FULL TRANSCRIPT

Intro:

If you’re a man who controls his own destiny, a man who 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.

Brad Singletary:

Gentlemen, welcome back to The Alpha Quorum Show. My name is Brad Singletary. This is our 100th episode. I’m so excited. This has been a long time coming. I’ve been working to get some other folks aligned here, and we haven’t been able to make our schedules work. And rather than continue to delay, the show must go on. So I’m hoping to get some other guys who’ve been on the show before to do a little video call with me that I can splice in here later.

I’m just going to begin by talking about how we got started a little bit behind the scenes, the journey that we’ve been on so far, what this is all about, why we’re doing this and I’m glad that you’re here.

So I met Derik Johnson in 2017, I think some time in the summer and very quickly we began talking about the fact that we had some similar experiences in life having been divorced, just looking around at the environment that we were raised in, the environment that the world has become now.

We started talking about the needs of men. So I work in mental health. I have a private practice here in the Las Vegas area where I do counseling and coaching with men and couples. And I have had my own experiences with failure and losses and different things that have been difficult for me, addictions and so forth. And as I was talking to Derrick, I realized that most men are alone.

I had felt that in my own life through a lot of the difficulties that I went through, including a divorce and just different things that have been tough on me. And I realized that when I was the most idiotic in my choices, that’s when I had the least amount of connection to men.

In 2017, Derik and I started talking and he told me about the book called No More Mr. Nice Guy by Robert Glover, and he confessed himself as a recovering nice guy and piqued my interest in that book.

I read it and I realized that so many men that I work with, the men in my own life and who I had become was this nice guy syndrome where you’re trying to get get your needs met by meeting other people’s needs. And he talks about covert contracts. And anyway, that sort of opened up the idea for me that and I should have known this already, but this is not what they teach in the universities, that men and women are different.

We have some instinctual needs that are sometimes opposite and men are isolated. I read some research out of the UK that most men over 50% of men there could not identify a best friend or even a good friend. And while I’ve always been a friendly type, I never had the sort of tribal feeling that I think men need.

We talked about the alpha quarter. We kicked around names, we created a logo, put a website up, and then on August 1st, 2017, we recorded our first episode. Derek came into my office. He had it set up on his iPhone and he set the iPhone down on my desk. And we started talking and I shared some experiences of my own life and some of the men that I work with.

It took some time to try to figure out what our show was even about. We had all kinds of plans, but we started this just as a podcast and as many voices and many shows as there are out there. We realized that, you know, this is we’re probably not going to be the the largest, biggest movement out there, but we wanted to throw our hat in the ring and have our voices be heard.

We started doing weekly podcasts for the most part, weekly, it seemed, in the beginning. And he and I met and we did five or six shows and then we brought on Taco Mike. Many of you know him, Taco Mike’s Virgin, Jeremy Leavitt and who else? Tyler Hunt, who we later lovingly renamed Funt. Anyway, so we just kind of kicked around ideas about what our show was going to be.

We talked about relationships. We talked about I’ll share some of the most popular shows that we’ve done, but we were talking about some of the difficulties that men were having. We wanted to be open and share our own failures and the losses and things that we’d experienced and we weren’t really sure what direction we were going to take.

You’ll notice if you started at the beginning, you’ll notice some really, some evolution in the way that we produced our shows. So from that first one that was recorded on like a speaker phone on an iPhone two, now we’ve had lots of upgrades. We’ve learned a ton, and I want to share some of that with you today.

One of the difficulties early on was the technical side of things, and so we knew we needed microphones and a way to record it. And I bought a mixer like a mixing board. I don’t even know what they’re called from a pawnshop. And I got some $12 microphones from Amazon. Or maybe it was Fry’s Electronics here in Vegas, a store that used to be open.

We set up shop in a part of a building that I worked in that we weren’t supposed to be in. I learned later that you had to rent this room, this kind of conference room that we met in over in the Summerland area of Las Vegas. And we recorded in different places, actually, we recorded at Taco Mike’s home, and then later we moved into my office here in Henderson.

But the sound quality was difficult. I mean, I was kind of in charge of a lot of, a lot of that, just having the willingness to do it. I probably made the mistake of taking on too much of it and not sharing some of that responsibility. And that’s why in six years we’ve we’ve only done 100 episodes.

That’s not the best consistency. That’s something that we’re trying to improve behind the scenes. You know, after recording, it takes about 10 hours of work. That’s what it’s taken me. And I’ve pretty much done all the post-production activity on the show, including everything from, you know, the images and any video or audio editing posting on social media, adding it to our website and doing all those different kinds of things.

