Kirk Kappelhoff: The Eight Pillars Every Man Must Build to Escape the Bottom Ninety Percent

D Brent Dowlen: [00:00:00] Kirk, looking at some of the content, uh, that you’ve put out as we’re getting ready for this show, I thought of a quote that I really want your take on because I’ve really seen this more reflected as like, when it first came out, I was like, eh, but I’ve seen more reflection sites, so I want your take on this quote.

Here’s the quote. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no great war, no great depression. Our great wars a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won’t.

We’re slowly learning that fact and we’re very, very pissed off. Mm-hmm. Now for all you guys, are you good movie nerds that, that’s from Fight Club Kirk. The first time I ever heard that, I was like, oh, I, you know, that may be a little, honestly, I read it the other day. I was like, you know, that’s really kind of touching a nerve.

So what is your take on that?

Kirk Kappelhoff: You know, it’s probably a [00:01:00] timeless challenge, but it does remind me a lot of the problem of purpose that men are facing today. That problem of purpose for those that haven’t heard is that traditionally men’s roles where protector, provider procreator, but protector, at least in the western world as threats have been declining, right?

You can walk down the street and a tiger’s not gonna attack you, or more civilized. That’s becoming less and less important. There are times for it, but just less frequent provider is becoming less frequent. We can talk about this a little bit later, but it’s in 22 of the biggest cities in America right now.

Between the ages of 16 and 29, women are earning more than men. For the same job and, uh, same time commitment and same age. So providers becoming less relevant, in fact, one generation further still. And we might, uh, see that, uh, this, the wage gap, which has now become more of the, uh, the parenting gap that might actually close off entirely.

Women are having children later as well. And then the procreator piece, well, that’s pretty obvious, but for the most part, uh, men were never needed for [00:02:00] that. And now scientifically you can actually reproduce pretty much without them being involved at all. And so men, with this traditionally defined role of protector, provider procreator, are questioning where they fit.

And so this middleman that you were quoting, right, where do we fit in this world? Where’s the purpose? Where do I go to? Well, interestingly, university of North Carolina did a study and it find they found that basically the, the time spent on video games for the average man has doubled from 2005 to 2015, and it looks set to double again from 2015 to 2025.

Some, um, people are spending 10 hours a day, some people are spending five. But either way on average, uh, that number is, is doubling. Why? Well, it’s because there’s a reality in the real world, and there’s a reality in the video game, and sometimes that reality in the video game is more attractive than the reality we see here.

Here you might not be, uh, attracting the girls you want. You might not be earning what you want. You might not have the physical sta you want, [00:03:00] but in the video game, you can see results quite quickly. You can jump three times your height. You can link up with your friends all over the world online, feel like you have a global presence.

And so sometimes, and at least it’s what they hypothesized. It’s easier to go to a fake world to find some sort of salience in your life than it is to face the reality of the real one. And that is kind of an apt submarine when it comes to Fight Club specifically.

D Brent Dowlen: Yeah. Fight Club. I, it is funny ’cause you know, I’m, I’m in the age group that he came out right at a prime time for me.

But for years I was like, I, I don’t see, like, I ditched didn’t see the appeal of the movie. Had a very cult following. And as I’ve gotten older, it’s like, hmm, I’m starting to get it a little bit more. Maybe I was a little younger than I thought that movie was aimed at when I, when I first watched it. But I read it the other day and I was going through getting ready for this.

It’s like, man, I know a lot of young men right now who like fall into this [00:04:00] category mm-hmm. Minus the whole great war thing. Uh, I think when Fight Came, club came out, we were actually at a more of a time of peace than we have been the last several years, of course. But, uh, yeah, it’s just like, it’s like, man, I, I know so many young men who are just falling into this category of.

And it is, is that, and I don’t wanna call ’em aimless and shiftless, right? ’cause that’s a derogatory idea. Sure. But we’ve lost track of purpose. And as someone who used to, I, I had a gaming addiction issue before. Gaming addiction was considered a legitimate thing. Uh, I, I threw away three years of my life.

Like, I, I actually clicked out time played over three years of my life on that game over the course of more like eight and a half or nine years. But in that time, like total time played over three years of my life in that game. I was like, and it was, but I have

Kirk Kappelhoff: to ask what game was that?

D Brent Dowlen: I was an early adopter.

I started World of Warcraft a month [00:05:00] after it came out, and I played amazing through Miss Append area expansion. Um, but yeah, no, I, I spent years of my life. I started playing it to connect with some young people I was working with at the time and just. It was, it was that absolute. I did not feel like I was accomplishing anything in my real life of note.

I was just, I was going to work, I was doing the thing. Yay. I got the job, I got the house, I got the family. But it was like, there’s gotta be more to life than this. And, and, and Azar off like I was pushing something.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Sure. Yeah. You were growing yourself. Yeah, for me it was, um, it was Call of Duty, modern Warfare too.

Mm. I was in that realm and I, I think I lost like 10th and 11th grade to just call of duty. Like the, my ultimate goal at that point was to get into paid competitions where for whatever reason, I thought that was the coolest thing in the world to get paid to play video games. And, uh, I’d realized [00:06:00] as life began to separate, I’m like, what?

Do I want to be the outcome of this? Do I want after, let’s just say a couple years of my life, I said to myself, if I take every moment that I play a video game, and I was to say, okay, every time I’m gonna play a video game for an hour, instead of that, I will work out while I’ll read a book. And I did some cals and I would finish up, it was something like I’d finish like 32 books a year or something ridiculous like that.

Mike Lindell: Mm-hmm. And I was like,

Kirk Kappelhoff: what At the end of the year, do I wanna look back and say, I did say I accomplished, or who’s just the person that I want to be? Is it the reader who has all this immense knowledge? Or is it the guy that prestige four times uncut? Right. And the answer was never prestige on on that.

And the the, the trick is. We’ve got this battle in our mind, which is where we want to pursue pleasure, but we also want to pursue our oughts. Meaning what? Who should we be? What ought we to do? And this is what I call the mental challenge of men. I want to do something, but I know I should do another thing.

I get [00:07:00] home from the gym and I know I should go to the gym and I do want to, but I actually also want to just sit on the couch and relax. I know I should apologize, but my ego won’t let me apologize because I don’t, I don’t really want it. I want it, but I don’t want it. These two things in our brain are, are both us.

They’re not like good and evil on our shoulder. They’re both pieces of our brain competing. And in fact, neuroscientists have been able to identify more or less the areas where, where that are at play when we have this kind of mental battle, the amygdala sort of towards the back of our brain. And then the prefrontal cortex, which we’ve all heard about a million times, which separated humans from, uh, sort of our animal pri.

And what’s happening here is this. You’ve got your amygdala, which wants you to feel good. Now it wants to feed you dopamine. It sees a cake and it says, eat it. More is always better than less, and now is always better than later. According to the amygdala. The prefrontal cortex, obviously higher order reasoning.

This is [00:08:00] where you see delayed gratification come in. This is where you see reasoning and consequence calculation coming into play. And when we say, I really want to go to the gym, but I also really don’t, those are the two pieces are at play and what interests me most about this, this like sort of battle of the two parts of the brain is that neither we already know the answer.

We know we should listen to the prefrontal cor, we know we should go to the gym. We know we should adhere to the diet that we, that we don’t want to adhere to. We know we should apologize for that thing we did. That was stupid. And all we gotta do is say the words. It’s not a question of clarity. We already are clear, do the thing.

It’s a question of conviction. Why aren’t I doing the thing that I know I ought to do? And interestingly, what they, what they kind of theorize is that because our amygdala. Substantially older than our prefrontal cortex. The pull of the amygdala on your sort of psyche [00:09:00] is much stronger. So what we’re talking about here is like a 350 million year old part of the brain down all the way to reptiles, and then you’ve got the prefrontal cortex, which really didn’t like separate humans from, um, apes until 200,000 years ago.

So when we look at an age perspective, it’s like having an old friend and a new friend. Your new friend might be super smart, but your old friend, you’ve just been through so much together. It’s so easy to listen to them. And so this is why we have this, what I call the battle of the mind, the sort of civil war in our brain.

And there’s a couple things that I, that I talk about to sort of help us understand how we can listen to the prefrontal cortex instead of, uh, instead of the amygdala. I know that was a long answer there, but that’s kind of where we’re, that’s kind of what you reminded me of.

