Knowledge For Men Archives

John Lee Dumas is the host of the wildly successful 7-day podcast, Entrepreneur on Fire, and creator of several high level masterminds and business courses for aspiring entrepreneurs and podcasters. John has created a multimillion dollar company with Entrepreneur on Fire and continues to grow his brand and business with books, courses, and seminars.

“Try not to become a person of success but rather a person of value”~Albert Einstein

1. Work on Being of Value

So often in today’s society and achievement driven market place, we focus so heavily on being a man of success that we forget to be a man of value.

We worry more about how others perceive us and how our possessions are ranked against other men that we never pause and slow down to realize that the important thing is who you are and not what you have.

So focus on being a man of value, a man of character, of honesty, of kindness, and compassion, and everything else will follow.

2. Embrace the 7-2 Lifestyle 

If you want to experience financial freedom and really live the life of your dreams, you need to get on your grind and embrace the 7-2 lifestyle. Aka working from 7 p.m. to 2 a.m.

If you have a family, with bills, a house and all the other bells and whistles and you aren’t pleased with where you are, then investing your time in the evenings on your side hustle is truly the best way to escape the grind and achieve the financial freedom you desire.

3. Provide Great Value and the Money will Come 

Most of us who start businesses expect to see revenue flow immediately, however, this is almost never the case. If you want to build a kickass income online, then you have to start with offering kickass value for free to your audience.

You have to give away your best work, build trust and get raving fans, and after a period of time (it took John 9 months of daily podcasts before he made any income) you will reap the financial rewards.

4. Invest in Yourself and Get Out of Your Comfort Zone

People will often say that once they are successful, then they will start investing in themselves, in their health, their knowledge, their abilities etc. however the truth is that you will never achieve any real success until you start investing in yourself and getting outside of your comfort zone.

The quickest way to ensure financial freedom and success is through massive personal development, because their is rarely a man who’s income exceeds his level of personal development.

Realize that this doesn’t have to be expensive either. You can rent a book from a library, find old personal growth tapes online, take cold showers, journal, or even use your work as a way to grow your patience and tenacity. Do whatever you have to do, but keep on growing.

5. Balance is Key

For type-A “alpha” males, taking time off and balancing their work and life is often difficult. It’s difficult to make time for yourself, to just allow yourself to relax and watch TV or go out at the end of the day, but it is necessary.

Unless you are a somewhat crazy, Gary Vaynerchuk type guy who derives all of his fulfillment from work and achievement, taking time for yourself and taking time to build relationships and fun into your life is a must.

So treat yo’self and just relax.

Scott Brennan is the president and chief accelerated success expert at BOLDbreak, Inc.  He has formerly been an award-winning business owner as well as an award-winning and successful corporate executive, repeatedly leading his teams to develop and deliver innovative services to the marketplace.

Scott is now an award-nominated-author of the book, “The Surging Team“, which was honored as an Award-Winning Finalist in the Business Management & Leadership category by the 2015 USA Best Book Awards and is now available on Amazon, as well as the author of an innovative video training series, “10 BOLDskills for Accelerated Team Success“, as an exciting companion resource to his book.

“If you are frozen by fear, look down, stay in your three-foot world and take one step forward at a time”~Mark Owen

1. Learn to be on the Lookout for Opportunities within the Problems

So often the difference between a successful person and a failure is simply perspective.

One will choose to see a set of circumstances as an opportunity, another as a problem. The better you can become at asking quality questions and searching for the opportunity in adversity, the more successful you will be.

So often it has been said that the greatest fortunes are made during the greatest recessions and this is true in life as well, if you can find a way to make any challenge or “failure” a positive, you will succeed at whatever you set your mind to.

2. Engage Your Team with Stories 

If you are looking to build a dynamic and surging team, it is essential that you engage the team in whatever task they have before them. The greatest way to achieve this is through the art of storytelling.

Learn to craft masterful stories about where the team is headed, to tell masterful stories about adversity that has been overcome and successes in the past, and you will have a team with an unstoppable connection and vision.

3. Learn to Build on Strengths

The greatest mistake any leader can make is placing his subordinates in a place of weakness. Often, team members with excellent potential must be let go simply because upper management never bothered to find out what they were really good at and what made them tick and therefore put them in a place where they could not thrive.

Do yourself and your team a favor and take some time to connect with them, learn their strengths, learn their weaknesses, and put them in positions reflective of their personality. When you do, your team will develop unstoppable momentum in business and in life.