On top of having six kids, I have six boys and I’m working probably 55 hours a week every week for a very long time. It was difficult to do that and others just didn’t maybe have the expertise or interest or or time to do that. So I was willing to do it and we just took off and started recording stuff.

Some of the funny, difficult things were like trying to decide on the title of a show and we wanted it to be catchy and provocative and whatever, but also explain what it was about. And so you’ll notice some evolution in how we name the shows as well.

I want to talk about some statistics. In 100 shows we’ve had 26,348 as of today downloads. And I get down about that sometimes and I was just talking to my nephew recently who’s going to be the future producer and maybe director of marketing of the Alpha Quorum. And he told me, Hey, listen, imagine that you’ve done 100 TEDTalks, and at each one you had 263 people there.

That changed my mind a little bit. A lot of what I do with people in my counseling and coaching, if we talk about a topic in the session, let’s say we’re talking about anger, so I can then refer them back to an episode where we talk about that and we and I do some of the teaching and talking.

Mike has done just phenomenal stuff with us here. The wisdom that that guy has dropped in this show has just been highly valuable as well as others. And I’m going to try to get some of those guys on here for a little cameo here in this in this episode to celebrate the 100th show. So 26,348 downloads. So that’s roughly, you know, 260 downloads per episode.

as I look at a few of the top ten episodes, let me just share what those are. So the first one, our most downloaded episode by about three times the average is Episode 54 – Shit Sandwich and that’s subtitled Surviving Separation to Save Your Relationship.

Jimmy Durbin, who’s a therapist here in Las Vegas, also a man in long term recovery, and Mike SPURGEON and I talk about our experiences of being separated. I was separated for a year. Jimmy was separated for 18 months, and I think that Taco Mike was separated for two and a half years, and we talked about that as an option before divorcing, maybe separate.

There’s a high probability that those who separate, it’s like an 87% chance that they end up divorced. We were part of the lucky 13%, but we talked about our experiences and the changes that we each had to make in order to mend our marriages. And today, as far as I know, all of those are doing well.

The second one was Boy Psychology Episode 67, and we did a six episode series on the book King, Warrior, Magician, Lover. And if anybody ever asked me what they what I think an Alpha is, if we’re going to if we’re going to use that as a way to categorize men, I think it’s those who operate with those four archetypes online.

KING Warrior, magician, lover. It’s a great series, but that was our second most downloaded. And then the third is episode one. So I know a lot of people will hear about the show and then they probably are going back to start at the beginning. I’ve talked to many people who’ve done that. Once they find out what we’re doing, they enjoy it.

They start at the beginning and work all the way through. I need to offer a t shirt or something to anybody who’s listened to. If you listen to every episode, text me or message me and I’m going to send you a shirt. I’m going to send you some Alpha Quorum swag here. The next show is Episode 12 – Sexual Self-Sabotage How Men Are Perpetuating Their Own Lack of Sex.

We talked about the reasons that we unconsciously, accidentally keep ourselves stuck in sometimes a sexless situation. The next most downloaded was number 96. That was called Dick Pick Getting Real. And growing up with Colt Johnson, Colt was a reality TV star on the series called 90 Day Fiance and I did a show with Colt and Vanessa where we did a therapy session.

In a way, through some of that, I got to know his story and realized that a lot of what he was struggling with was his sense of masculinity due to his relationship with his father, who died when he was very young. Um, maybe not the best example there. And he had gone through some reality TV worthy drama that he kind of created for himself based on this lack of self-worth and self-respect and self love.

He created some messes for himself. Now happily married and working on things. Our fifth most popular episode is Don, and that’s again, the continuation about separation. So we took we in the episode before we talked about our story of separation. The following episode, we talked about some rules and like how you can go about a structured separation and how you might navigate that in an attempt to heal the relationship.

The next one was Episode 11 – Grown Ass Man How to Be One in a Relationship. So you notice a pattern here is a lot of these most downloaded episodes have to do with relationships, and I think that’s where men struggle the most. The next one is Episode 14 – Why Men Hate Church and What They Want. Instead, We all belong to a faith community and we realize that you know how disengaged the men really are.

Sit around and talk about this abstract kind of stuff and and real talk. I think that was the conclusion that we came to that real talk, you know, adventure, being outdoors and really being truly vulnerable and open and expressing ourselves to a tribe of men. That’s what men really want. And some churches try to do that with men’s groups and so forth, but often failing because it’s not real enough.

It’s not meaty enough. It’s maybe too much about what we should be doing. And there’s some shame associated with some of that, but also the inherent needs of men that could be met more effectively. And we talk about how they might do that. The next one is primal polarity, masculine devotion, and feminine radiance. That’s episode 97. It’s one of my favorite topics.

