00:00:00 - Brent Dowlen
Every day is a choice. Our our motto here is be better tomorrow because of what you do today. I believe in incremental improvement, guys. There is no magic pill. There's no big bullet to just change it's. Making the next right choice every day every day you have a choice to do something. Just one thing. That's all you got to do. Pick one thing.

00:00:20 - Jerry Dugan
Do you feel like you're stuck in a rut in life or in a dead end job with no progression? I'm Jerry Dugan, and welcome to beyond the Rut, the podcast that offers you the motivation, inspiration, and practical tools to help you build a life worth living. My show is here to help you break free from your limitations and find a path to success. Join me as I share encouraging stories and actionable advice on how to get out of your rut in life and create a vision for your future. Life is just too short to live stuck in a rut. Here we go. Hey, rudder nation. This is Jerry, and this episode's special guest is Brent Dowlen. He is the host of The Fallible Man. He's also a life coach, and he has a mission to help men, christian men specifically, be the best fathers and husbands they can be. And since we're approaching father's Day in 2023, and this is going to be pretty evergreen beyond that. And if you can time travel and go in the past, you can listen to this, too, sort of. Not really, because it's out now, but that's not important. What is important is we're going to talk about vulnerability, being humble, and to be that leader in the home through the context of being the fallible man, where we had our struggles, those kinds of things. So sit back, relax, grab a notebook and a pen. Here we go. All right. Hey, Brent, thank you for joining me on the show. How are you doing?

00:01:47 - Brent Dowlen
Oh, man, I'm excited to be here. I'm looking forward to our conversation today.

00:01:51 - Jerry Dugan
Awesome. And, no, you guys did not hear my voice crack just now. That was just you imagining things. I said, Brent, how are you doing today? That's what you heard?

00:02:00 - Brent Dowlen
That's what I heard, yeah.

00:02:01 - Jerry Dugan
Thanks, guys. We're moving on. No, I heard it. I admit it. My voice cracked. It was like Brent. All right. That's not important, though. Squirrel. So, Brent, host of The Fallible Man, you've already told me you're doing great, but I'm ready to just dive right in. So you're a father of two daughters. You've been married 20 years. Just over 20 years. So around the same amount of time as my wife and I, we're at 21 years and counting. Now, what was it like when you became a father of daughters? Did that change you profoundly?

00:02:39 - Brent Dowlen
We're actually coming up this April on 22.

00:02:43 - Jerry Dugan
Nice. Okay, there we knew I read an old bio.

00:02:50 - Brent Dowlen
Becoming a father of two daughters was from the minute my wife told me she was pregnant, my life changed radically. We went old school. We did not find out if we were having a boy or a girl until my child was born, either one of them, because it didn't matter to me. Being a father has always been something I've dreamt of. I had early goals in life. I can actually remember around my junior high age, right? I can actually remember telling myself, like, if when I die, they can put it on my tombstone. I was a good husband and a good father. I've lived a worthwhile life. And that may seem like heavy thoughts for a junior high kid, but you got to understand, I grew up in a Christian family. I grew up a preacher's kid. Went to a lot of seminars, from marriage seminars to just Living Life and stuff like that. So I didn't always think my age, but I realized this was something that was important to me early on. And so when we got pregnant, my wife had a miscarriage on her first pregnancy. And I was out of the state working when that happened. That was very hard on both of us, especially her. So when she got pregnant with our first daughter, it was just a prayer of, okay, just let it be a healthy pregnancy. That's where we were with that. It's like, okay, God, this is your timing. We didn't actively try and get pregnant. We just stopped actively trying not to after over a decade of marriage. Because my oldest daughter is now eleven. So I was 33 when she was born. No. Yes. I'm sorry. Forget how old I am, right?

00:04:30 - Jerry Dugan
She doesn't listen to the show. You'd been fine.

00:04:34 - Brent Dowlen
She's actually one of my biggest fans. She loves to listen to my work, which is a little unnerving sometimes. It's like, okay, got to keep myself honest here, right? Because my eleven year old is keeping me in check.

00:04:44 - Jerry Dugan
So maybe she would listen to the show and say, wait, you got my what?

