086: INFLUENCE – Alpha Discipline with Ryan Echols

May 4, 2022 | Mental Strength, Podcast

086: INFLUENCE – Alpha Discipline with Ryan Echols

May 4, 2022 | Mental Strength, Podcast

Our guest today has been a counselor in a correctional facility for 21 years. Several years before he started, he was an inmate there, serving 14 months for violent crimes as a juvenile. He paid off $33,000 in restitution by working in the kitchen. He didn’t meet his biological father until he was 15. Three weeks later, his stepfather died by suicide. This led him to years of anger and violence. Once he was locked up, he learned how to deal with his emotions from men he didn’t want to disappoint.

He read spiritual texts, competed in sports, and learned to meditate. He was the first inmate in this prison to later return and work there, continuing the influence he was shown decades before. He is now very close with his father. He and his wife have a blended family of 8 children and he enjoys weightlifting, mixed martial arts and was recently in an episode of the hit show, Yellowstone.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

 

00:00:00:01 – 00:00:24:04
Brad Singletary
Our guest today has been a counselor in a juvenile correctional facility for 21 years. Several years before he started, he was an inmate there serving 14 months for violent crimes. He paid off $33,000 in restitution by working in the kitchen. He didn’t meet his biological father until he was 15. Three weeks later, his step father died by suicide.

00:00:25:02 – 00:00:45:11
Brad Singletary
This led him to years of anger and violence once he was locked up. He learned how to deal with his emotions from men. He didn’t want to disappoint. He read spiritual texts, competed in sports, and learned to meditate. He was the first inmate in this prison to later return and work there, continuing the influence he was shown decades before.

00:00:46:09 – 00:00:58:07
Brad Singletary
He’s now very close with his father. He and his wife have a blended family of eight children, and he enjoys weightlifting, mixed martial arts and was recently in an episode of the hit show Yellowstone.

00:01:10:01 – 00:01:31:02
Intro
If you’re a man that controls his own destiny, a man that is always in the pursuit of being better, you are in the right place. You are responsible. You are strong. You are a leader. You are a force. For good, gentlemen. You are the Alpha. And this is the Alpha Quorum.

00:01:39:02 – 00:01:59:01
Brad Singletary
Welcome back to the Alpha Quorum Show. Brad Singletary here, you guys. I’m super excited today. Our guest is Ryan Echols, and he’s going to introduce himself here in just a minute. But I’ve been I’ve known this guy for about over 20 years. 20, 21 years. We worked together in a place, and he’s going to talk about that in a little bit.

00:01:59:01 – 00:02:22:11
Brad Singletary
But his upbringing, his his adolescence, his young adult life and his life now all really have some interesting things woven into it. Our topic is discipline. We’ve been doing this series on the Red Nine, and this one is about a man who lives a life of self-control. And we don’t always do that, but sometimes we have to learn by difficult experience.

00:02:22:11 – 00:02:44:10
Brad Singletary
And I’m sure we’ll hear some of those stories today. But so this is a man who lives a life under control. He controls himself. He dominates himself. He’s the master of his time is money, is environment, is mood. His actions. And of course, what follows all those things is results. And here’s a guy who’s just done some really cool things.

00:02:44:10 – 00:03:06:13
Brad Singletary
I’ll let him introduce some of that He seems to be pretty humble in his older age here. So I hope you’ll brag a little bit on yourself, Ryan. Tell us just a little bit about your your life and what all you’ve been through to get to this point, and especially as it relates to discipline and, you know, problems you’ve overcome and things like that.

00:03:06:13 – 00:03:09:03
Brad Singletary
And we’ll just let you go at this for a little while here.

00:03:09:04 – 00:03:38:13
Ryan Echols
All right. We’ll see if I can nail that one. This is good introduction. I appreciate it. So like I said, Ryan Echols live in Plains City, Utah. You and I worked together at Mill Creek at a youth lockup facility. That’s where we met is a that’s one of those situations where I was introduced. I was the first person to be in that place and have been able to go back and work in.

00:03:40:09 – 00:03:44:01
Brad Singletary
So you were a resident as a kid. You were. This is a.

00:03:44:08 – 00:04:01:02
Ryan Echols
Yeah. So, yeah, I was a kid my senior year of high school, beginning my senior year high school. I got in a fight and somebody got injured and I ended up being sent there. I spent my senior year. I spent 14 months in lockup and.

00:04:02:11 – 00:04:07:03
Brad Singletary
That must have been a pretty serious fight to get that kind of you must have done some damage there.

00:04:07:03 – 00:04:25:06
Ryan Echols
It was like, yeah, cost me about 30 grand in restitution. But yeah, it was, oh my gosh. I mean it would, it was a fight. I mean, any time a fight happens, something bad can happen, which is, you know, when we’re talking about discipline that goes back to the exact same thing. I didn’t have discipline at that point in my life.

00:04:25:06 – 00:04:47:11
Ryan Echols
I was a little wild, little crazy time I was crazy. But, you know, as had a single mom raised, you know, a mom was an amazing woman. She, you know, she she worked her, worked her ass off to make sure that we had power, we had food, we had all those things. But it was just, you know, as a young man.

00:04:47:11 – 00:05:08:10
Ryan Echols
And I think why as a man, I do what I do now. And why I’m the father of this, because I didn’t have that. I didn’t have a man to show me how to be the man I should be. Right. And so by the time I was 16, 17, I thought for sure that I was going to be in prison like everybody else that was doing things that I was doing wrong.

00:05:08:10 – 00:05:33:08
Ryan Echols
And then I got sent to prison. I got sent to the place where we were and there were some amazing men there that literally changed my life. I had men that I knew for a fact that I thought going into that place, I was the baddest person walking the planet at 60. I was a big kid at 16, 1700 and £80 or 16, 17 years old, and I thought I was way better than I really was.

00:05:35:13 – 00:05:58:12
Ryan Echols
You know, the guys were like, There’s plenty of guys that you work with that were there when I was there that I had no intentions of upsetting or not. So and those guys took an interest in me in a way that no man had done before. So I had a situation where I met my dad at 15, wasn’t the greatest, wasn’t the greatest situation.

00:05:58:14 – 00:06:16:05
Ryan Echols
Him, he and I now are extremely close. It’s an amazing man now, but at that point in my life I didn’t have that. So I was a little wild for the years leading up to before I went to military. When I got there, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to go in there and just bully my way through.

00:06:16:05 – 00:06:37:04
Ryan Echols
Everything is wasn’t about the staff. They were amazing. They gave me a chance to realize humble myself, basically. That’s the way I mean, that’s the best way to put it. I got humbled they not only humbled me, but then built me up and said, hey, you could do something. You can go to school, you can create a life yourself.

00:06:37:04 – 00:06:47:13
Ryan Echols
Things that I had my mom always encouraged me to do everything. But it’s one thing for your mom to say it, but another man that you respect and say it is completely different. So go.

00:06:48:00 – 00:07:10:04
Brad Singletary
Back. I just want to talk about this this facility. So this is a secure juvenile correctional facility. This isn’t like, you know, Ju Juvie. This isn’t like some day camp. This is a prison basically for kids up to age 21. This is up in northern Utah. This is, you know, razor wire. There’s electronic door locking mechanisms. There’s a control panel.

00:07:10:04 – 00:07:10:14
Brad Singletary
And this is.

00:07:10:14 – 00:07:12:06
Ryan Echols
This is youth prison.

00:07:12:06 – 00:07:33:01
Brad Singletary
Pretty much. It’s a it’s a prison and there weren’t any armed. The only difference probably is that there are no armed or at that time there were no one was armed there. And so also when you said that you were a pretty big kid, you guys, he’s not talking about a chubby kid in this guy’s swole you know, he shows up with some with some muscle and and you and you’d already been in some fights.

00:07:33:01 – 00:07:53:05
Brad Singletary
You felt really confident. And some of that maybe sounds like is coming from a lack of that like fatherly role. And you show up and there’s these men who are the staff there and they connected. They somehow they reached you or you had a desire to like hear what they had to say. Talk a little bit about that, some of that stuff.

00:07:53:06 – 00:08:14:11
Ryan Echols
So for sure, I think I think every every young man who doesn’t have that connection with their father and or any kind of male role model, you’re always looking for it. It doesn’t there’s no doubt that I deal with it every day at work with these young men that are looking and begging for like some kind of connection to some man that will show them how to be a man.

00:08:15:02 – 00:08:33:07
Ryan Echols
And I was not an exception to that. I was like I said, I thought I was the toughest kid that there was at the time, that I was far from it. But the staff absolutely took me. And trust me, you know how it was. Play sports out there. You find out real quick how you play football a little bit.

00:08:33:07 – 00:08:52:14
Ryan Echols
You find out how tough you really are and but then they pick you up. I had guys Ben was one. They took you know, you need to go play ball. You go play football, you need to get out here and do more than this. This isn’t what you’re meant to do to be in lockup or be in prison or be dead by the time be 21.

00:08:54:09 – 00:09:17:04
Ryan Echols
I had no expectations for anything after I had gone through a year before that. I mean, I know if you want to get into that back and get the what led to me going to Milkshake was probably what changed everything. If we wanted to get into that, we can, we can do it right. So I met my dad at 15 and it was just one of those situations where my mom sent me to go live with my dad at 15.

00:09:17:04 – 00:09:38:09
Ryan Echols
I’d never met him. I’d say, He’s amazing, dude. Now we’re super close. We talk every day. At the time he was alcoholic, very, very violent. I got to meet him probably not the greatest number of my life, but I was already a violent kid. Anyways, you know, I started boxing at ten. I was. I’ve always been into physical.

00:09:39:10 – 00:09:40:14
Ryan Echols
I always like to fight that way.

00:09:43:01 – 00:10:02:06
Ryan Echols
I came back, my mom and I had a boyfriend when I was like four or five. That was like a dad to me. And it’s always been on my life even that entire time of school. Every year we go do that very close to me. I got back that that summer after meeting my dad first time, and three weeks after I got back, he killed himself.

00:10:04:08 – 00:10:27:12
Ryan Echols
And so it was a situation where I meet my dad disappointment. The guy that that was my thought daughter as my father commit suicide and I had no it wasn’t really my mom do talk about this. You still love this guy. Yeah. I mean, like she it was rough for her to deal with it. But for me I just shut down.

00:10:28:03 – 00:10:50:09
Ryan Echols
And if anything I became a lot more aggressive and a lot more violent just because I didn’t want to deal with emotions. I didn’t want to open up and tell him to hate this and that’s what led to is a year before I got put in lockup and I was probably fighting every weekend for a long time before I finally got in trouble and got sent there.

00:10:51:08 – 00:11:14:11
Ryan Echols
I’m going back full circle that I meet the staff there, and it’s kind of the same thing. I’ve got men that I respect and men that I know physically I have to. It was just kind of a snapshot of how tough you think you are. And yeah, it was there’s a bunch of great guys there, you know, that you worked with.

