Episode #1000
After 1,000 episodes, we’re still getting the same core questions from men: “Why won’t my wife forgive me?”, “Why doesn’t she feel safe?”, and “Why is nothing I do ever enough?” In this episode, we’re cutting the fluff and giving you direct, honest answers.
Doug and Tim reflect on what’s really going on in your relationship—and how to start fixing it without trying harder or doing more of the wrong things. Whether your marriage feels stuck, your wife feels distant, or you’re just tired of trying to guess what she needs, this episode is for you.
It’s not about chasing her approval. It’s about learning to lead again—from a place of calm, grounded strength.
Grab a beer (we did), press play, and let’s talk man-to-man about what actually works.
Want to know where things really stand in your marriage—and what to do about it?
Start with a quick gut check: take the free Married Businessman Assessment to get clear on what’s working, what’s not, and what to do next.
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Transcription
Doug Holt 0:00
So maybe your wife says too, or maybe she hasn’t grown, and you have these things happen, but 90% of the time, Tim, when I hear this question, What am I doing wrong with my wife? No matter what I do, it’s never enough. You’re doing the wrong things, and odds are you’re focused on what she is saying she wants, and not showing up as the man she knows you could be.
Doug Holt 0:35
Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the TPM show, and once again, Tim Matthews back in the saddle, guys, this is our 1,000th episode, and today we’re going to go over the top three questions that we get from men all over the world, and Tim and I are going to answer those. But Tim, 1000 episodes, who would have thought back in the day when we hit that record button to record our first one.
Tim Matthews 1:02
Yeah, I know a scary thing. My background hasn’t changed much since
Doug Holt 1:09
your hair has, though your hair has, my
Tim Matthews 1:11
hair has, but yeah, man, I mean, I can remember you saying it. Hey, I think we should do a podcast. It’s gonna take a while, like it’s gonna take a few years, but I really think it’d be a great idea. I said, Let’s do it. And here we are, 1000 episodes later. It’s crazy. We’ll get
Doug Holt 1:29
into these questions, guys, because I know you guys want these, and our goal for this episode one is we’re gonna celebrate a little bit with you guys, right? This is a monumental achievement for the movement, and we are going to get to these three questions. I think answering these three questions, you know, these are, this is an episode you’re gonna want to save, because these are questions men ask time and time again. But yeah, Tim back back in the day, we didn’t do video, right? We did audio only. It was during COVID When we started, if I recall correctly, or just before, maybe even, okay, yeah, I remember the house that I was in. So we have over 1 million downloads of this pod, over 1 million downloads. And just think of the ripple effect and impact from men all over the world who have come in and out of the movement. Some men have been in the movement for a very long time. Just was chatting, and I got to get back to him. Mike D, so guys from all over, he was at the second ever Alpha Reset. And you know, men still giving back, giving back to other men and and really doing from a place of love and power. We talk about the powerful man. And it’s not about your muscle size or any of that. It’s about the power from within and man celebrating this podcast you and I would get on and just talk from our hearts about what was going on and what we were hearing from the men.
Tim Matthews 2:53
You’re gonna crack up beer. I really want to drink my beer.
Doug Holt 2:55
So gentlemen, we are gonna be celebrating on this There you go.
Tim Matthews 3:01
Mine is northern monk faith,
Doug Holt 3:06
northern monk faith, nice. I went for a more responsible version. Mine is the founders all day. IPA. It’s a session. IPA, so less
Unknown Speaker 3:15
alcohol. It’s not double. I
Doug Holt 3:19
do have another beer over here, though, just in case the mood strikes.
Tim Matthews 3:22
Yeah, that first podcast I was in the office at Johnny’s, and then from there, we went to the house I lived in, in Roundy, where you came and visited. Then after two years of living there, then COVID hit. Because I remember COVID Hitting on the way back from The Alpha Reset in oh, what Beach was it? It was somewhere down there, Florida. Body had not Aspen had just been born. Oh, yeah, okay, I think was Aspen had just been born at that reset. So you weren’t there, Mr. Peach and Mr. Jack, were the volunteers, and that was the reset with force of nature. That was his first reset. He’s been to two, but that was his first reset with Craig, Denton, Houston, Jake and a lot of those other guys. And then on the way back from that reset, I remember being in the airport, and Amelia calls me, and she’s like, Hey, a lot of flights are getting canceled. Just one, make sure you get back, and two, just make sure you don’t catch that illness that people are catching. And I’m like, I’ve been in a reset, right? So I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. And I remember being sat, I think in Dallas airport, was it? And flight after flight was just getting canceled. It was nuts. It was crazy. People were panicking. And anyway, I got home, luckily, and then a few days later, everything just shut down.
Doug Holt 4:52
Yeah, yeah. Now that you say that, because the reason I was thinking, I was thinking of the background or the how from the first be. Video we have on YouTube, the house that we were in because Aaron and I were traveling. Remember, we were mobile for a year, but yeah, what a crazy time, right? We totally twisted what we were doing for TPM, trying to serve men. I remember we put some emergency trainings on trying to help guys with their finances, with their business with their health. Bring in some experts. You know, the movement has just continued to grow. And seeing these men, you know, saving their marriages, more importantly, saving themselves, you mentioned the reset for those guys that are newer to the showThe Alpha Reset is our transformational four day program where man just go to the website and look at the reviews men, just like you, completely changed. It’s like men finding the real man inside them for the first time probably ever.
Tim Matthews 5:51
Yeah, it’s incredible. It really is, I mean, to consider all the men and all of the families, all of the lives, all of the tattoos the men have got since then. It’s just remarkable. It’s crazy.
