#330： The Life Skills Every Man Should Know
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
194.75485
Summary
What skills and knowledge sets to the man need to have in order to be effective and self-reliant? What skills and skills sets should a young man learn before he leaves his father's household to become a man? And why should every man get his pilot's license? This episode is a hodgepodge of insights on becoming a well-rounded man.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast what skills and
00:00:19.280
knowledge sets to the man need to have in order to be effective and self-reliant my guys has spent
00:00:24.040
the past few years thinking about this topic and putting down his ideas in a series of books that
00:00:27.560
he calls modules for manhood his name is kenneth w royce i had ken on the show a few years ago to
00:00:32.680
talk about the first volume of modules for manhood and today on the show we discuss the modules found
00:00:36.720
in volume two we begin by discussing what it means to cope with the world and why many young men today
00:00:42.120
aren't equipped to do so kenneth then shares some strategies on how you can find the time and money
00:00:46.320
to learn new skills we then dig into some of the specific skills he highlights in volume two of
00:00:50.840
modules for manhood including how to teach managing your time and how to become a leader by learning
00:00:55.820
to be a good follower we end our conversation talking about problem solving and why every man
00:01:00.220
should get his pilot's license this episode is a hodgepodge of insights on becoming a well-rounded
00:01:04.760
man for a man who spent his life trying to become well-rounded himself after the show's over check
00:01:09.220
out the show notes at aom.is slash royce where you find links to resources where you delve deeper into
00:01:13.620
this topic kenneth w royce welcome back to the show glad to be back thanks for it so we had you
00:01:27.880
on a few years ago talk about your book volume one in a series called modules for manhood and for those
00:01:34.580
for those who aren't familiar with the series uh what is the overarching goal of this series of books
00:01:41.600
you're putting out called modules for manhood well it's basically to fill in the gaps of males who
00:01:47.980
aren't quite yet men and becoming a man is a process and there's always something to learn something to
00:01:54.660
hone something to do better at but these days a lot of young males didn't have father figures
00:02:01.440
grandfathers uncles or even an older brother to kind of help them show the way so as an author i'm trying
00:02:07.100
to do my part in helping them to fill in the gaps the so-called modules and there's about 42 of them
00:02:14.820
that i came up with and volume two covers uh i think 13 through 25 all right and uh i think it's
00:02:23.120
interesting you quote jeff cooper the famous marksman right pistol fighter gunfighter um and he
00:02:29.720
says that it's about these skills that you're trying to teach is learning teaching young men how
00:02:35.320
to cope with the world around them and what what do you and what does cooper mean by coping with the
00:02:41.320
world around you jeff cooper just before he died in 2006 outlined a whole list of things that he thought
00:02:48.240
a young man should know how to do before he leaves his father's household and cooper thought the father
00:02:54.840
was primarily responsible for inculcating these things you know such as knowing how to fight
00:03:00.280
knowing how to manage money knowing how to cook a meal how to camp out on his own uh speaking foreign
00:03:06.500
languages and so forth so uh you know coping with the world is something a man should be able to do
00:03:12.720
and not have to ask for help for every little thing so so he has all these different skills and it's
00:03:18.920
an impressive amount of skills it's like yeah you said fighting learning foreign language things like that
00:03:23.360
but you also have things like you know a young man should learn how to fly a plane ride a motorcycle
00:03:28.700
let's say you're a young man and you're like man that looks awesome i want to learn how to do all
00:03:33.380
these things but i didn't learn those when i was a you know a youngster a kid or you know in my 20s
00:03:39.440
how do you find the time if you're in your 30s or your 40s how do you find the time and also the
00:03:44.240
money because this stuff you know oftentimes takes money to learn how do you find the time and money to
00:03:48.940
learn these skills well people tend to find buddy who's walking or gaming or you know addicted to
00:03:55.240
screen to entertainment has plenty of time available if they'll drop you know that stuff
00:03:59.660
and go learn real skills so another way to find the time is to start waking up a half an hour or an
00:04:06.800
hour earlier a day you know basically if you get serious about learning something you'll quote find
00:04:12.420
the time the time is there you know are you there that's the question right and what about the money
00:04:18.840
issue well um again you know learning to fly that's the most expensive thing you mentioned to become a
00:04:26.060
private pilot will cost you about nine or ten thousand dollars plane the certified flight instructor
00:04:32.460
your books and so forth that's a lot of skill for not a whole lot of money um you know i quote in
00:04:38.560
in the introduction of of all the modules a young man who was 17 by the time he was 17 he had already
00:04:45.720
bought a powered parachute which is about the cheapest way to get into aviation and become became
00:04:50.900
a licensed uh sport pilot for that so you know this young man as a junior in high school was already an
00:04:56.840
aircraft owner and already a pilot and he did it by mowing lawns he mowed acres and acres and acres of
00:05:01.980