00:04:48 - Brent Dowlen
But it changed the world drastically for me because I was finally realizing, okay, I'm going to be a father. What do I need to do? Am I ready to be a father? Right? I think all the questions that most young fathers ask, we go through that checklist, right? We have to shore up the house. Is everything safe for a baby? Right? We control what we can. You start to think of all the things you have to fix, all the things you need to change about the house to make it safe for your wife and for the baby and all those little things, because that's what we can control. And that's our instinct. But then I started looking at myself because I've spent years working with youth. I used to be a youth minister. And I started looking at myself, and it's like, am I the person that I need to be? Am I who I want to be. And so that really just kind of started gnawing it back in my mind because I wasn't sure how to frame that yet.

00:05:43 - Jerry Dugan
What was the answer that was coming back to you when you asked yourself that question?

00:05:46 - Brent Dowlen
I definitely started realizing I had some habits that I needed to get under control. I smoked for years. I was a smoker for I started smoking when I was a teenager. I probably had my first cigarette when I was eleven, but I smoked on and off, and I had tried to quit, and I had tried to quit, and then I'd smoke for a long time, and I try and quit. I quit for almost two years solid once, and then I went right back to smoking as soon as I left the job I was in and went back into construction. And so it's like, okay, and never smoked my house, but it's like, do I want them to see me doing this all the time now? Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy a good cigar. I love good cigars. That's my destress. When I need to unplug, I go sit on my back porch, I light a fire. I've got a little fire pit, and I light a cigar and drink a little bourbon. That's my me time, right? I watch my kids play. They come out and look at the fire and talk to me. But it's like, I don't ever want my children to struggle with cigarettes because they're horrible. It definitely had an impact on my life. It definitely hurt my lungs a lot. So I was still smoking when she was first born, the first year or two. But I would only smoke when I had friends over who smoked. I only smoked at work, which right, that tells you there's some control over it when I'm only smoking at work. And so I was like, okay, that's got to go, right? Eat. Just certain happens like that. My health had declined slightly because I had switched from construction into the It industry, and that was a major transition for us. I got a lot less physical and just had to spend all my time trying to learn everything I need to learn. It was a really big jump from building facilities to actually running them and working them. And so it's like, oh, my health is declining. Success, too. Yeah, there were lots of little things, and then it started getting deeper as I went on. But the first time the doctor, when my daughter was born, I was there in the delivery room, and they put my daughter in my arms, and it was just done. It was like that moment as a father where you're just like, I will burn the world to the ground before I let anything happen to you. Yeah, you spend the rest of your life just hoping to live up to that. Right. But it really lit this fire under me. I decided my job as a dad is to become Superman or as close as I can possibly get. Because if I can set the bar so stupidly high in what my children expect right. With two little girls, if I can raise that bar so high that my daughters will accept nothing less than a certain level, it shores up the kind of person they're going to bring home eventually.

00:08:23 - Jerry Dugan
Yes. Oh, huge. I remember when I learned that there are people out there who target women who have daddy issues. Having a daughter of my own, I have a son and a daughter, but yeah, when my daughter came along, same thing. It was just like, I will set the world on fire to keep her safe. But then you're holding her and all that warrior yeah. Also melts away. You're like, oh, she's so little and precious. I love her. But realizing, though, that there are people out there who prey on women and girls who have daddy issues. Absolutely. I was like, well, let's fix that. Let's be the kind of father that she will always want to hang out with, always want to go to when she needs help, always feel safe that she can talk with for anything. And not just that, but model a healthy relationship with her mother so that when she gets older and starts dating, she has those boundaries in place, she has the communication skills needed, and when she needs to drop, a bad guy gone. And I've seen her do it, I'm like, wow, it works. She's 19 now, so it's worth doing. Yeah. Having that bond, that father daughter bond is just it is different than a father son bond in many ways. Like I feel like with my son, I had to initially that I had to raise him to be like me and then eventually realized, no, I got to raise him to be him and the strongest him he can be. And why not? The same thing for my daughter and have that relationship with both of them. But you're seeing the healthy relationships for them now. Huge. So it sounds like similar. The warrior side of you is like, I will protect her by any means necessary. And at the same time, my heart has melted for this child, both of them, because you got two daughters and I want to model for them what a healthy relationship looks like so that when they're older, that's what they experience, that's what they bring home, that's what they convey to their kids when they have kids. And that is just huge as far as a mindset shift, too, because how many of us men go through life thinking we just got to be the same tough guy and put on this bravado at the expense of a relationship with our children. Have you seen that working in ministry?