Doug Holt 6:07
It has been. And then the offshoots, the the powerful Christian man, you know, men coming into the movement, uh, recognizing that the the teachings that we have at TPM bring them closer to their faith. Now we’re not a faith based group at all. So fact, there was a question came up yesterday, Tim, I don’t know if you saw it. There was a guy coming to an Alpha Reset, and he said, Hey, look, I’m a little worried that this is going to affect my faith, my walk with Christ. And I found it really interesting. So he posted that. And men from the powerful Christian man community, so it’s one of our sub communities and our private app came in to said, hey, look, it brought me closer, like it was man after man after man. He didn’t have to hear it from us, right? Because he wanted to hear from other guys who were walking that walk. And then, you know, other men that are going around giving back volunteering, helping people starting non profits. You know, really looking at their legacy of life. Once they’ve they’ve solved the crux of the two entry points we help. One is how to save your marriage without talking about it with the activation method. The second entry point coming, which was our original program, it helps men get unstuck and get clear.
So maybe their marriage is great, but they’re kind of in that place of like, Huh? I’m just not sure what’s next. And so we have these two divergent groups coming into the movement. And then once these men solve this problem, they become unleashed, like getting unplugged from the Matrix. It’s been absolutely amazing. And guys, for those that don’t know, our mission at TPM, and the mission with this show, is to save the children by saving their fathers first. And so that’s where I get emotional, man, when I think of these the South, you know, 1000 episodes here, and all the emails and DMS that I’ve gotten over the years, and I’m sure you have Tim guys that haven’t invested a penny with us, there’s like, Hey, I listened to your podcast, and you guys really lay it all out, and it saved my marriage, or it saved my relationship with my child, or so many men that have walked off, you know, walked away from the edge right, looking over the edge, thinking that they needed to find a permanent solution for a temporary problem. And a lot of men writing us just saying, Hey, I was suicidal, and that really brought me through. And then just to think it’s two just regular dudes, you know, we’re not perfect at all. We’re walking the journey just like everybody else. We just happened to be maybe a little further ahead in some areas, and just two guys from different parts of the world, different backgrounds, just trying to make the world a better place.
Tim Matthews 8:42
I love that so true. It is true. Well, let’s get you and I connected
Doug Holt 8:48
you and I connected is a funny story. We should do a podcast on that alone, but that’s not for this one. So I want to deliver value like we have for this past 999 episodes. Guys, if you want to laugh, go back and YouTube. I think we have some of the first ones of Tim. And I, you know, you’ll see the evolution and the businessmen that are on here, or any man that’s listening to this. And then some, we have a lot of women actually listen to the show. You’ll laugh and chuckle to yourself. We’re real guys, right? We’re the guys you’re going to meet at the barbecue or at the kids Little League game, doing the best we can. And it’s just so funny to see that evolution, absolutely hilarious. And
Tim Matthews 9:28
if you pay close attention, you’ll see when Doug zones out every time I talk and starts to multitask. That was one of the pitfalls of moving to video, although I learned when to shut up.
Doug Holt 9:42
It is good. You also notice that I make fun of Tim right before I hit record. So we’ll continue with the trash talking. We’ll take little breaks between these three points. So guys again, what I did is I had the team go back and look at the top 10 questions we get asked at TPM. These are questions we get asked literally. Three almost every every week, and out of those 10, just based on time, Tim, I picked three at random. Just grabbed the first three that were on that list. And maybe we could do a part 234, of this series as we go through. But here’s the first one, and no particular order. This question we get all the time, man, man. I had this too with my wife when we were going through our bad times. And this question is, why won’t my wife forgive me?
Tim Matthews 10:33
Wow, so multifaceted, right? It
Doug Holt 10:36
is multifaceted. And a lot of these questions, when I saw them, they’re gonna have similar answers, but yeah, I definitely have the typical answer that I give for this one, which is based on my experience with Aaron and the women that she coaches, and also for men in the movement.
Tim Matthews 10:55
Do you know? Obviously you’ve heard about love languages, right? Oh, yeah, we did this on a podcast. There’s the apology languages.
Doug Holt 11:05
We’ve done all of these on podcasts. That’s why they’re the most
Tim Matthews 11:07
No, no, no, no, the beer is kicking in. The Apology languages came up when you and I are on a podcast, and we googled it for the first time, and I took the test. Ah, yeah, yeah, which was really interesting, right? Because I think if your wife is struggling to forgive you, it could be one that she doesn’t feel like you’re taking responsibility for what it is you’ve done. It could be deflecting. You could be whatever it may be two. It could be because you’re not truly listening to her so she doesn’t feel heard in her complaint. It could also be that you have been very inconsistent with what it is you said you would change about your behavior moving forwards, so therefore she doesn’t trust the change. Stop smoking. There. His desk, therefore she doesn’t trust the change. And also it could just be because you didn’t, well, it kind of goes to the one of the point points are made. You didn’t listen to her when she was complaining. You know, if, if you’re in a position where you’ve not really listened to your wife a great deal, or your partner, and typically, her complaints will become less animated, and her tolerance to wait for you to pay attention and listen and listen will essentially dwindle. So therefore she may bring up a grievance or complain with a lot less ferociousness as we men would like it to have. So therefore we may not realize it’s as big of a deal to her as it is, but that’s really just because she may have just lost faith, quite frankly, that you’re even going to listen to or change or take responsibility, or whatever it may be. But the regardless of what it may be. The underlying theme with all this is the grievance has not been addressed in a way that works for her.
Doug Holt 13:09
Yeah, I agree. The way I usually address this question, because it does come up a lot, is it’s kind of like this idea, there’s also stories or grievances that women will bring up with their husbands time and time again, and guys would be like, Man, it’s the same thing over and over again. She keeps dredging up the past, and the reason she does is she doesn’t feel you understand what she’s saying. She doesn’t. So listen to my words carefully. She doesn’t feel that you understand it’s not think it’s not the logical thing. So what I used to do, Tim be like, You’re not listening. I bet I can repeat verbatim everything you said, like a record player, right, or recorder, I should say. But that wasn’t what she was talking about. She wanted to make sure I understood and felt the pain. Really felt it coming through now with that right she really sometimes women want you to feel their pain, and they want you to feel the pain that they’re going through. So if you’ve had an affair, if you’ve neglected your wife or your partner, they want you to understand or feel. Sometimes it’s both how much pain it has caused them how it really feels to be in their shoes. So this is a version of empathy, right?