lawns for the previous two or three years and saved his money so that's one example of how it can be done
00:05:08.000
right so yeah time money if it's there if you if you just take the initiative to find it oh sure
00:05:13.540
um let's say you're a dad right you know cooper thought that you know these skills should be taught
00:05:18.280
by fathers to sons what if you're a dad and you don't know how to do half the stuff like you want
00:05:23.120
to teach your son like how to be efficient how to cope but you you're still trying to figure that out
00:05:27.800
yourself how do you impart those skills when you're still trying to figure it out on your own
00:05:32.100
well you know one one way to do it is to fake it until you make it you know however incomplete the
00:05:37.120
dad is he certainly knows more about whatever you know subject than the son probably does so you know
00:05:43.040
the dad needs to ramp it up and then teach to the son what he knows as he knows it when i was in
00:05:49.280
college for example i would take a course and the next semester i would tutor it and i never claimed to
00:05:55.360
be an expert but i knew i knew more about the subject than my students did even though i just learned it
00:06:00.760
a semester ago so you know fake it till you make it right you know a child will respond to any kind
00:06:07.800
of good instruction and i think i think sons are fair they know that fathers aren't omnipotent and
00:06:13.580
omniscient but what counts is the effort so you know dads need to to bear down and fill up the modules
00:06:20.020
so that that leads me this idea of teaching your son leads me to one of the modules you cover one of
00:06:25.380
the very the very first one in fact in volume two is this um is teaching and why do you why do you
00:06:31.720
think it was such teaching is such an important skill for men to have that you you made it one of
00:06:36.060
those modules well you know men should be examples of two others for their family and for society and
00:06:42.640
part of being a good example is being able to impart what you know how to do and what you know in your
00:06:47.880
head and so there's a certain process a certain way to be a teacher you know teaching is a science and
00:06:53.660
art and so i thought it important to describe what it is to teach what's involved and basically
00:07:00.260
anybody is a teacher if they can show someone to do something quicker than that student could learn
00:07:06.580
to do it on their own and the other reason it's important to know how to teach is because you really
00:07:11.500
don't know something until you've taught it that's the final examination for any skill is if you can
00:07:18.620
impart it to someone else and as you do so you're going to learn more about that skill or that
00:07:22.940
knowledge set than than you did before uh when you weren't teaching it so it's the final way to
00:07:28.120
know that you've you've you own something is if you can teach it yeah that second point i think
00:07:32.640
goes back to that question about if you're a dad and you don't know this stuff how do you teach it to
00:07:36.540
your kid like teach it to your kid and that you're going to learn how to do it right yeah and there's
00:07:40.520
some things dads could go hey son i'm not real you know up to speed on this but you know let's go
00:07:45.140
fishing together i'm no great fisherman but uh i know a little bit about it from my dad and my
00:07:49.880
grandfather let's go fishing well we'll learn some of it together and that's good for the
00:07:53.640
relationship because it's more of a partnership you know in in that learning experience versus dad
00:07:59.300
being always the authoritarian teacher and the son always the student you know once in a while in
00:08:05.000
some things it's good that they both learn it together and the son knows that they're learning
00:08:09.520
it together yeah i think it sets a great example for your son it's like look my dad is 30 40 and he's
00:08:16.920
still learning like it's his education didn't stop with school right so another aspect that you
00:08:23.360
model you call out in volume two is time management as we mentioned earlier if you want to cram in all
00:08:29.120
this stuff learn all this stuff these modules you have to manage your time effectively and efficiently
00:08:34.800
so i mean what's your approach to time management and productivity that you lay out in the modules for
00:08:40.020
manhood well you've got to realize that everyone has the same amount of time in a day whether it's
00:08:45.700
warren buffett or someone who's destitute on the streets they've all got 24 hours in a day
00:08:50.560
and so we're given a resource every day of an of a new day and i say yesterday is a canceled check
00:08:57.780
tomorrow is a promissory note but today is cash so how you spend today to the minute you know once you
00:09:05.660
get really efficient and vigilant about it will add up to a real life versus if you fritter your time away
00:09:13.620
you're not going to have much of a life you're not going to be effective you you won't have goals
00:09:17.800
that are fulfilled you won't attract a quality mate you won't have a good career so you've got to
00:09:24.120
consider the wealth that you're given every day when you wake up in the morning i've got a full day
00:09:29.860
that i can spend like cash in the bank or cash in my wallet so you've got to drop the unimportant
00:09:36.500
things you've got to start with the important things and start with a start with stuff that has to be
00:09:42.740
done that's important or urgent and and tackle that immediately i had a quick vignette i got online
00:09:49.420
one time at a coffee shop and instead of tackling the day's business i you know went to some fun
00:09:55.360
emails and told some jokes and looked at some jpegs and all that and i could have finished my business
00:10:01.120
had i started with my business but no i i played instead of worked and i never forgot that and so