00:10:42 - Brent Dowlen
Oh, yeah. It's one of the things we try and do with the fallible man is. I started with the fallible man just because it's the fallible man. Because I want everybody to know I'm not perfect. Right. I want to be upfront about that. But I see so many men's movements that are just beat your chest, eat raw meat. Yeah. It's like, you guys are not helping. Okay? There's a place for all that. Don't get me wrong. I like a pretty rear steak. I like fire. And I am competitive as I'll get out. When I was in the military when I was 20, I qualified for Special Forces training. I got injured and got washed out of that. But that's a whole another really different long story, but I was definitely what you would call an alpha male at the time, right. I was 20 years old going into the military. And so I was older than half the guys that were most of the guys that were in boot camp with me and trying out for Special Forces. I was in incredible shape, and it was a very kind of area to be in, right?

00:11:44 - Jerry Dugan
Oh, yeah.

00:11:45 - Brent Dowlen
The other guys who are in that training program were all just like there were fights every night in that detachment. It was nuts because you put 100 guys who are all that just RA, hear me roar kind of mentality in there, and something's got to give. I wish I was exaggerating. There was blood on the floor every night. But that's one dimension, right? Jordan Peterson nailed it. Being a man who is what has he said? Being a harmless man is not a good man, right. A good man is a dangerous man who has it in check. And as a father, that's a balancing act, right? Making sure that side of me doesn't come out with my children, making sure I have my temper in check and that I slow down before I react to things and that I breathe because this is one portion of me. And whatever man they bring home eventually, he better bring that, because for darn sure, he better be able to take care of my kid. But that's not enough. And that's the problem, is those moments get locked up in this. That's not enough. My wife is my best friend. I literally marry my best friend. We were friends for almost four years. We never dated. We never lived in the same state. And one day I asked her to marry me because I knew I'd be stupid not to. But I marry my best friend, right? She's still my best friend, and we're a lot different. But my kids need to see that side of me, that side of how to be a friend, how to be a husband by the way I treat my wife, how to have that meaningful relationship, how to communicate with her. They need to see that soft, gentle side. I've showed up when I was still working in a corporate job with fingernail polish on because my daughter's painting my nails.

00:13:29 - Jerry Dugan
Yes.

00:13:33 - Brent Dowlen
It'S every dad goes through this little girls, right? I have one of my coworkers like, dude, nice nails. I looked him square in the eyes and my four year old did that and like, instant just regret on his face that he even could and just his heart melted, right? We were at a motorcycle rally when my oldest was probably six months old. Biggest motorcycle rally in the Pacific Northwest called Oyster Run. 1215 thousand bikers show up and just take over this town for a day and a half. And my friend was with us and she was looking at sunglasses. My wife was carrying around our six month old and she's looking at these little kids sunglasses and this big burly beastly biker, right? And we've been in this world enough. Like, we know the clubs that own the area. This is a one percenter, like, hardcore prison tat. Head of a chapter of this group, right? And she looked him square in the eye and pointed and said, they're for my niece and this big prison tatted, one percenter guy with multiple. We won't go into rap records, but to be there in this club, he's got a rap sheet just melted, like, instantly became this big baby.

00:14:49 - Jerry Dugan
He's like, oh my gosh, these would.

00:14:51 - Brent Dowlen
Be so cute on her, and helped her pick out the sunglasses. Men just melt when they see that connection, right? But our children need to see all of that in us. They can't just see the raw raw. My kids see me go to the gym. They've seen videos of me lifting. Like I broke my neck carrying 600 pounds at one point. My kids have seen me left heavy stuff. They also know that Daddy curls up with him at the end of the night and has both them in his arms and makes time for them. Right? There's a hole that has to happen. And so many of these men's movement gets lost in this bravado crap.

00:15:26 - Jerry Dugan
Oh, yeah. Huge. There's a book you're reminding me of written by a guy named Stu Weber called Tender Warrior.

00:15:33 - Brent Dowlen
Have you come across that? I haven't.