D Brent Dowlen: It is the adage of a jelly donut in my hand.

Tastes good right now. Six pack abs feels good after it sucks for the next six months. You get there.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Yeah,

D Brent Dowlen: right.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Same thing.

D Brent Dowlen: It, it, it really is that simple. We, [00:10:00] uh, we, we make this argument every time we make a decision of what feels good. Now what, and, and the things we really want all take delayed gratification.

I mean, all the best things in life that we really, really aspire to are a delayed gratification. You’ve gotta put in time, you gotta put in effort and it’s down the road versus this feels really nice right now and, and we’re such a dopamine driven society at this point. It’s become ridiculous. Guys, this is gonna be an incredible conversation with Kirk.

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D Brent Dowlen: the Driven 2 Thrive broadcast, herpes growth and lasting impact for men, helping men go from living to thriving purpose-filled intentional lives. Welcome to The Driven 2 Thrive broadcast purpose, growth, and lasting impact for men. I’m your host, Brent Dowlen, and we help men go from living to thriving, purpose-filled intentional lives.

My guest today is Kurt Kappelhoff. [00:12:00] Kirk, welcome to the Driven 2 Thrive broadcast.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Thanks so much for hap having me. Really happy to be here.

D Brent Dowlen: Now, Kirk, uh, I’m not big in inter introductions, so in your own words today, who is Kirk Koff?

Kirk Kappelhoff: Sure. Uh, well, it’s been an evolving story. I was born in, in Abu Dhabi, grew up in Australia, um, stints in like Singapore, Scotland, but now obviously in the us I’m actually sitting here in, in New York City today.

Uh, how did I get here? I just wanted to play D one sports and you guys have the best, uh, world of combining athletics and academics, and I really wasn’t sure which route I wanted to take yet. And so, uh, came to the us. I was out in California. I made my way across the country to DC Miami now in New York, uh, currently working in, in the world of finance.

Uh, but interesting, interesting myself with the, the deeper questions. What makes a good man? How should a man be? Those sorts of things, and I think that’s, uh, [00:13:00] what we’ll be talking about a little bit more today.

D Brent Dowlen: So you are a finance guy by day and a men’s advocate by night.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Yeah. Is how

he’s

D Brent Dowlen: working.

Kirk Kappelhoff: I would say that’s pretty fair.

Uh, men’s advocate might assume that I’m not also, uh, a woman’s advocate. Where, where I certainly don’t wanna, I don’t wanna neglect the incredible challenges that they’ve overcome since probably, I mean, since the donna time, but especially since the seventies and the progress they’ve made. And actually, that’s one thing we can talk about, which is super interesting.

What I’ve noticed though, is at a macro level with men, what concerns me is not so much with how men are doing against women, but more so with how men are doing against previous generations of men. And on virtually every measurable factor, men are declining and we’re talking finances, spiritually, emotionally, vocationally, all these different features of what you might consider masculinity or what they, what men want to achieve.

There’s been a decline, and it’s very hard to find an incline that interests [00:14:00] me, not so much, uh, from a perspective of needing to, uh, needing to course correct ASAP at a macro level, but more at an at a micro level. How should I be so that I don’t have to be a part of the decline, but instead be a part of the incline, right?

What are the things that I need to achieve and the things that I need to do in life? Who’s the person I need to be to, to, to see that growth?

D Brent Dowlen: So this journey into fascination with men started with your own personal growth. You looked at your life and went, who do I want to be? How do I want to be? Right?

How do I wanna live? And has a hundred percent become even more so to the point where you’re working on a book, uh, about the subject. And this is a fascinating question. It’s, I mean, I’ve been doing this podcast for, good lord, this is season six. Uh, we started in 2020. Um, I. And I’ve done hundreds of shows.

Right. And we’ve been talking about masculinity in men for years now. And [00:15:00] it is fascinating to me because, I mean, you read the stats, right? Uh, the average genzer has a fraction of the testosterone that his grandfather had, which is just mind blowing and terrifying to me at the same time, because I see the importance of masculinity in the world, right?

And so we, we will throw out the disclaimer right now, so we don’t deeply offend some women out there. I talk to men about men. I’m, that doesn’t take anything away from women. I’m a girl dad. I got two daughters. My wife and my mom lives with us. I got four women in my house.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Wow.

D Brent Dowlen: My, my life is surrounded by estrogen.

Um,

Kirk Kappelhoff: no wonder testosterone is declining.

D Brent Dowlen: Right? I, I get a kick at it ’cause my brother has three daughters and his wife and it’s like, wow. We just got a lot of women in our family. Like, I’m surrounded, I have so many nieces. Um, I, I think [00:16:00] I have two nephews, otherwise I have nieces. And so I’m utterly fascinated by women.

I am the first one to say, I want my daughter to be able to do anything a guy can. I just don’t want her to have to do anything A guy can.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Yeah,

D Brent Dowlen: right. Uh, I don’t want her to have to rely on a guy to do it for her. I want her to be capable, but I don’t think she should have to be, do certain things. So when we talk about men, ladies, it’s because I talk to men, right?

We’re not taking anything away from you guys. But I have seen this displacement because masculinity, just like femininity is essential to the world thriving. I’ve seen this deterioration. So I’ve been fascinated with this subject for several years now. I think you may be one of the few guys I’ve talked to who seems to be as fascinated with as I am.

Why do you think we are heading this direction? I know it takes a lot of work to start to put together a book, so I know [00:17:00] you’ve done a lot of research. What are you seeing? Why do you think we started heading this direction?

Kirk Kappelhoff: Yeah, well, you’re totally right. First of all, in saying, uh, that this started with sort of my journey, once I realized that I don’t really know what it means to, to truly like be a good man.

I don’t know what it entails. What’s the checklist of things that I need to accomplish in order to be like a good man? Or what do I need to do in my day-to-day life? How should a man even be? Questioning this and then talking with other men about it, I realized this is a bigger problem to solve than, than I thought.

And not many people had a pretty strong opinion, or at least what I would consider, like strong, good answers on the topic. So I really delved deep into it. And what I found at a macro level is, like I mentioned before, things are declining. The question is to why that’s a bit deeper. And I can touch on that probably after, um, we talk a little bit about the decline because there’s some interesting opinions from the experts on that.

But [00:18:00] basically what I, what I did is said this, okay, well every man faces challenges. What can I isolate these two? And I found about, I found a four internal four external. The internal would be the, the mental, physical, emotional, and the spiritual. And these are things that you just can’t avoid. You’re gonna have those, and I, of course, I define those in my own way.

But then externally, you have these challenges as well, spiritually, financially, socially, vocationally. And you’ll notice I split out vocationally or professionally from financially, and we can talk about that too. But across all eight of those, first of all, women are doing incredible. If you take each of those from the seventies to today, women are just skyrocketing.

They’ve increased pay, they’ve increased their physical strength emotionally, they’re, they’re stronger than ever. There is a loneliness epidemic with them as well, but they are, um, also like pressing into friendship stronger than men are. Occasionally obviously they’re, they’re doing great relationally.

They’ve always done great. So, um, that, that wasn’t [00:19:00] too concerning. But then when you take a look at men against their grandfather’s generation, let’s say in the seventies, some interesting things arise for, for example, like physically only 15% of men were classified as obese in the seventies. Today it’s 40% of men.

In fact, one proxy we use for strength with men is, is grip strength. If you have strong grip strength, you likely have stronger everything. And well, in 1972, that was 118 pounds, what men could hold. Today it’s 98 pounds. So there’s been some sort of reduction there. Emotionally, men are feeling more lonely than they ever felt in self-reported loneliness.

Men used to feel 16. Uh, 16% of men used to feel lonely sometimes, or always. Today it’s 28%, so that means it’s, it’s almost doubled. And then financially, this is very interesting. Wages peaked at a median level in 19 70, 19 69, 19 70. Since then, there’s been a $13,000 decline in in median [00:20:00] average purchasing power.

So men are actually seeing about like a 28% reduction in their ability at a median level, which is just incredible. Socially, men have never been great. What, so what experts are now calling sort of this friendship recession, 15% of men, so they have no close friends. That was 3% in 1985, the number of men with 10 or more close friends has collapsed from 40% to 15%.