00:11:14:12 – 00:11:38:09
Ryan Echols
You worked with them too. And it wasn’t it wasn’t a superficial friendship. It was I guess it was legit. Like, I expect you to be the man I know you can be. And if you do that, I’ll be here for you. And it worked out to the point to where I left that place and was working there six years later because those men said, if you do what you need to do, will vouch for you and you’ll come back.

00:11:38:13 – 00:11:47:09
Ryan Echols
You’ll be the first person to ever be in here. Come and work here. I didn’t believe that at all, because I’ll be honest, like a lot of people told me flat out, you’ll never work here.

00:11:49:10 – 00:11:53:02
Ryan Echols
Because nobody ever had. But I took that as a challenge.

00:11:53:02 – 00:12:11:11
Brad Singletary
So you were a resident. You were a an inmate, basically, at this place. A troubled kid. You’d been in enough trouble. There were probably multiple layers of you know, they have diversion programs and, you know, you got your hand slapped and then a little more and then a little more. And then he got 14 months in basically a prison.

00:12:11:11 – 00:12:12:08
Brad Singletary
And you’re still in high.

00:12:12:08 – 00:12:12:13
Ryan Echols
School, right?

00:12:12:13 – 00:12:36:02
Brad Singletary
Z and and and these and these guys are seeing something in you. They see something because there’s a bunch of knuckleheads in there. There’s a bunch of, you know, idiot kids running around who just don’t have any kind of structure strength to speak of, really. And they saw something in you and you saw something in them and you kind of said, Hey, I want to hear what you have to say.

00:12:36:02 – 00:12:42:07
Brad Singletary
And they shaped you and so you left there after 14 months, and then six years later.

00:12:43:00 – 00:12:43:04
Ryan Echols
You.

00:12:43:13 – 00:12:46:11
Brad Singletary
You got a job there as a, as a youth counselor, right?

00:12:46:12 – 00:13:07:04
Ryan Echols
Yeah. So I left I went to Dixie Dixie College for a little bit. Left Dixie went actually went live with my dad for a year or so. I was going, I wanted to move to Arizona because my dad was a tapes lineman, made good money doing that. And that was my plan was to go he was going to get me a job down there.

00:13:07:04 – 00:13:35:03
Ryan Echols
I was gonna stay in Arizona. I went down there and my great grandmother had talked about it pretty much raised me, started having heart problems so I moved out to Utah to take care of I took care of it for two years until she died and then had met my ex wife. We were dating. I was getting ready to move back to Arizona and she ended up two pregnant and I didn’t want to do it.

00:13:35:03 – 00:13:55:07
Ryan Echols
My dad did and leave. So I stayed and I was doing cement work at the time and I just happened to submit work. Yeah, good. Hard. I’m making this money. But, you know, not so much. I went I happened to stop by to go visit the guys, go visit the counselors that I keep in touch with everybody.

00:13:57:08 – 00:14:20:09
Ryan Echols
Stopped by oh, you ever did can. Oh, yeah. Hey, there’s opening in control, and I want you to come apply for it. And I was like, there’s no way. There’s no way they’re going to hire me, you know, just like you didn’t. I’d never thought it would happen. So he’s like, I don’t care. We think you’re going to come apply for it.

00:14:20:11 – 00:14:42:05
Ryan Echols
So I did apply for control. Got that. Got hard to control. I think I was two months later, I got offered a spot in college to be to be counselor and that and I got to be honest, like, I never at that point in my life, I didn’t think that I was even still worthy of that. Like, you still dealing with all the issues of like, your past and trying to overcome all the things.

00:14:42:08 – 00:15:03:00
Ryan Echols
You know, I was doing good. I was doing very well for myself, you know, financially and everything. But emotionally and dealing with all the things in my past was still kind of hold me back for I didn’t think I was worthy of that yet, but it played out and, you know, I got it and it’s just 21 years later I’m still there.

00:15:03:08 – 00:15:21:10
Brad Singletary
So it’s that’s amazing, dude. I mean, I’ve just seen, I mean, the recidivism rates for the kids at this level. It’s just very that’s one of the best, one of the things that took me out of that career because it was, it’s kind of sad, you know, I mean, most of the kids that show up in those places, they end up in prison every few years.

00:15:21:10 – 00:15:46:01
Brad Singletary
I’ll look up some of the kids I worked with and I see their I see their picture in the in the state prisons and whatever. And I and I and I see, you know, how far things progressed in a worse direction for them, you know, and it’s just it’s just heartbreaking. But you’re someone who someone someone reached you, man, and you you had to reach inside yourself and say, I’m made for something better.

00:15:46:01 – 00:16:03:05
Brad Singletary
Than this, and I know what I need to do something. I just believe there’s something special about a guy who can do that at such a young age. I mean, I didn’t know this until a few years ago that our adult brain isn’t even fully formed until you’re like 25 or 26 years old.

00:16:03:13 – 00:16:04:02
Ryan Echols
I mean.

00:16:04:03 – 00:16:12:14
Brad Singletary
And that’s that was one of the coolest things I ever learned. And I was like, Well, no wonder they wouldn’t let me rent a car when I was, you know, a freshman in college or whatever. But so.

00:16:12:14 – 00:16:14:02
Ryan Echols
You’re way.

00:16:14:02 – 00:16:25:14
Brad Singletary
Ahead of your time in terms of turning things around or you started to in your late teenage years, were you at Mill Creek after you were 18 that were you already an adult and still locked up?

00:16:25:14 – 00:16:26:10
Ryan Echols
Yeah. OK, yeah.

00:16:26:13 – 00:16:31:14
Brad Singletary
See, so they kept they would keep kids until their age. 21. So. So how old were you when you left?

00:16:32:00 – 00:16:53:01
Ryan Echols
I was I was at probably 18 and a half, I think. But just beyond that now they just changed that here now that we’re keeping kids. So 25 which I don’t know that those are kids but yeah we did they just, they just changed that. Yeah. I’ve met something. They’re not a great idea for me in that facility, but I mean it is what it is.

00:16:54:06 – 00:17:07:02
Brad Singletary
Wow. That’s interesting. So you’re so you’re an adult and you’re still in lockup, but pretty much so when you get out there’s some probation or some kind of youth parole stuff where you have to go. And what did you do after you got out of there?

00:17:07:03 – 00:17:26:14
Ryan Echols
So I was on I was actually on parole, so I was like 23 because I had so much restitution so when I got done with that, I was 21. I had to go to adult because I still had restitution. They would lay me off until my restitution was paid, which oh. So then once my restitution was paid off, I could actually get my record expunged.

00:17:28:00 – 00:17:31:05
Brad Singletary
And you’re talking about adult parole, not you didn’t get.

00:17:31:05 – 00:17:37:06
Ryan Echols
No, no, no, no, no, no. Never got locked up again. Never. I’ve never had another charge secured. OK, OK.

00:17:38:10 – 00:17:40:02
Brad Singletary
Well, you just finished out your parole.

00:17:40:02 – 00:17:47:14
Ryan Echols
Yeah, yeah. Because I still have I think I still have a few thousand dollars left in restitution to pay. I mean, I was on my tank a few thousand from.

00:17:48:04 – 00:17:49:04
Brad Singletary
What was a total.

00:17:49:04 – 00:17:54:10
Ryan Echols
33,000, you know, in medical bills. Yeah.

00:17:56:09 – 00:17:58:00
Brad Singletary
Wow. You put a hurt.

00:17:58:01 – 00:18:10:12
Ryan Echols
No, I mean, it’s that is a bad situation, you know, maybe I’m proud of I don’t want to glorify any of it, you know, but quite it’s happened and people think it could happen to me. That’s easy.

00:18:10:12 – 00:18:20:10
Brad Singletary
You did what you had. Absolutely. But you finished that. You paid out 33,000 parole for several years afterward. And where did you where did you pick things up from there?

00:18:20:10 – 00:18:40:12
Ryan Echols
So like I said I went to Dixie College for a little bit. Wasn’t a good fit for me. I’ll be the first to admit to to go from being in lockup to you know, Dixie, when I was a JSI, there was a party school that was a terrible idea for me to go from lockup for a year plus to go to a party school.

00:18:40:14 – 00:19:15:04
Ryan Echols
So I lasted maybe like six, seven months. And I was like, if I don’t if I don’t leave, I’m not I’m not going to do well. So I went to my dad’s in Arizona decided I was just going to work. You know, I was going to work for the AP for eight years, the power company B alignment. And like I said, then things out with my grandma and I came up here, I started doing some work at group homes and I worked at several group homes up here while I was doing other work, got the time in with my schooling up to where they hired me at Mill Creek.

00:19:15:04 – 00:19:17:14
Ryan Echols
So that was it worked out.

00:19:19:13 – 00:19:37:02
Brad Singletary
And that was only a couple months here in the control room. That’s where I started. That’s where I’m talking about you open the doors, you’re looking at cameras and you’re kind of observing the flow of traffic, the control you’re in control of the flow of of all the movement inside. And then only after a couple of months you went and your title is Youth Counselor.

00:19:37:02 – 00:19:40:05
Brad Singletary
One, two, and that must have been a crazy.

00:19:40:05 – 00:19:56:10
Ryan Echols
Yeah. At the time. And the craziest thing about that is that when I got hired as a counselor, I worked in the same party that I was in so I was in the same unit I was excited to see when I was in there. And then I went back and worked in the exact same cottage. And it was it was me.

00:19:56:12 – 00:19:58:12
Brad Singletary
And some of those staff were still food.

00:19:59:01 – 00:20:21:00
Ryan Echols
And I took that to be honest. Like not all of them were super happy that I was working there at the time. There was a lot of negative, a lot of negative talk about me being there, which I understand as a staff. Now, at the time, there was a lot of there were some very good people that were very supportive, but there’s a lot of people that think I should be able to work there because of what I did and that I was in there.

00:20:22:04 – 00:20:25:06
Ryan Echols
But I think by now probably shown that I’m worthy of being there.

00:20:25:06 – 00:20:41:13
Brad Singletary
So well, I I got to admit, man, and I don’t think we ever had any much, you know, exchange or communication or anything but or about that anyway. But I remember feeling a little confused about how would they, you know, how did they let that happen or what’s, you know, is that is that is as good or not.

00:20:42:02 – 00:20:56:08
Brad Singletary
I wasn’t really judging it. I was just it was curious. I was like, this has never happened before. And and, you know, I don’t know. You have you’re this musky, muscled muscle dude, but who used to be there as a resident. I was is this a good, good idea or not?

00:20:56:08 – 00:21:14:04
Ryan Echols
No, I understand. That completely. And I knew that going in. And I think I joke with my wife all the time because I when I left there and I said I wanted to come back and work there, people were like, well, never happen. I guarantee you’ll never work here. And I’ll never forget, like, all right, watch. I’m going to show you that.