00:15:35 - Jerry Dugan
Oh, man, you would like this Stu before became a pastor. I don't know if he's still around or not. I'll have to Google that later. Stu was in Special Forces, served in Vietnam, survived a, I think, a helicopter crash. And it turns out while he was in recovery, they discover he had cancer. And so he goes through treatment. He's healed, but eventually has to get out of the army. But he talks about in Tender Warrior, the two sides that you just talked about, that there is an expectation that the head of the house, the head of the family, the man is strong, is able to defend his family by whatever means necessary and know when to be tender and dives into. Like the story of King David and other examples from the Bible of men who were strong warriors and tender fathers, tender husbands. And that that is the whole man. Like like, you're talking about this raw, like, meat eating, we're tough alpha male. That's only one part. If you focus on just that, you are not a whole man because you're not a whole person, and you're not able to engage in all those nuances of what is masculinity, what is not masculinity, what is my role as the man in the family? I don't think you can navigate those if you just focus on being that machismo, bravado, alpha male mantra that you've talked about. So it's a breath of fresh air to hear somebody else say the same thing. That it's like yes and no one to be that tender person and let your kids see that. Because I'm sure on a date with your wife between the two of you, she is probably not impressed with I bench pressed 200 and whatever pounds today. And you're like, Jerry, it's 300 something. I'm like, whatever. I don't bench press. My wife doesn't care what I can bench press or how many push ups I can do or if I can eat three raw eggs for breakfast because, well, one, I don't do any of those things. But she doesn't care. She's not impressed by that. What she's impressed by is, can I connect with her on an emotional level? And that stereotypical alpha male can't do that. The tender warrior can, because it's both sides. Somebody who's all tenderness, and no warrior can't stand up for what's right for their family. So I love that we're talking about that merger of the two. You got to be the warrior, and you got to be tender, and you got to know when to turn the switches on and off and what situations are appropriate for each one. And I just love that. And I love that. The Fallible Man, your podcast as well as your website teaches that to people. So tell us more about the Fallible Man. Do you have men's groups that come together? Is it like a community of guys? Is it a newsletter? Do you guys go off to the woods and hug each other?

00:18:24 - Brent Dowlen
Yeah, we got tonight hug circles.

00:18:25 - Jerry Dugan
I know. No kidding. I need to go.

00:18:29 - Brent Dowlen
We're working towards that. We're working towards that. It's okay. You weigh my plans, man. Come on. The Fallible Man started as a book, and I got about 100 pages in, and it's like, okay. I started researching self publishing and went, if I want anyone other than my wife and my mom to read this, I'm going to have to build some kind of audience, right? So I did what everybody did, and I got on social media. I was like, that's easy. Everybody gets famous on Instagram, right? Insta famous is so easy. A, no. B, I hate social media with a passion. I should have known this because I had no social media accounts before I started doing this. Zero. I didn't own a Facebook. I mean, I didn't know any of that stuff. And I found out very quickly. It's like, oh, I really hate this. This is why I never owned this. Now I'm on like eight social media platforms still, but it's like, okay, this cannot be the medium because I can't do this all the time. I hate this too much. I can't do this all the time. And so I've been speaking publicly since I was eleven years old. Growing up, my dad was a minister most of his adult life for 47 years. And so we went to a lot of small churches. My dad was kind of a transitional minister. He'd come into a small church after the minister who had been there for years, like passed or retired, and he would be there for three years or so to help the church shift the mind. Because you don't survive coming in after a long term preacher. You don't survive for long because there's always that comparison of, well, Bob did it this way, I'm not Bob. And most guys will crack under that and it will fall apart. So my dad would be there for a couple of years to help them transition to a healthier position where they could take on another long term minister. And so we were at a lot of small churches. My dad was mission supported and so there weren't always a lot of men to stand up and do these things. So once you were baptized in the church, you could help serve. And so at eleven years old, I started leading worship in an Acapella congregation. We have no instruments. My background purely. Acapella Church. So eleven years old, I'm leading the congregation, worship at 200 people. And you learn, it's like, okay, well, either get comfortable with this or this isn't going to work. Well, so I started speaking when I was eleven years old and I've been doing it ever since. It doesn't scare me. It doesn't bother me learning to speak on a microphone like this. This took some adjustment because I'm very animated. I'm used to I've spoken in front of 2000 people before. I'm very animated. I talk with my hands, trying to be still and be on camera, right? Lying with a good mic around instead of having like a lapel mic or a headset on where I can move. Oh my goodness, that was such a horrendous change for me. But it's like, okay, podcasting. I listen to podcasts so I can talk. The trick is getting me to shut up sometimes, so podcasting, I can get into that, right? And so it began and it's like, okay, what am I trying to share? What is this going to be about? Right? So I wanted to say along the heart of the message that I had started with the book, which still never moved past 120 pages because I've gone through, like, three drafts, and I still move never because I get about 100 pages in. It's like, I don't like the directions going and start over, but it was born out of that concept, and so I kind of fell in love with podcasting. I enjoy the podcasting community. I enjoy doing our show. I look forward to it. And as it started to take off and grow more, it's like, OOH, guests. I should have guests because I don't know everything. I know. I don't know everything. So I met Alex, actually, on LinkedIn. Alex san Filippo. I'm sure I said that wrong. Sorry, Alex.