Now ten’s a lot, but 40 to 15% tells you a lot about what’s changing there. Interestingly, in that same year, 45% of young men reported that when facing like a personal problem of sorts, they would reach out to their friends first. Today that number is 22%. So it’s less than half from 45% to 22%. The question then arises, who are they reaching out to?

Well, 36% say that their first call would be to their parents. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but when you pair it with this net next statistic that [00:21:00] 35% of men today are now living with their parents, that’s more than the number of men living with a partner or a wife, then it becomes a little bit more concerning.

’cause now you’re, you’re wondering, well the reason that they’re calling mom or dad is ’cause they’re living with mom or dad between the ages of 22 and 35. And you, you, I just see men reclining from society relationally, which is obviously quite important as well. One in three men haven’t had sex in the last 12 months.

That’s shocking. In 2008 it was 10%. Now that number’s up to 31%, which is not because men all of a sudden are all of a sudden, you know, screaming for celibacy. It’s, it’s because they’re not out there looking already in the dating field. Men outnumber women on the apps nine to one. And, uh, according to the stats, 20% of men receive 80% of the likes, uh, or swipes, I should say.

And so you’ve got this very unbalanced, um, view [00:22:00] of what’s happened between previous generations and today. What’s even more interesting is that while the bottom 90% of men have never had it worse, if you take a look at the bottom, 90% of men across all previous generations, our bottom 90% is bad and it’s getting worse.

But on the flip side, that top 10% of men have never been more successful than the top 10% of men from previous generations. So this prompts the question one, how do I know if I’m in the top 10% or in the bottom 90%? And two. What does it take to be in that top 10% versus 90%? I personally, if I had the choice, would want to live a life that is more in accordance with the 10%, whether that is socially and just having a rich friend and family group or financially or physically.

And so this is what I’m trying to solve for. What is that blueprint that you need in order to more or less achieve something that would put you in the life that maximizes your potential or form [00:23:00] a different potential? A person with a potential of, let’s just say an arbitrary number of 70. They can never live above 70, but they can live up to 70.

And if you achieve, you know, 35, then you’re living half of your life, why not exceed it and do the the best you can to live the full potential that you were actually born with. So at a high level that lays out the problem. I certainly didn’t answer the question as to why, which we can, uh, talk about, and there’s some interesting pieces there, but I’d be really interested in your reaction to that.

You said you’re super interested in this topic. Um, when you hear those things like the eight challenges for internal four external, anything jump out at you that were maybe anything that surprised you?

D Brent Dowlen: Uh, I won’t say anything surprised me. Um, so this, this podcast started with a book.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Okay.

D Brent Dowlen: Uh, I, I started exploring this problem years and years ago, and I’ve talked to a couple guys who frame it right.

You, you have the eight [00:24:00] things. I’ve talked to guys who frame it in, you know, six things or whatever, right? I think all of us identify those eight areas. I don’t know that we all define them the same, but we all identify basically those eight characteristic areas for men. Um, I like the fact that you’ve separated the financially from the vocationally.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Mm-hmm.

D Brent Dowlen: Because we are so focused on the provision part, right. At a time when provision is actually less of a driver in relationships than it was for many generations. Um, but the decline in men has been a fascination for several years now. I was watching, I don’t know how much news you watch. Uh, I, I’m a news nerd.

I listen to the news all day. I’m sure it’s actually bad for my brain. Uh, but I listened to it all day and I was laughing [00:25:00] Totally. You know, sidestepping politics period. Right. Uh. One of the mayoral candidates for, I believe it’s New York. Is it New York or Chicago? Zora Madani.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Yeah, it’s New York that’s right here.

D Brent Dowlen: Um, he went to something that was going on in one of the areas and he had to help to bench press 135 pounds.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Yeah, I saw that. He was out of breath and it was, um,

D Brent Dowlen: yeah, the, and the spotter was basically lifting me. The clap back

Kirk Kappelhoff: was, um, a lot of

D Brent Dowlen: me, and I, and I’m not, I’m not gonna rag on the guy that’s, I, I don’t wanna get political or rag on the guy in this, but I looked at that and I thought, wow, that’s, that just seems like, and I’m, I’ve been a personal trainer for years.

I understand weight really is relative to your size, right? Uh, 135 pounds is heavy to someone who is a whole lot smaller than I am. [00:26:00] Sure I get that. But in that, I was following. Looking at some of that stuff with the statistics now that less than 10% of the men in the world can bench 2 25.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Right.

D Brent Dowlen: Which just floored me, uh, as I, I’ve been lifting weight since I was 11 years old.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Wow.

D Brent Dowlen: Pretty religiously. I’ve been lifting weight since I was 11 years old. Um, I, I pour out my shoulder and had to rebuild from scratch and get past that number again. When I was already benching three something, I tore out my shoulder doing another exercise and had I had to retrain from zero all the way back up again.

Right. Uh, which is pretty frustrating when you spend a long time trying to get to three 15 and then you tear out your rotator cuff on something else.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Yeah.

D Brent Dowlen: Um, but I

Kirk Kappelhoff: saw that. Right. Well, what you touched on is a really important point too, and that is. Like physically, what does it actually take to be in the top 10%?

And there’s answers. Because out of [00:27:00] all these things that I’ve mentioned, some of them are measurable, very measurable, like the physicality piece. Mm-hmm. And athletically, since only 8, 10, 10, 8 to 10% of men have visible ads, a top 10% men will technically have visible app. He’ll also be able to hold an eight 30 mile pace for about three miles.

Right. That would put you in the top 10%. Not extremely fast, but definitely uh, you know, quicker than quicker than what you might expect.

D Brent Dowlen: Yeah.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Will put you in much

D Brent Dowlen: higher in the top 10%.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. He’ll be able to back squat 1.75 times his weight deadlift 2.25 times his weight and bench press 1.25 times his weight.

Those are the things you would need physically. In order to be in the top 10%. Now there’s a million other metrics that you could list off, but if we’re talking about weight room mm-hmm. That’s what the man would need to be able to achieve financially. There’s another section, oh, go ahead. Sorry

D Brent Dowlen: tho, those metrics actually will put you in the top 1% in the world.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Yeah. You know, um, this is,

D Brent Dowlen: that, that’s not even the top 10%. Those [00:28:00] metrics actually put you in the top 1% in the world. Physically

Kirk Kappelhoff: you’re a hundred percent right. If you take them, um, together, they would a hundred percent put you in the, in the top 1% of individual people. And if you take it from a, like a US perspective, those things would on average put you top 10%.

What’s interesting though is men could not be able to do one of those, but not mm-hmm.

D Brent Dowlen: All

Kirk Kappelhoff: of them. All.

D Brent Dowlen: Yeah.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Yeah. And so, and then it is like, okay, now it’s that 10% is that 1% Right. Those sorts of things.

D Brent Dowlen: But seeing, seeing that decline, right. And then a couple years ago, one of the popular talk shows the Gen Z talk shows.

On YouTube, uh, there’s a couple young guys all in their low twenties had their testosterone checked and they were all like, their, their great grandparents had more testosterone than they did. Um, and I’ve seen this as decline, right? Like you have. And so, yeah, I look at that and [00:29:00] it’s like, but part of that is we’ve also skewed what that actually looks like.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Mm.

D Brent Dowlen: There’s this common misconception that, uh, among women, and I, I don’t know if I wanna blame social media for that. That men, you know, good men, men, men who are good, all make over a hundred thousand dollars a year.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Right?

D Brent Dowlen: And it’s like, actually that’s less than 2% of men, period.

Kirk Kappelhoff: It’s true

D Brent Dowlen: the amount of, I

Kirk Kappelhoff: think, median wages right now, somewhere in the 40 range.

D Brent Dowlen: Oh yeah. The, the amount of men who make over $70,000 a year by themselves. Mm. Is like 2% of men. Yeah. Maybe three. Uh, and, but we all have this idea in our heads with social media, right? ’cause we all see our best moments on social media and go, oh yeah, yeah. You know, high caliber men all make this. Uh, I know a lot of really stellar guys, like [00:30:00] high quality men.

