, you can do that at e circle academy.com. And he's also got, and he failed to mention this on
00:59:58.260 the podcast. Cause I failed to ask, uh, he's got an event. It's a, it's a digital event coming up.
01:00:04.580 It's called winning 2021. It's November 28th. And he said that if you go to
01:00:10.160 ecircleacademy.com and book an appointment with him, the way that he gave on those instructions
01:00:17.400 on that call to action button, uh, then you can ask about the, uh, the winning 2021 event. Again,
01:00:23.500 that's on November 28th, go to ecircleacademy.com to check it out. All right, guys, that's all I've
01:00:29.480 got for you again, connect with Nikki, let them know what you thought. Oh, by the way,
01:00:33.720 I was going to tell you guys, the conversation I had with tank last week on the podcast did
01:00:38.560 phenomenally well. In fact, it was our highest single daily download to date, which means that
01:00:45.760 the conversation we shared between tank and I really, really resonated with you. So go back and
01:00:50.640 listen. If you haven't make sure you share it because men need to hear the message that tank shared.
01:00:55.600 Uh, and then tank also said that you guys bombarded his inbox, which I asked you to do.
01:01:00.660 So I appreciate you doing that. I don't know if tank appreciates it. I know he does. He does
01:01:05.520 appreciate it because he sent me messages that you guys sent to him. Uh, and it was clear that that,
01:01:10.280 uh, really opened up some great conversations and some great thoughts for you guys. So I'm glad to
01:01:16.240 know that make sure you keep sharing the show because more men need to hear what we're doing.
01:01:19.300 All right. That's all I've got for you. We will be back tomorrow for the ask me anything,
01:01:23.760 but until then go out there, take action and become the man you are meant to be.
01:01:28.540 Thank you for listening to the order of man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life
01:01:33.000 and be more of the man you were meant to be. We invite you to join the order at order of man.com.
01:01:38.500 Thank you.
01:01:43.960 Thank you.