00:10:07.040
i always remind myself start with the a's not with the c's yeah i mean i love that analogy of
00:10:13.860
time is money i mean we often hear time is money but like really thinking of your time as money
00:10:18.280
and spending it like that it really drives home like man and also like that money's going to go away
00:10:23.980
right like this is cash that disappears at the end of the day will help you manage better you also
00:10:29.220
quote hemingway where he famously said you never confuse motion for action oh that's a great quote
00:10:35.020
yeah any examples and maybe from your own life or from just your observation of other men of how
00:10:39.960
they confuse motion for action well a lot of people men and women claim to be busy and i put busy and
00:10:46.780
you know if you can hear the quotation marks in my voice and they're in motion but are they getting
00:10:51.700
important things done and getting important things done right you know that's really the question uh
00:10:57.360
you know it's easy to spend a day somehow the day will go whether whether you want it to or not it
00:11:03.160
will go away but what did you get done what did you accomplish you know you should have some goals
00:11:08.560
in mind general goals and then those are localized to the day to within hours or even minutes within
00:11:16.020
that day you take a a tycoon i forget his name but he's he's a chinese billionaire and his day is
00:11:23.400
planned by every 15 minutes you know quarter of the hour is blocked out you know this is a man that
00:11:28.980
knows what his time is worth and gets stuff done so you know are we in motion are we moving stuff
00:11:34.620
around just to move it around or touch something once especially a piece of paper touch it once
00:11:40.460
reply to that letter finish the task that that piece of paper demands throw it in the trash whatever but
00:11:47.020
touch it once get it done and then move on to the next task don't keep rearranging things on your desk
00:11:53.340
you know moving it a little bit here and then two hours later a little bit there touch it once and
00:11:58.380
get it done so that that's action versus motion and speaking of time management there's a really
00:12:04.000
interesting movie called in time and it's basically where the currency of the society is based on time
00:12:11.060
and you're born with you're guaranteed i think 25 years and then after that you know have you added
00:12:18.340
to your time account in your first 25 years if not you clock out you die and it's a fascinating
00:12:24.940
concept the movie is pretty well done it could have been uh better but it's good enough to to be an
00:12:30.500
attractive presentation of that concept and they've got a little digital clock on their forearm he's got
00:12:35.200
100 years and he gives it away and uh that causes all sorts of interesting problems right um yeah i think
00:12:42.360
that's justin timberlake is in that movie if i remember that's right right yeah um yeah so yeah and i
00:12:47.580
love the the touch at once i mean that came from i remember david allen from getting things done
00:12:52.020
advocates that as well that's right and you talk about getting things done if you have if you're
00:12:57.000
listening this podcast haven't read getting things done or gtd how it's often referred to right great
00:13:02.820
book highly recommend it yeah he's the master of that oh yeah for sure you know speaking of this
00:13:08.480
confusing motion for action you also warn readers to stay aware not confuse excessive studying and
00:13:16.500
research as action because i i think i guess the the the insidious thing about you know studying and
00:13:22.020
researching it makes you feel like you're doing something but you actually aren't sure right so how
00:13:28.240
do you know uh when you've reached the point where you've learned all you can and you're ready to start
00:13:33.220
actually you know putting rubber meets the road type stuff right you know if you've got a project that
00:13:39.500
you've got to research and get into with a lot of study for the project you might be wise to have
00:13:46.500
some milestones written down in advance to give you an idea of your progress beyond that it just takes
00:13:53.880
practice doing it and kind of a gut hunch and uh this is something that i i have to do myself because
00:14:00.160
every one of these modules in my three books all 42 of them each one of these deserves its own book
00:14:07.540
and many books have been written about any one of these subjects so how do i know as an author trying
00:14:13.040
to give you the the short version of it know when to stop and that that's a tricky one and you know
00:14:19.620
there's a science to it the milestones in advance and then the art the gut hunch uh will come into play
00:14:25.640
later but then if someone really loves to read and research like i do sometimes it can be a very fun
00:14:31.700
vortex to let yourself fall in gigabytes of info about this i think that's enough and i just
00:14:37.520
went through that researching the ribosome microbiology nucleic acids and proteins and
00:14:43.920
how they're formed and all that in my chapter about evolution and that is a fascinating vortex
00:14:49.800
and it i finally crawled my way out of it but i did and i think i'm satisfied with with what i've
00:14:56.080
got and i think it's going to be chapter 33 so yeah it just takes practice knowing when to stop yeah
00:15:01.100
yeah i've often found i can get trapped especially when you're planning business stuff
00:15:05.140
right like you want to like read as much as you can and plan as much as you can and you have this
00:15:10.700
perfect plan you're like okay and you just end up planning more and planning more and then when you
00:15:15.320
finally start to take action you quickly realize that that plan you had pretty much worthless i mean