They, they are good men who take care of their families, are good fathers. They’re doing their best to keep their health up. They make a good living. They don’t reach that bar at all. Hmm. Right. I, I’ve got a friend of mine who is a teacher and he’s worked for years to put himself through school. He’s been a para for years in the middle, in the school system while he was working on his teaching certification.

Uh, and he’s, he’s a phenomenal guy, right? One of the best guys I know. And he doesn’t make anywhere near. And so we, we’ve got a skewed perspective of what men look like today. And so now we’re playing two games. We’re playing, this is what men used to do. Mm-hmm. Right? This is, this is what our forefathers did, our grandfathers right, and their generation that, how they provided the money they brought in, [00:31:00] the health, et cetera, et cetera.

We’re comparing that and we’re also comparing these unrealistic expectations in our society of what social media says is, so, yeah, it’s, it’s this really complex game and I think’s really contributing to the fact that men don’t know what to do now. ’cause like their traditional roles are gone and now we have multiple measures.

Like you said, you, you found, what, what is this actual answer? You know, how do we define men masculinity, what they do?

Kirk Kappelhoff: Couldn’t agree more. And you hit on some very interesting topics there. One of them, um, this is actually the reason that I separated out the financial challenge from the vocational slash professional challenge.

And that’s because they don’t have to be tied, first of all. But secondly, financially, men put a disproportionate importance on their salary and on their net worth. [00:32:00] Women care less about, they don’t tie their identity as much to, uh, net worth or, or salary. But men will take their number and they will isolate it at the core of their identity.

And this isn’t Kirk, this is, this is the, the, the literature, the academic literature speaking here. Men report higher happiness in the exact same circumstances if they feel as if they’re in a really good financial position and they will borderline be, uh, depressed if the exact same circumstances are the same.

But their financial dollar changes to something that they don’t feel is sufficient. And this is obviously, um, even truer still. If you find men in, in, let’s say friendship groups where they are at the bottom of the pack and then the comparison is at its highest. So that’s something that needs to be addressed.

Men thinking that this is their be all and end all. Well, according to at least my framework, there’s seven other sections that you need to focus on. And this is where we see this dilemma, where you’ve got like this really fit guy in the [00:33:00] gym and you look at him and he walks in and everybody notices this guy walk in.

He’s massive and he is fit and he’s shredded. And when he opens his bank account, he’s got $2 in there. That is, that is a, an example of the disproportionate attention on your life. There’s more facets. Don’t idolize just one piece. The alternative side of that is the guy works in banking who never leaves his desk consulting, never leaves his desk, and he is eaten out all the time and he is just let his health go, go to nothing, right?

Well, there’s no point having like a $10 million net worth if you’re gonna die at 50. And so this balance actually studies show when you are balanced across your life, you feel like everything is in order across your life within a a, a threshold range in everything is more or less in tandem that leads to the highest reported number of happiness.

Why? ’cause it’s hard. And typically, and we can talk a little bit about the effect of, um, doing hard things on your brain, but typically when men do [00:34:00] hard things. Gratefulness increases life satisfaction, increases the ability, uh, to report less or less likelihood of suicidal ideation. All those pieces go in the right direction, whether that’s up or down.

And so in short, doing everything is a lot harder than just focusing on one thing. There’s a time and a place to focus on one thing, two things, and you need to do that. But overall, in the long run, keeping things in balance, not just isolating for your finances or your friend group or, or how much you can back squat, that will lead to a longer term higher happiness.

And so what I encourage people to do is take a look and self-reflect on these eight sections. And score yourself. And I have my own scoring framework in the book for where you can kind of say, okay, well where am I at physically, emotionally, spiritually, um, um, mentally vocationally, uh, relationally? Where can I rate myself and which one’s lacking to the other [00:35:00] ones?

And what do I need to do in that particular one or two or three in order to hit parody with the rest?

D Brent Dowlen: I think you touched on some good stuff with the hard things there. I’m, I’m a big fan of concept. ’cause I think men, I think that’s been part of the decline for men, and it’s part of the reason that video games appeal to us so much. Mm-hmm.

Mike Lindell: Right.

D Brent Dowlen: Men, men are by nature. It’s in our DNA we want to conquer. We, we want to discover new worlds.

We want to cross the ocean, we want to climb the mountains, right? Mm-hmm. We want to do these big, big things. And we’re in a generation where it feels like most of that’s been done.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Mm-hmm.

D Brent Dowlen: Right. There’s no new worlds to explore. There’s no. Unfound continents to chase, right? There’s no, uh, as the quote said earlier, great war.

Uh, although the military guys would disagree with that, there’s no great challenges ahead of men. And so men feel like they aren’t accomplishing, they [00:36:00] haven’t learned to substitute that in. And so I think, you know, pursuing the hard things idea that’s really important for men. We need, we need to feel like we’re on mission.

We need to do things that challenge us both physically and mentally at the same time. And whether we want to admit it or not, emotionally and spiritually, uh, as well, we need that dragon to slay, for lack of a better term. Um, and so I’m, I’m a huge fan of, you know, pushing men to do that when I started trying to come around in my life, right?

I had given up construction after years to work in construction and stuff like that. And took a desk job. I got into it and I noticed me putting on a little extra weight around that midsection. Right? Little more abs, uh, more, more time in a desk chair than actually physically doing anything. And so I actually started my own journey jumping into, uh, like obstacle course racing.

That that was [00:37:00] what put it’s like,

Kirk Kappelhoff: oh, cool

D Brent Dowlen: man. I wanna do that kind of stuff again. Right? Because I used to be able to do that kind of stuff. I wanna do that kind of stuff again. Um, I’m imagining

Kirk Kappelhoff: like some American Ninja warrior stuff. Is that kinda what you’re talking about?

D Brent Dowlen: Uh, tough mutter, Spartan races.

Yeah. That kind of stuff. Oh,

Kirk Kappelhoff: cool. Yeah. Very nice.

D Brent Dowlen: Um, I like, I I have tough mutter tattoo, like

Kirk Kappelhoff: wow. Committed.

D Brent Dowlen: I, I started a friend who it’s become part of his identity. Uh, he’s, he’s now recognized on social media for his common man OCR tag. Um, I started his fascination with, I, he was a friend. I was like, Hey, let’s go do this together, dude.

I did this thing and we were both dust jockeys, like, let’s go do this. Right? And it’s really become, he, he just got back from, uh, two day. Three race event, uh, down in SoCal. But chasing that for both of us, like it changed us a lot. It helped us start to come back around on other parts of our lives where we felt like we were lacking.

Awesome by [00:38:00] pursuing something difficult, something that challenged us physically, emotionally, mentally, because you get 10 miles into one of these things and your muscles are cramping and you’re exhausted and everything hurts, and you’re dirty and you’re wet and you’re cold and you’re like. This sucks.

And then you see a smart little sign they like to put on the course that says, remember you paid to do this.

Kirk Kappelhoff: I love it. Love it. Yeah. I mean, when you look at challenges, most people think of them as impediments to life. I’m living my life, I’m doing my thing, and then an obstacle comes in. It is challenging and it gets in the way of my life.

And, uh, Ryan Holiday, he, he writes a lot about stoicism and, and one thing that he quotes Marcus Aurelius on is that the obstacle isn’t in the way. The obstacle is the way. And when you challenge things in your life, when you go through those challenges, those things that feel like difficulty, they’re the things that actually give you drive.

And so in that view, [00:39:00] challenges therefore are not an impediment to a rich life, but the building blocks for it, show me a man who, who shortcuts life’s difficulties. And I’ll show you an apathetic man that that was one of his quotes. I love that one. And if you take a man and show me that he’s one that doesn’t complain, you’ll probably find a man that’s enthusiastic about life.

You could just take it on. Uh, John shed, he was an author. He said A ship is safe and it’s harbor, but that’s not what it was built for. And so by the same token, we were not designed to sit in comfort. We were designed to pursue challenges. And the immense benefits in the brain are pretty evident there too.

And we could talk about that, which is pretty awesome. But, um, it’s very interesting to, to me to see that. It’s so easy for us to fall into that, that problem that, um, in that, in that book, those who remain by g Michael hop hard times, create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men.