4. Relationships Matter

At the heart of everything we do in this life is relationships. They amplify the human experience and give some sense of meaning to our confusing and often frustrating existence. If you get the relationship piece right, your life will be full and joyful, if you get it wrong, no amount of success will fulfill you.

Dr. Mark Goulston has been described as a “people hacker.”Starting off as a clinical interventional psychiatrist and UCLA professor of psychiatry, he learned to “hack” into the minds of suicidal and potentially violent individuals to prevent acts of destruction to others or themselves.

He next went on to train FBI and police hostage negotiators. He has since expanded his work to “Hacking Genius” and speaks and provides webinars internationally on: “Thinking Like Steve Jobs – How to Create ‘Gotta Have It.'”His company, The Goulston Group, is hired by Founders, CEO’s and Boards of Directors to help them create a “gotta have it!” response to their services and products (which seamlessly translates into “gonna buy/hire it,” a “gotta work there” response in outside talent they’re recruiting, a “gonna get it done” response from employees and a “gotta invest there” response in investors.

He contributes to the Harvard Business Review, Huffington Post, Fast Company, Business Insider and writes the “Closing Bell” for C-Suite Quarterly Magazine. Frequently called upon to share his expertise with the media, he has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Newsweek, Time, and Reuters; has offered commentary on NPR, CNN, and Fox News; and has appeared on the Oprah and Today shows. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

Dr. Goulston is also the author of Just Listen and several other best sellers.

“Be a first class noticer”~Warren Bennis

1.  Learn to Notice & Listen into People

One of the most important skill anyone can develop is listening, not just listening however, listening into people. Listening into someone means learning to read between the lines and past the ambiguity to get to the bigger picture.

What is really going on in their lives? What are they really saying?

Listening into someone requires that you “listen” to their body language, their facial expressions, their tone of voice, and any other nonverbal signals. Listen to more than just the words, listen to them. Feel for them, put yourself in their shoes.

2. Deepen the Conversation to Get to the Root

In any relationship that you are in, the best way to diffuse a fight is to get to the root, to deepen the conversation and understand what is really going on and to approach it from their side.

An example with a wife who’s complaining about a husband who never helps around the house could go something like this

“I know that I have been really busy at work recently, and I bet that it has put a lot of stress on you, especially since I haven’t had as much time for you or the kids and haven’t been helping out like I normally do. I understand it’s not fair to y’all and I’ll make it a priority to do more moving forward.”

What the man is doing in this example is cutting to the root of the problem by listening into the conversation and then diving deeper. He doesn’t leave it at the surface level of how he’s not taking out the trash, he dives deeper and brings up his work schedule and how he hasn’t prioritized family.

The interesting thing is, this conversation will likely end with his wife apologizing! Whenever you let your guard down, whenever you are honest and open yourself up and are no longer on the defensive or offensive, but are on the other person’s side, your whole world changes.

3. Learn to be Tender

One of the hardest things for a man, especially someone who is much more “alpha” than the normal guy, to do is to learn to be tender. It’s learning just to feel for someone without having to fix them or change them. It’s learning to be present and give them your full attention and to cry with them, laugh with them, smile with them, or simply be with them.

Being tender is not easy, but it will transform your intimate relationships quicker than anything else. Put aside the macho facade every once in a while and just be tender.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby holds a PhD in counseling psychology and is a licensed marriage and family therapist. She is also a board-certified life coach based in Colorado.

Dr. Bobby has appeared numerous times on news programs around the country (FOX 5 New York, CBS News Denver, FOX 35 Orlando) as a relationship expert, and has been featured on Time.com and in the New York Post, Natural Health magazine, and New York Magazine. She is one of nine national dating coaches trained at the headquarters of Match.com and is a featured expert with EXaholics.com, a 12-step breakup recovery platform.

“Act from your values instead of your feelings”

1. Internalizing Your Problems will not Solve Them 

So often as men, after something that is emotional and difficult, we decide to internalize our emotions due to the societal conditioning (e.g. just be a man and get over it). However, this path rarely if ever is the solution.

Men were made for companionship and finding a friend or family member who can help them cope with the pain and be there to hold the space whenever they are struggling is absolutely essential.

If you are not already, find a mentor or a men’s group where you can be yourself and talk about your issues without judgement. Breakups suck, they suck worse alone.

2. Stressful Relationships Create More Intrigue 

One of the more interesting things about relationships is that relationships which have an element of “stress” or uncertainty and mystery tend to be more intense and more emotional, regardless of how much face time you got with the person.