00:15:20.780
like it didn't go according anything yeah that's right yeah but at least you know that right right
00:15:26.580
you got it has to go somewhere else yeah i think it's eisenhower said that uh plans are worthless but
00:15:31.660
planning is everything that's a great way to put it yeah yeah because i think the the what planning
00:15:36.620
does it allows you to get your mind around the whole project and then when things don't go
00:15:41.680
according to plan you have these mental models in your head so you can start adapting on the fly
00:15:46.720
and that wouldn't have been possible if you didn't do the planning in advance there's a module right
00:15:51.380
there you should you should put that in your that eisenhower quote that's right in your
00:15:55.100
yeah i could yeah i could look into that you know it reminds me when i was studying to become
00:15:59.680
a private pilot you know it's a very hierarchical sequential study and your skill set you know you
00:16:06.380
start with this and then he adds this and so forth but aside from that my own personal research on
00:16:11.960
aviation was was very kind of haphazard i'd basically snarf all the uh magazines that i could from the
00:16:20.200
terminals you know people leave their old copies of aopa and pilot and flying and all that so i'd ask if
00:16:26.520
you know you guys done with this it looks like you've got plenty of magazines so i take home you
00:16:29.860
know scan uh the the information that i liked and so i was learning about aviation in a very random
00:16:35.360
sense but this mosaic began to fill itself pretty nicely after about a year and i had a very wide and
00:16:43.760
and occasionally pretty deep knowledge about flying that i got you know from magazines and books so
00:16:49.480
but that on top of the the actual planning and study to you know get your pilot's license i think
00:16:55.760
rounded me out pretty well as a young pilot so another thing that young men or men in general need
00:17:01.480
to learn in order to cope with the world is problem solving because once you get into adulthood you
00:17:08.800
quickly realize that life is just basically solving problem after problem after problem that's right
00:17:14.860
and that's right for a lot of young men that can be daunting and even paralyzing how do you how do you
00:17:21.500
suggest young men going go about categorizing problems to help them move forward with solutions
00:17:28.100
well i guess maybe the first thing is to uh discern who owns the problem you know just because there's
00:17:35.180
a problem and it's in your face is it your problem or is it someone else's problem that they're trying
00:17:40.180
to put on you you know my mom says who owns the problem you know whose property is it's not my property
00:17:45.080
that's that problem is your property so if it's not your property then you know don't don't mess
00:17:50.800
with it further than that let's say it is your property well if you can't define it or act upon it
00:17:56.340
you know there's nothing to do but forget it is it really a problem you know can you do anything
00:18:00.960
about it is it going to affect you you know like weather i can't do anything about a hell storm
00:18:05.640
except stay out of the hail you know but uh other than that if you've got to start to deal with a
00:18:12.180
problem then deal with problems big enough to matter yet small enough to solve i read that
00:18:19.700
somewhere and i think it's a fantastic way to uh philosophize on this if the problem's not big
00:18:26.760
enough to matter then you can forget it but if it's too big to solve then what are you going to do
00:18:32.120
anyway so you know get philosophical about what's what's in your face if it is big enough to matter
00:18:38.700
and small enough to solve then all right now now you're on your way to having to deal with something
00:18:44.480
and the book talks about you know the steps in that especially if they're important problems the
00:18:50.260
first step would be to separate facts from opinions then you define the real problem which is which is
00:18:57.100
often something else especially dealing with women you know they may may get in your face about
00:19:01.620
something and complaining about a and a is not bothering them they're bothered about b and you've
00:19:08.960
got to know women and know your woman to get to all right honey what's what's really bothering you
00:19:14.200
and it'll be something entirely different step three secure evidence on those possible solutions step
00:19:20.780
four weigh the pros and cons of each possible solution and problem solving is a skill and you get better
00:19:27.600
with any skill that you practice well and a real man loves problems because hey as ben carson said
00:19:33.980
it's it's just a chance to do your best do your best another opportunity to do your best yeah yeah i think
00:19:39.380
that one of the biggest challenges particularly for younger men when they're just starting out in life
00:19:42.880
is figuring out what is really important i remember when i was a young lad of 18 19 things that i thought
00:19:51.400
were really big problems like they weren't really big problems i made them big in my head and i spent a lot
00:19:56.460
of time and energy on that and uh yeah as you get older you start learning how to discern that
00:20:01.480
yeah you get a perspective i i would tell young boys i once helped raise i said look guys you know
00:20:08.920
one one was like uh let's say nine years old and i said look i know this seems a big deal to you now
00:20:14.960
but think of at your school a six-year-old complaining about you know a six-year-old kind of problem
00:20:20.240
you know you look at him as a nine-year-old going what a kid what a punk what a baby
00:20:24.620
right and i said you know in a few years you'll think back on this problem you're having right now
00:20:29.200