Weak men create hard times. [00:40:00] It’s oversimplified, but it creates the picture that this is almost cyclical, right? When we find ourself in comfort, part of it’s systematic, but part of it comes down to agency. And by agency I just mean it’s us. We get to decide the type of life we want to live. Our biggest problem in life could be that our Starbucks latte is too cold if we design it that way.

But it could also be that we take on responsibility, and responsibility has its challenges, and the more responsibility we take on, the more purpose we’ll find. We have Jordan Peter has this great quote. He says, your purpose in life is to find the biggest burden that you can bear. Then bear it. And I love that because burdens come in all shapes and sizes.

I don’t want to say that like having a wife and kids are a burden, but in a sense, their responsibility and responsibilities come with burdens. And so by taking those on, which is something that I think men should definitely pursue, it’s the something that turns selfishness into [00:41:00] selflessness because now you have to live for other people by taking on a job, which again turns your selfishness into selflessness.

By volunteering at some sort of community outreach piece, turning selfishness into selflessness, this is where responsibility and therefore purpose seemed to arrive. The more responsibility you have, the more purpose you have. And since they’re challenging, the less you complain about life, the more enthusiastic you are for it.

And so it seems to be this positive feedback loop where doing hard things makes doing hard things easier and makes you enjoy life more because you know that you can feel very tangibly. The difference between. The best parts of life and the hardest parts of life.

D Brent Dowlen: Well, and and that’s self-evident too, like anyone who spends a lot of time training the gym.

Right. I’ll, I’ll throw that metaphor out there. When you first start going to the gym and are new to it, sometimes it’s hard to get started. Right. You got that struggle, um, and then you start lifting regularly and [00:42:00] yeah, it’s, it’s difficult, but it becomes hard to not go lift, not go train regularly because your body starts to crave that challenge.

It starts to crave that work. And so, yeah, you do hard things and it makes doing hard things a little easier and a little easier because you’re like, yeah, it’s, it’s rough, right? How, how many guys, you know, in the gym who are like, oh, I’m gonna fill that tomorrow. And they’re smiling as they say it. ’cause it’s like, you know, the first time I hit some of the numbers I wanted to hit.

I was like, God, tomorrow’s gonna suck. But man, that was so cool or so stoked afterwards. Um, Kirk, I wanna pivot a little bit here. Sure. Because I, I think you and I could talk about some of this stuff pretty much the rest of the day, honestly. But I wanna pivot into something, a topic that I saw that you talked about that really I think is important for us to cover because a lot of men are struggling with a loneliness epidemic.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Mm-hmm.

D Brent Dowlen: And [00:43:00] that loneliness, loneliness epidemic is thinning our numbers. Men, men are, I’m, the last statistic I read was suicide was the second leading cause in men from I, it was 1835. Uh, and it’s ’cause men are lonely. And part of the reason we’re going to games is there’s community games. I, I have friends who met, they were in the same guild, pla in World Warcraft, they’re married and have kids.

Yeah. Been there for 15 years now.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Yeah.

D Brent Dowlen: You know, uh, we crave a sense of community, but we’re not good at getting it as men.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Sure.

D Brent Dowlen: And so we’re facing this epidemic of loneliness where men, even in a crowded room, or even surrounded by people they love, feel alone.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Yeah.

D Brent Dowlen: So let’s talk about.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Yeah, definitely.

And you’re not wrong. The, the rate of suicide, um, amongst men, it’s four times that of women. They’re very [00:44:00] disproportionately affected. The rate is not only higher, but it’s increasing. For example, if you were to take the rate of suicide on men from the year 2000 and just keep it steady, meaning it didn’t increase to what it is today, then 400,000 more men would be alive in the US alone today, that’s more than the number of men lost in World War ii.

Now, granted, it’s over a longer time period, right? That’d be about 20 years as opposed to World War II six. But even still, that’s a lot of men. And it’s because, like you said, they’re feeling lonely. Lonely, they’re feeling purposeless. They don’t feel like they have. Something to do. A part of that is, um, the challenge, the problem of purpose, which is dealing with the three Ps that we spoke about, which is, you know, uh, the provider procreator, these, these pieces right there.

But the other side of it is socially, I mentioned before that 15% of men have no close friends. That used to be 3%. So that’s increasing the number of men with 10 or more close friends that went from 40% back when your [00:45:00] grandpa was in his thirties to 15%. Now that we are in our thirties, forties, right? So this change is scary.

You called it the loneliness epidemic. Uh, the, um, experts have called it the friendship recession. It’s happening for women two, but nowhere near at the same rate as what it’s occurring for men. Now, is this something that’s out of our control? Certainly not. It’s something that maybe socially is easier or more accepted for women, but this is where men need to step up and put on their big boy pants and just ask a guy, yo wanna hang out.

Right. It, there’s this great saying that, that women bond face to face and men bond, shoulder to shoulder. Women go get a cup of coffee and then they’ll talk and all of a sudden they’re best friends. Men could plow a field, not say a word to each other, but because they’re shoulder to shoulder doing something together, now they’re best friends.

Right? And that’s not always true. But in general that’s what’s true. You do things with men, so ask men to do things. I had a, a buddy here [00:46:00] who he just asked me, and actually tonight we’re doing this, he just, Hey, you wanna go play some ping pong at this local ping pong bar? So we’re just gonna show up late at night and slap ping pong balls around and chat for probably what will become our, that is typically got a negative connotation with it, which is.

Should I ask to hang out? Is that uncool? Am I, am I trying too hard? The answer’s no. And you’ll be rewarded. You’re rewarding your future self if you make the the move to just go ask and, and push this, this loneliness epidemic or friendship recession out. And so what typically happens is we think we’re social because our wives and girlfriends invite us to things, and we’re not going to hang out with our friends.

We’re going to hang out with their friends’ husbands, right? That’s what ends up happening. That is a trap to fall into. That gives the illusion. Of taking control of your social life when in reality you need to have your own social life too. Your social life isn’t, I show up to work and I see my friends there.

Those are [00:47:00] friends you made at work and you happen to see them, but what are you purposefully doing? Who are you purposefully FaceTiming once a week, maybe across the country or the world? Who are you purposefully going out and doing something with? Maybe you’ve got golf buddies. Maybe you go paintballing, maybe you just catch up and watch movies.

Whatever the case may be. There needs to be some, some action on that side from the men’s side, and I can, I’m talking pretty harshly about it, mainly because I’m a, a. Culprit of doing it the wrong way. I’m, I’ve definitely fallen into the trap where it’s just so easy to let life and all the social people that might be there, coincidentally fall into place.

But who are the men that you would actually be friends with if all of those structures of work and church on Sunday and then whatever, um, things that you do week to week, if those will fail, who would you love to keep in contact with? Make the effort to reach out to them. Just send them a text. They’re gonna say yes, they want to hang out with you.

Right. And even if they don’t, [00:48:00] there’s somebody that, that will, the point is that we are, we’re missing that piece. So I don’t know if that’s similar to, to what you’ve seen or experienced or heard about this topic, but that’s typically what I’m seeing. The, the statistics or frankly, just in my personal life,

D Brent Dowlen: oh, we were talking before we started recording.

Right. And I told you an experience when I, I went over to have a cigar with one of my good friends and we met because our wife’s are friends. That’s, that’s how we met. On the, on the happier note, we actually like totally hit it off and we get along great. We’re good buddies now, but like I came over to hang out and to have a cigar.

Uh, he’s got, you know, four kids, so we we’re both very busy and we don’t get to hang out a whole lot. So we try and try and make it purposely, but it’s like, you know, maybe once a month if we’re lucky and we live a mile apart. Right. His daughters gave us so much crap. ’cause I showed up to have a cigar with him, was like, oh dad, your date’s here.[00:49:00]

Oh, they’re so cute. Right. Men have this weird stigma. So much so that like his daughters are, his younger two daughters are best friends with my daughters. Uh, like our families are really, really deeply connected at this point and they still tease us ’cause. It’s so weird for dad to hang out with somebody ’cause dad doesn’t hang out with, and that’s the truth is my friend, that’s one of the reasons we clicked, is neither of us are really good about hanging out with other guys or anyone for that.

Mm-hmm. This is one of my big weaknesses as a man is I have to be really conscious and intentional about hanging out with other people. ’cause I’m an introvert. I, I, which is ironic since I do this for a living, but I’m an introvert. Uh, I, Hey, there’s a reason I’m on this side of the screen. Right?