We teach guys The Hidden Motives Technique, and we’ve done so many podcasts on this. It’s ridiculous, but The Hidden Motives Technique is a great way to get through it. Now, what will I do? Okay, so I’m glad you asked him. So what I would do in this situation is I would sit my wife down, and I would want to address the issue, so the elephant in the room, so let’s say she’s not forgiving me, because. Because I consistently worked late. This is a common one, right? Guys work a lot. We’re out there, we’re hustling, we’re grinding. We want to provide and protect our families, and part of that is by making money, right? And so within that, we may have missed dinners, we have worked weekends. We’ve really just busted our our butts to in our version, is to provide, and that’s our job, and our wife may not forgive us for that missed time, those, those what she would call lies or indiscretions, or you said you’re going to be home for dinner, you didn’t show up, you went to another meeting, client dinner, whatever. So I’m just using this as an example. What I would do is sit down and hear her out what and ask questions. So you want to ask questions like a journalist. What about this bothers you? Right? Get curious, okay? And keep asking her. But you also want to use The Hidden Motives Technique. So she says, Well, you never, you never keep your word you were said you’re gonna be home for dinner, and you don’t show up, and I’m in the kitchen, I made a hot plate for you. The kids are waiting just I can’t trust you anymore. I can’t trust you. So in that situation you want to be empathetic. Oh man, I’m so sorry. I would never want you to feel frustrated, because I’d imagine if the role was reversed, when I was constantly waiting for you, putting my my love into my food, my heart, my soul, the kids are waiting, I would get frustrated and angry, like, why don’t you respect me enough to be here? And that’s not what I want for you. What I want for you is to know that I’m always respecting you. I always want to be here. In my naivete, I thought working and crushing it was doing the right thing, and I can see that that wasn’t the right thing for you, and you really just needed me to be around, and I’m committed to doing that, and I’ll do it through my actions, not just my words. What else is bothering you? So what you want to do here, Tim is you want to get everything out. And what happens is, guys take this to 60, 70% and that’s why it keeps coming up again and again and again, and so I’ll even go as far as going, Look, babe, this has come up multiple times, so clearly, there’s a lot here.
Let’s get everything out on the table so we don’t have to have this conversation again unless I repeat the problem. Right now, you also gotta understand, I’ve never, I haven’t apologized for anything. I’ve just didn’t like, you know, well, sorry, sorry for the way that she feels, but I haven’t apologized for my actions, for working late, for providing for my family. I’m just getting understanding and getting into her world once she feels seen and heard completely again. You got to complete this. Don’t take this to 70% or 80% or even 90% because that 10% will come up year after year after year after year, until she gets it all out, you got to sit there, weather the storm. Be a powerful man, grounded masculinity. Stand your ground. Be grounded and just listen. And sometimes you have to step back and think of her like she’s your buddy’s wife just unloading on him for you. So take the emotion out of it, third person, if you will, and that sometimes can help you. And once she feels seen and heard and feels that you truly understand the pain you’ve caused, then she could be on the process to forgive
Tim Matthews 18:16
you. How will you know when she’s unloaded 100%
Doug Holt 18:20
what else? What else? Tell me more. You keep asking questions, and even when she says that’s that’s all. Are you sure? Because I feel like there’s something more in there. I just want to make sure that you know we don’t have to revisit this conversation as much, and that you feel complete. Now, what my wife will do, she’s sneaky. She’ll say that’s all for now, because she wants to keep all the time Aaron’s go to That’s all for now. She wants to keep the door open. And so what I will do in that situation, I’ll be saying that’s beautiful. And I know you always can come back to this conversation, but if you thought there might be something else, what would that be? Right? So I’m using some psychological tricks here, right? And you can use these in negotiations and things of that nature. But I’ll ask her, and I’ll keep probing questions. Well, I’m glad we got to the end of this. I might say something like that. So she said, Well, we didn’t get to the end. Oh, well, what else? And if you’re silent and you wait, she’ll most likely keep talking.
Tim Matthews 19:25
Let’s take a step before because in theory, this sounds fantastic, and I know it works, right, but I’m imagining the listeners trying to hold space in that moment without falling into dear mode, without getting annoyed, without any of that stuff. And it is hard, right? It is hard. So what? What tips can we give them to help them not to not fall into that space?
Doug Holt 19:54
So first of all, for the listeners, dear, mode is an acronym we use for defend, explain, excuse. Choose and react. It’s the our our defensive mechanisms, right, that we go through. So how do you not fall on that man? That’s your practices, right? That’s your Alpha Rise and Shine. That’s your grounded masculinity practices. That’s your breath work, that’s getting your reps in, right? At first, you’re going to probably get triggered and react. So you’ve got to get, you know, it sounds selfish to him, but I’m gonna be like, you’ve got to go through The Activation Method, go through an Alpha Reset, but that’s the fastest way, truly, to get there. But if I wasn’t going to do that, I’d be listening to these types of podcasts regularly, and I’d be practicing regularly, and then when I did early on, because there wasn’t a TPM out there or anything like, what we do is I would ask my wife a question, and as soon I just listened to her, and I would disassociate. I would just imagine her as a five year old girl, you know, yet just her little girls coming at me, and so a five year old girl starts yelling at you and saying, Tim, you’re so mean. And you kind of just chuckle a little bit. It’s cute, right? It’s cute.