00:22:16 - Jerry Dugan
No, you got it right. Oh, did I?

00:22:17 - Brent Dowlen
Yeah, I usually blow that one to me. When Podmatch was in Beta, I met him on LinkedIn on a podcasting community there, and he invited me to the BtR Impact, LLC, and I've been on it ever since, and that's where I get most of my guests. I've tried the other platforms, but Podmatch is the one I live on. And so now I've got really great guests coming in, and they can cover everything that I can't with a lot more professionalism and a lot more expertise, which means I can bring value to the men I'm working with. And so it's grown from there, right? We have the social media. I've got blogs that go up. We've got a bi weekly newsletter. We're up to two shows a week. I do a solo show on Fridays. That's usually short. We try and keep it around ten to 15 minutes, then my guest shows on Wednesday. And then last year, it became a conference as well. So we launched the Phoenix Conference last year, and we do a live and virtual event. We're actually, at the time of the recording, a week out from my next conference. Oh, wow. Overdrive right now? Yeah. I have a conference called the Phoenix Men's Conference, and I most well, all of my speakers have come from podcasting. I have eight keynotes at this next event, and all of them have been on my show. They're podcasters that I connected with and went, yes, you got something that men need. But a year ago, it's like, okay. I really started feeling like it was time to bring this home. Everything we were doing online. So I live in a small community. Most people don't know I exist. I actually just registered with the Chamber of Commerce about a month and a half ago, and they're like, oh, my goodness, this is so cool. We had no idea.

00:24:02 - Jerry Dugan
Wow. In a small community, that's a feat to pull off, because everybody knows everybody's business in a small community.

00:24:09 - Brent Dowlen
Right. But I'm not very social. That's one of my big shortcomings, is I'm not very social. I'm an introvert. It's funny because I'm an extrovert by profession. I'm an introvert at heart. I would never leave my house. My wife goes nuts because I'm a homebody. There's nowhere I want to be other than curl up with my daughters at home. I want to go do something with my kids. We can go do that, or we can curl up and watch a movie, but don't actually feel the need to go hang out with other people. Usually for my wife, that drives her nuts because she likes to get out. She doesn't want to hang out with other people, but she wants to go and see places and explore. But I actually have a friend of ours who is helping me try to get out into the community, because the only people I know in my community are either people I worked with at my former job or people I see at my church are people I see my gym.

00:25:00 - Jerry Dugan
That's it.

00:25:01 - Brent Dowlen
That's the three places I go. I go to the little local grocery store, and I go to the gym and I go to church, and that's about it.

00:25:08 - Jerry Dugan
Yeah, but you also meet people through podcasting, and that is also a network that we tend to kind of gloss over there. I mean, these are real people you're meeting. You're growing from them. You're connecting.

00:25:18 - Brent Dowlen
I love it. Yeah. This is one of my favorite parts about podcasting is all the incredible people I've gotten to connect with. Like I said, all my keynote speakers come from podcasting because I meet all these incredible people, and it's like, man, you have so much to say. And our theme is this. So we're getting ready for our second event. We do it live and virtual. We've actually invested a lot more this year into doing the virtual event, taking that up a notch, making that an even better experience. And, I mean, it's still a small conference. I definitely run it bigger than the budget affords. Most of it comes out of pocket now, but we're working on it one day.

00:25:57 - Jerry Dugan
Yeah, but how many people go right now?