And I’ve got to say, as I move toward the future, as we take this thing forward, I know that I’m going to be talking about that a lot more. I highly recommend that you guys listen to that show and look at some of the books that I mentioned there and all the work that I’ve done over 20 years in behavioral health, working with relationships, you know, men and women on the things that have failed and and why and what’s happened.

I never was able to really, in spite of going to the best conference, is reading the best books, looking at the research and literature on, you know, relational healing and all these different things. There was something that was missing. So it’s taken me six years. It’s taken me all this time. Well, five I picked this stuff up last year about polarity in.

The idea is that there are instinctual needs for men and instinctual needs for women, and basically that is that men are designed to lead and to penetrate and to direct. And that’s the essence of masculine energy, to be the giver. And the essence of feminine energy is to be the receiver and to be the submissive one. So we talked earlier about No more Mr. Nice Guy.

A lot of these things kind of blend in. When we look at this particular brand of polarity that I’ve become a fan of and I’m going to be talking about a lot more is that men don’t like to be penetrated, men do not. We get frustrated when we’re told what to do, when we’re corrected, when we’re embarrassed in public.

We don’t want to be made a fool of. We don’t want to be pushed around. But so many of us have become a doormat because of nice guy syndrome. We think that we have to like, win love somehow. And so we maybe do all these things and we’re not speaking up.

We don’t have high assertiveness. And so our needs are chronically unfulfilled. And there’s some commonalities about how this develops in men because of parental relationships, you know, problems with that, you know, addictive. The addictive side of men, the indulgent side of men kind of comes in is this attempt at coping with loneliness. But anyway, the Polarity episode is very good.

It basically teaches, it begins it introduces the idea that there are certain things that women are doing that are frustrating. Her man all the time. And it’s not because of him, it’s because he’s a man. And men don’t like to be penetrated for the most part. And so directive corrective language, you know, the bossy woman for masculine men, that’s a turn off.

When that turns a man on, he’s in an emasculated state and he needs to be taken care of. He’s probably got mother wounds and he’s probably has low self-worth. And so and we also talk about why women become masculine eyes is the term I think we use. There are why they get so far away from their feminine vulnerability.

That’s another thing that’s always kind of bothered me in some of the language out there is vulnerability and that men need to be vulnerable. I think I just hate the word. I don’t want to use that word, but I think that men need to be respected and men should be vulnerable, or I’ll use the word maybe transparent. They need to be expressive to other men.

I don’t think it helps very much for men to be vulnerable to their woman. I think it puts them in a in a weakened state, and it’s not something that’s even chosen by the partner. It’s just if we become this complaining, emotive, vulnerable, quote unquote, person to our woman, she doesn’t like that and she doesn’t know what to do with it.

She wants to because she’s probably just glad you’re talking to her and that you’re engaged in some way. And that’s when I hear women say, Oh yeah, I really love it. I think as we drill down into that, we find that they don’t. By the way, 75% of the listeners of this show are men and 25% are women.

So much of this, I have found, has been valuable for women to listen to and understanding the position of men and how they get where they are and what their needs may be. And then the 10th most popular episode is episode 33. That’s with Tyler Hunt. And I think the title here is Hold on a minute. I don’t have my glasses.

Episode 33 – Don’t Cut Your Junk Off How to Forgive Yourself and Others. So there’s a little bit of a snapshot into, you know, what this show has been. We’ve we’ve got listeners from all over the world. There’s probably looks like 93% in the United States, but other areas where men are listening are Canada, Australia, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Afghanistan.

The goal is to help men level up. The goal is to help men alpha up. That was one of the profound moments early on, maybe episode ten, 12, 15, somewhere around there talking Mike used the term It’s time to alpha up and later in another show we talked about what that means and it’s kind of become a slogan and and you know, no excuses alpha up. So the goal of the whole thing, the message is really included in these few topics. So, number one, men need men. We need a tribal group of close, connected men who can give us feedback, tell us who we are, punches in the mouth when we need to.

I wish I would have had that when I ran into financial trouble or when I had relationship problems. I wish I had that. And that’s something that’s one of the core tenants of this whole thing is the idea of quorum, which comes from the political process of the fact that a certain percentage of the members of a committee, let’s say, need to be present in order for the vote to be valid.

Maybe the numbers two thirds or a majority or whatever it is. And I believe that we are only alpha when we effectively use a quorum. So you’re not just running around out there in life just making independent decisions and have no input.