So I get into that state, and then I counted to 10 seconds before I said anything. So one, two slowly, I almost never got to 10 before she starts saying more stuff, right? So she would unload more and more and more. And so to me, I’m starting to laugh inside, like this is a game. Now, some of the things she said were hurtful, and early on, I was not great at this, right? This took my reps. I didn’t have The Hidden Motives Technique back then, right? I didn’t have the Clean Slate Method, the things the Trident connection, the things that we teach through The Activation Method, I just didn’t have them. They didn’t exist. And so it was me just kind of and then I would regurgitate what she said, because that’s active listening, right? And that wasn’t the best way of doing it. But to to your point, how do you hold your ground? You have to take the emotional charge out of it. That’s the key. When you when I put myself, when I put more emphasis on what Aaron, my wife, thinks of me than I think of myself, she is in control. When I hold myself to a higher standard than her opinion of me, I’m in control.
Tim Matthews 22:15
Yeah, I think that’s the key. That’s the key.
Doug Holt 22:19
It is the key, and it’s not easy. I mean, this is why orange iron sharpens iron, and The Activation Method we pair you up. Your coach is going to practice this with you. It’s going to it’s going to give you the nuances we you know, we’re going to try to get three questions and some reminiscing done in this podcast, so we can’t go through all the details. But again, this is a commonly asked question, and Tim and I have covered this in the past. Anything else you want to add to this? Or should we move on to number two? Yeah, let’s do number two. This is fun. This is we haven’t done one of these in a while, buddy.
Tim Matthews 22:48
Oh, it’s been ages, years. Who has when you move into the states, by the way, probably tomorrow, sweet. Sounds
Doug Holt 22:57
good. I’ll pack my bags. I’m gonna jump around and save number two for last. We go to number three. Why does she keep telling me she isn’t safe? And
Tim Matthews 23:06
it goes to the first question, though. Well, they all are gonna have
Doug Holt 23:10
very similar lines to them. This is why we were able to make a methodology that covers 99% of relationship issues. But this one’s a little I think there’s some nuances here. They’re going to be a little
Tim Matthews 23:25
different. Yeah, I think the consistency piece with this one’s probably more emphasized as well, because if she can’t trust you to honor your word or trust you in general, right, which is different to forgiving you. There’s an element of trust in forgiveness, but if she can’t trust you, there’s also been seen and heard that falls into that too, then for sure, she isn’t going to feel safe with you, especially if you fall into dear mode a lot as well, which goes to the consistency piece, because that’s more of the emotional regulation being consistent with how you respond, versus falling into reaction, which, if you do that to your point earlier, you fall into the trap of her whole her opinion been higher than yours of you, her opinion of you been higher of her opinion of you been higher than your opinion of you, so but I think the consistency piece is a lot, especially honoring the word for sure, seen and heard too. I’d say those two things, consistency and seen and heard. They’re the main two that stand out to me. Those
Doug Holt 24:35
are two that are super important. I agree with you. This is, you know, again, I talk about this a lot. I distinctly remember back when Aaron and I were going through, kind of our tribulations, if you will, our trials, as many of the men are going through right now. And I remember telling me, you know, she’s like, I just don’t feel safe. I’m thinking, what the heck I’ve never pushed her. I. Don’t even yell at her, like, loud, like, and I’m thinking, safe from other men. I was doing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu at the time, worked out a lot, oh, the gym like I was doing, and I was playing competitive sports. I was a safe guy to be around, unless you’re trying to do something to my family, right? And so I was just baffled. I just did not get it. And so she was talking about emotional safety, right? I don’t feel emotionally safe. And so a lot of guys don’t get this as well. That’s why I wanna make that delineation. When I share my story, a lot of guys are like, Oh, crap. You know, my wife says that too. This means she doesn’t feel that she can surrender into you. You’re not a safe place for for her, and usually that’s to your point consistency, but it’s because, I’ll take it a step further. It’s because we’re erratic as Ben, we come home from work, we’re anxious next day, we’re happy. She doesn’t know who she’s gonna get coming through the door. There’s also an element of leadership here, right? And this is where safety tests come in. Now, commonly in men’s coaching, they call it shit test. We call it TPM safety tests, because that’s really what a woman’s looking for.
She’s trying to see if she’s safe. And how does that work? Okay? So women, consciously and unconsciously, are constantly testing their man, their provider, protector, and they’re testing them to see if she is safe in this world. So what that could look like is she could say something to you that could upset you. And let’s just say your wife’s up 140 pounds. I weigh 240 pounds. I’m 100 pounds heavier than her. Okay, now if my wife can trigger me, in other words, she can get me upset, get me riled up. That means she can control my emotions. If she can control me at 140 pounds, how the hell am I going to protect her from the other 240 pound guy down the street or the 190 pound guy? That’s what goes on subconsciously in a woman’s mind, also, then I’m now no longer emotionally safe. Now if she can come at me, then there’s the skills that Tim and the men in the movement have developed, and she comes at me and tries to trigger me through her safety tests, right? And those can look like nagging, they can look like accusatory, they can look like all kinds of complaints. Is a common safety test, if we can stay in the eye of the storm and hold our ground, she can then surrender into us, we now become safe emotionally, not a radic we don’t go into DEER mode, defend, excuse, explain, react. I was good at the reaction one, right. Like, what are you talking about? You’re not safe. Is it so safe to be around me? I
Tim Matthews 27:44
am a safe place. I am a safe
Doug Holt 27:48
place totally. And I just didn’t understand it at all. But now that I do so, my wife could come at me that same argument. I go up, babe, you know, it must be horrible to feel that way. I don’t ever want to feel that way, and I give her a slap on the butt. A slap on the butt, or whatever it may be, and turn around to something playful. I have won that safety test that can turn into intimacy boys, because now this is the thing that guys don’t get. Like, yes, women want us to be ripped and have muscles and all that thing, but that’s like, number 50 on their list, that’s they want a guy that’s emotional, what they’ll call emotionally safe or emotionally mature. They’ll do that above and beyond anything else. Then to your point. Tim, seen, heard and desired also a big part of this equation, and I’m gonna throw one more in there is leadership. Right? Men abdicate their leadership of their family. Some men have this from a faith based thing. You know, hey, my faith. I’m the man. I’m supposed to lead the family. But all men need to lead their family, in my opinion, in my experience. And this doesn’t mean you just tell everybody what to do, but you lead by example, and you lead with what you’re doing. So what can that look like? Hey, babe, we’re going out to dinner tomorrow night. I need you to be ready at five o’clock. Babysitter’s gonna be here. Everything’s taken care of. What I want you to do is wear a dress and wear those cowboy boots. That’s lead you’re leading her. She doesn’t have to think about it. She doesn’t have to plan it. She doesn’t know what outfit she needs to wear what she needs to dress for. She doesn’t have to worry about the kids you lead. You make the decisions for your family. Now, some families you know, you have different rules, right?