at nine as something babyish so just realize you're however old you are right now young man
00:20:36.980
you're going to be older later so keep keep a long-term perspective about life and you know
00:20:43.560
the old uh phrase in a hundred years will this even matter or even five years will it even matter
00:20:48.480
to anyone including yourself probably not and speaking of young men and problems um i mentioned
00:20:54.060
this in the book and i want to mention it on air don't be afraid or hesitant to ask somebody for
00:21:00.060
help especially if the problem is is new and it hasn't set in you know let's say you broke something
00:21:05.840
your stuff fess up you know ask dad or mom or or someone else look uh i kind of did this and most of
00:21:13.620
the time an adult a seasoned man will go yeah it's it's kind of a kind of a goof but uh it's not as bad
00:21:19.860
as you think and here's how we'll handle it and it's like uh but if you let your problem fester
00:21:26.520
it may become become too big for even an adult you know to handle and uh attorneys may have to be
00:21:33.220
called or doctors or whoever you know at the next level so uh handle your problems early and even if
00:21:41.380
you have to ask for help to get out of a jam just just do it yeah that asking for help that can be
00:21:46.040
particularly hard for men because you know you want to show independence yeah you know and show
00:21:50.620
that you can cope with the world but you know it's a learning process and sometimes you need to
00:21:54.280
you should try everything yourself but at a certain point need to reach out and ask for some help get
00:21:58.500
some insight yeah asking for help is coping you know if you're lost don't don't try to act like
00:22:03.760
the stud in front of your girlfriend driving around aimlessly just just pull over and go hey
00:22:08.240
looking for such and such right another problem you tackle in the book that a lot of not just
00:22:13.160
i think it's all men at certain points in the life they're going to face whether you're young
00:22:16.520
midlife or older is getting into a rut can you like maybe you can share like was there a time in
00:22:23.160
your life when you found yourself in a rut and what did you do to get yourself out of it oh absolutely
00:22:28.740
yeah i think i mentioned in the book i had a whirlwind uh college career i got i got a business bba in
00:22:36.240
just three years and it was taking a lot of hours and you know just just studly you know just rammed right
00:22:42.400
through it the dean of the business school is just amazed all my professors thought i was
00:22:46.400
something really unique and then i graduated and it's like well now what do i do and i had a year
00:22:53.460
brett of just like wow just just stunning silence i hadn't made any plans whatsoever of what to do
00:23:00.040
after my college graduation and so i might as well have just spent four years you know in college and
00:23:06.240
planned for the graduation after that i would have been you know ahead of the game so uh yeah that was a
00:23:11.860
very black year and uh i finally just had to pull myself up out of my bootstraps and and i went to
00:23:18.120
europe to a trade show and attracted the sponsorship of a business i was in the motorcycle industry
00:23:23.360
years ago and so but even right now i'm transitioning from very philosophical and political type works with
00:23:31.800
all the boston tea party books i've written you know about government constitution and privacy and guns
00:23:36.640
and so forth and you know for my own self i pretty much exhausted my interest and my passion in a lot
00:23:43.080
of those subjects so i'm having to switch gears and you know write and think about other things you
00:23:48.700
know modules being one of them so i wouldn't call it a rut but it's certainly a transition but i've got
00:23:53.660
some tips about getting out of the rut you know if if if you're if you've got negative emotions or you're
00:23:58.800
bored or you're tired or you're depressed you know you've you've just you've just got to go do
00:24:03.680
something either for yourself or for somebody else you just can't wallow in it if you do cobwebs will
00:24:09.980
start to form on your soul and those cobwebs turn into tethers and then steel aircraft cables and i
00:24:17.900
see people and i know you do too every day that are just walking walking ruts and you can tell that
00:24:23.960
they've been in that for for a decade and they ain't getting out and so realize that this could happen
00:24:29.460
to anyone especially if you have a reversal of fortunes if your business tanks guaranteed that
00:24:36.180
you're going to be upright facing the sun all the time and so you've got to learn how to get up and
00:24:41.760
stay up and you know life is life is work and it's up to you to do it yeah yeah that's i mean it's it's
00:24:49.720
i mean the solution is so simple right just you just got to start doing something the hard part
00:24:53.900
is actually just doing that thing and it really is it's it is a matter in my experience when i've
00:24:59.120
been in a rut it's a matter of just oftentimes just sheer willpower right and just getting you
00:25:05.360
to take that first step because once you take that first step it's like an object in motion stays in
00:25:09.460
motion right once you get going you'll keep going but it's just that first part you know an object
00:25:14.160
at rest stays at rest you got to really exert a lot of energy to get to get going that's right
00:25:19.040
i know that's i know a lot of people who are in a rut they want to hear oh there's got to be
00:25:22.100
some kind of hack that i can do and oftentimes i'm sorry it's like no there's not you just got
00:25:26.900
to start doing something and uh the rest will take care of itself i'll tell you a good hack if
00:25:31.680
you're depressed okay let's hear it is either to work out do something very physical because that'll