You’ve got a mentor, you have a group of people who are kind of your brain trust. That was a word that Jimmy Durbin used, a brain trust of advisors, people that can hear your situation, be supportive, but also give you constructive feedback. We don’t just want to be cheerleaders for each other. We want to help each other. So men need men. We need a tribe of men to help us level up. We’re trying to change three things, really our attitude, how we approach life, how we see ourselves and see things and choose to participate with the world.

So our attitude, our actions and our attributes, attitude plus action over time equals the attributes of mature masculinity. So that’s what we’re aiming for. And so I was sitting down, I think at Taco Bell, we’re writing this on a napkin, maybe trying to think about what is our core message or our core principles. And I thought of the Red nine and here are those characteristics.

Three Start with our three, start with the and three start with D. So your responsible you do only good. You have boundaries. You do things that help people, but you don’t become a toxic rescuer. You can be forgiving. You have boundaries. You know who to let in, who to leave out. You accept the things that you can’t change, change the things that you can.

You apologize when you’re wrong. So we’re responsible. We are resourceful. We figure things out. We use tools of every kind, anything that’s available to us. We leverage all the opportunities and all the things at our disposal to help us. And that could be the library, that could be Google, that could be other men, that could be a physical tool from the hardware store, that could be an electronic device, that could be a machine.

But we are resourceful and we figure things out. Reverence is the next principle, which really is about humility and gratitude. You know, we use some solitude. We use stillness as a way to reflect, and maybe that’s prayer, maybe that’s meditation, maybe that’s journaling.

We’re respecting the fact that our life is going to end someday. We ponder our mortality and we keep a big picture view of things. And we do that by appreciating the sublime experiences in life, you know, Magical Mountain View or an opportunity to be in the ocean or a family experience or whatever, like sacred moments. We really cherishing those and living fully in the present while those things happen. We also can forgive and we have we can share appreciation.

The next one is energy, and that’s about health in our body. How we fuel ourselves with, you know, sleep, water, food supplements and medication that we’re conscientious about those we are vigorously active and, you know, use that to maintain our vitality.

I’m looking at my note card here, by the way, guys, I’ve got some cool like downloadable if you want to get with me and get some of these materials or I’ll put them on the website, just these little things where you can kind of remember I have one of these in my bathroom right at eye level by my mirror, and so I can kind of see what it is I’m supposed to be doing. I always end up focusing on one of these for a week or so until I get myself corrected. But so the next one is, is engagement. And that’s where we’re tuned in. We’re not on the date with our wife and on our phone. We’re engaged. We’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing.

We’re supposed to be at work. We’re doing that when we’re at home. We’re being present and involved with a good attitude. We participate with good vibes. So engagement has to do with, you know, fun and leisure and recreation and celebrations. You know, you’re you’re not afraid to go to the holiday party or the, you know, the one year old’s birthday day.

Who’s your second cousin that you participate in those things as much as you can and that you genuinely connect with your people. You know how to laugh. You know how to love people. You have emotional intelligence, you’re engaged in healthy relationships, you’re also assertive. And so speak boldly but respectfully. The next principle is endurance. We train our minds.

We have goals, we make adjustments. We take a new approach when we need to. We’re willing to be patient and persevering to pursue the things that we want. We’re willing to accept support. There is every kind of support that you could imagine. It already exists. It just means you choosing to be connected with it. It may be a professional, it may be, you know, some community group.

I myself run five men’s groups in the Las Vegas area, and there’s just all kinds of things online you can join. Facebook groups are so many ways to receive support in the last part of endurance is interestingly, that you respect your own limitations and when you must, you do quit. Sometimes we have to leave the relationship. Sometimes you have to leave the job and forsake the project and put down the chisel and let things be and walk away.

Sometimes that may be an ironic part of endurance that at some point we may have to walk away from a person or a thing. The last three are discipline, which includes, you know, having control of your time, your money, your mood, your environment, that you have some order in your life, you have structure in that you have the ability to cut out the things that are not helpful to you.

Discernment, which has to do with really the cognitive part of all of this, that we’re self-aware, first of all, of our own good and bad problems. We recognize reality. We can see things as they really are, and in an objective way. We have realistic expectations. We’re a fair judge of ourselves and other people, and we understand cause and effect.

We lean on mentors. You’re going to hear that repeated over and over. The last one is a distinction. So you have great skills with people and things in order to have any kind of distinction, you got to stand out and you stand out by bringing value to and that’s when you have great skills.

You live true to your beliefs. There’s congruence between what you believe in, what you know and what you’re doing think about how shitty that feels when you know that you ought to be doing this and you know the answer, but you’re not doing it. Someone asked me maybe ten years ago what I thought the secret to happiness was, and I said, It’s knowing what to do and doing it, whatever, whatever that means.