As your emotions are triggered with all of the excitement and confusion around your partner and their upcoming actions, you begin to become emotionally invested. This is why relationships that may have been short lived can still be emotionally devastating when they finish.

Realize that stressful relationships are a double edged sword. While they can elicit a great response from women and create a number of amazing adventures together, they can also do a lot of emotional damage if not handled properly.

3. You Have to Realize that Ex-aholism is a Genuine Problem

Because of how our society views break ups and relationships, it is often easy to fall into the trap of believing that ex-aholism is not a real problem, even when you find yourself up until the early hours of the morning Facebook stalking your ex girlfriend.

Like any addiction, the first step to recovery is admitting that your ex is a problem and is still plaguing your emotional life. Once you do this, you are operating from a place of power where you can move forward in your recovery.

4. This too Shall Pass

Something you must realize as you go through all the phases of recovery is that this too shall pass. Your biochemistry is messed up from the last relationship and it’s a natural part of human life. Realize this and accept that there will be pain for a while but there will be a light at the end of the tunnel.

You will be able to move on and have the relationships you’ve been wanting for so long. You will create the life you have been dreaming of and you will no longer struggle with depression over your ex.

This too shall pass, just hold on and make it through.

Ellen Nyland, author of Life is Great Even when it Sucks, has faced many challenges in life and overcome them with insight, humor and intelligence. She successfully negotiated living and balancing the personal and business relationship demands faced by living and working on the same farm with four generations in close proximity.

Ellen has been an unofficial life coach and source of counsel for a long time, but it was after her move from the Netherlands to Canada in 1998 that she became a certified professional co-active coach in 2008. Ellen saw and helped many people and families deal with the stresses put on personal and family relationships.

Ellen’s biggest passion in life is to empower others and help them discover their own magnificence. Ellen uses her own life story and the examples of others to show that the system she’s discovered through experience and study can help others move positively past their barriers to a more fully lived

“When you don’t love and respect yourself then it is impossible to love and respect others”

“If you feel stuck, always do something”

1. Be the Lead Actor of Your Own Life 

Often times it is easy to allow others to take the lead role in your life by allowing the standards and beliefs of family, friends and society to dictate your actions instead of following your own beliefs, dreams, and goals.

If you wish to live a life of success, you must become the lead actor in your life. You are the only constant and therefor you must take total responsibility for everything in your life. While you can still listen to the advice of others and take the consequences of your actions into account before acting, remember that you are the one who is ultimately responsible, not your parents, your friends, or your society.

2. Attitude is Everything

Life can suck. It can suck and we can’t control it. Children get sick, businesses fail, friends die, bad things happen. No one who has ever been born or will ever be born can face a life completely void of pain, but we can all face the pain a little bit better than we are now.

While you can’t change the inevitability of suffering, you can change your attitude towards it. If you face adversity by asking how it will make you stronger and better equip you to live out the purpose God has put on your life, then you will become infinitely more powerful than you ever imagined and the pain that you face will have purpose.

3. In Relationships you Must Grow in the Same Direction

As men, it is often easy to get sucked into relationships based purely upon physical attraction without much thought about the congruency of our partner’s mission and purpose. Whenever you are considering getting into a serious relationship, you need to examine your partner’s path and ensure that you are both growing in the same direction.

4. Build Your Toolbox 

One of the most important things you can do for yourself and your future is to build your emotional ‘tollbox’ or your character. Focus on building yourself into the person that you need to become to achieve your goals. Build your integrity, your honor, your honesty, your kindness, your empathy, your compassion, your drive.

Build yourself up until success is inevitable. Because as Jim Rohn says, your level of success will rarely exceed your level of personal development.

Cade Courtley was born in Columbus, Ohio and raised in Boulder, Colorado where he spent much of his early life in the outdoors. He graduated from the University of San Diego with a degree in Business Administration and was commissioned (ROTC) into the United States Navy as an Ensign.

A standout from the beginning of his military career as a Naval Officer, Courtley was the Class Leader in his BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/ SEAL) training.  After 19 months, two Hell Weeks, broken left leg (twice), a broken right leg, and a fractured skull, LT Courtley graduated (CLASS 202) and became a Navy SEAL.  He was then chosen to attend the elite SEAL Sniper school, privilege only given to a select few.

His strong background in military Special Operations made him the obvious choice to Host and Produce the Spike TV/Discovery International original series “Surviving Disaster” (2010) that to date has aired in over 150 countries. Author can now be added to Courtley’s list of accomplishments when the folks at Simon & Schuster decided to publish SEAL Survival Guide “A Navy SEAL’s Secrets to Surviving Any Disaster.” (2012) As well as Host of the original TV series “America Unplugged” (2014) Cade is also the founder of Victory Coffee.

“If it was easy everyone could do it”

“You have to get your ass kicked every once in awhile”

1. You Need to Constantly be Challenged

One of the reasons that Navy SEALs are the best of the best is because they are always being challenged and forced to grow. Obvious from their motto “The only easy day was yesterday” Seals believe that to be the best, you have to push yourself beyond your perceived limits, and they do this every single day of training.

Whether or not you want to be a SEAL, the lesson remains the same. Men need challenge, they need adventure, they need to do something other than sit in a damn cubicle.

Start challenging yourself today. Get outside, exercise, take a cold shower, give up a bad habit, learn a martial art; do whatever you need to do to get out of your comfort zone and stretch yourself to new limits.

2. You have to Find a Strong Why 

At BUD/s there is an attrition rate of nearly 80%, meaning that for every 10 recruits who show up on day one of training, 2 will graduate. Although there doesn’t appear to be much rhyme or reason as to who makes it and who doesn’t physically, the one thing that all successful SEALs have in common is a strong why.

You have to have a strong enough reason why you are doing what you are doing to get you through the inevitable shitty times. Whether you are in entrepreneurship, fitness, family or war, you have to have a reason for what you are doing and it has to be strong.

3. Train in Peace so You Don’t Bleed in War

One of the core principles of SEAL training is to sweat hard in peace, so you bleed less in war. In layman’s terms, this means that you have to put in the work before the shit hits the fan.

You must develop yourself into a grounded, self reliant man before you meet the woman of your dreams, you must save up and be financially intelligent before recession hits, you must work hard at your fitness before some sort of physical disaster arises.

Prepare now so that you have peace of mind later.

4. Find Your Passion and Follow It 

Life is freaking short. Too damn short to waste in a cubicle doing something that is uninspiring and boring. Find your passion and follow it, because God only knows when your last day is.

You might not have another tomorrow and the worst thing in the world would be to get to the other side and think to yourself “Damn I really blew it, did I even matter?”

Do yourself a favor. Follow your passion and make your life count.

Ex-Googler Filip Syta left the tech world to write books and his debut literary novel tells you why — in a satirical, true and unsavory tale, revealing the savagery beneath the shiny veneer of Silicon Valley.

In 2011, Syta graduated with a master’s degree in entrepreneurship from Lund University, Lund, Sweden. He aspires to make readers identify the truly important things in life.

“Find what you love and let it kill you”~Charles Bukowski

1. Never Allow Life to Rob you of Self Reliance 

Often times it is easy to become complacent and allow life to rob you of your self reliance. You find a job with great benefits, you find a wife who takes care of all of the chores, whatever happens, life becomes too cozy.

As a great Persian general once said “Soft lands make for soft people”

Never become soft. You need to be able to take care of yourself and get things done, if you can’t be dropped into a new city all by yourself, find a job, run a household, and build a social life, then something needs to change.

2. Focus on Your Passion not Your Paycheck 

People often spend so much time following the money, doing things that make the miserable, doing things that take away from their family lives, that take away from their health, and destroying your relationships.

While money is important and necessary, doing things that you love and making an impact is far more important. At the end of the day, the cars you drove and the houses you lived in won’t matter. The 0s at the end of your paycheck won’t matter, but what will matter is how you lived your life, the people you impacted, and the passion that filled your days.

3. The Rewards are There 

Whenever people talk about passion and pursuing your dreams, there is also an inevitable conversation about “the grind,” because greatness doesn’t come without struggle. Following your passion is hard, doing what you love is hard. It is much easier to simply find a safe job that you don’t hate, get into a comfortable relationship that you know will, at best, be mediocre, and not get fat.

Putting it all on the line and struggling through low income, loss of love and friendship to achieve a distant goal is difficult. However, the rewards are there. Once you put the work in, you will see results. Don’t stop 3 feet from gold.

Keep pushing and pursue your dreams because the rewards are there.

The CEO of Global Equity Finance, Cornell Ho is a prolific entrepreneur and former top salesman currently responsible for one of the fastest growing mortgage companies in the world.

“Success only comes when you cut the chains of excuse and blame”

1. Be Completely Focused Sunday through Thursday

One of the keys to success is to master your energy by showing up to work at 100% everyday of the week. This means showing up well rested and not hungover Monday through Friday and letting your hair down and going crazy on Saturday and Sunday.