For those decisions, I can also tell you, I can’t count how many times you know our program, The Activation Method, it’s an investment. It’s a financial investment, right? You’re getting world class coaching that’s going to save your marriage, like a divorce is going to cost you 500k right? You’re getting world class coaching from these guys, from our coaches, and so you got to pay for world class coaching. It’s an investment. It’s also investment in time, and when guys, when their marriage isn’t working, their wife doesn’t want them a to spend. More time away. B to spend any money at all. She no longer trusts him, but when the man makes the decision to invest, the man makes the decision to better himself, and just does it, just pulls the trigger. Nine times out of 10, the woman responds incredibly well. And we have, we have one of our interviews where we interviewed one of the wives, and she said, Man, that was the sexiest thing he’s done. That’s leadership, and when you’re leading yourself and you’re leading your family, that allows her to feel safe. I’m
Tim Matthews 30:33
glad you made a few distinctions then, because at first I was thinking define this for the guys a little bit more. And I think if you’re in a relationship where you have abdicated the leadership and you were trying to reclaim the leadership,
Doug Holt 30:51
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Tim Matthews 31:44
let’s give the guys some tips on what they can do, because I see a lot of guys make mistakes with this because they try and reclaim the leadership to in big ways too quickly, and the relationship isn’t ready for that. Obviously, we give the guys at ARS, which is one of the ways in which you start to reclaim some leadership within themselves, and that starts to get watched and noticed. But while some other ways, it can begin to reclaim the leadership in a way that’s a little bit more nuanced for the for the doubt, fragility, that the relationships in.
Doug Holt 32:20
Well, the first thing is the Clean Slate Method, right? We as humans have this crazy notion that we can hide things from others, right? That they don’t see our insecurities, that they don’t see what we’ve been doing, you know, behind closed or whatever else it may be they can and so the masks that we wear, or things that have happened in the past, we’ve slept swept under the rug, she knows they’re there. So the Clean Slate Method using that and basically calling out the elephant in the room, that’s a way to regain leadership, because now I can trust that person. They at least have the social, personal awareness of reality. And what most guys rely on is hopium, right? I talk about that a lot. They’re smoking hopium. They’re hoping things get better. They’re hoping their wife doesn’t know, or they’re hoping their wife will just forget she won’t she won it all. And so you need to just address the elephant in the room and just call out what everybody knows. And when somebody, I mean, you can do some business, too, guys, when you call out the obvious, something somebody already knows, then that takes away their power over you or over that thing. And that thing has that power over you anymore, either. So you got to do that. That’s the first thing, right? So once you’ve done that, you clean the slate. You you want to have conversations with The Hidden Motives Technique, right?
Just so she understands that she can be seen and heard. She won’t let you lead if she doesn’t feel seen, heard or desired, right? And she has to be emotionally safe. These things all come into play, but you just start making decisions. So the common thing every couple on it. You know, you go out and you see couples do this in front of I see them do it because I’m just so aware. But they’ll be like, Hey, do you want to go out to eat tonight? I don’t care. What about you? Yeah, go either way. Or do you want to go? I don’t know. Where do you want to go? I don’t care. It goes back and forth like a freaking horrible ping pong match rather than switch the scenario. Hey, babe, it’s been a long day. Let’s go out to dinner. I really want to try that Mexican restaurant again tonight. Do you want to throw on the jeans? We can sit outside. Maybe bring a sweater. I’ll get the car ready. I’ll meet you What 1520 minutes, different scenario, I can tell you guys. So we just, we did a brotherhood event in Prague. So the Brotherhood is our one year mastermind group. It’s invitation only. It’s men that go through our other programs that can get invited in, and we do some epic adventures with epic growth. Yeah, and we did one in Prague, right? And so a few of us, a number of the guys, went to Germany earlier, did Oktoberfest. It was on a bucket list for me, you know, 48 and so I’m like, Hey, let’s just, let’s check this thing out. Worth it, by the way, I had a great time, nothing too crazy, just great, great, great time. And I flew my family out after the event, and we went through Austria.
My wife planned zero things during that entire trip. I planned it all. I bought the plane tickets, told her where she needed to be, because she was coming separately with the kids, everything, you know now, she picked what to pack, and I let her know kind of where we were going. It wasn’t like it was all surprise, but I took charge and planned the whole trip. Thank you. Chat, GPT, and hey, I’m a guy. You know, there’s a shortcut there. It works well. And shout out to all my friends. 10 man, you everybody else, give me recommendations. I mean, that’s really where it fell into me. 10 men give us a give us a private tour. It was awesome. Poor guy. His hip was hurting him, but still is walking it. That guy’s a tough dude. So yeah, I planned it all, and my wife told she told all her girlfriends how sexy it was, how freeing it was. She was allowed to be in her feminine the whole time. Now you have a woman that’s in her feminine the whole time. That leads to intimacy. She feels completely safe. She can surrender into you, in this case, surrender into me. Does that help?