So when we are living true to our beliefs, it makes us more powerful because we have congruence within our own heart. We are respected and trusted by respected and trusted people. That means we’re connected to those people. They know who we are and we can show up authentically and also, you know, find favor with people who have favor.

That’s important. We present ourselves with dignified and outward appearance. We’re intentional about how we show up in the world, in the way we speak and how we dress and so on. We’re effective leaders and we connect to a tribe of men. So that’s the red nine, that’s that, those few things. We need other men around us in a formal or kind of grouping of a little tribe that we can lean on.

I have this with several friends of mine pretty much every time I have an issue at home, I text him and say, Man, here’s what’s going on. Here’s what she did, here’s what I did, here’s what set it off. And they just immediately, I don’t know how they even have the time to do it. And we do this for each other as much as is needed.

They’re firing back. Some really cool feedback. Brad, you’re being selfish, man. You you’re looking at this from this perspective and you need to be instead looking at it from this perspective. It’s so very helpful. So that’s principle number one. You need men. We need to change our attitude, actions and attributes. And the way we do that is through the Red nine that we’re responsible, resourceful, reverent, energetic, engaged, enduring, disciplined.

We have discernment, and that leads us to distinction. So in doing this show, we wanted to in, in a way, connect men to other men. We haven’t had any female guests on the show yet. I told my wife that she could be the first one, but we haven’t we haven’t decided on a topic yet or exactly what we want to talk about.

What I think I want to share. I want to do a series with couples where we talk about what didn’t work, what happened when it wasn’t working, and then what we did to fix those things. And maybe she would be the first guest there

So speaking of guests, I wanted to go through some of the guests that we’ve had on the show.

So we talked about Derek and I. We’ve had we had Jeremy Levitt for some time. He’s also a male therapist in the Las Vegas area. He very well is very popular and he’s just a very insightful guy. I missed talking with you, Jeremy, If you’re listening to the show, man, we got to get back together. He works about two miles from me, lives on the other side of town, I believe, but he works literally, like 6 minutes from my office, and I haven’t seen him in years.

And COVID was no help to that kind of thing. But we had no excuses now, brother. We also had Mike Olson on the show, who’s a friend of mine. He’s a neighbor. I’ve known him since I was 12 years old. Mike lived in my area down in Florida as a missionary for our church. And so he kind of served the area that I lived in and we I just moved into his neighborhood and saw him at church one day.

And that’s how we got reconnected. But just a very strong man, you know, an athlete just comes from a great family, solid guy. He has five sons as well. And he is you know, he’s shared a lot of wisdom about things that he’s learned in business, things he’s learned in relationships. I think he talked about anger in one of our episodes.

Anger is not your friend or control is not your friend. He talked about, you know, so we’re all revealing some very personal things about our stories. And we had Tyler Hunt, the young millennial, I think he’s a millennial rugby coach here in Las Vegas area, friend of Derrick Johnson’s. He gave some great perspective. Had another college age young guy who talked about dating and some of the the challenges that young men, younger men face in dating.

We also did two shows on pornography and like, why that’s destructive. Some of the things that happen in your brain and how that’s affecting your relationship. What compels men to to get stuck in that loop? And so many good shows yelling at God like Lieutenant Dan Atheists for atheists and reverence in masculinity.

Let’s see, we had a very popular episode number 42 Leadership, humility, not hiding. That was with Dr. David Brownstein, who was a Jewish rabbi here in Las Vegas and also a licensed psychologist. Very fascinating story. Talked about some of his mentors and role models in his life. We did a few solo episodes, so I started with King Baby Syndrome.

And then Mike Olson did one, Taco Mike did very good episode about a turning point in his life. That’s episode 47 Road Closed. See alternate Route.

So after episode like 48, 49, Derrick Johnson, who was was the original host and co-founder with me. I don’t know if I haven’t talked about him enough. He had done some radio, I think, in college and just has golden voice strong teaching ability. And he got into some health trouble. He had heart attacks, some heart surgeries, all kinds of things were going on that kind of took him out of the swing of things. And hopefully we’re going to get him involved back here really soon.

Let’s see other guests that we had. So Jimmy Durbin, I’ve talked about him already. Just I promise you, when you listen to him speak, you’re going to learn some things and you’re going to learn it in a way that’s impactful in that you will remember.