Kirk Kappelhoff: Right. You don’t

D Brent Dowlen: do these

Kirk Kappelhoff: live

D Brent Dowlen: right?

Yeah, yeah. Uh, no, I’m good. One-on-one. I don’t like groups that really [00:50:00] messes with me. But I would like, my wife laughs ’cause I’m a homebody. I, I would do nothing but hang out with my daughters, my wife. I, I’m that stereotypical, uh, comedy joke, sitcom joke. Uh. You know, I’m the dad who never goes and hangs out with anybody.

I don’t wanna see anybody. I go to work, I work, I come home. I don’t want anything else. I wouldn’t be social if they didn’t make me. And so I’ve had to be really conscious about it over the last several years trying to correct that. So I know I need to be around other men. And so, you know, his daughters tease us ’cause like, oh my God, dad des here.

Right? Because neither of us go and hang out with other guys or anyone. And so while I’ve made conscious choice about the last several years, I’ve gotten involved with like men’s Bible studies and uh, a game night with some of the guys I know and stuff like that, trying to do things purposely. It’s a really like [00:51:00] forced thing for me, but it’s because I’m aware that I need that.

I think a lot of men don’t understand like, no, you, you need that. Your work buddies are, are work buddies. They’re not friends.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Mm.

D Brent Dowlen: I think a lot of men don’t understand, like, you really, for you to thrive as a male, you need to be around other men because it raises your levels. You don’t know what it does for you.

Because at a point in history where we’re more able to connect than any other time in history, we are less connected than we’ve ever been.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Right.

D Brent Dowlen: Like this is, this is, this is the surface level relationship right here.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Mm-hmm.

D Brent Dowlen: Hey, I’m talking to you on the other side of the computer, on the other side of the country and yeah, we’re we’re connected.

Yeah. I was social. Yay. And it, it’s not, it’s not real connection. I think we’ve lost understanding that somehow. I also think that a lot of it has to do with hustle cult. Mm. Like

Kirk Kappelhoff: never stop, constantly work. [00:52:00]

D Brent Dowlen: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Um, there’s been a huge decline in men’s mental health. To me, statist, like I’m looking at the evidence recently.

I’ve been really studying this recently in the decline in men having actual hobbies, right? Our fathers and our grandfathers had hobbies and men go, well, I have a hobby. No, you don’t. If there’s any ramifications of you not doing that thing, you lose income, you lose influence. Right. If there’s any penalty for you not doing it, it’s no longer a hobby.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Sure. Yeah.

D Brent Dowlen: If it’s feeding something, it’s not a other than, I do this for fun if it’s like trying to make you an income or something like that. No, that’s a side hustle. That’s you trying to, but that’s not a hobby. You’re not doing it for the joy of it.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Right, because we don’t think we can. Yeah. What would you do if you were the only person in the world that existed and money, resources, whatever wasn’t an issue?

That’s a hobby. That’s how you can define your hobby. Like [00:53:00] what would you I’d go to a top of building and hit golf balls. I, you know, I’d, I’d probably revert back to video games if I’m being honest, a little bit, if there was no responsibility whatsoever. But those are the things that you’re hobby, and you’re right.

So many people confuse a side gig. Because they, like you said, with hustle culture, they, they go, okay, well I, you know, this is my hobby. It, it can’t be your hobby. If, like you said, there’s anything else that relies on it other than the pure joy of doing it. Meaning if you lost the money, you would stop. If you lost the the person doing it with you, then you’d stop.

Right? That’s not a hobby then. And one of the things that I’ve seen a lot is people when they go, let’s say they start dating, they realize this really quickly because somebody asks ’em, so what do you do for fun? And they have nothing to say. I work and I really like Netflix. Right. Like that’s the, the answer.

And maybe they go to the gym or something like that. But that’s more for, for maintenance than it is for It’s for health. Yeah. True joy. Exactly. So it’s kind of [00:54:00] like, okay, well what are, what are those pieces? And so this is why you can kind of pair a lot of the times your hobby with social, I, I might not go hit, uh, you know, a hundred golf balls at a driving range alone as frequently as I would.

Go do 18 holes with the boys, right? Or I would probably not go to a comedy show alone. But last night I was at a comedy show in New York with my guy friend, right? And actually to your point, the, the com, one of the comedians, you know, the, the heckling comedians called us out and thought we were a gay couple.

Why? Because it was, it just four lads and we were sitting kind of two and two, and they just made the assumption, right? They couldn’t possibly be friends hanging out male friends. That’d be ridiculous, right? And so, uh, I, I couldn’t agree more like investing in these things doesn’t happen by accident.

Everything that we want to improve in life usually comes purposefully. It doesn’t happen accidentally. Maybe your growth as a human from a baby up until you’re, what, 25 years old. [00:55:00] Everything up to there is natural growth. You don’t have to do anything, you’re just developing. But from 25 on, you’re decaying.

And. That is true of everything that is true of your mind, that is true of your body, that is true of your hobbies, that’s true of your social friendships. If you invest in something, it gets better. If you ignore it, you can’t expect it to get better. It just won’t happen. It’s not accidental.

D Brent Dowlen: Alright, Kirk, we gotta pivot a little bit.

Sure. Because we’re gonna run out of time on this thing if I’m not careful. And you know, we’ve talked about several concerns among men at this point. We’ve talked about, uh, the decline in testosterone. We’ve talked about the stress of productivity, life of not having friends. We’ve talked about a lot of things and there’s honestly like that’s why I’m still doing this five years into it.

There’s a lot of things to talk about in the world of men. Uh, we are simple. In some ways we are complex than others, right? Just like any other creature. But I really want to spend the last little bit talking about some solutions. ’cause we can talk about problems, but that’s not [00:56:00] solving anything. So we’re gonna do the impossible.

We’re gonna try and, you know, at least put some guys on the right foot. Give them some steps to start moving towards some solutions and some of these things.

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So what issue do we wanna tackle? What, what are we gonna solve today? World hunger. Oh, now wait. We’re talking about men. What are we gonna solve?

Kirk Kappelhoff: So, so I, I would say this when you’re, when we’re talking about the problems of masculinity, I’ve described a lot of statistics that take things at a macro level here on average are the problems that, uh, men are facing.

Here’s the decline from previous generations of men. Solving those at a macro level is a very different question than solving them at a micro level. For example, Richard Reeves, who identified a lot of those macro level, uh, [00:58:00] trends and I highly recommend his book of Boys and men, um, where he delves into that, he writes to policymakers and his recommendations.

You know, since boys develop more slowly start them in school a year later, since today, we currently have more female fighter pilots in the US Air Force than we do have male primary school teachers. We need to invest more and incentivize more men to become primary school teachers. ’cause the studies show that boys respond better to male teachers than, uh, than they do to female teachers.

And that, and that’s not true of girls. Girls actually respond relatively equally to, uh, female and male teachers. They’re more durable in that sense than than boys are. So he makes these macro level recommendations. I read his book and I was completely convinced of his thesis and topics. But that didn’t help me with my day-to-day life.

How do I, as a guy with these macro level trends in the bottom 90% and the top times said, how do I live my life? What am I meant to change [00:59:00] to ensure that I can maximize my potential potential now that I am a 30-year-old man? Right? What do I do there? And that micro level solution is of a different nature and a different category.

And what, what I did is separated into these eight parts. Because I look, I look at each of these challenges individually, and I tackle them individually at an overall level. The best thing that you can do to solve this is create systems. And systems are a powerful agent for you, ensuring that you live your best life every day.

What I do is, this started with me creating what’s called a perfect day. A perfect day is if I could live this day, every day, what would I have to do for just that day at least. To feel like I lived a, a perfect day. And so for me, I started writing this out and it was, okay, wake up with a glass of lemon water.

I know that’s really good for you. Clears everything out. It’s a great thing to do. Have a cup of coffee, read 10 pages of my book, go on a run, hit [01:00:00] all my work that I need to get done that day. Maybe do a lifting session in the evening. One thing I always struggled with was brushing my teeth twice per day.

I’d always do it in the morning, but then at night I’d always forget and I’d just go to bed. But I know that’s important. So I put that on my, on my perfect day, and I realized, okay, I can live perfect days. But some things aren’t meant to happen every day. Some things should be like three times a week. So I converted this to my perfect week, and now on a Monday, it might say something like, okay, I need to call a friend.