Tim Matthews 36:31
It does. Yeah, it does. Again, I’m just thinking about the some of the guys watching this. I think they are listening, listening, watching whatever. I think the confidence might be a little bit low to take some of those risks. So I think working out on the ARS and being consistent with the routine just beginning to lead themselves like we’re teaching the Live Like a King System
, and then bolting on the clean slate, well, it’s a try the connection, essentially, then balling on the Clean Slate Method and hidden motives and progressing to the things that you’re talking about. I think that all of it is such a great journey for a guy to go on.
Doug Holt 37:04
I agree. I mean, at the end of the day, man, you just got to make some decisions, like, just start making decisions, and you’re going to get pushback. You’re gonna get safety tests. She should test you if you haven’t been making decisions and you’ve been abdicating your leadership to her, you’re basically outsourcing the man’s duties to your wife. And this is going to piss a lot of guys off, and they’re going to have all the excuses in the world. And dude, I did too boys, but it’s the truth. We’ve done this with 1000s of men right over this time, so you just got to start making decisions, and you’re going to screw up. That’s okay. Just like in business, you got to make decisions. You make the best ones possible, decisions on where you’re going to allocate your finances, decisions on where you’re going to allocate your time, decisions on things your family is going to do, right? You get to make the decisions, and it’s going to be perfectly imperfect, but you do it and you own it. When you screw it up, you call it out right before anybody else does. Ideally, you clean it up and you move on. It’s as simple as that. It’s called being a man, right? I mean, that’s I’m gonna screw up, but if I screw up, I need to own, take responsibility for my own mistakes, not a boy who tries to hide from it or do all the other BS that guys tried to do. So I’m passionate about this one man. Oh,
Tim Matthews 38:25
yeah, no, 100% because there’s a lot of guys out there that do want to just, there’s a lot of boys walking around masquerading as men, right? And
Doug Holt 38:34
Peter Pan syndrome,
Tim Matthews 38:36
yeah, yeah, funny than you, right? How easy it can be for them to just shift, and how welcomed it would be as well by the people around them, because the people around them see how capable, that capable they are, and see the potential within them, and that’s what frustrates them the most, when they’re not really showing up in that way.
Doug Holt 38:58
100% I had a woman. I won’t give away anything about her, because it’ll give away who she is. Away who she is. But I was in conversation with a woman recently, and I don’t know her that well, right? And she just walked up to me, and you were at the ranch, actually, Tim, she just walked up to me and started telling me, like, man, gotta get my husband your program. He just like, oh, rough patch. And started talking to her. She’s like, Oh, you could see how frustrated she was and almost angry, and she was dying for some change. And you know the number of times I hear this, in fact, at my house, I converted my garage into a garage gym, right? Cable machine, squat rack, you know, all the fun stuff, because my wife and three other moms in our you know, the area, all they want to work out and they’re having a good time. It’s a social time for them. Well, I worked out with them this morning.
Every once while I pop in there and try to get a workout in with them. It’s fun. You know, talk a little trash, but I hear these women talking about their husbands, you know, I asked one woman today, how’s your husband doing? She’s like, what, like, you know, in what area? Like, Oh, okay. I thought he was sick. She’s like, Oh yeah, he’s fine there. But the implication of what’s being said. And guys, your your wife, is talking to other women as well. They want us to step up, boys. They want us to step up. They are looking for men. If you I did this. I had a podcast before this with Mark Smith, Tim and I got curious. We went to the sisters rodeo. Josh, Mark myself, Aaron, our kids. It was fun. And the conversation, I don’t need to go into details of the conversation, but eventually Aaron goes, you know, it was a it was basically about women’s fantasies. And Aaron just said, just go look at almost any best selling book for women. And so I went and looked at, like, the top 10 best selling books, not erotica, none of that, but almost all of them contain an element of erotica. Women are fantasized and all of them had a strong male character, like, I mean, a strong male character, an alpha. Women are dying for men to step up.
Tim Matthews 41:21
Oh, big time they are
Doug Holt 41:24
dying. That’s why we get so many the joke guys within TPM is if we wanted to start a dating app and just link up men that have gone through our programs with women, because we get, we get emails from women who either their girlfriend’s husband went through this program and saw his changes, or they just relate to the content so well. Like, where do I find one of these guys? Do you have an alumni list of guys who’ve went through your program, who’ve got divorced? I’m in just, just give me a name. Like, this is the type of man I want.
Tim Matthews 41:56
It’s an epidemic, right? That’s study of the Lost Boys. Did I speak to you about the lost boys. Have you heard of Lost Boys study? I have, yeah, got done in the UK this year, very recently. Just crazy. The stats from that around, in short, for the listeners so Lost Boys, the results of the Lost Boys study that was done by a social services and some other services in the UK was essentially saying that we have an epidemic on our hands, that we’ve got these women who have risen in the past several decades, quite rightly so, and Therefore now in a position whereby they don’t technically need a man to provide for them, right? So they’re dealing with a very different currency, no longer financial IQ, it’s emotional EQ, whereas men, the past several decades have been taught to discount that, right? So you’ve got this epidemic where women are a big pool of women are able to choose from very small pool of men. Yes, it’s the pool of men that are doing the work, and that pool of men is so small that those men are so rare, that the issue is the guys are like, hang on a minute. I’ve got all these options. Why would I bother getting into a relationship? Ironically, and as a result, marriage rates are dropping, birth rates are dropping, all that kind of stuff.