You’ll find his stuff very helpful. He’s a very popular therapist in the Las Vegas area. He’s been a 12 stepper. He’s been working in recovery for many years, himself. I had my dad on the show, so one year for Father’s Day, I recorded the show with my dad and his the title of his was called Boss Y, Leading to Loud is fo Alpha, and he talked about some of his mistakes as a man and as a father and talked about his victories as well.

We had Nick, who is the inventor and creator of Uncommon Questions, so an entrepreneur who’s done lots of cool things. He lived in mainland China for a while and had talks about, you know, how to think like an entrepreneur. We had an Olympian, a silver medalist, a three time Olympian, and silver medalist for the United States in bobsled.

That’s below. Bill Shubin, our former coworker of mine back in the day. Uh, let’s see here. We had a panel discussion about the Alpha 360, which is a 60 day challenge, similar to like 75 hard, but it’s more well-rounded. And we had the panelists of the five guys who placed highest in that, I think four or five guys from here in Las Vegas all the way to Brisbane, Australia.

We had Matt Marx who talked about understanding mental illness and other very masculine therapists in the Las Vegas area, gun enthusiast, super redneck. Just kidding, Matt, Love your brother. But he talks about, you know, the the difficulty that men have in dealing with, you know, addressing their mental health and the importance of taking care of that stuff sooner rather than later.

And then we had a panel discussion of Jay, Jim and Clint. Jay is a police officer in the Las Vegas area. Jim is a electrical superintendent and Clint is another male therapist here in the Henderson area. And we talk about the King Warrior, magician, lover. It’s a six episode series. I think you could listen to the audiobook in half the time it would take you to listen to our discussion about it.

But I think it’s it’s probably my favorite piece of the of the entire podcast. There. And then we had a couple of shows with Taco Mike. We had the Alpha Quorum Man of the Year, Justin Mackie, on the show. We had we did two episodes with him. He talked about the craftsman and the cash. We talked about resourcefulness and how to be resourceful.

And then engagement number 76 Alive. And every moment we had Reverend Dean Sanner, who was a lead pastor of a church here in Las Vegas and also a licensed marriage and family therapist. And the chaplain for the Metro Police Department. Here we had Joshua Roy, who was a coach and trainer from Brisbane, Australia. He’s also a police sergeant.

And then we had Steve Edwards. We talked about nice guy syndrome. Steve and his buddy Kevin O’Neil, some amazing guests. Life is a marathon. We talk with Gavin Hillman, who is a has a doctorate in physical therapy, I believe works as a physical therapist. And then Tanner Smith, who is his buddy and training partner and friend and Tanner is an emergency room physician’s assistant.

Tanner had a great story. He was a man of the year a year or two ago, and he was running a marathon, running the Boston Marathon for a third time for trying to reach his record. And the lady dropped in front of him and cardiac arrest. He performed CPR. She lived and he finished the race in a very good time.

He didn’t get his record, but he talked about that experience. We’re talking about health in that episode and how to take care of your body, how to look at those things. Then we had Rear Admiral Stephen MAYLING, a retired Coast Guard admiral who talked about leadership and discipline. And the title of that is Squared Away Alpha Discipline. Very good stuff.

Some fascinating stories that he shared. It’s amazing the responsibility that he’s had and that he was willing to take some time with us. Another Episode on Discipline with Ryan Echols. He was a

he was in juvie, like in the secure, locked down like prison for teenagers. And within a few years after leaving that program, he came back as an employee and now serves as a youth counselor in the same program that he was a resident many years before.

Fascinating story. Then we had Dr. Rocky Wright Rockford, right. Who talked about Alpha discernment and just some of the most intelligent teaching. I promise that you’re ever going to hear this guy, Rocky, another friend and neighbor of mine. And we had cocoa. Vinnie from Cocoa Tap’s Cocoa, Love Cocoa. Vinnie is a local entrepreneur who sells coconut water. So he’s harvesting, he’s growing, harvesting coconuts all around the world and has some amazing things.

He’s very involved with a charity that supports women and young women who are dealing with domestic violence. We had Butch Williams, an attorney in the Las Vegas area, on an episode called Learn How to Love a Jason Baker, who was the 2022 father of the year. He’s a firefighter here in the Las Vegas area. And he talked about how he operates his family and how important it is for him to have his little tribe, his little local gang to to support him if he may be at work.

He’s got a multitude of men that he can call to to step in and handle something in his home. If there’s a need for that, that’s a great episode. How to Build a Fortress. Then we talked with Samuel Anthony, who was a police officer who was shot in the line of duty and discussed his recovery from that trauma, how it’s affected his body and his life and his relationships and how, you know, how he’s tried to move forward with a positive attitude.