00:25:36.880
change your endocrinology get your serotonin levels up and all that working out will will help
00:25:42.380
get over depression the other thing if you're depressed or kind of in a funk go do something nice
00:25:47.720
for someone especially a stranger you know go go to the senior center and help out there or the
00:25:52.840
library or find some way to help out and forget about yourself forget about your own damn problems
00:25:59.060
and how sad and miserable you are just you know act like it's not even you anymore just go do something
00:26:04.880
for someone else and that will make you feel good because you've made other people feel good
00:26:09.320
so uh it's not all about you get out of yourself you know that's i tell myself that get out of
00:26:15.140
yourself yeah you know there's other people out there you're not the only you know one on the
00:26:19.720
planet get out of yourself right i love that um you also devote a section to leadership which is you
00:26:24.880
know every man's going to be a leader at some point in his life and i thought it was interesting
00:26:27.800
um in this section for your leadership insight you went to a um spanish i think he's was he jesuit
00:26:35.020
what kind of priest was he was he is balthus art gracian gracian yeah that's a fantastic book yeah
00:26:42.720
yeah what the was the art of worldly wisdom is what it's called right that's right what it's called
00:26:48.300
yeah um what can this set like i think he's like from the 16th century 15th century spanish priest
00:26:56.280
teach us about being better leaders well he has his book is kind of like uh marcus aurelius's
00:27:04.260
uh meditations uh just things he wrote to himself over a long period of time and then it uh concocted
00:27:12.000
itself into a book and they're they're very small vignettes i mean each subject you know gets a
00:27:16.920
paragraph and the book itself is very tiny you can get on amazon and fit in your back pocket it really
00:27:21.700
is a must must thing to have um and i picked out a few things he talked about let your behavior be
00:27:28.920
fine and noble common and nothing uh have distinction and speech and action prize intensity
00:27:36.140
more than extent to give a give way in everything or to everyone don't be a bore adapt yourself to your
00:27:43.640
company just just great stuff but a leader is anybody who has followers you know someone could
00:27:49.800
be a leader not really even know it but if you've got followers you know let's say uh you've got a
00:27:55.500
couple of younger siblings you're a leader to them they they look at you as as a quasi-adult
00:28:00.520
almost and especially if you if a you know 17 year old boy has a nine-year-old sister you're you're
00:28:08.860
like a god to her and so if you've got a follower you're a leader and you better know the extent of
00:28:15.400
your influence and uh you know how important it is to to to act accordingly you know everyone's a leader
00:28:21.720
somewhere so uh and there's an art to it and there's personalities that are much more suited for
00:28:28.040
it you know like the so-called entj and the myers briggs the field marshal you know these people are
00:28:33.700
natural born leaders in my book on the back cover robin old's you know 23 years old this guy was a
00:28:40.560
major in the u.s army air corps in uh england and was a squadron commander p-51 fighter pilots at 23
00:28:48.240
natural leader then went on to uh be a fighter wing commander in vietnam and then headed up uh
00:28:55.880
the u.s air force academy you know so it's just in some some men to be a leader to someone so you
00:29:03.100
better know something about it yeah so in your book in your section about leadership you you talk
00:29:09.660
about the importance of leaders being good followers which is counterintuitive because oftentimes the
00:29:15.600
literature on being on a good leader especially like i don't know the pop leadership stuff not
00:29:22.000
not the real it's just all like no a leader is like this dynamo he's charismatic he doesn't he
00:29:27.460
doesn't submit he he's he's leading from the front um why do you think leaders should be good followers
00:29:33.780
well there are some leaders that are kind of born into it like that and those so-called dynamos were
00:29:39.000
probably dynamos at three and four years old and you know since then and so they they've been used to
00:29:44.920
being at the forefront and leading people and that's one kind of leader i don't think it's
00:29:50.020
necessarily the best i think the best leader and the military uh will support this are the ones who've
00:29:56.620
come through the ranks um i'll give you two examples the uh you know someone who goes right into
00:30:03.420
officer training uh school and becomes a second lieutenant who's never been an enlisted man or a
00:30:10.500
non-commissioned officer and certainly the military is full of those kinds of officers but who the
00:30:15.480
military really values are the so-called mustangs and i think uh lewis puller of the marine corps chesty
00:30:22.260
puller is the best example of that he started out as a buck private in the marines you know back in the
00:30:27.780
i think the 1920s maybe world war one and retired as a brigadier general i believe and the reason he was
00:30:35.300
such a good officer especially in world war ii in korea was that he had been there as a grunt as a buck
00:30:42.380
private and so he was really knowledgeable about the needs of his men and he knew what they were
00:30:48.280
capable when they were just bitching to bitch about something and when there was a real issue that the
00:30:54.040
men couldn't handle and so he he understood them inside and out because he had been one yeah i love
00:31:00.520
that because that's my been my experience as a leader it's whenever i i ask i'm always like i'm
00:31:06.400