00:21:14:04 – 00:21:36:12
Ryan Echols
I could do that. I could do this. I come over. So why couldn’t you you know, I couldn’t be a neurosurgeon or something. Would wouldn’t make me a lot more money. But it it it played out good. You know, I feel like I, I feel like with my life before that and the way that I was, I wasn’t contributing to society the way that anybody said the things I did prior to being locked up.

00:21:37:11 – 00:21:57:04
Ryan Echols
This has been my way for 21 years to give back to the community I live in and do things that I should’ve been doing the whole time. And now that I’m a father, I’m a husband, all these things, and and for the boys I work with, they deserve that effort and the energy I put into them to make up for everything I did.

00:21:58:04 – 00:22:18:00
Ryan Echols
It’s a big deal to me because I feel like I did. I wasn’t the greatest person that, you know, maybe 15, 1415 to, to 18 till I was in there. A lot of things I feel like I need to make up for it. And it’s our being hard on ourselves for sure. But to me, I’m like, this is my way of giving back.

00:22:18:00 – 00:22:39:08
Ryan Echols
I said when I started, if I could help one kid the way I was helped, then I’ve done what I wanted to do. And I actually had a I had a kid that I had probably 15, 16 years ago that named a son after me two years ago. And, and to be honest, this was a little like my wife.

00:22:39:08 – 00:23:01:11
Ryan Echols
We were upstairs and he’d message me out Facebook and like, send me a picture of his baby. I had him for four years at that place. He came in at 13 and left at almost 18. No family, super good kid, just bad situation, good kid. Is doing amazing. Sent the message me say, hey, my baby is born and he sends me the picture.

00:23:01:11 – 00:23:22:03
Ryan Echols
I didn’t notice like the name tag on it and I’m like, I’d like to see the name. And I’m like, I’ll go back and look and my wife’s like, Are you getting emotional? I’m like, Yeah, like literally after you know, at that point, like 17 years of doing this like that is a, it’s a huge deal to impact somebody’s life that much like it was, it was amazing to me.

00:23:22:04 – 00:23:24:04
Brad Singletary
Wow. What an what, what, what an honor.

00:23:24:04 – 00:23:26:08
Ryan Echols
Yeah, well, go ahead.

00:23:28:02 – 00:23:54:04
Brad Singletary
Dwell. I just the, you know, everything that you’re describing from, from kind of what was missing for you in the beginning. That’s why this whole thing exists, man. We have kind of have a smaller, you know, following. We’ve got, you know, I don’t know, two 5300 downloads per episode. We got a little Facebook group and and but the idea is that men are suffering because of what other men are like in their lives.

00:23:54:04 – 00:24:11:09
Brad Singletary
And so if you’re if you didn’t have the best role models and things and you didn’t have the kind of presence that you needed, somebody to, you know, rough you up a little bit and love you at the same time, you ended up finding that. Thank God you ended up finding that in lockup. You know, you’re in it.

00:24:11:09 – 00:24:33:08
Brad Singletary
You’re in a youth prison. And you had some guys who probably roughed up a little bit and loved on you some, too, and kind of gave you some encouragement and gave you some you know, hold up the mirror and show you to yourself and they tell you what you can be. And then and then you you went out there and probably just stubborn enough to to to say you want to prove it and and you did that.

00:24:33:10 – 00:24:52:11
Brad Singletary
And that’s come full circle to where now you’ve got kids who’ve been out of that system for 15 years or whatever length of time and they’re naming their kids after you. That is dude, that’s, that’s success that began out of failure. And now you’re a dad, you’re married and have to talk about your kids and your family situation.

00:24:54:05 – 00:25:05:05
Ryan Echols
So I have total I have six, I have six kids. I have four. When I met my wife, she had two boys. So I’ve got two stepsons. We have two together. So we have eight in total which we.

00:25:06:14 – 00:25:11:13
Brad Singletary
I thought I had a bunch of kids. You do have a y’all got a like a tour over there. How do you.

00:25:12:14 – 00:25:31:04
Ryan Echols
Settle with one? We’ll need it if everybody comes home. That’s the thing. Luckily, enough, as my older kids, I got 22 and a 20 year old daughter out on their own. My wife’s 19 year old’s in Hawaii going to school. So we’re lucky enough right now. We probably have three or four, maybe five at the most on a weekly basis.

00:25:31:04 – 00:25:40:03
Brad Singletary
So if you got a 22, you do to me I, I’m thinking you’re 20 like that’s what I knew. You were.

00:25:40:03 – 00:25:41:05
Ryan Echols
Right. You were pretty.

00:25:41:05 – 00:25:52:00
Brad Singletary
Young like that. So it’s weird to think you got a 22 year old. I have an 18. My my, my oldest is 18. So we’re getting eight kids all together, yours, mine and got York.

00:25:52:02 – 00:26:22:01
Ryan Echols
Right there and I love it I actually like it. I mean it, it’s not the easiest thing to blend families for sure. It’s a lot of work but I think the connection I with my wife, I mean we’ve made it work for sure. It’s like it’s not always easy. It’s definitely not easy. And then like I said, we have our two together, which is it’s funny because we kind of had our own like when I met her, we had a date and she only had boys and she wanted a daughter.

00:26:22:01 – 00:26:47:05
Ryan Echols
Right? Absolutely. I’ll make sure you can have a daughter. And her first baby was a little girl, so she got her daughter there. She’s basically like the miniature version of my wife. They exactly like her. And then she got pregnant about a year later, and we had our son who was literally like exactly like me. It’s funny because I was like a miniature version of each other to finish it out.

00:26:47:05 – 00:26:50:03
Ryan Echols
And so that’s it. I mean, we’re done for sure.

00:26:50:05 – 00:26:51:03
Brad Singletary
Well, it’s got to be me.

00:26:51:05 – 00:26:52:06
Ryan Echols
Yeah. Oh, yeah.

00:26:53:05 – 00:26:57:05
Brad Singletary
Well, I 20 if you got 20 something year old kids, you want to be a great father.

00:26:58:00 – 00:27:07:04
Ryan Echols
A grandfather. Actually, yeah. Oh, oh, grandfather. My, my, my oldest daughter. Maybe Grandpa a year ago in December, so. Yeah, yeah. Wow.

00:27:07:07 – 00:27:15:08
Brad Singletary
Well, congratulations, man. So your kids, your your older kids, good relationships with them. Is that all? Yeah. You know, I mean, I’m sure you went through a lot together.

00:27:15:08 – 00:27:33:00
Ryan Echols
Yeah, I think, I mean, in that situation, I think, like, we’ve always been close. I was always dad first, no matter what. Like, whether I was, whether I was fighting, whether I was, it didn’t matter. I mean, like I said, we didn’t really talk a whole lot, but I’ve never been I don’t go out much. I don’t party a lot.

00:27:33:00 – 00:27:58:11
Ryan Echols
I, I’ve had my, my time for sure. I won’t deny that. But when I had kids, it was like I’ve always felt like I needed to be what I didn’t have. And so that’s always been a priority to me. Being a dad is a big deal. I’ve messed a lot of shit up in my life, but being a dad is something that I’ve tried to be my best at now with my wife now I’ve tried to be a good husband just trying to mature and grow and be better at things.

00:27:59:12 – 00:28:12:03
Ryan Echols
My older kids, yes, we went they they went through a lot more than they should have because the relationship that me and their mom had, but I was always there. I mean, the only thing I could I’m not perfect by the means, but I showed up every day. I was there every day.

00:28:14:11 – 00:28:33:08
Ryan Echols
Yeah. I mean, we’re all close. We’ve always been very close. We talk all the time. My daughter, my oldest daughter is in California with her baby and baby’s dad. All my kids are here all around town. And I still see all of them like my other kids with my ex. I get them every week like it works out.

00:28:34:00 – 00:28:56:10
Ryan Echols
So I’ve got it. Wow. My, my. I got an 11 year old. And it’s funny because when when me and Lindsay, my wife, when we met, she had a three year old that had a two year old and they were eight months apart. Two boys. Yeah. Now now they’re 11 and almost to like my stepson will be 12 next week and my son’s 11 and they’re close as hell but they’re super close.

00:28:56:14 – 00:29:10:08
Ryan Echols
There’s been a lot of battles between those two. Those two are by far the closest because they’re closest in age and it’s worked, Allie said it’s been rough. It’s hard to blend everything lately, but I can’t I can’t complain. It’s been, it’s been good.

00:29:12:09 – 00:29:34:11
Brad Singletary
So this topic about discipline, I mean, you went from a life maybe of no discipline. There didn’t seem like there was a lot of discipline even in your home or not. The right kind of, you know, structure and discipline. And you turn things around. You’re a family man now. You do it. You’re still doing a lot with, you know, fitness and you’ve talked about I want you to talk about, you know, Emma and fighting.

00:29:34:11 – 00:29:56:13
Brad Singletary
You’ve done some, you know, started out maybe just street fighting. Got you. Right. But you but you wanted to harness that into something that was about you know, that’s what I’ve noticed about you over the years is just your commitment to like working out. You’ll have a picture of your, you know, one of your little ones running around like leg there, you know, and there’s my workout partner and you so you continue that.

00:29:57:03 – 00:30:19:04
Brad Singletary
You seem to be a guy who for the most part isn’t one to make a lot of excuses I know we all have our off days and we get off track for a little bit, but you’ve done it enough that you’ve stayed fairly consistent from what I can tell, from what I know about you, and to look to look at you, I can tell that you’ve got a you got a way to grind and I want to come back to discipline.

00:30:19:04 – 00:30:40:10
Brad Singletary
And so you’ve talked about career stuff. What motivates you there, your family, how? Well, talk about fighting, though, because you you took some of that maybe anger or the desire to be physical and fight and, you know, this violent nature and to turn it into something more like an art form. Mm.

00:30:40:11 – 00:30:42:02
Ryan Echols
A Yeah. That’s.

00:30:42:07 – 00:30:43:13
Brad Singletary
You know, that’s that’s an art.

00:30:44:08 – 00:31:04:09
Ryan Echols
It for me. It’s weird how it played out. I’m not sure this is like it’s happened to thousands of people, right? I was a product of a single mom, right? I had I was probably I was only child till I was in my I was just me, too. I was doing I was probably a little not little. I was definitely a little chubby kid for a long time.

00:31:05:00 – 00:31:27:13
Ryan Echols
So I was probably ten to about 13. Yeah. My mom always had me in sports and I wasn’t very great. I wasn’t very great at sports for a very long time. And she married my she met my, my sister’s dad. And they got married. He was, you know, he was he was a good athlete, wasn’t the nicest guy ever, but pushed me.