But the point is, I was really curious about this in Amsterdam, actually, the IC event. And I was speaking to this, about this, with some women that were there, chefing the event. And I said, is that your experience? Do you find it hard to meet guys? And she’s like, Well, yeah, and obviously, she’s at the event with the IC guys that have been doing the work on themselves for two or three years. And she was just in awe of those guys. Yeah. So every time you walked in the room that in a circle, I see in a circle, High Level Mastermind, thank you. There you go. So every time they’d walk in the room, she’d drop into a feminine and, yeah, she was saying, I was very difficult to find men who are really doing the work on themselves. Because women, to your point, are dying for men to step up in this way. No,
Doug Holt 44:16
they are. It’s, it’s incredible. And look, you know, I’m very aware of my physical appearance, and I if I can get women who find out what I do hitting on me, every man in this world’s got a chance. It is. They call it the Lost Boys, right? Peter Pan syndrome is what I hear the most from women. They’re so tired of it. And I hear this all the time, I just want him to be a man and like, what does that mean? Right? Like, as a man, that’s hard to define. Is it my definition of a man? Is it someone else’s definition of a man? You know, and I’m not here to define what a man is or what a man means, but I can tell you that. Most women feel like they have a grown adult child in their house, and that is not safe. And I’m
Tim Matthews 45:07
just looking at it. I’ve not heard of Peter Pan syndrome before. I’m just Googling
Doug Holt 45:10
it now. Well, I don’t know if it’s Peter Pan syndrome, but it’s Peter Pan like so Peter Pan and the Lost Boys, right from that. That’s where the both of those come from. Is the movie Peter Pan of the book. And Peter Pan never grew up, never wanted to grow up.
Tim Matthews 45:22
Yeah, the key characteristics, difficulty with commitment, avoidance of responsibility, emotional immaturity, narcissistic traits, fear of adulthood and magical thinking.
Doug Holt 45:37
Yeah, magical thinking is great, but yeah, I think
Tim Matthews 45:40
that’s that’s thinking the problems will magically disappear. I got a catch bet.
Doug Holt 45:45
90% of the men listen to this are hoping it magically disappears. I used to,
Tim Matthews 45:50
oh, oh, easy, yeah. If you avoid it long enough, it’ll just get better. But that goes to the other point, avoidance of responsibility. They may avoid chars pain bills are taken on leadership roles.
Doug Holt 46:02
Yeah, a lot of us haven’t been taught what it means to be a man or how to stand up. And I’m gonna get for me, Tim, I had what I would consider mostly all the manly characteristics everywhere except for my home, because when Aaron and I would fight or Aaron would challenge me, I did what I thought was the right thing, which is bite my tongue, stiff upper lip. It’s just Yes, dear, all right, I’m gonna get better at doing I’m gonna clean this house. I mean, you’ve heard me tell that story 100 times when we were fighting and arguing and she was complaining that I didn’t take off the trash or do the dishes. I can’t remember exactly what it was at this point, but I was like, I’ll show her. I’m gonna clean this flipping house better than anybody. And I came off work early. She wasn’t there, put a pot of coffee on, cranked up the stereo, and I cleaned that house like nobody’s business. And we were not in a good place. She walks in the door, looks around and goes, Oh, you didn’t clean the oven. And then, of course, I lost my my stuff, and I was just what the I can’t please this woman. Little did I know what I know now. Had nothing to do about cleaning, nothing to do about the oven, and nothing to do about any of that stuff. She didn’t feel safe. She didn’t feel seen and heard or desired, you know?
And that’s where a lot of our men are. They’re in that position. And so when we take back leadership, when we take back our self leadership, we learn the triadic connection, which is three points for people that don’t know. It’s the Live Like a King System, the Clean Slate Method and The Hidden Motives Technique. When they learn those and how to apply those things, they’re able to take it back and change it. I mean, people worth our 1000s episode, right? So let’s go back. When people meet us, they’re shocked at how real we are. That’s the most common thing we’ve we hear is how authentic we are, because we’re not different, right? We’re having a beer right now, recording a podcast where, you know, I remember chief, you know, coming to the ranch. We have 106 acre ranch that Tim and I invest in because we we believe in this movement we’re in for the long term. This is not just some internet game we’re playing. This is about changing lives. And my family came and, you know, my kids are around. My kids are five at the time. They were four and seven. They’re five and eight now. And I’m wrestling on the grass with them. I’m playing with them. And all of these men, our staff are all around, dude, we’re working. But when my kids come around, I play. My wife comes around. She comes up to me, grabs me, kisses me, and I remember pulling me aside, going, I always wondered if it was real and it was cool to see it is, you know, it was cool. And he bought my my son, a 22 rifle. My daughter, they are. It was such a nice gift, right? Unexpected gift, and now we have guns at the ranch.
Tim Matthews 48:51
The best bit was walking into the kitchen and watching him loading up one of those guns that evening after I’m like, dude, listen No.
Doug Holt 49:00
Well, to set the scene, there we had, you know, 36 I think people from all around the world. And Chief was loading the AR 15, you know. And what’s wrong? You just, just, he was very comfortable with guns. The some people from other countries never seen a gun, you know. So he’s a Texas boy. What are you gonna say? It was a very generous gift. Thank you, Chief. I appreciate it. Next time he’ll be out here in August, we’ll shoot him.
Tim Matthews 49:27
Have a good time. You say you shoot him, or you’ll
Doug Holt 49:29
shoot them. We’ll shoot the guns. Chief is gonna wear the bear suit, though we’ll see, see how he goes. The Pinball guns out. Yeah, that was wild. We’ve done paint guys. We’ve done paintball gun trips. We’ve done so many things in this 1000 episodes coming into this Tim I want to give the number three right the third question, I want to deliver value with this episode, as much as you and I want to reminisce. We can do it maybe off a little bit talk, a little trash, which is one of the things, ironically, a lot of guys used to say that a. Liked about our podcast when we used to do them together, is the little trash talking, little digs that we did periodically,
Tim Matthews 50:07
periodically.
Doug Holt 50:09
Tim is still in therapy. All right, I can’t believe you want to roast for your 40th birthday is so beautiful. You will regret that right now I do Yep,
Tim Matthews 50:20
as soon as I say, not. CR, what am I doing? No, stop.
Doug Holt 50:30
For those that don’t know, Tim is turning 40, coming up here, and he turned to me and said, Doug, I’m thinking about doing a roast. Do you think it’s a good idea to have have the guys there roast me and being the benevolent friend that I am, absolutely great idea. As long as I’m there, I’m all for it. It’s gonna be fun. All right, third question here, Tim, third question. Second beer, what am I doing wrong with my wife? No matter what I do, it’s never enough.