I need to FaceTime a friend. I’ve got a couple in mind, like I’m from Australia so I can call them, or a couple across the country. I can call them, but I need to get in contact with them at least, you know, like a Monday and a Friday. And perhaps I’m not gonna learn language, uh, learn language every day, but I might study it Monday, Wednesday, Friday, something to that effect.

And so this will change based off of my goals at the time. But the point is, I’m developing a system where I can look to it and I’ve done the thinking ahead of time so that when I wake up that day, I don’t need to do the thinking. I already know what I’m gonna do. I can look it up the night before and say, okay, [01:01:00] tomorrow morning I’m waking up at five, I’m going on a run, and then I’m coming back and I’m hitting some of my book.

Right? Whatever that, that might be. And this matters because somebody that reads, reads five pages a day on average finishes eight books a year. That’s eight books. You wouldn’t have touched had you not had the system in place. Somebody that goes to the gym three to four times, uh, per week, puts on 10 to 15 pounds of muscle, especially if they’re a beginner per year and burns an extra 4,000 calories.

Per month, right? This systematic approach to life, it adds up. And so what I encourage men to do is create a system around what you would deem to be your perfect day. And don’t hate yourself when you don’t do it. I have designed many perfect days in perfect weeks, but I have never lived a perfect year. I even struggle to live a perfect month.

There will be something that you’ll inevitably miss, but that’s okay because I guarantee that you will complete more and achieve more in any given week because you tried to adhere to a [01:02:00] system. Then you would if you didn’t have a system at all. And so this is what I call out, just design it. You don’t even have to do it, just design it and then maybe you think about it a little bit more and then maybe one of them becomes a habit after 21 days or so, and then maybe another one does.

But over time you will see results more than if you just didn’t do this at all. So tangibly practical steps, create a system for your life. I’m obviously creating quite, quite a broad system across eight different categories in the form of this book. Those are measurable, those have steps. And the goal is I should be able to, if I, if I do this and live this properly, have the conviction to do so.

Not only develop willpower to do it, but then use that willpower to sustain the other eight challenges that I’m trying to achieve.

D Brent Dowlen: I like the concept because men are at their base creatures of habit. Men actually really tend to thrive when they have a routine more so. It is funny ’cause you know, there’s [01:03:00] obviously exceptions to every role right.

There. There are people who are just thrive on chaos and are, you know, fly by the seat of my pants. The majority of men, I, I hate to use generalizations, but the majority of men actually function best with a structure routine. And so the idea of planning it ahead of time, right. I, I think there’s always value to that.

And I’m, I’m big into block scheduling. That’s part of the way I manage my schedule and my time. And I go farther to like, I have one afternoon that is my daughter’s time period from four o’clock until they go to bed. It, it’s theirs. Nothing else in the world exists on that. I don’t care. I don’t answer calls.

I don’t do work. I don’t do business. I don’t pick up my phone. And so, you know, I’m, I’m a big fan of putting things on the calendar that you wouldn’t think about putting on the calendar necessarily.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Yeah.

D Brent Dowlen: And just blocking that out. So I love the idea that you put on. Hey, I need to call my friend on this day and I’m gonna call this other friend on this day and make sure [01:04:00] I get those connections.

A hundred percent. I love that because as men, were done, right? You were talking about it and I’m thinking, dude, I haven’t called Oliver in months. What the hell? This someone I love like your brother. I’m like, called him in months. ’cause we’re both super busy guys and, and we don’t, we live on the opposite sides of the country and don’t even think about it.

Most of the time it’s like, damn it, I’ve really fallen behind. I haven’t talked to him in months and I should check in with him. Right?

Kirk Kappelhoff: Sure.

D Brent Dowlen: We, we, if you put it on your schedule and on your team, that makes a whole lot more sense that we’re gonna remember those things to do. So I’m loving the idea of a perfect day, starting a perfect day, and then moving to a perfect week and playing out what that actually looks like.

Right. Obviously you can revisit that. Do you revisit yours like quarterly or weekly, or how do you. Yeah,

Kirk Kappelhoff: really good question. I, I don’t have a strict cadence on it. I find some of them are [01:05:00] lifetime items, right? Like if we’re getting really specific, um, I am always going to get outta bed between five and 6:00 AM short of a big wedding the night before, big party or something like that.

That’s five and 6:00 AM that’s just kind of my zone. I’m most productive in the morning, statistically, and whether people feel like it or not, everyone’s. Best time is in the morning. Um, in fact, we have our, our highest level of willpower in the morning. So I say do your hardest things in the morning, which for me is reading.

All my friends would describe me as a reader. They are wrong. I am not a reader. It takes every ounce of willpower in me in the morning, but I make it fun by how I have that glass of water. I put my creatine in it so that I’m getting my five milligrams, and then I sit down, press the coffee machine, and I have my coffee, which is the nectar of life.

And then I read my book. And once I hit 10 pages, maybe I wanna go further. But I, I force myself to get at least that and I don’t enjoy before it. Once I start, I don’t mind it. Right. I actually really like the learning [01:06:00] and everything, but I know how important it’s for me. And so I forced that. Um, tangibly right now, FaceTime a friend that’s never going to disappear.

I always am gonna do that Monday, Wednesday, Friday ish. FaceTime family is also pretty frequent ’cause they’re all back home in Australia writing, right? As I’m writing this book, writing 500 words, that’s one thing that’s gonna disappear after I finish writing the book and revisions and all these different pieces, that’s not gonna stay there forever.

So I might take that off and fill it with something. Maybe I’m happy just leaving it off and having a bit more of a easier perfect week. And another one that I have that kind of goes on and off is eating, um, a home cooked meal. You’re always gonna cook healthier than when, than you will eating out. And so the idea of having a home cooked meal is by default, you are eating healthier.

You are, um, you know, having less grease, less unneeded calories, and then bed by 10:00 PM again, that’s gonna be pretty much of a generic, pretty much, uh, pretty generic for me. And so things like that, those will be either a mix of forever items or things that change, but ultimately what I’m trying to achieve.

Is [01:07:00] that truth that John C. Maxwell always talks about where he says, we don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems. Without a system in place, you could end up anywhere. And ideally we’d just love to continuously hit our goals higher, higher, higher. But the truth is we don’t do that.

What we do is we don’t wanna break promises to ourselves. So when we make a system and we see the structure and we love the organization and our brain’s designed for hierarchy, and we look at that and we go, that’s what I’ve said I’m gonna do, so I’m gonna do it right. That is where we ultimately will see, um, results.

So design the system, the goals piece. We all know how hard it’s to achieve those. The system piece makes it more structured, organized and easier As for reviewing it, um, when it feels like it needs to change, that’s probably the best time to change it. It’s likely not gonna change materially. It’ll be one item removed here, one item added there, something to that effect.

D Brent Dowlen: Now you, you break this into four [01:08:00] major segments in the life. All of these things can be addressed with this idea of designing a perfect day. In a perfect week. You, you can nurture all those areas, uh, and in your case, it sounds like you’re trying to hit, you know, all eight every week and make sure you’re nurturing those things.

But as a guy looks at those four pieces that we covered earlier, go ahead and say them again.

Kirk Kappelhoff: So it’s the men. So you got the four internal, which is the mental, emotional, spiritual, and the physical, and then the, the external challenges of the financial vocational slash professional, and then social and relational.

D Brent Dowlen: So as we’re diving into those guys, right, you’re gonna have times where you are gonna identify where you feel like you are in each one of those things and go, well, you know what? On the spiritual level, I feel like I, I’m really got this. And maybe. Vocationally, I, I got a really great job right now. I feel like I could use some more work relationally, [01:09:00] or, you know, physically, I, I probably should get back in the gym, sitting in the desk chairs, putting on a little, little too much weight, right?

You can shift those things, but there are four, eight areas of your life to tune into all the time and reevaluate periodically, right? Check in with yourself because, you know, catch phrases, but, uh, you know, what, what’s the one you, you, what can be measured can be improved.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Yep. Anything can be measure, can be improved, and that’s actually a great call out for things that can’t be measured.