00:26:00 - Brent Dowlen
So right now, I think I have, like, 45 people signed up between online and in person. I also get a lot of people to the door. So I had, I think, 20 signed up last year. I have 40 people at the event. Actually.

00:26:15 - Jerry Dugan
Nice people have 45 signed up, and you might have more people dragged in at the door.

00:26:20 - Brent Dowlen
You have this really weird non committal thing going on these days. I grew up where if I didn't pre register for something, I wasn't going. That was just the rule.

00:26:30 - Jerry Dugan
So you haven't lived in Corpus Christi, Texas, then?

00:26:33 - Brent Dowlen
Parents of Texans. We're Texas.

00:26:36 - Jerry Dugan
Okay.

00:26:36 - Brent Dowlen
So they know my parents are from Fort Worth.

00:26:40 - Jerry Dugan
Okay. Yeah. Just down the road from where I am.

00:26:44 - Brent Dowlen
They grew up, and that's the way it was. And so for church events, like youth events and stuff, preregistration would come in. My parents were like, Are you going or not? And we'd be like, yes or no? Because once they asked, the question was over if you said no. There was no changing your mind. Now people wait till the last minute. I still actually am a co director of a large youth rally, church youth rally. Up here, we have about 250 people, and the night before the event, we'll have, like, 40 people registered online.

00:27:14 - Jerry Dugan
Yeah.

00:27:14 - Brent Dowlen
We will have 200 plus people at that event at the door. Registration is insane.

00:27:19 - Jerry Dugan
Yeah. So holding events, I mean, you got a plan for those extras. But the point I wanted to drive home with this was how many people would you be impacting with these conferences and these events if you didn't do them at all?

00:27:32 - Brent Dowlen
Zero. Exactly.

00:27:34 - Jerry Dugan
Yeah. And so these are 45 men, plus whoever they bring along who are going to be impacted by not just what the speakers are bringing to the conference. I mean, these guys are going to interact. They're going to talk during the breaks, during lunch. Any mixers that you have going on, they're going to talk. And it's in these conversations, I think, that men also grow, like, when they see men being authentic and vulnerable and are willing to talk about that in front of other men. I think that's something that, again, those rah, raw, meat eaten alpha male get togethers don't cover because they're all about the bravado on the outside. This type of thing is making you strong on the inside. I think we're going both ways.

00:28:19 - Brent Dowlen
Yeah. My first conference, I have coffee with five of the guys who went to my first conference every week. Still, some guys from the local area, we get together and have coffee every Monday. It's awesome. We have a Bible study, but they still talk about my last event, which I had to change the dates on. So that happened last June. Turned out I planned it for graduation weekend. You should never plan an event for graduation weekend. Just saying. You all anybody listening? Yeah.

00:28:44 - Jerry Dugan
I've tried to work marriage conferences that were scheduled during graduations. I'm like, why? Registering?

00:28:51 - Brent Dowlen
My kids are little, so I didn't realize I scheduled it. And so we moved it to February. But the guys who came to the last event are still talking about the takeaways they got from the last event, from the quality of the speakers, and from the breakout sessions. Right. Those connections they made, it brought them closer. Well, this year, we're taking it up a notch. We're hosting a strong man competition during the in person event.

00:29:10 - Jerry Dugan
Yeah.

00:29:11 - Brent Dowlen
And, I mean, it's not like a pro strong man. Right. Brent Shaw is not coming to my event. That'd be cool, but Brent Shaw is not coming to my event. Brent, if you're listening, we'd love to have you, but we're going to have an amateur strong man competition. Right. Because you add a physical element and guys connect even more.

00:29:28 - Jerry Dugan
Yeah.

00:29:29 - Brent Dowlen
So we can feed that raw side of you as well. But we're also going to nurture your soul. We're going to nurture your heart. And I know guys don't like the term nurture, but honestly, guys, the community is insane. And we have a Facebook group now, too. I tried to host it on my own website for a while. Wix, if you're listening, you need to up your offering on groups, man, I'm just saying. Yeah, I moved to Facebook because it was just so limited. I could not get people to sign up on my website to be a part of that group. So we moved fallible nation. We have a private group called Fallible Nation that any men are welcome to on Facebook. That's the requirement, right? You be a dude, we're cool, right? Come we're still nurturing that group along. We got about 50 people in there. Getting people to talk is still the big push, right? It's like, okay, guys, you can share in the group. You don't have to wait for me to post something and respond to it. And they're getting better about at least responding to post. We're still taking the hey, you know you can post here, right? Thoughts, concerns, questions? This is your group.