never i never ask someone to do something that i haven't done myself at some point because i know
00:31:11.540
yeah like you said you get that experience you know what is possible and like you said you know
00:31:17.440
when someone's just like i can't do this we know you can do it you're just not thinking and then you
00:31:21.080
can coach them if they come up sure sure parenting is similar to this uh when i was raising a couple of
00:31:27.180
boys with uh my girlfriend who had children from a previous marriage you know they would kind of
00:31:33.480
grouse once in a while of why they had to do this or that and it's not fair and i said look i was a boy
00:31:38.980
myself i know exactly what you're going through so you know there's no surprises ahead of you that i
00:31:45.760
haven't you know experienced myself and grown out of and this is why i'm here to help you know teach
00:31:50.640
you and get you into manhood so right well um there's a lot of other skills you cover in the book you
00:31:56.340
talk about self-defense which i think we talked a little about in the previous podcast we did
00:32:00.100
you get into economics you get into time management but the one skill that i thought was interesting you
00:32:06.620
you highlight because after i read this i was like okay i gotta do this oh good i gotta do this now it's
00:32:11.260
getting your pilot's license why do you think every man should go out and get their pilot's license
00:32:16.320
well i mean since we're on the art of manliness i mean the first and most obvious answer is because
00:32:21.700
it's a steadily manly thing to do i mean why wouldn't a man want to fly an airplane yeah that's
00:32:28.880
the simple answer uh to get into it a little more deeply he uh experiences a totally new level dimension
00:32:37.000
of freedom that uh you can't find anywhere else um i mean no more tsa blue glove groping him and his
00:32:46.380
family which i don't understand how any man would put up with that at the airport um you've got the
00:32:52.340
freedom to fly from a to b and you decide what is a and what is b you know instead of having to drive
00:32:58.240
three hours to denver to pick up a big airplane you know why don't you fly it out of grand junction
00:33:03.080
colorado where you live um and then the other thing that uh i've really come to enjoy about aviation
00:33:10.160
and this is something that you don't really read about or your instructor will tell you about
00:33:14.160
but you have to experience it for yourself as a pilot is that you've entered into a new and higher
00:33:21.440
level of humanity and that sounds a little elitist but quite frankly the barriers of entry to becoming
00:33:28.760
a pilot are high enough that it excludes a lot of people that just you know will never be there
00:33:34.440
don't deserve to be there for example i just got back from oshkosh where 10 000 people fly in with
00:33:40.380
their airplanes and so you know everyone's got phones and tablets and uh etc and they've got
00:33:46.760
these public charging stations and instead of just hanging around for an hour waiting for your
00:33:51.740
your tablet to charge up you can plug it in and go have a shower go have breakfast and come back and
00:33:57.340
it will still be there because you're amongst thousands of fellow aviators and you know quite
00:34:04.020
frankly they just uh operate at a higher level of ethics of responsibility and of capability and so
00:34:11.740
for me that's becoming almost as enjoyable and gratifying as the flying itself and is i think a lot of
00:34:19.660
guy reason why guys don't take that up so they think the the cost is prohibitive is it really that
00:34:25.280
expensive to get your pilot's license uh no becoming a pilot isn't all that expensive especially
00:34:30.720
for what it gives you to get your private pilot license that's above sport pilot which means you
00:34:36.540
can fly something up to i think 12 seat you know aircraft versus only two seats as a sport pilot
00:34:42.740
private pilot license will cost you about ten thousand dollars uh that includes the plane that
00:34:48.340
includes the instructor that includes your books and that will take you about oh anywhere from
00:34:54.600
three to nine months just depending on the tempo of how often you can get to the airfield and get
00:35:00.820
your license yeah that's not bad at all i mean considering like what yeah what you get and this
00:35:05.360
is it's definitely an investment for sure yeah i mean that and i mean is it so the process is when
00:35:11.460
you get your pilot's license there's a you said there's a sport pilot license and there's a private
00:35:15.840
right do you do you have to start off with the sport license and then move to the private or can you
00:35:20.120
just go right to private you can start and go right to private uh some people get sport first
00:35:25.600
because it's a little cheaper cost you about six thousand dollars mainly because it only requires
00:35:30.680
20 hours of dual instruction time versus minimum of 40 hours private pilot uh you are a little limited
00:35:37.740
as a sport pilot you can only fly uh one passenger you can fly only in the daytime you can't ever have
00:35:44.040
clouds below you you always have the ground visible below you and i think you're limited to
00:35:49.140
10 000 feet uh and also you usually can't fly into big airspace class bravo which would be uh lax
00:35:57.000
denver chicago unless i think you have some sort of enforcement uh most people that fly routinely fly
00:36:03.780
kind of at the sport pilot level um you know you don't have that many people with you you don't fly
00:36:08.940
into you know big cities so it would be a good stair-stepping way to get into flying and start with a
00:36:15.120
sport pilot and then you can always add private pilot later on and like a plane is it something you
00:36:21.480