Then we had Scott Edgar, who an attorney and a poet. He also was a podcaster. And I think his show is called The Poet Delayed. Um, he talked about just his experiences losing a parent at a young age and how he’s used language and also a men’s group to help him help them grow through some difficulty. Then we talked about Colt Johnson already.

Then we had Ramsey Venner, just a remarkable guest who has a booming business here in the Las Vegas area. And he’s a felon. He was a Division one college athlete. I think he played basketball and football at Fresno State, and then he got started getting in trouble and he went to prison for several years. Many I think it was maybe nine years.

And there he learned to play the piano. He learned other languages. He read. He did all this work on himself. He found his or rediscovered maybe spirituality. And he’s a father of a healthy family now, coaching youth football and his

he’s involved with his kids athletics and runs a very successful business here. And then we had the 2022 Man of the Year.

David Schofield. Uh, David is just a stud of a man you’ll see on our social media just some of the things that he does. He has two young daughters and he’s very involved. He lives all of those attributes, these men that receive these awards. We do father of the year every year, and then we do the Man of the Year, the end of the year.

So Father of the year in June and Man of the year at the end of the year. So upcoming shows are going to be we’re going to have Mitch Baxter, Andy Giddings. Mitch was the the most recent, the 2023 father of the year. He’s done an amazing job as a stepfather. He’s a firefighter down in Mississippi, I think is Mississippi.

Yeah, So we could have him on the show here soon. Also, my nephew, Andy Giddings, who is going to be much more involved with what we’re doing. He’s been out of prison for about two months. Uh, fascinating story about this guy. He’s 35 years old. Maybe. I think he just turned 36, but, um, he had a very short period of heavy and extreme drug use, which led him into multiple charges and multiple problems, talking like a year.

And it completely destroyed his life, went to prison, went in with all the wrong attitude, all the wrong actions, and he evolved. And so he found some true masculinity in prison. Um, the structure, the order, the demand for improvement. He set up a one of these pit bull and parolees programs where they had, I think, up to 60 guys that he was leading in this dog training program, which had to do with rehabilitate, hating these, you know, vicious bully breeds.

Most of them, I think they are. And the, you know, the requirements for guys to be involved with that and what it taught them about themselves as they learned about behavior and reinforcements and so forth, and bonding and attachment. Fascinating stuff. And you’re going to hear a lot more from Andy. You guys were just trying to do some good in the world.

Um, you know, this is a small audience here. 75% of of our listeners are men, 25% are women or said non-binary, which I always count that as a woman if it’s say non-binary. But anyway, um, call me what you want. Anyway, I,

I just want to help people. I just want to I hope that my voice is uniquely qualified for whoever may listen to me or the guests that we bring on.

Everybody knows Joe Rogan. There’s a lot of cool things on there. Everybody knows, you know, Ryan McLure, who was by the way, Ryan McClure in the Order of Man, was a huge influence when I got started here. In fact, I joined the Iron Council, which was a great experience, I think. I think Ryan is back on the West Coast.

He had moved to Maine, but I think he’s back over here and I’m going to try to get him on the show. So maybe if I try to get you on the show. Ryan Mclr, I’ll let you listen to this 100th episode just to hear what we’ve done and kind of summarize what we’re all about and what our message is.

But user were very instrumental in all of this and I appreciate that influence. So we’re just trying to do some good. We’re trying to bring men to other men through podcasts. There’s a lot of men who won’t go to therapy or won’t go to a support group or those kinds of things. Don’t want to talk about their feelings.

That’s all right. Pull up your Spotify, pull up your apple. What is it? Apple Podcasts and listen to our show. I promise you, we’re going to bring you high quality content. It’s hard to produce, it’s hard to create, It’s hard to line up. It’s hard to get. It’s hard to find people who can be articulate and who can be who have an interesting story, who are doing well with themselves.

Right now. No one’s perfect, but we want to bring guys on who are handling their business. And nobody could really ever say they’re not. I am certainly not perfect. I hope that part of what this is that we’re doing here is leaving a legacy for those who have participated in the show. So I just want to thank all those guys, men who have given ideas.

Taco. Mike bought this machine right here, which was like a $700 investment that he made in the Alpha core. Him out of his own pocket, um, to to help us have better sound quality.

and you all know that he’s done some pretty big, big things with media and with his own company.

Just a stellar guy. Taco Mike, the original Man of the Year.

appreciate what you’ve done to contribute to all this in the future. Here’s what you’re going to hear. You’re going to hear more direct and more bold messaging about what you’re afraid to do and how to break through the barriers of whatever things create a difficulty for you in being a man, being assertive, being a leader, being directive, being corrective, you know, being reliable, being a devoted, loving leader.