00:31:27:13 – 00:31:52:08
Ryan Echols
And it kind of motivated me to like they would constantly there’s like comments about not being athletic. And so I probably at 13 really pushed myself to get in shape and not be clumsy and overweight. So working out all the time. At 13 my mom started taking me to the gym at 13 and then I started boxer and I think my grandpa boxing was the boxing.

00:31:52:08 – 00:32:15:14
Ryan Echols
The army you had you had to. Yeah, you had to be able to handle yourself. My, my family they were a little little rough so it was a lot of for me it was proving people wrong even then when I say if you like my stepdad I wanted to fight. You think you’re a good athlete. Watch. I’m going to show you that I can be a good athlete.

00:32:15:14 – 00:32:42:13
Ryan Echols
I went from being 12. I was a senator on my football team and at 13 I was running I was a running back and inside linebacker just based off of the effort I put in and it just always seemed to be for some reason, I would always just choose violence. In that time, I couldn’t handle people saying things or people criticizing me.

00:32:42:13 – 00:33:08:11
Ryan Echols
I’d always be like, I tell you exactly what happened. I was probably 13 years old and there’s kids pick on me every day, walk home from school every day. Always something pushed you spit on each other. And the last week before my end of my sixth grade year, I turned around, punch this kid in the face, dropped him, Illustrator broke his nose, first time I’d ever hit anybody and dropped him.

00:33:08:11 – 00:33:28:09
Ryan Echols
And it was like I became like this little miniature celebrity in my little group, in my own neighborhood is like, wait a minute. If I actually fight back and I’m decent at it, people like me, right? I’d be this nerd that nobody likes anymore. And that’s what started everything. And then it became like and to be honest, at that point, like, I didn’t have a lot of friends.

00:33:28:12 – 00:33:44:12
Ryan Echols
I was chubby kid that like to read books and play like my animals or stuff. I didn’t. I was a single kid, but there are people like, Oh, you beat up so and so. And then a few months later I beat up somebody else and start building this fake persona almost at that time because nobody’s nobody’s guiding me.

00:33:45:08 – 00:34:02:02
Ryan Echols
Nobody’s saying like, Look, this is a this is the way to do things. I definitely defend yourself. Don’t let people, you know, put their hands on you. I didn’t get that. My mom was definitely like, Don’t. If somebody picks on you, don’t come home unless you go you go handle it. You see my wife, it’s definitely my mom.

00:34:02:06 – 00:34:34:08
Ryan Echols
I don’t if you get beat up, you got to go back and fight again so you could kill you do win or don’t come back. But she was at work. You know, she worked a lot. She had to because it was just us. And so for those years, it was just like I got a lot of get rush and adrenaline and what I thought was people liking me for being violent but not fast forward to get to the point from that to when I got locked up I didn’t hear from anybody like all these people that said, all right, you will be there for you.

00:34:35:04 – 00:34:54:00
Ryan Echols
You realize real quick, when you get locked up that nobody really cares. There’s this very few people in life that are going to be there for you when you need them. And it’s always your tribe. It’s your family. A very small circle. I’ve always kept a very small circle for that reason because I learned it at 17 years old, I got locked up.

00:34:54:11 – 00:35:16:05
Ryan Echols
All those people that say they care, they it’s all lip service. That’s all it is, you know? You know, everybody knows that now in our age, like, you start realizing like. And so from that, when I got out of lockup, probably about 90, 95 was when the first UFC started. It’s like, wait a minute, you can fight somebody in jail for do you?

00:35:16:05 – 00:35:43:12
Ryan Echols
Can I get locked up for it? And you know, in, in Arizona at the time, there’s some underground stuff that we make. You get a hundred bucks to go fight, that kind of thing. I did that for a while and it was, I started doing jujitsu and all that and it brought some kind of like normalcy to my passion for that without it being like overly aggressive it’s hard to explain like it was and it was.

00:35:43:12 – 00:36:04:12
Ryan Echols
There’s a lot of it. It was like just rebelling back for everything and everybody just being too much. And now I could do it. And it’s an art form, right? I can do jujitsu, I can do more type, I can do boxing and I can help train kids, and I can do all these things in this physical expression of greatness that doesn’t have to be a crime and it doesn’t have to be violent.

00:36:05:00 – 00:36:27:01
Ryan Echols
And you start realizing, I think that’s where honestly where my fight to self was when I started looking at like an art form, because if I could be that violent person and then I could if if it comes to a street fighter or to protect my family, it’s still there. But the art form of what that is kind of changed a lot of things for me because I had kids when I had kids, it made me a little softer.

00:36:27:01 – 00:36:38:13
Ryan Echols
I’m not going to deny that. But so yeah, it was image issue, all that stuff. It was a big part of helping me, you know, stay on the right track for sure.

00:36:41:08 – 00:37:02:07
Brad Singletary
So talk about discipline, I mean, just in general. And we’ll we’ll get into some specific questions here. But the change for you at some point, you went from just, you know, hellion, street fighter, violent guy who was just, you know, locked up. And at some point what you had to learn or discover, maybe the hard way, maybe it was a choice.

00:37:02:07 – 00:37:26:08
Brad Singletary
Maybe you would lay there at night and think, I got to be a better dude. I mean, what how did you get to be so disciplined? Because you can’t have a successful blended family. You can’t have a pretty, you know, solid body as a 40, 42. You can’t be 46 and have you know, be built like this. You can’t have a successful blended family and a 21 year career and a very stressful job.

00:37:27:04 – 00:37:48:07
Brad Singletary
And you can’t keep all that together if you don’t have a sense of discipline. I can tell from your, from your, from your posts and things like you’ve got a beautiful home, like you got some things figured out. Ryan and I just wonder how like how did discipline create that for you because you were headed, I don’t know the numbers, but it used to be high, high numbers.

00:37:48:07 – 00:37:56:12
Brad Singletary
I mean it’s 70, 80% of those kids in those facilities end up in prison. You’re headed there. You turn it around with discipline. How, how did you do that?

00:37:57:11 – 00:38:17:09
Ryan Echols
Honestly, it was if I’m being honest, before I went to Mill Creek, I thought for sure. I mean, you’re talking about the time like the mid nineties, early nineties, it was crazy, crazy time. I thought for sure I would be in prison. I thought I would probably be dead by the time I was 21. He was like, this is the way I was.

00:38:17:09 – 00:38:34:07
Ryan Echols
I’m not nothing to be proud of at all or anything like that. But it took me about a month of being and being locked up. I was like, Yeah, this is not the life I want. This isn’t what I want. I’m watching everybody around me, the things we’re doing and the life that they’re living, and I don’t want that.

00:38:35:02 – 00:38:53:10
Ryan Echols
I don’t know how to live it at that point. And I talk about this with my kids a lot. I, I started doing meditation. I had my mom bring a lot of books on meditation. I started reading every religious book I could find was the Old Testament, New Testament, the Koran, every Buddhist writing ever the Bhagavad Gita. I read everything I could.

00:38:54:00 – 00:39:20:10
Ryan Echols
All I did is read them. I sleep them in my room the night I locked lockdown. I read, I worked out, I read and worked on my meditation. I started developing a pattern of learning and I talked to my kids a lot about this at work is they think meditation is a chore, right? When in reality, it’s a situation where you’re trying to find that moment between thoughts that lead to the situation that gets you in trouble.

00:39:21:04 – 00:39:39:01
Ryan Echols
And learning to take that break and snapping yourself out of that repetitive habit you have of doing the same shit. They get you in trouble all the time and just taking a break. Stop. Wait a minute. We catch myself and that’s what it was. And it’s a lot of practice. I’m still I’m still practicing that to this day.

00:39:40:01 – 00:39:59:12
Ryan Echols
But that was the original plan was like, All right, I’ve got to get this impulsive, violent streak out of my head. I’ve got to learn to deal with this. And then I got to realize that I’m worthy and capable of a normal life. And it was it’s been a process for sure, but it’s it’s been a great process and a hard process.

00:40:00:05 – 00:40:40:02
Ryan Echols
And when discipline, it’s like we as we get older, especially our my body is beat up. I mean, I’ve had more injuries and surgeries and I want to talk about but I still have to do something every day. I still need to get up and move I still need to try to eat. Well, we have our I mean, me and my wife, you know, that’s one thing that I’m one of the reasons my wife’s Instagram blew up because we did after we had our last baby, we were both overweight and we were at Universal Studios for our honeymoon after our baby is born and I look like Shrek standing next to one of the pictures.

00:40:40:02 – 00:41:00:03
Ryan Echols
And I was 273 at the time. Not in any kind of shape, horrible shape. And she was you know, I won’t say what her weight was that she she’s bigger, too. She just had a baby like you she didn’t like how she got back. And I was like, all right, we’re going to we’re going to diet. But I’m doing the diet.

00:41:00:05 – 00:41:18:01
Ryan Echols
You’re just going to do what I say. And she said, I trust you. And she’s lost. I think she lost like £80. I lost £86. And it’s, it’s been a lifestyle change more so than just are we going to diet? We stopped eating chips and salsa every night while we drank beer on the couch and talk to each other.

00:41:18:01 – 00:41:46:03
Ryan Echols
And it’s just been a complete lifestyle change. And that discipline with it, that was the beginning of this reinvention of myself and almost 40, 42, like where I was like I had my, I don’t know, like my, my 11 year old now was like five at the time. And he’s looking through my phone on Facebook and he’s looking at my pictures and he sees a picture of one of my fight posters and he’s like, Who’s that?

00:41:46:13 – 00:42:05:03
Ryan Echols
And I was like, That’s me. It’s like, No, it’s like that. You’re too fat. That’s not you. It’s like that five year old. Honestly, that five year old. Honestly, that’s not like he wasn’t being mean. Is this reality like yeah. You don’t look anything like that. You’re 185,000 picture you to 70 right now and that. And then I had issues.

00:42:05:04 – 00:42:23:02
Ryan Echols
My blood pressure is in hospital like three times in the year for my blood pressure. It was like one of the last time I was there that my doctor’s like, if you want to see these kids make it to high school, you’ve got to make some changes. You know, stop drinking so much. Stop eating the way you’re eating, start exercising more.

00:42:23:09 – 00:42:43:01
Ryan Echols
You’re like, it’s obvious that you know what to do. So it was it was a wakeup call for sure because you know, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of drama that went on with my divorce leading into my marriage that caused a lot of issues with me and my wife that we’ve battled through and that whole weight loss process made us so much stronger because we did it together.

00:42:43:09 – 00:43:03:11
Ryan Echols
Yeah, we overcame that. Became with the strong I mean, I, I don’t I couldn’t be with anybody better in my life. Like, she’s the best person for me ever. And she’s, you know, I hope that, you know, I think she feels the same way. We’ve done a great job together as a team, but that team has been like the discipline of just devoting myself to her was something I’d never done before.

00:43:04:11 – 00:43:23:10
Ryan Echols
You know, I wasn’t the greatest husband or anything before. I met my wife and I was miserable. And so with this situation, I’m like, I’m going all in. I’m going to devote everything to my family, to my wife. And it has been an amazing eight years we’ve been together. And, you know, the first few were a little rough, but these last four have been amazing.

00:43:23:10 – 00:43:25:14
Ryan Echols
We’ve done some good things together. We still are.

00:43:28:02 – 00:43:45:05
Brad Singletary
I think I was caught. You guys, I must have caught you on Instagram right around that time. And I don’t know if I follow her or if I just see it because you’re tagged in it or whatever. How I how I know, but I see both of your stuff and it looks like, man, it looks like you have a a decent relationship.

00:43:45:05 – 00:44:06:04
Brad Singletary
And I know people talk, you know, right smack about social media is not real and whatever. But I can tell you, man, I’m a I’m a person who can I can I can look in the mirror. This is my job. As a as a therapist. I look at people and I can read what the vibe is. And it seems very good that you have a solid relationship, you know, and you’re doing this stuff together.

00:44:07:07 – 00:44:07:10
Ryan Echols
Yeah.

00:44:08:03 – 00:44:27:01
Brad Singletary
And it’s amazing that you’re talking about that. We can drift. You know, we even when you you’ve known these things in the past, you were all swole and fit before and then we drift a little bit. And then if you make your mind up. So the mindset is it is an important part of this. You got to make your mind up to discipline.

00:44:27:06 – 00:44:47:05
Brad Singletary
And you’ve done that at some pretty pivotal times in your life as a younger person in the in the in lock up. When you decided to come back, you wanted to to prove everybody wrong, that you couldn’t work there. You did that. And then later on, you know, you got your got blood pressure problems and the doctor says you need to change and you did.

00:44:48:06 – 00:45:03:03
Brad Singletary
It’s amazing how how did you how did you talk to yourself? Like, what did you say? So the doctor says you’re not going to make it for these kids to graduate. You need to make change. How did you begin to talk to yourself about the daily discipline you need?

00:45:03:06 – 00:45:22:05
Ryan Echols
Honestly, like it would’ve been so I had my car fixed in 2009, and that was the beginning of like me spiraling down before I met my wife. Like, she taught me bottom spiral for whatever reason. She just still decided to make it work with me. But I was still recovering from that. Like, I couldn’t fight anymore. I couldn’t train the way I wanted to.

00:45:23:14 – 00:45:46:07
Ryan Echols
I kind of given up like I really wasn’t working out. And then we had our we had our babies and I’m like, I’ve given I’d given so much to my older kids that being in the gym with me every day and then seeing me is is not the baddest man on the planet by any means. But my kids, my older kids knew like my dad will take care of me if something happens.

00:45:46:11 – 00:46:05:13
Ryan Echols
My dad is a pretty bad dude, at least if somebody comes out his protectors and now I’m this overweight guy that’s not doing anything. And my younger kids, they have no idea. They can see pictures, but they’ve never seen me that way. And it was a that was a big thing for me is my kids deserve to see me at least the best I could be.

00:46:05:13 – 00:46:23:02
Ryan Echols
Now, I’ll probably never be what I was, but they deserve to see me the best I can be now. Right. And so it was a rough I mean, my body was beat up, you know, the things I’ve done, but it’s like I owe it to my kids and I owe it to myself to be to go out at least on top in their eyes.

00:46:23:02 – 00:46:40:07
Ryan Echols
Right? Like, let them see me be the best I can be at 46. You know, it’s I didn’t want my kids to be embarrassed of me dropping them off at school. Like, Dad dropped me off down the corner because I want my friends to see you thinking that. Like, when I was at my heaviest like, were my kids embarrassed to have me drop them off?

00:46:40:08 – 00:47:05:00
Ryan Echols
Like, it was a big thing. So I’m like, you know what? You know what to do. You’ve done it for your whole life. Like, you’ve done this before. So it’s time to, like, get off your ass and do it. And that was it. Like it. It was a daily thing, like, in my head because I work, like, right now, I work all six of two, so 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. so I’m at 430, give up, do something right, get up and move.

00:47:05:04 – 00:47:20:12
Ryan Echols
And then when I get off work, you get home. I go straight to the gym in the garage, or I go to the gym in town. But usually if the weather’s nice, I work out in the garage. I got an ice cube in my garage when I get home and the kids get there, it’s you’ve seen that. You’ve seen the YouTube, the videos on Instagram, it’s I’m out there working out.

00:47:20:12 – 00:47:35:13
Ryan Echols
My kids are playing. They’re working out with me. I want everybody out doing something. Let’s get out and get physical, get in the sunlight, be active. And if I don’t, I catch myself being lazy like my youngest on my fibro like that. Are we going to go work out? It’s like, all right. There you go. There you go.

00:47:35:13 – 00:47:38:06
Ryan Echols
He’s calling you out. It’s time to get up and get moving. So, yeah.

00:47:40:05 – 00:48:03:05
Brad Singletary
Dude, that’s awesome for them to see you make the changes to be kind of involved with it, to be around that stuff, too. You know, they’re never going to walk into a gym as an adult and write, you know, £45 plates, clink for the first time. I mean, they would have seen it and see what it does for you and see how it affects your mood and your family, your relationship to your wife.

00:48:03:05 – 00:48:16:00
Brad Singletary
I mean, they would have been, you know, an observer of all this growth and all this like discipline here. So why is it so important to you? Why is discipline such an important thing for you?

00:48:18:03 – 00:48:45:12
Ryan Echols
I honestly because if I didn’t create my own discipline, like we talked about the beginning, nobody taught me how to do any of this stuff. I basically I had to kind of fake it till I became who I wanted to be. And that started with me being disciplined in certain things. Exercising and learning to control my temper, learning to control the way I talk to people, learning to fit into environments.

00:48:45:12 – 00:49:02:06
Ryan Echols
I didn’t understand how to be around that’s one thing I forgot to say earlier is like when I went to Dixie after getting out of lockup, I went from being in a situation with murderers and gangsters right. To a situation where all these kids are normal. And I’ve got to pretend like I know how to hang out with them.

00:49:03:04 – 00:49:22:00
Ryan Echols
And honestly, at that point, I really didn’t know how to hang out. I didn’t come from like the greatest situation. You know, we lived in a poor area where I was living. I was always probably only like in two blocks. I come to just to go to college, and it’s like being around people that were normal, which was intriguing.

00:49:22:02 – 00:49:39:14
Ryan Echols
I wanted to do that. I was just like watching and seeing how to fit in. And it’s kind of been a process for me of creating my life that way. Like, I look for people like like to see, like, I want my life to be that way. All right, so how do I do that? I’ve got to make it happen myself, right?

00:49:40:00 – 00:49:55:05
Ryan Echols
I can’t do the things I did before because if I do that, I’m going to get what I got for it. And that discipline, that discipline of like saying I am not going to go back to that person that I was. I’m not going to live that life anymore. And whatever I’ve got to do, how uncomfortable it gets, I’m going to do that.

00:49:58:12 – 00:50:21:07
Brad Singletary
I think for some people and I’ve been for sure been this person people talk about, especially with like diet and fitness routines and stuff like that. They they they feel like they’ve failed if they don’t stick to it. 100%. I had a client here recently, he was talking about, you know, man, I do this for two weeks and then I’m off for two weeks and then I do it for two weeks and I’m like, all right, I see why you’re upset.

00:50:21:07 – 00:50:41:08
Brad Singletary
But dude, you you spent half of the year last year. You know, focused and being intentional about what you eat and what you do with your body. That’s not it’s not that bad. That’s better than most people. Even if you’re on and off of it. Don’t get tripped up about the fact that you you know, you’ve been slipping back up.

00:50:41:08 – 00:51:05:09
Brad Singletary
Tomorrow’s a new day and just get your self back in gear with with whatever thing, whatever thing it might be. What about what about routines? Like, a lot of it seems like discipline has a lot to do with structure. Andrew Stevens, we had this two star general on last, last in the last episode, and he was talking about, you know, discipline so many times has to do with structure.

00:51:05:09 – 00:51:19:13
Brad Singletary
There’s a a term for this. It’s it’s leg day today. It’s, you know, back and biceps or whatever. Like when it comes to routines for you, what’s been helpful from throughout your life? I mean, what kinds of routines have helped you stay focused?

00:51:19:13 – 00:51:41:06
Ryan Echols
All right. So before that, I want to get to the book when with people taking the two weeks on Twitter. Right. That that’s something I want to touch on because when my wife started this process with me, I told her flat out, we’re going 12 weeks no cheating, no glasses, wine, nothing, period. I’m going to hold you 100% accountable after that.

00:51:41:06 – 00:51:56:02
Ryan Echols
12 weeks if you want to have a cheat meal. And so we’re at a point now where we will have a cheat meal Saturday or Sunday. We go on a date. I date my wife every week. We go on a date every week. I make sure that we do that. And she wants to a glass of wine, that glass wine.

00:51:56:06 – 00:52:17:12
Ryan Echols
And if she wants some French fries or pizza, we have it right. You said that doing more than you would do regular is always going to be better than nothing, right? So yeah, getting back to so yeah, when it comes to my routine, it’s I want the hardest thing first, right? So it’s always International Chess Day on Monday.

00:52:18:01 – 00:52:44:03
Ryan Echols
It’s always everybody that’s just a Monday. I do legs on Monday and I do that. I do legs again on Friday. I decided that I needed to do something when I came back and I started working out again. I mean when I was 2324, I was attention 515. I was a oh my, I was a little bit of a freak of nature, you know, 23, 24 years old, squat and seven and seven it beat my body up.

00:52:44:03 – 00:53:06:04
Ryan Echols
So obviously now if I, if I hit 359 because I related with it right without my shoulders, don’t hold it up very much anymore. But I have to do things now harder when I don’t want to do it. So if I take Sunday off I need to legs on Monday and then I’ve gone into a situation where I do like a push pull legs.

00:53:06:10 – 00:53:28:09
Ryan Echols
So I do chest, shoulders, triceps one day back biceps straps and then legs or I’ll do the opposite. So I try to do that biceps straps, sort of triceps weights. Stay off, go. But if I’m really pushing it, I won’t take a day off and I’ll just go out. I might do lighter work, but I’m always making sure I do something.

00:53:28:09 – 00:53:49:04
Ryan Echols
I want to get up and do something every day they happen all the time. No, there’s no doubt. Like I have days where I’m just beat up, my body’s hammered, I need the salt bath and massager and the heating pad, you know, and I’ve kind of learned to. I said I’m 46 at this point. It’s like I can’t beat myself up over missing a day.

00:53:49:11 – 00:54:01:08
Ryan Echols
I definitely like to get out, walk make sure I get my 10,000 steps in every day. Minimum but if my body is really beat up, I probably should take a little bit of a break. So I kind of eased up on that a little bit.

00:54:03:08 – 00:54:20:11
Ryan Echols
I I like to set up like at least like a 12 we decide to do for 12 weeks and I need to hit those goals. I need to say I’m going to hit these workouts every week for these 12 weeks. And then if I need a couple of weeks to scale it back and take a break, so be it, right?

00:54:21:05 – 00:54:32:11
Ryan Echols
That’s how I have to do things. Because if I give myself too much leeway, I’m like, Oh, I can do it tomorrow and I can’t do it. It just hasn’t worked out for me in the past. I have to just hold myself accountable and force it to happen.

00:54:35:00 – 00:54:41:01
Brad Singletary
What’s magic? About 12 weeks? I mean, so three months, three months, I guess. I mean, that’s a lot of 90 days and it’s.

00:54:41:01 – 00:54:57:06
Ryan Echols
Just me mentally. I don’t even I don’t have a reason to honestly just two hour weeks. Yeah, it was worse for me. I honestly, I feel like three or four weeks. I got to like as far as pushing weight, I’ve got to go back a little bit. But the work effort is still there. Like my shoulders won’t hold up.

00:54:57:06 – 00:55:12:02
Ryan Echols
So I’m trying to push heavy for 12 weeks, but the work output has to be there for 12 weeks for me. Then I got to a week, I could say, All right, you might have earned a couple of weeks of scale on back a little bit. And I mean, I’m just trying to stay somewhat average now, but that just always works for me.

00:55:12:02 – 00:55:17:06
Ryan Echols
So that’s what I, that’s what I do so.

00:55:17:13 – 00:55:38:08
Brad Singletary
All right. You’re talking about getting up at 430 in the morning. You work at six. So you’re already you’re already, you’re already, you know, running, you’ve already got something going, some physical activity going before you even go to work early in the morning. That’s when you do that. You talked about having some occasion you’ll have a like a Saturday or Sunday cheat.

00:55:38:09 – 00:56:04:04
Brad Singletary
Yeah. Or whatever. What are there what are the what are the kind of forms of discipline for you? Because this is more than just about I think some of your strengths are fitness and diet and stuff like that. But what other things like let’s talk about like, you know, your environment, your space, your your stuff, maintaining your mood, you know, your your money, your actions, talk about other types of things.

00:56:04:08 – 00:56:28:06
Ryan Echols
You know, it’s I would say like my my environment is for me, it’s controlled chaos because we got all these kids running around. But that is where I find my peace. I couldn’t be any happier or any calmer mentally than seeing my children thrive and be happy and have the things that I didn’t have. So they can come out and say, hey, dad, can we go outside and do something?

00:56:28:06 – 00:56:46:11
Ryan Echols
I never was able to do that. So I find for me that’s like the biggest thing. It was more than money. It’s more than working out for nothing. My boys and my girls can come and say, Dad, can you do this with me? And that’s that’s a huge thing. I mean, for me, that’s one of the big things I’ve done in my life is be a dad.

00:56:48:01 – 00:57:01:04
Ryan Echols
Then I always make sure that I try to explain to them, like, exercise is one thing, but we need to need to read. So I make sure that everybody’s got we read books here. You have to read where I’m going to sit on electronics all day long. There’s limited time on electronics. I do the same thing for myself.

00:57:03:02 – 00:57:06:12
Ryan Echols
Shut everything down. I like to say everything down before bed. It’s an hour or so before bed.

00:57:09:10 – 00:57:16:10
Ryan Echols
Try to read something to get my brain to relax a little bit because, you know, getting older, it’s harder to sleep. But yeah, I.

00:57:18:12 – 00:57:39:03
Brad Singletary
There’s there’s got to be some pushback on that. So, you know, one, so there’s discipline, there’s individual discipline. So that’s you taking care of yourself as you do in your routine. But then as a leader or as a, you know, counselor in your work or as a father, you got to be disciplined because I’m sure you get pushback from the kids.

00:57:39:03 – 00:57:53:03
Brad Singletary
They you want to take their devices, you want them to read. They’re going to give you a hard time or I’m sure maybe in the beginning they did anyway. And you got to be disciplined enough to not buy into the you know, not cave when they when they fuss a little.

00:57:53:03 – 00:58:13:14
Ryan Echols
Bit for sure. I mean, and they still they still do. There’s no question. It’s my my daughter, my seven year old. If you’re watching, I’m she’s kind of she’s definitely the princess of the house. And every day still this is always been a rule. But no candles or anything. A dinner. There’s no electronics, a dinner. You put everything that she still acts every day.

00:58:14:04 – 00:58:25:01
Ryan Echols
She’ll still bring it in every day. What about today? Can I can I watch it today? No, you know, you can’t watch it. And it’s literally the same thing with it. Yes. She was hoping for a kick.

00:58:25:02 – 00:58:25:14
Brad Singletary
In the just a.

00:58:25:14 – 00:58:46:03
Ryan Echols
Possible absolutely. And I don’t blame her. I mean, good for her for trying, but that’s just that’s one of my things. At night before bed, you know, they have their time that they can use it. When it’s time to shut it off, it’s off and is it hard? Absolutely. And like this way on my end, it’s there’s times I would just as soon let him use it so I can relax and go to bed and not fight him.

00:58:46:05 – 00:58:58:07
Ryan Echols
But I’m not benefiting them by doing that. So, yeah, it’s harder to be that to be that person, say, no, we’re shutting everything off right now. We’re not having it on at dinner. Well, yeah, it’s a lot more work for sure.

00:59:00:09 – 00:59:19:13
Brad Singletary
When you were talking about environment, it’s controlled chaos because kids, I don’t believe that. I mean, not any worse than anyone else’s home, but I mean, but how do you how do you look at how do you see the, like, upkeep of your place and stuff like that? I mean, I just everything I’ve seen is always things look pretty for sure.

00:59:20:02 – 00:59:36:04
Ryan Echols
Absolutely. That’s it. That’s a big a big thing for me is everybody has I mean, everybody has stories every day. They have victories they have to do even my five year old chores to do nothing. I mean, that’s scrubbing the floor, things like that. But that we has a part in this House. I tell you, this is our tribe.

00:59:36:06 – 00:59:53:02
Ryan Echols
We don’t take care of this. Nobody will. Right. So everybody has to do their part. And my wife is definitely somebody that doesn’t want to come home. I get off at 2:00 every day. My wife is out at five. So she’s home around 536 so I make dinner. I take care of all that stuff before she gets home.

00:59:53:11 – 01:00:11:11
Ryan Echols
I make sure the kids know your mom doesn’t want them home to me because if she comes home to a mess, then I’m gonna hear about it. And then you’ve got to hear about it. So it’s just get everything done the best you can. I mean, with all the kids we’ve got, it’s not completely perfect. But yes, our house is we try to keep it clean and straighten it as possible, but it’s a lot of work.

01:00:12:03 – 01:00:33:10
Brad Singletary
I like how you’re saying, Whoa, dude, I like how you’re saying that. So you’re you’re up super early. You’re working out before you even go to work at 6 a.m. home by two. You got 3 hours or so with the kids before she gets home, and you’re doing dinner and picking things up and handling kids. Like, there are so many men out there who just they don’t or won’t do that.

01:00:33:10 – 01:00:51:14
Brad Singletary
I know there’s plenty. Right. And hats off to everybody who can do that. But that’s pretty mature of you. That’s being a grown ass man. When you’re up working out of 430, go to work 8 hours, come home, do the dinner, take care of your kids. And looking after mom, too, you know, I mean, that’s that’s pretty awesome that you do that.

01:00:51:14 – 01:00:59:11
Brad Singletary
I’ve picked that up a lot from your your social media, just that you you’re really a team and you definitely pull in your career.

01:00:59:11 – 01:01:18:06
Ryan Echols
Yeah, for sure. I think that’s I mean, I sometimes I work out the kids when they get home. So if the kids want to work at work at 320 when they get home from school, we’re outside. I want if it’s nice, we’re outside at 430, it’s time to feed them, right? Yeah. I just feel like I’m home, right?

01:01:18:07 – 01:01:34:14
Ryan Echols
I’ve already worked my wife still at work. The least I can do is take care of the things I can take care of at home so that when she gets home, we can have dinner together, we can hang out, we can spend time together because then that’s our time together. If I waste that time, just doing nothing, then that ruins our connection.

01:01:35:07 – 01:01:49:00
Ryan Echols
Right? And that’s her husband. The least I can do is help her out while she’s still at work. When I get up and I get up to take a shower in the morning, I’m getting ready for work. I come out and she’s got my coffee ready. She’s got my lunch in my in a bag ready for me. She takes care of me the same way.

01:01:50:03 – 01:02:03:11
Ryan Echols
So at least I can do is do my part like we’re a team. If we don’t work as a team, then this doesn’t really work. I like to cook anyways, so it’s not a big deal to me, you know, and that’s I feel like it’s my responsibility and she’s at work. I’m home. I can do that.

01:02:06:13 – 01:02:22:08
Brad Singletary
You know, we began this talking about your time in lockup and then, you know, your 21 year career. You’ve been working in that system ever since and I wonder if that was a part of your change. You know what you did. I pick up that you were an only child raised by single moms.

01:02:22:09 – 01:02:29:06
Ryan Echols
Yeah, I have a sister here that I was ten when she was born so. Yeah, pretty much.

01:02:30:00 – 01:02:45:11
Brad Singletary
I mean you pretty much. Yeah. So you go from kind of being able to do what you want to do and run around and whatever to this very highly structured this is the wake up time. This is the day you have to say this is when you have your chores. Here’s when we have group. There’s, there’s school time.

01:02:45:11 – 01:03:19:04
Brad Singletary
There’s here’s when we go outside there’s a lot of structure. And I remember working there. That was one of the things that seem these kids who come there, they could thrive because of structure. If they went back home into chaos, you know, they would go back into the same old patterns. But do you think that made a difference in how you see your use of time and your entire way of discipline now that at some point it went from you could do whatever you want, you ran around and did whatever to a highly structured daily some daily kind of ritual?

01:03:19:04 – 01:03:44:10
Ryan Echols
Yeah, for sure. My mom was somebody that like you, you did your chores, you made sure the house was clean. But she worked a lot. So I still have the freedom to do so. But when I went to military, actually back then, I worked in the kitchen every day because the kids could work in the kitchen because I had so much restitution that I worked in the kitchen at 6:00 every morning till 330.

01:03:45:02 – 01:04:02:01
Ryan Echols
And I did that for the entire time. I was there, and I definitely created habits and discipline for me to get up every morning and be ready for work. So it’s always worked out for me that way. When I got out of Mill Creek I just automatically started to get up early and get things done, and I had never done that before that for sure.

01:04:02:09 – 01:04:07:14
Ryan Echols
I’d get up at 20 minutes where I had to be to school and that was it. Yeah.