you own or do you rent one and if you do own one how much does it cost to own a plane the uh renting
00:36:27.440
versus ownership decision usually is made when someone's flying over 100 hours a year below that
00:36:34.980
if you've got at least a fairly good deal on renting a plane which is anywhere from 100 to 130
00:36:40.820
dollars an hour including fuel that's basically for a cessna 172 skyhawk it's a four-seater it cruises
00:36:48.060
about 130 miles an hour for about 400 mile range um if you're flying more than 100 hours a year
00:36:56.060
the economics make more sense to buy uh the skyhawk over the long haul and you know a plane like that
00:37:03.020
will cost anywhere from 25 to 50 000 just depending on uh age and condition gotcha so you can you can
00:37:12.200
get these used there's a good used market oh sure in fact a lot of the planes that are flying uh aren't
00:37:17.640
made anymore uh cessna doesn't make their entire line like the 180 skywagon which is a great plane but
00:37:24.200
they stopped making it in the 70s i think so yeah a lot of what's flying is old you know my plane is from
00:37:30.320
the 60s and a new plane like a new brand new skyhawk today is 300 000 and you can get the the
00:37:37.640
cherriest you know 1980 used skyhawk with nice avionics for uh you know 60 000 you'd have a hard time
00:37:45.860
paying more than 60 000 for the nicest used skyhawk and you're just you know the other 240 000 premium
00:37:52.540
for a new plane uh just isn't worth it but people are catching on the values of of these older planes
00:37:59.220
and so the market has kind of bottomed out but i think it's starting to rebound a little bit
00:38:04.060
both in the aviation sense uh and also you know national economy may be improving under trump so
00:38:10.300
if you want to start flying this is an excellent time to do it especially with fuel being you know
00:38:15.020
four to 450 a gallon for avgas are you seeing more people get their private license i mean have you seen
00:38:20.920
since you've had it have you seen more people kind of enter into that that domain i i statistically that's
00:38:28.400
it's not happening i i see people getting into it because i'm i'm at airports and i've talked to
00:38:33.180
pilots you know i i named half a dozen people who just got their license in the past year but that's
00:38:38.320
only because i'm immersed in it uh i think nationally we have fewer pilots every year than the previous
00:38:44.360
year uh we're trying to do a lot to to uh reverse that there's a rusty pilot program a lot of people
00:38:51.240
uh have their license they're just not current they haven't flown for you know four years or 40 years
00:38:56.360
we're trying to get them back into aviation and we're also trying to entice the younger generation
00:39:01.020
of the joys of aviation so we're we're doing our best and low fuel prices are helping because you
00:39:07.540
know when i started to learn how to fly uh avgas was five to six dollars a gallon versus uh under 450
00:39:13.320
so the environment's good with low fuel prices and low uh prices of used airplanes so uh i've become
00:39:20.700
sort of an aviation missionary uh wherever i go and so a guy's best bet in trying to get started
00:39:27.560
with this is just google their local pilot school yeah if you live any you know anywhere near a large
00:39:33.620
city meaning a hundred thousand people or more there's almost guaranteed to be a certified flight
00:39:38.480
instructor uh if not several um meet all of them because people are people and you're only gonna
00:39:44.440
you know click with one versus another and you know find out the reputation of of uh these flight
00:39:50.460
instructors versus each other there's very few bad ones and you know you're likely not going to to
00:39:57.760
fall into a uh a regrettable situation with whoever you choose i mean i called the first guy out of the
00:40:04.100
book i liked the sound of his voice and uh nice older gentleman reminding me of my grandfather and uh
00:40:09.960
you know i love the guy he was just wonderful and so anyone can can find a good instructor where they
00:40:15.900
live the main thing is just to get up in the air at least for an introductory flight brett
00:40:19.820
and after that boy if it's in you uh it will just take off that's awesome well ken this has been a
00:40:25.680
great conversation where can people go to learn more about uh your work i've got a website
00:40:30.700
javelinpress.com or all my books are on amazon of course and that's probably the quicker way to get it
00:40:37.320
especially for kendall all my stuff is on kendall uh so yeah kenneth royce uh kenneth w royce at amazon
00:40:44.900
is probably the fastest way i also have a new youtube channel uh boston tea party on youtube so
00:40:52.020
uh i've got some excerpts of my older speeches and i'll be adding more content content to that very soon
00:40:57.540
awesome kenneth w royce thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure my pleasure too brett
00:41:02.640
thanks for what you do it's a great site and a great mission you guys got so i'm happy to be a part of it
00:41:06.940
i guess it was kenneth w royce he is the author of the books modules for manhood they're available
00:41:12.140
on amazon.com you also check out our show notes at aom.is slash royce where you can find links
00:41:16.840
to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic
00:41:18.760
well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:41:34.860
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy the
00:41:38.260
podcast i've gotten something out of it over the years you've been listening to it or months really
00:41:41.780
appreciate you give us a review on itunes or stitcher that helps us out a lot thank you to
00:41:45.020
everyone who has given us review really appreciate that as always thank you for your continued support
00:41:48.800
and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly