The Distilled Man: Actionable Advice for the Everyday Gentleman

Today we talk with the multitalented Paul Olinger about reinvention, career second-acts, fatherhood, and living your purpose.

Paul Ollinger is a nationally-touring comedian, podcaster and corporate refugee. After 15 years selling advertising for companies like Yahoo! and Facebook (where he was employee #250) Paul launched the comedy career that has taken him all over North America, opening for legends like Norm Macdonald, Dave Attell, Daniel Tosh, and Roseanne Barr.

He has performed in the Laughing Skull, Asheville, Big Pine, Cleveland, DC, San Diego, and North Carolina comedy festivals. Earlier in 2019, he headlined the legendary Carolines on Broadway in New York City.

Paul is the host of the Crazy Money podcast in which he interviews celebrities, authors, and everyday people to explore how money affects their decision-making and happiness. He lives in Atlanta with his wife, two kids, and two goddamn French bulldogs (his words, not mine).

Show notes: http://www.thedistilledman.com/066. Rate and review the episode at http://www.thedistilledman.com/itunes.

Let’s be honest, marriage is a marathon, not a sprint. And even when a relationship starts out strong, over the long haul it’s easy to get mired in the day-to-day grind of life. If you don’t pay attention and constantly nourish that connection, you can start to drift apart from your spouse.

My guest today, Laura Heck, shares how you can recognize the problem areas in your marriage and reignite passion and healthy communication with your wife.

In this episode we talk about the silent killers of long-term relationships—essentially, the subtle signs things aren’t going well—and what you can do to fix them. We also discuss specific strategies for how to create more purpose and meaning in your marriage. Plus, we talk about how you can use roles, goals, symbols and rituals to help dramatically increase your connection with your wife.

Laura Heck is a licensed marriage and family therapist and a Certified Gottman Therapist. Laura has trained, taught, and spoken in front of tens of thousands of couples all over the country about how to create a marriage that thrives instead of one that merely survives. She co-hosts the podcast Marriage Therapy Radio and co-developed Marriage in Motion, a video series for couples. Laura has been a featured relationship expert for Google Talks, the New York Times, Huffington Post, The Art of Charm Podcast and Martha Stewart Weddings, among many. When Laura is not working, she can be found in her lululemon, trail running with her weimaraner puppy, golfing with a double IPA in hand or glamping the National Parks of Utah. You can learn more about Laura by visiting her website www.laurahecktherapy.com or listen to her podcast Marriage Therapy Radio wherever podcasts are found.

Show notes: http://www.thedistilledman.com/065. Rate and review the episode at http://www.thedistilledman.com/itunes.

There’s no doubt that developing a lifelong habit of reading is one of the best ways to increase your wisdom and success in life. As the saying goes, “readers are leaders.”

My guest today has taken this to the extreme. In the past five years, Mani Vaya has read over 1,000 books in the fields of business and personal development. He now reads an average of seven books per week.

In this episode, we talk about why every man should read regularly and widely, along with tricks for how to accelerate the way you absorb information from books. Plus, we discuss the merits of quantity-reading vs. quality-reading, the importance of putting knowledge into action, how to know if a book worth your time, and much more.

Show notes: http://www.thedistilledman.com/064. Rate and review the episode at http://www.thedistilledman.com/itunes.

If you’re single and you’re tired of the stresses and the games of the dating world, this is going to be a great episode for you.

Today, my guest Dr. Robert Glover shares how to cut through the bullshit and fundamentally change your experience of dating and cultivating authentic relationships with women.

In this episode we talk about how men make courtship more difficult than it needs to be. We also talk about why leaning into the discomfort of putting yourself out there helps uncover baggage that may be holding you back in other parts of you life. Plus, we discuss how the women in our lives need to be the “icing,” not the “cake;” how to reframe your mindset around approaching women, how to overcome the fear of rejection once and for all, and much more.

Dr. Robert Glover is the author of No More Mr. Nice Guy and Dating Essentials for Men. His websites drglover.com and datingessentialsformen.com feature tools and resources to help men get what they want in love, life, and sex. Dr. Glover lives in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

Show notes: http://www.thedistilledman.com/063. Rate and review the episode at http://www.thedistilledman.com/itunes.

All of us have experienced anxiety at one point or another. Sometimes it seems like we’re at the whim of our thoughts and emotions—stuck in a negative spiral we can’t control.

The good news is, there is something we can do about it.

Today on the podcast, Dr. Loretta Breuning talks about how we all have the power to control our brain chemicals—so we can tame anxiety and actively move towards happier thoughts and feelings.

In this episode, Dr. Breuning shares her 3-step “taming tool” for reducing anxiety when it rears its ugly head. We also dive into the essential brain chemicals that govern our emotions and how they evolved to help us survive as mammals; why anxiety and emotional ups and downs are perfectly natural, how the brain wiring we created in childhood legitimately does affect our thinking patterns as adults, how to break those patterns, and much more.

Show notes: http://www.thedistilledman.com/062. Rate and review the episode at http://www.thedistilledman.com/itunes.

Some people seem to have all the luck. You know, those people for whom opportunities just magically appear out of thin air? They always get that callback, that big promotion just lands in their lap, AND they get the girl.

Is it just luck or is there more to it?

In this week’s episode, my guest Karla Starr and I discuss a very serious question: can you create your own luck? We talk about the subtle things that lucky people do differently, why just showing up is often the key to success, how to recognize fundamental cognitive biases and use them to our advantage, and much more.

Show notes: http://www.thedistilledman.com/061. Rate and review the episode at http://www.thedistilledman.com/itunes.

For many of us, the idea of ditching our job and traveling the world for years at a time seems like a pipe dream reserved for the rich. But if you have the right mindset—and budget wisely—pretty much anyone can quit the cube life, grab a pack and hit the road.

My guest today has spent the last 10 years traveling the world as a 21st century nomad. In that time, he not only survived but also built up a budget travel empire that continues to grow.

In this episode we talk about the biggest misconceptions about long-term travel, unorthodox tips for how you can save money while traveling, how to make friends as a solo traveler, and much more.

Matthew Kepnes runs the award winning budget travel site, Nomadic Matt. He's also the author of the New York Times best-seller How to Travel the World on $50 a Day as well as the upcoming travel memoir, Ten Years a Nomad. His writings and advice have been featured in The New York Times, CNN, The Guardian UK, Lifehacker, Budget Travel, BBC, Time, and Yahoo! He also regularly speaks at travel trade and consumer shows, owns a hostel in Texas, and launched a non-profit called FLYTE, which empowers students from underserved communities through transformative travel experiences.

Show notes: http://www.thedistilledman.com/060. Rate and review the episode at http://www.thedistilledman.com/itunes.

Even if you were exposed to classic literature in school, unless you’re a scholar you probably aren’t reading 500-year-old books on a regular basis.

But my guest today argues that the great books of the Western Canon still have a lot to teach us.

Scott Hambrick is the founder and reader-in-chief at Online Great Books, an online community developing classically educated men and women using the Great Books of Western Civilization.

In this episode, we talk about why the great books are considered the “Great Books”, why the order in which you read them matters, how these classic works can still be extremely relevant to our lives today, and much much more.

If you’ve always been interested in digging into classic literature but didn’t know where to start, this is a great episode for you.

Show notes: http://www.thedistilledman.com/059. Rate and review the episode at http://www.thedistilledman.com/itunes.

If you’re at all familiar with the world of men’s websites, you’ve probably heard of today’s guest—Brett McKay of the Art of Manliness.

Brett originally started the Art of Manliness while in law school as something fun to do in his spare time. He’s since grown the site into the largest independent men’s interest magazine on the web.

In this episode, we discuss the challenges that men face in the 21st century, why the term “manliness” is often misunderstood, the importance of mentorship and rights of passage, what it means to live well as a man, and much more.

Show notes: http://www.thedistilledman.com/058. Rate and review the episode at http://www.thedistilledman.com/itunes.

Some stats say that seventy percent of Americans aren’t passionate about the work they do.

And there are a lot of people on the internet selling the dream of “quit your day job and pursue your passion.” But sometimes the actual steps to get there are a little fuzzy. Even with conventional career searches, there’s a lot of bad advice out there.

My guest today, Ken Coleman has created a proven framework that gives you a specific roadmap for how to get closer to doing the work you love. In this episode, Ken breaks down the components of this strategy, which he calls the Proximity Principle. We get into the specific types of People, Places, and Practices that you need to focus on in order to make real progress towards landing your dream job.

Show notes: http://www.thedistilledman.com/057. Rate and review the episode at http://www.thedistilledman.com/itunes.