01:04:09:01 – 01:04:09:12
Brad Singletary
And I’m guessing.

01:04:09:13 – 01:04:10:03
Ryan Echols
Oh, go ahead.

01:04:10:13 – 01:04:29:00
Brad Singletary
I’m guessing when you’re working, I’m guessing when you’re working in the kitchen that was an option. Yeah. I mean they probably offered it, but maybe you didn’t have to do that, but you chose to, to take advantage of. See, I don’t know. I guess what I’m picking up from you, Ryan, man, is that you’re, you’re seeing opportunities all the time.

01:04:29:00 – 01:05:00:11
Brad Singletary
You’re saying, right, here’s an opportunity, here’s an opportunity, my kids, here’s an opportunity. Here’s, here’s what I could work out. Here’s the best time for me to work out for the morning. Here’s an opportunity for me to get things set up for my wife. Here’s an opportunity, and I’m going to take advantage of this opportunity. And that’s what’s making things work for you because you’re noticing, you know, you’re 16, 17, whatever, in, in, in lockup and you’re thinking, I’ve got all of this restitution, and I got a chance to work and let me work a bunch of that off as much as possible.

01:05:00:11 – 01:05:14:13
Brad Singletary
I just love it, man. You’re, you’re seeing that someone is hand in you some time someone is handing you an opportunity. Here’s an experience you can have. Here’s and you take advantage of opportunities absolutely.

01:05:14:13 – 01:05:31:01
Ryan Echols
That was a I mean, I used to say you remember my first day in Mill Creek, my first full day at Mill Creek. I went to school and he came in. He’s like, hey, get your ass up and you’re going to the kitchen. You’re going to work. You got this reservation. We’re going to get it. He’s like, Are you willing to work?

01:05:31:01 – 01:05:50:14
Ryan Echols
I said, Absolutely, I’m going to work. He’s good because you can eat whatever you want in there. And then then when you’re dining, go work out. So I have an opportunity to work off my restitution. We’d have omelets every morning for breakfast. All the kids had cereal. So we’re in the kitchen. There’s two things I’m working my hours off, and I also get to eat more food and I’m working out every day.

01:05:50:14 – 01:06:11:09
Ryan Echols
So it was a win win for me for sure. But I didn’t want to waste time in there. I think you work there, you understand? Like the kids go there and it’s just they they told me, Oh, they don’t want to make any change. And it’s sad. It’s sad to see people just waste time because what happens then?

01:06:11:09 – 01:06:18:01
Ryan Echols
You see them when they’re 30 and they’re just getting out of prison. They’re doing the same thing. When they could have changed everything back then. Yeah.

01:06:21:14 – 01:06:39:12
Brad Singletary
So you talk about you’ve talked a little bit about time. I guess, you know, you’re taking advantage of the time that you do have. You talk about your date nights and was that always the case? Because that’s an opportunity you got, man. I know it’s hard. You got I have some smaller, younger kids like that and it’s hard to break away from them sometimes.

01:06:39:12 – 01:06:40:09
Brad Singletary
But you’ve made it.

01:06:40:14 – 01:06:41:07
Ryan Echols
A.

01:06:41:12 – 01:06:44:13
Brad Singletary
One of you. Maybe she did. She maybe she pushes you.

01:06:45:02 – 01:06:45:10
Ryan Echols
A little bit.

01:06:46:01 – 01:06:52:13
Brad Singletary
What have you made? What have you made the decision that we need to be spending some time together away from this debt?

01:06:53:02 – 01:07:17:03
Ryan Echols
If I’m being honest, there was a we’ve always had a great connection. When we met and started dating my previous marriage, I had been separated from my ex-wife for years. She would not sign a divorce for me. So that went on for three years into my relationship with my wife. That caused a lot of stress like a lot of drama.

01:07:17:03 – 01:07:42:02
Ryan Echols
We had our babies. We were together. Mean we lived together was and there was nothing from that previous marriage. Four years. But she wouldn’t sign a divorce. Caused a lot of issues. We had two babies. I think we were I don’t think I know we were basically done. We were going to be done. And when we decided to lose weight and commit to each other, recommit to each other, it was like we need to to have that time every week.

01:07:42:02 – 01:08:03:04
Ryan Echols
It’s not about the kids. It’s not about controlling this household. It’s about me and you bonding and spending time for each other and with each other. And so that it was both of us honestly, like, I didn’t want to lose her. I’m pretty sure she did want to lose me. But it was something like every Friday, Friday, Saturday night, you’ve got older kids.

01:08:03:07 – 01:08:20:02
Ryan Echols
You guys can watch the kids for an hour or so while we go to dinner. As it’s an hour or two, we’ll hook up some pizza or whatever, you know, whatever you guys want to eat, but you guys can babysit and we go out. And it’s been something that we’ve done for for a while now and it’s paid off for sure.

01:08:20:03 – 01:08:21:10
Ryan Echols
It’s definitely made our relationship better.

01:08:24:05 – 01:08:52:07
Brad Singletary
I’m curious a little bit of a sidebar question, but I’m curious about who which of you is kind of the leader, because I’m I’m picking up some things that, you know, maybe you’re really and I’m sure I don’t know if you both take turns, but when you talked about the decision to lose weight, the decision to make changes in your like lifestyle together, who is one or the other of you more kind of influential like the leader of the.

01:08:53:04 – 01:09:15:10
Ryan Echols
Of the two? You know, it depends on the situation, like when it comes to like fitness diet stuff. I am a hundred when it comes to sports. The kids I am when it comes to like my yeah, works me 100% in her career and everything else. I won’t deny that for a second. She’s amazing in what she does. I love my job.

01:09:16:00 – 01:09:35:06
Ryan Echols
She’s is absolutely cheap. She’s a hard worker. In that sense. And I think that’s why we complement each other so well is I can call her on something and she she has a better idea. I still struggle being called on to fix this. She calls me on, Hey, you could do more this way. You could do it, OK?

01:09:35:11 – 01:09:37:12
Ryan Echols
She’s always right. But it is what it is.

01:09:40:09 – 01:09:52:03
Ryan Echols
So yeah, it depends on the on the situation because she definitely is she wouldn’t say that I’m the leader of much, but when it comes to diet and stuff like that, she falls. What I say for sure.

01:09:55:00 – 01:10:12:06
Brad Singletary
But she respects you enough somewhere. Somewhere she respects you enough to say. I remember earlier on here today, you said, you know, she said, I don’t trust you. Like, tell me what to do. I have to trust you. I’ll follow you. And in even if that’s the only thing, even if she thinks you’re an idiot for everything else, there is enough basic respect there.

01:10:12:06 – 01:10:18:05
Brad Singletary
She has enough respect for you to believe you and to trust you and to kind of like follow.

01:10:18:07 – 01:10:19:00
Ryan Echols
For sure.

01:10:19:13 – 01:10:20:07
Brad Singletary
Some of.

01:10:20:07 – 01:10:37:10
Ryan Echols
Those I mean, honestly, we were we were best friends before we did so. I mean, there was no there was no secrets. All my all my wrongs on my all my mistakes. She knew everything and vice versa. So I mean, there is a trust and a respect that we have for each other because of that friendship we have.

01:10:37:12 – 01:10:59:08
Ryan Echols
And we still have that. Absolutely. I mean, do anything for her. She’d do anything for me. Like I joked around a lot about, you know, for sure we do have that relationship, too. She trusts me. She trusts me, and it’s vice versa because that’s because we were friends before we ever dated. Like, nobody could say, hey, you know, Ryan was this person or this person 20 years ago.

01:10:59:11 – 01:11:08:13
Ryan Echols
Yeah, I know. Because we’ve been friends. And he told me everything so there was no secrets going into our marriage. They had this build a relationship where we trust each other very much.

01:11:11:09 – 01:11:33:08
Brad Singletary
Talking about environment and the conversation last week that I had with the admiral, he was talking about environment also includes, you know, friendships and things like that. I know with a large family you may not have a ton of time to socialize and stuff, but what kind of discipline do you have or talk about discipline in the context of like your social connections?

01:11:33:14 – 01:11:40:14
Brad Singletary
Who do you hanging out with, who you spend time with, who do you, you know, listen to? Who do you trust? Who do you have around and how does that you know.

01:11:41:03 – 01:12:00:11
Ryan Echols
Honestly, like, you know, when you work the mail pieces, like we got a bunch of good, good guys out there. And that’s kind of my my cottage and the guys I work with, that’s my my circle outside of home. And we get together like you remember Rocky Bills mhm.

01:12:01:02 – 01:12:03:05
Brad Singletary
Oh wait. I guess the brother.

01:12:03:07 – 01:12:21:10
Ryan Echols
So yeah. So we get together in his house. We all, you know, we just out there last Saturday hanging out, talking, you know, dealing with stuff from work but you know, playing pool and hanging out. That’s, yeah. That’s, that’s my, my, my crew outside of, outside at home. And lucky enough we work together to.

01:12:24:02 – 01:12:35:05
Brad Singletary
But there’s enough in common, there’s enough, you know, you trust these guys, you, you know, they have your best interests at heart. You know, they would tell you when you’re being an idiot, you could talk honestly with each other. That makes a difference.

01:12:35:05 – 01:12:52:06
Ryan Echols
It does. And especially in that job, you have to trust somebody like I mean, at the end of the day, like something could happen any day at work or somebody gets to get stabbed in the neck. They could. I mean, we’re dealing with kids that are in there for motive. Like we’re we’re responsible for each other’s safety every single day.

01:12:53:02 – 01:13:06:08
Ryan Echols
So it’s definitely that relationship that you can trust somebody if you work with somebody. So, yeah, and we definitely will call each other on if you’re doing something wrong, you’re going to hear about it for sure. You know how it was when you were there. You see how it is.

01:13:09:06 – 01:13:22:14
Brad Singletary
Real quick, I wanted to talk about mood because you’re you were, you know, saying that anger was a big part of this whole thing that got you in trouble in the first place. Anger and violence and so forth. How do you have discipline over your.

01:13:22:14 – 01:13:23:12
Ryan Echols
Mood that.

01:13:24:14 – 01:13:25:11
Brad Singletary
What’s helped you?

01:13:26:06 – 01:14:03:02
Ryan Echols
Like I said, honestly, the biggest thing was when I started meditating and like learning to not let my emotions control me. And another big thing was not letting other people’s responses or words affect me or control me. So I realized I could control my own emotions. I could could self regulate with nobody. So by just catching that little break between thoughts before I react and just build on that and I built on that for 30 years now, it’s in that process.

01:14:03:02 – 01:14:21:14
Ryan Echols
And I talk to my kids at work every day about this, like catch catch force because we all have that moment before we snap. And if you can’t learn to find that moment before you do, you’re never going to change anything. And it is paid off. I mean, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I wasn’t. So I had issues with anger.