00:30:35 - Jerry Dugan
It's almost like a men's Bible study. We're waiting for the leader to say something. I'm not going to just volunteer some information, but that is what we hope to get these men to. Yeah, I love that you still there.

00:30:49 - Brent Dowlen
I'm still here.

00:30:50 - Jerry Dugan
Okay, good. I'm sorry. Well, I have to edit that out. I did not follow that up with a question either. I was just like, I just made a comment and back to taking notes. Now we got a blooper reel. Oh, man, how long have I been doing this? So I know you've got the website, thefallibleman.com you've got the podcast with the same name, the Fallible Man. It's on all the platforms where you can listen to podcasts. One day you will get that book published. I feel it. And you've also got the Facebook group Fallible Nation, which is open to all dudes who want to just learn how to be that tender warrior, that person who can be the warrior, and that gentle person at the home. If somebody wants to reach out to you and say, hey, I heard you on beyond the Rut, and I'd love for you to speak at my event, or really? That and we want to pay you money and all that good stuff, where can people reach you?

00:31:43 - Brent Dowlen
I would dig that entirely because I am trying to speak at more events now. That is one direction because I have that background. I'm comfortable there. So if you go to thefallibleman.com I have floating drop down menus, it tends to mess people up. I may have to change that design on my web, that web element on my design. Because you hover over the main menu and there are submenus to pop up, and people are like, oh, we can click on those too. If you go to the Fallible Man Productions, there is a scheduling tab in there, and you can go there, and it's my calendar link. And you can schedule a 15 minutes or 30 minutes call with me. You can also schedule kind of a discovery call if you have something you'd like to possibly talk to me about speaking at that way I'm there. I also have just started this is new doing men's coaching. I've always played in that I did some coaching as a youth minister. I've done personal training on and off for years in the background. But we are now starting to offer, like, one on one coaching, and we're actually going to expand that to group coaching as well. And so there's a whole tab for that where we're expanding that because that's the next goal, right? I put on the event. I've got the podcast, but I want to get back to I miss that element. I want to get back to working individually one on one with men, whether that's one on one or even the group coaching, where I'm just solidly with a group of men and can walk with them as they are on their journey.

00:33:15 - Jerry Dugan
Yeah, and that's so desperately needed, too. And when you're coming off an event like that, they're fired up, and they want that. And the sooner you can plug men into that kind of support, the better for them and for what you're putting together. Any final words of wisdom you want to share with folks before we head out?

00:33:34 - Brent Dowlen
Final words of wisdom. Every day is a choice. Our motto here is be better tomorrow because of what you do today. I believe in incremental improvement, guys. There is no magic pill. There's no big bullet to just change it's. Making the next right choice every day. Every day you have a choice to do something. Just one thing. That's all you got to do. Pick one thing. Go for a walk on your lunch break if you don't get enough exercise in your life, right? Listen to a podcast or a book instead of listening to some music while you're doing something. Pick one thing. Pick one thing today and choose to do something to make yourself a little better. That's growth. That's real measurable growth that causes long term change. And so make your choice every day. I'm going to choose one thing to make myself better in some way today.

00:34:22 - Jerry Dugan
Brent, I love that. It was great to have you on this show. Great to have a new friend in the podcasting space as well.

00:34:28 - Brent Dowlen
I appreciate you having me on. Jerry. I've been looking forward to this conversation. We've been getting this together for a little while now. It's like, woohoo. We're getting close to it. It's all popping up on my calendar. It's like, yeah, I'm looking forward to doing the show. So thank you. I love your show.

00:34:41 - Jerry Dugan
Now, I hope you got a lot out of that conversation like I did. And if you want to learn more about Brent, his podcast and everything he has to offer, go check out the show notes@beyondtherut.com three 70. There you'll find the link not only to his resources, but related episodes beyond the Rut. On the topic of Fatherhood Now, I enjoyed joining you on this episode and I look forward to joining you again on the next one. But until next time, go live life beyond the Rut. Take care.