That’s what I want to influence me to be a devoted, loving leader, that you’re not just healthy and doing baseline stuff, that you’re creating something that you participate. And by the way, all this messaging out there about men don’t have to be strong. Men don’t have to be, you know, it’s okay if you’re not ultra masculine or whatever that is.

Some of that is harmful, I think, because our instincts don’t lie. And so the the messaging that often comes from I’m going to say it, I’m just going to call it out. A very feminist leaning academia. Um, that produces all the research and all the literature and everything on relationships and how things should be. They’re trying to turn women into men and men into women.

And so, so much of what you hear in the therapy world out there is kind of emasculating and is not honoring our nature. So I’m going to be more bold and I’m going to be more up front. It’s taken me six years to really come to that. Uh, but I think men have sacred duty. Um, for survival or for the containment of family.

Men have sacred responsibilities. And I don’t want to get overly preachy or moralistic about any of that stuff. I just want to teach good principles. I want to combine the things that I’ve learned to spend 25 years watching human beings and what they do and how they behave and what comes as a result of that. I’ve had 47, almost 48 years of my own failures and my own

school of hard knocks, which has taught me that I cannot be alone.

I can’t make a big decision. I can’t decide if I’m going to get divorced or file bankruptcy or start a business or close a business. I should not do that alone, ever. You know, if I feel like being reactive, if I know that I’m explosive, I need to take a drive and to my homies and say, Listen, man, I need a can you talk me off the ledge here?

I’m just upset. I know that I need that some of these topics that we present on are things that I want to learn more about. There are things that I want to listen to. There are things that I want my children to hear long after I’m gone. What it means to be a man. Because this world is unkind to men.

I think there are accidental and there are intentional attacks on masculinity. And I’m sick of it. And I don’t want to turn this into anything political. I to tell you what to do. I want to help. You know what you need to do? I want to help you meet your needs with integrity. I want to help you feel supported.

I want you to stay alive. I want you to have a life. I want you to bring life. And I want you to preserve life. We’re tribal beings. We need to be connected. Um, I’ve talked already about some of the other influences about why I want to help men unite together in these little brother hood kind of situations.

Ideally, you’re connected to men in your neighborhood, men in your close vicinity, that if you needed something, you could borrow a tool. You know, there was. There’s some practical need. Shit hits the fan. Whatever happens, you’re connected to men in your own neighborhood. Also that you have. Maybe the same, but maybe separate a group of men who can meet maybe on an every two week basis for about 2 hours.

Yes, 2 hours every two weeks where everybody gets maybe there’s six or seven of you. You take 15 or 20 minutes to talk about your wins and losses and where you are struggling, your own resistance, you know, the excuses that you’re making and get some feedback. Open yourself to the judgment, the wise judgment of men. That’s what we need more of.

And in order to have that, you got to be doing the work yourself. So the group idea is something that we’re going to develop. I’m writing a book right now to give you more details later. It’s taken me again about six years to gel everything together. I struggle a lot because I didn’t know what my message is. I didn’t know what my message was When I started writing the book.

It was just for adults. I was just going to write to men and women. I realized soon after that I wanted to speak to men. And I have, I think, just in the last year, rounded out my philosophy in kind of my the combination of things that have gathered from different places about here’s how to be healthy and here’s how to be miserable.

So we’ll share that with you more as we come up. Stay tuned with us. Stay connected. We have a Facebook group. There’s 1600 men from all around the world who are on this Facebook group. You can share your difficulties and your problems and the things that are hard for you. You can also answer other people’s question and give them some feedback.

You can write anonymously in there. We have a Discord server. What else we have, you know, Instagram and all those things, YouTube channel. So get connected with us if you live what many of our guys are in the Vegas area in the western United States. But wherever you live, if you want to get connected to a therapist, you want to find mentors, you want to have help creating a little quorum of your own, a little group of men that you that can advise each other and be friendly and supportive.

Let me know. I’m going to. That’s part of my book. That’s part of what I’m writing up, is how you can take that idea and create your own to join something that we may build in the future. Hey, we do this because we love men. We know that life is difficult. You’re out there trying to be responsible. You’re trying to handle your business.

You most likely are feeling alone. And that’s what I don’t want to have happen. So if ever you’re in trouble, you know, if ever you’re dealing with some kind of crisis, if you have no one to talk to, you talk to me. And I will get you pointed in the right direction. We love you for participating in this.

Thank you for your support. I think you’re going to like what you’re going to see in the coming months here with the Alpha Quorum. Until next time, fellows. No excuses. Alpha up.

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.

 

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