01:14:21:14 – 01:14:38:05
Ryan Echols
I mean, obviously we all still we’re all human and I still have my bad days and moments where I’m probably miserable to be around and far from perfect in that way. But it’s still a process. I’m still working. I have missed it. I’m still working on it every single day.

01:14:40:06 – 01:14:57:07
Brad Singletary
When it comes to meditation, you know, I think a lot of typical guys, you know, they think, oh, that’s what girls do at yoga class or whatever, you know? I mean, they don’t it’s it takes it. I remember I probably the first and and and the the longest period of time I ever did that was when we worked together.

01:14:57:07 – 01:15:15:11
Brad Singletary
There was a program where kids could go and work out. And at the end of that, there was a meditation stabilizing. And that’s where I was introduced to some of that. But it was a, it was a it was an interesting thing to talk about. A meditation, how you do it. Is there a particular type that you do or what’s honestly.

01:15:15:11 – 01:15:37:09
Ryan Echols
Like for me, like, I even would do that with my youngest kids. It’s like it’s a matter of counting your breath, right? Like this. Don’t let thoughts come to count. Count your breath, count to five, take a breath in and out five, five. County start bars. Breathe in, breathe out right now. When the thought comes in, realize that that’s coming into your head right now.

01:15:37:09 – 01:15:55:03
Ryan Echols
Forget about it. Start counting again and you start to learn how to catch a break between each one of those thoughts as they come in and out. I want it to be as basic as possible, especially for my kids. And for my kids at work. That’s the only way it’s going to work. I can’t go in and do like some kind of meditation therapy and expect them to sit for 8 hours a day.

01:15:55:03 – 01:16:15:09
Ryan Echols
This is not going to happen right right. Right. That basic needs, the basic needs of learning to catch yourself between thoughts. And that’s how you do it. For me, that’s what work. If I need to take a minute, then count my breath to get my head straight. That’s what works. That’s it’s always work for me is the most basic, the most basic form possible.

01:16:16:05 – 01:16:34:05
Ryan Echols
I’ve done other things. I’ve done plenty of other types of meditation. I do you do guided meditation with everyone, but when it comes to effectiveness for people who are just starting out, count your breath count your breath and they want to stop, comes in, start over and acknowledge that that document doesn’t mean that that was bad. It just means that it came in.

01:16:34:05 – 01:16:39:08
Ryan Echols
They’ll start over and do it again and do it longer. Before the next that comes in. That was it. That’s all I do.

01:16:39:08 – 01:17:03:05
Brad Singletary
It seems like it seems like that would just slow you down. And if you can know that you’re thinking if I right. I mean, that’s a high that’s a high level of self awareness. Mostly we’re just running around nonstop like animals and we don’t even we’re going to take a minute to think, oh, I’m thinking or thought. But when you’re trying to do something like that, it gives you some control or some like awareness.

01:17:03:05 – 01:17:09:02
Brad Singletary
You’re monitoring the the process that’s happening in your mind, in your body. That’s pretty awesome.

01:17:11:07 – 01:17:27:05
Brad Singletary
So, dude, this has been like this has been amazing to talk to you. It’s been I’ve been down in Vegas for 17 years and, you know, haven’t I think I’ve gone back once. I went back and hung out with really and those guys. One time I caught up with Rob Reeves.

01:17:27:05 – 01:17:31:13
Ryan Echols
I just saw him where I thought, Rob last week the yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:17:32:02 – 01:17:54:14
Brad Singletary
And then I’ve seen Vinnie a couple of times. And so I it’s those were some of the best days of my life that kind of work that kind of spurred me into this into what I’m doing now, working with man and trying to, you know, basically do the same things and, and just bring some stories that can be inspirational to guys just trying to figure it out.

01:17:54:14 – 01:18:23:04
Brad Singletary
So many men don’t have the right role models. They don’t have the right you know, the situation with their dad. One of my friends the other day, what did he call it? A dad deficiency sometimes means he wasn’t there or or he was preoccupied. He was running around. So many guys have have had that happen. And you had some men come along who were strong were tough on you and also showed you enough love at the same time.

01:18:23:04 – 01:18:59:06
Brad Singletary
And you have. Right, man, you’ve got this cool thing. I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of polarity. And basically it’s that you can be both, you know, tender and tough. I’ve seen you write very sweet messages about your wife, for example, and yet you’ve got this, you know, violent inmate excuse me, jujitsu history you can you’ve got this ultra toughness, this this disciplined, laser focused kind of way and also meditate and also like, you know, you’re reading books.

01:18:59:06 – 01:19:20:07
Brad Singletary
You’re not just some muscle head freak, you know, who’s who’s who’s. You’re not just the dumb jock. You really evolved with like all of these. You talking about reading the spiritual books and and learning to meditate and learning to be aware and learning to be OK with some sensitivity before the show here, I asked about is it OK to talk about anything?

01:19:20:07 – 01:19:44:10
Brad Singletary
And he said, I’m an open book. I’ve got note, you know, that’s a part of who I am, and that is maturity. That’s a person who’s not going to let even the worst things about your story bother you because you’re so far beyond it. You’re so far moved past that that you’re secure enough to be OK with the fact that you’ve had some you’ve gone through some tough times, created, you know that you created yourself.

01:19:44:10 – 01:19:57:07
Brad Singletary
I just I have a tremendous amount of respect for you. Also, another cool thing that we didn’t mention much was the you were on a show here recently. You had a pretty talk about that for a all right.

01:19:57:07 – 01:20:23:14
Ryan Echols
So I was a huge fan of Yellowstone at season one. Right. And somehow my wife, somebody follows my wife on Instagram was somebody that was casting. They were looking for casting for season two. And my wife comes home one day. They say, hey, you’re going to go beyond the first episode of Yellowstone. You’re like two weeks. And I’m like, what are you talking about?

01:20:23:14 – 01:20:39:11
Ryan Echols
We got to take some modeling pictures. I’m like, I’ve never taken a modeling picture in my life. Like, I’m far from a model, so I can’t take all these stupid pictures. And I had to go buy some new wranglers and all that stuff for that if I have that.

01:20:40:04 – 01:20:41:11
Brad Singletary
Do you normally? Do you normally? Do you.

01:20:41:11 – 01:21:02:11
Ryan Echols
Normally? No, know, I have. I’m not good. I had I had horses, not that at one point, but it had been a while before that way and only the only victory in that. The funny thing about that is that’s when I had just lost a bunch of weight so I was a size 42 jeans before that. And when I had to get my regulars, they were size 32 and I had won 32 since I, since I was in high school.

01:21:02:11 – 01:21:24:03
Ryan Echols
So I was super hyped about that but yeah. So then I drive down to the Spanish Fork and I sat for God, I want to say was like 16, 17 hours. We filmed for like 2 hours and I probably was in season two, episode one, the bar scene for like 5 seconds. But it was awesome. It was, it was cool to be on the show for sure.

01:21:24:07 – 01:21:29:07
Ryan Echols
And I got to see, I got to be like, yeah, like power shared. And everybody was there. It was cool. It was really cool for sure.

01:21:32:04 – 01:21:35:09
Brad Singletary
So I guess when it aired, you showed that to your kids and you gathered around the.

01:21:35:09 – 01:21:48:07
Ryan Echols
TV that they had back in yeah. I think I’ve got a picture of it on my, on my Instagram, actually, there’s a screenshot of it. So that’s the yeah, it was cool.

01:21:48:07 – 01:22:13:14
Brad Singletary
That’s awesome, man. Dude, I appreciate your your time to spend with us here, man. You’ve, you know, you, you’ve done the you know, some impossible things to just to just no longer follow this path that you were on so many people. Again, that was one of the reasons I kind of got out of that. I didn’t have the heart to watch these kids one after the other just continue and all the work we did and all the stuff we poured into it.

01:22:13:14 – 01:22:29:01
Brad Singletary
And your story is one of hope and one of influence you’re talking about some badass men and I know who some of them are, who who looked you in the eye and gave you some some firmness and some, you know, friendly, fair, like.

01:22:30:04 – 01:22:31:11
Ryan Echols
You know, correction.

01:22:32:07 – 01:22:52:08
Brad Singletary
And I know they changed it to what, juvenile justice, but it used to be called youth it used to be called youth corrections when I started in. And you you made the corrections, you made the changes in your life. And I know things aren’t perfect. You’re just like everybody. I’m sure you get frustrated with your kids and, you know, have good days with your wife.

01:22:52:08 – 01:23:15:13
Brad Singletary
And there’s plenty of ordinary problems like everybody else. But in the big picture, dude, you’ve come a long way and you’re you’re out here influencing other young people to the point of, like, these guys are naming their kids after you and stuff and so, so much respect for you. Appreciate what you’ve, you know, the kind of example that you are out there.

01:23:16:00 – 01:23:36:03
Brad Singletary
I’m going to promote this. And is it OK if I take your Instagram and stuff like that and I don’t know about you, too, you know, you know, you’re kind of punisher and it’s it’s really cool to see how how much you love and respect her. I can just really tell she’s very important to you. And a lot of people.

01:23:36:03 – 01:23:37:11
Brad Singletary
You said you’ve been together eight years.

01:23:38:06 – 01:23:39:06
Ryan Echols
Eight back in November.

01:23:41:04 – 01:24:02:09
Brad Singletary
Oh, man. That’s that’s around, you know, seven, eight years. That’s when a lot of people are are the most checked out. And it seems like you’re you appeared to be crucial never and really moving in a good direction and good on her for finding a good dude and and for you being the kind of guy that you know she deserves so I really appreciate you.

01:24:02:09 – 01:24:14:13
Brad Singletary
I hope to in the future maybe have you back on here. And if you’re ever in Vegas, man, you you know I know you I know you want to spend time doing what you do down here, but I’d love to catch up, have a breakfast with you or maybe.

01:24:14:14 – 01:24:16:05
Ryan Echols
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

01:24:17:01 – 01:24:39:05
Brad Singletary
And catch up with you. Ryan, appreciate it so much, man. You guys, you guys, we’re talking about discipline because if you don’t have a discipline, if you don’t have a practice of discipline in your life and continue to make the decision to do the things that are going to make a difference in your life, you just you just run into pain, frustration, disappointment.

01:24:39:10 – 01:25:10:14
Brad Singletary
It costs you money. It costs you your health. There is no more masculine like property than to have some discipline. That’s how you take control of your life. And this is not about dominating other people. This is about dominating your own selfishness. Dominate and your laziness, dominating your, you know, your inability to make good choices and do the things that are going to create health and and vitality in your life.

01:25:10:14 – 01:25:15:13
Brad Singletary
So thank you again, Ryan, for being with us. You guys. No excuses. Alpha up.

01:25:24:14 – 01:25:30:01
Speaker 2
Gentlemen, you are the Alpha and this is the Alpha Quorum.