If you get 8 hours of sleep throughout the week and show up to work fully charged and focused, ready to kick ass and take names, you will out perform every other person at the office. However, if you are up late, drinking or fooling around after work, you will show up the next day lagging and your performance will suffer.

Work hard? Yes. Play hard? Yes.

2. Learn to Master Time Management 

Nothing will impact the end result of your life more than one thing; how you manage your time.

Every single one of us are given exactly 24 hours in a day, nothing more, nothing less. How you manage those 24 hours will determine the quality of your weeks, months, years, and ultimately your life.

The key to mastering your time is to master your focus. When you are working, work. When you are relaxing, relax. When you are with family, be with family. Do not allow yourself to be distracted by external stimuli and thoughts about other tasks. Focus 100% on the thing at hand.

3.  Find what Motivates You

One of the keys to achieving highly is to find what motivates you. Cut and dry.

Do you enjoy competition? Recognition? Financial Incentives? Impact? Advancement?

Figure out what makes you tick and create a reward system centered around it.

Megan Tull is a master business strategist specializing in assisting entrepreneurs in turning their passion into a highly profitable business they love and the author of The Passion Belief Method

“Be courageous, take action, and share your gifts with the world”

1. Your Why is One of the Most Important Parts of Success

In the interview, Megan talked about how losing her husband and becoming a single mother became the fuel for her to succeed. With a strong enough why, anything is possible.

If you desire success on any large scale, having a powerful ‘why’ is a must. You have to know why you want what you want and why you are willing to make the sacrifices that you will inevitably have to make to succeed.

2. Don’t Settle 

Today, so many people settle for living lives that they aren’t passionate about they ascribe to the old adage that “Life’s a bear and then you die.” If you are living a life where you feel you are settling, something needs to change.

If you are struggling to figure out what it is that you want to do, what you are passionate about, what you could make of your life, then ask yourself these three questions.

1. What do I love to do 2. What do I do that I cant help but do 3. What do people tell me that I am good at

3. Learn to Set Your Intentions

One of the most essential habits of success is setting your intentions each day. Start your mornings by reminding yourself of what you are grateful for, what your goals are, and what you want to do with your life.

By doing this everyday, you will ensure that you remain focused on the positives of life and the goals that you have set for yourself and your future.

In the last 28 years, Akash has recovered from a life of drugs at a young age to now living a full life. Since then he has been skydiving, cave diving, ice diving, scuba diving, He spent 7 months in a war zone with the US Marines, climbed mountains all over the world, climbed vertical cliffs without the safety of a rope, started two businesses, spoken on a stage at a fortune 100 company, spent one month dragging a 190 pound sled 350 miles across the second largest icecap in the world and is now training to run across every country in the world.

He has also authored the book The Other Side of Fear which launches in Spring 2016.

“Earning success is hard. The process is laborious, tedious, sometimes even boring. Becoming wealthy, influential, and world-class in your field is slow and arduous.”~Darren Hardy

1. Learn to Suffer Well 

Suffering is inevitable in life. No one makes it through without some pain, however what determines your capacity as a man and as a world changer, is your ability to suffer well, to laugh in the face of adversity and smile in the face of death, to, as Rudyard Kipling put it “Hold on when there is nothing in you, save the will which says ‘hold on.”

If you can learn to embrace suffering as an inevitability in life and, instead of avoiding it, seek to turn it into your asset by learning and growing from the pain… there is nothing that you cannot do.

2. Learn to Change Your Mindset Around Stress

One of the keys to mastering stress is mastering your mindset around stress. Learn to make the sh!t storms of life a game that you play with a smile, seeing how high of a tolerance you can build for pain and discomfort. Learn to view stress as an opportunity to grow and you will find yourself growing more than you ever thought possible.

3. Harness the Power of Psychology

You need to understand that your brain is not always your friend. It wants to keep you safe and alive, and as such, it does not always have your best interest at heart. If you want to become a master at the game of life, you need to learn to harness the power of psychology.

Learn to reduce the amount of choices you have to make in a given day and to build a spiral of upward momentum that will carry you through challenging times.

Throw out your junk food, but your gym clothes next to your alarm clock, avoid bars and ABC stores, do whatever you have to do to program yourself for success. Use the power of psychology and momentum to ensure your success every day.

4. Create a Powerful Environment 

Environment always trumps willpower, and as such, it is important to create an environment conducive to success. Plaster your walls with success quotes and inspirational pictures and people, throw out your junk food, build a home gym, toss out your TV, do what is necessary to create a home base that is constantly reminding you of your goals, dreams, and ambitions.