Do your best to make them measurable. We don’t have an internal clock or an internal calculator for determining how many l uh, words we know in Spanish or Italian or French or whatever language we wanna learn. But Duolingo has a clever way of gamifying language learning by making these little, um, modules and they give you an estimated percentage of how much you know.

When we see progress, we are [01:10:00] incentivized to keep going. Strava is good for running, right? They track a bunch of metrics and you can actually see over time how many miles you’re hitting per week. It’s your average pace, all those different pieces. Um, uh, CrossFit has turned something that’s relatively boring.

Olympic weightlifting into something more fun, which was the CrossFit game and the rise in decline and the injury. All that aside, no one can de deny their popularity and how they now all of a sudden, everybody knows what a clean and jerk is when no one would know what that was before. Gamifying meaning turning something that’s unmeasurable into a measurable item, it works.

And so take those things in your life and make them make them more measurable.

D Brent Dowlen: I, I laugh ’cause. Duolingo will also guilt you if you don’t stay on top of it. Not only do they gamify it, like Duolingo will guilt the crap out of you if you neglect your your language lessons. It blows my mind. [01:11:00] I, I was studying for a trip I was planning to take, so I was trying to, you know, learn some basic, uh, some basic French, right?

I, I knew I couldn’t learn a, a bunch of, like, I wasn’t gonna become fluent, but I was like, okay, I at least want to, you know, be respectful enough to try and have some basic phrases and, and be able to please and thank yous I was raised southern, so I, I have this very polite streak. And please, and thank you.

And sir, ma’am, and you know, basic things like, excuse me, where’s the bathroom? You know, important phrases when you’re in other countries. I stopped doing it ’cause the trip got canceled. And like the little app, the, the face changes on the stupid little app on your phone. Right, right. To show you that you’re neglecting it and send you like guilting emails, Hey, it’s been a while.

Obviously you don’t love me anymore. Like it, it escalates. I was like, wow. Not only do they gamify learning the language, which is a, was a brilliant [01:12:00] idea, but they also like figured out how to build guilt into not using this app. That’s

Kirk Kappelhoff: Oh, it’s incredible. And they try to hide level behind it because they have duo the little bird, which is super cute though.

If anybody else said these things to me, I wouldn’t let it stand. But because duo’s so cute, you actually do feel guilted and you say you go, you have to go into the app and do something about it. I broke my streak a long time ago.

D Brent Dowlen: Oh yeah. Du finally, finally, you know, and the app face looks like a dead bird.

Yeah. You know, it’s got like xs on the eyes and the tongues sticking out. It’s like. Really even the little app display changes on my phone to show you I’m not doing my Duolingo.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Yeah, yeah. I’m very impressed by some of the marketing teams that their Duolingo is one. I don’t know if you’ve seen the ones for Ryan Air.

Have you seen those ones?

D Brent Dowlen: Mm-hmm.

Kirk Kappelhoff: No. Ryan Air’s a very popular budget airline in, in, uh, in Europe, and they totally embrace their cheapness. And so you can imagine when people are like posting on their story like, thanks, Ryanair, and they look at their [01:13:00] window and there’s just no window, it’s just a wall. Uh, they’ll respond back and say something like, Hey, you paid for it.

Like we charge nine euros. Like, suck it up. And so they’ll do things like this, like for honeymoons. They’ll call those people out. They’ve done very well and I think they have more followers than most accounts on Instagram, Twitter, these sorts of things.

D Brent Dowlen: Oh yeah, yeah. There, there’s a, was it one of the fast food joints has gotten really big about.

On, uh, x about just like talking crash about other restaurants and stuff like that. I was like, wow. I never thought I would follow a fast food restaurants account, but we, we all like those little,

Kirk Kappelhoff: yeah. Wendy’s I think is the big one.

D Brent Dowlen: Yeah. They’re, they’ve gotten pretty, he’s like, oh, wow. You’re, you’re not quite Elon Musk level troll, but you’re, you’re growing pretty well there.

Kirk Kappelhoff: And you know, there’s a person behind that. He’s running the show as well.

D Brent Dowlen: Oh, yeah. And, and the fact that they found somebody to do it that well is like, that’s corporate. [01:14:00] Corporate was smart with that one. That’s, this is a good angle for you guys.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Hundred percent.

D Brent Dowlen: Kirk. Um, like, I, I, I really feel like this is such an incomplete conversation.

I feel like we could go for several more hours.

Kirk Kappelhoff: Definitely could,

D Brent Dowlen: but we, we won’t. Guys, let us know if we need to do a part two and carry on this conversation farther. Uh, you know, ping me note, message me, whatever harass. Let one of us know and we’ll, we’ll go on if we need to go on on another show. Kirk, where is the best place for people to connect with you?

Kirk Kappelhoff: Yeah, sure. So, uh, you can find me on Instagram. It’s just my name, Kirk Kalo. It’s like Captain Kirk and Star Trek, and then Kalo is, is with a K and spelled exactly how it sounds. I’m sure it’ll be in the notes here. You can also, I, I talk about all this stuff on, uh, my YouTube channel and so definitely go, go there and take a subscribe if this sort of thing interests you.

You’ll also get to keep up to date with how that book is Perge progressing and, and when that’s coming. And then of course, if you do need to email me, which I actually love ’cause I love hearing [01:15:00] people’s stories, um, with their challenges of masculinity or frankly with what they’re observing. And you’d be surprised how many, um, mothers are reaching out to me about their boys and they’re concerned for them and what either society is throwing at them or what they’re going through.

So that’s, um, definitely an option as well. And that’s just Kurt kapoof@gmail.com. Everything’s just my name because it’s a very unique name. No one’s got that name, so I, I don’t have to describe it at all. Um, so that, that would be the main ways, and I really encourage people to reach out. I get back to literally everybody.

Sure there’ll come a day where that is not feasible, but right now, that’s very feasible. So please share anything, anything you can with me. And yes, of course, we need to touch on the other six sections in detail. And I will gladly come back for a part two.

D Brent Dowlen: And guys, of course, we’ll have all of Kurt’s connection points down in the show notes are the YouTube description.

Wherever you are finding this episode, we’ll have all of this connection points to make sure you can reach him as well. Kurt, let, let’s land this plane. [01:16:00] If the men listening heard nothing else today, what do you want them?

Kirk Kappelhoff: Okay. Um, a good quote by Jim Ron. He said, you can’t change your destination overnight.

You can change your direction overnight. Ultimately, you are in charge of your life and you are not going to make changes today that will change your destination when you wake up tomorrow. It’s just not gonna happen. But you can make changes today that will turn where you’re facing from wherever you think your life will end you up to where you want to be.

And with the mix of systems, with the mix of, uh, a community focusing on the things we’ve spoken about today, all of that’s possible. So if a man is feeling like perhaps he’s in that 90% and not in the 10, but wants to be in that tent, there are things that you can do to get there and the exchanges can [01:17:00] be so immediate such that you stop walking down that road and start walking down this one.

To the men that already feel that they are in that top 10%, which is awesome. Congratulations to you. There’s ways you can give back. You are a perfect example when it comes to the dads look after your family, right? That’s the number one thing. The biggest, um, the biggest contributor to suicide ideation to men feeling purposeless to not contributing back to society is not having a male role model.

So the men that already are a male role model and they have that built in, great. Keep doing that to the men that don’t have kids, right? I don’t have kids, right? What can we do? Big brothers, big sisters, clubs, volunteering at those. There’s one here in New York, which is awesome. That is a ginormous impact on, of course, the kids’ life.

But there has a ripple effect of course, through the families and whatnot. And as much as you might say, well, I don’t know if I’m a great role model. All the studies say that a role model is better than [01:18:00] no role model. And it, there’s just something about accountability, keeping it in check and just knowing somebody’s there watching, maybe going to ask about it that changes your life.

And so I would say to the men that feel like in the bottom 90%, there’s a lot of time and there’s still hope. And to the men that already feel like they’re in the 10%, keep giving back. And there there’s a couple of ways to do it.

D Brent Dowlen: Guys, for Kirk and myself, thanks for hanging out with us today. Be better tomorrow because what you do today and we’ll see you on the next one.

The Driven to Thrive broadcast purpose, growth, and lasting impact for men, helping men go from living to thriving. Purpose-filled intentional lives.