Tim Matthews 51:01
So mistake I made for a long time kind of goes to your oven cleaning. One was doing what I thought I should do, rather than just doing what she asked me to do. Explain. Yeah, so I, I think I spent a lot of time doing what I thought I should do in order to create the connection that I wanted to create. When, in reality, when I just asked what she needed, it was a lot less, a lot simpler. And when I did that, it was a lot easier as well. So she then got what she wanted, and it was a much easier on my side too. Which, which helped a lot. They didn’t, you know, there’s still things to add into that piece, but it definitely helped a lot.
Doug Holt 51:51
Yeah, when I hear this question, you know, I think back to me, cleaning the house, right? There was nothing to do about cleaning the house. Nothing to do with it. She was complaining about something to get my attention. It had nothing to do with me, doing dishes, taking the trash out, maybe a little bit. But, I mean, I did stuff around the house. She did most of the cleaning, to be fair. But you know, there was nothing. What it was is my wife, at the time, didn’t feel fully seen by me, didn’t feel fully understood, which is heard by me. And because of that, we created distance, thus not desired, right? They got to a point where I didn’t even want to have sex with her, you know, because I was just, I’m stubborn, you know, and I’m like, if you’re going to be this way, I don’t want to be near you. I want to go out the boys, or I’m going I’m going to go do something else, or I’m going to sit on the couch and catch up on a movie or something. And it just created so much distance. And it was never about the chores. And so when I hear this question, like, what am I doing wrong with my wife?
No matter what I do is not enough. It was never enough. Usually it’s because you’re not doing the right things, and she doesn’t feel seen, heard or desired completely like completely understood. Now, there are exceptions to this, boys, sometimes you’re just not compatible. Sometimes you’re just not compatible. She wants a and you want Z, and it’s not going to work. You’re in two totally different paths. We’ve had men go through the program and figure this out and decide, You know what, I actually want to separate. I want to get divorced. Because my wife, what she wants is not what I want. It’s changed. And that happens, people change, right? People change over a period of time, and that’s totally cool, right? I hope you change. I hope you the listener, aren’t the same person you were 10 years ago. That would be a travesty, right? You talk about being Peter Pan on Lost Boys, that would be a travesty. I hope you’ve grown. I hope you’ve learned from the cuts, bruises and scrapes you’ve gotten in life. I hope you’ve learned from the values you’ve developed. I hope your characteristics, your principles, have grown, your faith, whatever it means to you, has grown. I hope your experiences have molded you into a better man, a better person. So maybe your wife’s has too, or maybe she hasn’t grown. And you have these things happen, but 90% of the time, Tim, when I hear this question, What am I doing wrong with my wife? No matter what I do, it’s never enough. You’re doing the wrong things, and odds are you’re focused on what she is saying she wants, and not showing up as the man she knows you could be.
Tim Matthews 54:38
Gosh, the question recently, and it was, we have a trick question, really, in hindsight. The first question was That’s shocking. Well, you know, Does, does she see intimacy as a reward for quality time? Let’s just say that the answers. Yes, yes, okay, conversation goes on. Okay, so if you are getting the intimacy that you wanted, would you then be treating her differently in this scenario? And answered it a while ago, I said, Yes, absolutely. Oh, interesting. So it’s conditional. First, when I got asked it from the perspective, again, this was a while ago, from the perspective of her, I was like, yeah, she’s so conditional. And then when it was flipped, it was like, the law of the mirror. And I’m like, oh shit, damn blast. That’s an interesting consideration as well. I think you raised some really incredible points about compatibility. And, you know, doing the wrong thing 100% and the other interesting thought process is, if I was getting everything I wanted, how would I be showing up? How would I be treating her? Because the likelihood is you’d probably be more attentive, you’d be more patient, you’d be more whatever it may be. It’s very difficult to do that. It’s not easy to do that, but
Doug Holt 56:15
I don’t think so. I disagree. What do you mean? I think if you got everything you’d want, you’d be bored. Oh, expand, yeah. So I’m gonna, I’m, my marriage is great, right? I’m, I’m blessed that we went through hell, but it’s great, and most of the time, I’m getting all the things I want and when it’s blissful for a while, but we’re men, like we’re we’re up, we want to, I want more, right? Like, there’s that kind of I want different, right? You can almost things I would have died for 10 years ago. I take for granted today, I’m not proud of that at all, but it keeps evolving, right, and you keep wanting more. And so most of us, men, we marry powerful women, women who stand in their power, who have a voice, who have opinions, right? Not doormats. And because of that, we like the challenge. It sharpens us a little bit, right? It sharpens us to grow. Now, I know that’s not exactly what you’re saying or alluding to, because you’re talking about, hey, if I started getting my needs met because my base needs aren’t getting met, or this person you’re talking about, whatever, then that’s different, right? So base needs are, you know, hey, look, let’s intimacy for me is three times a week, right? And my wife is one, and there’s difference, or vice versa, maybe she’s got six for her or three for me. That happens more often than not. Guys just don’t like talking about it. You know that, hey, my wife actually wants more sex. And if you don’t think your wife wants more sex, boys, go look at what the best selling books in the world are. They’re all about women having sex with strong men. It is nuts. The best selling fiction books, they’re not about dudes, you know, fighting crime. They’re not. And even the other books, they call them romance books, it’s women’s erotica. And I know I’m done, you know, come simplifying it, but when you go back to all of your needs being met, that sounds good, and it is good, but I don’t think everything’s rosy at that point.
Tim Matthews 58:41
Oh no, for sure, just in terms of just so the question, again, I didn’t ask a question. No, no, the number three,
Doug Holt 58:50
what am I doing wrong with my wife? No matter what I do, it’s never enough.
Tim Matthews 58:55
Yeah, I’m just talking about coming from that place, like the consideration of, oh, if everything was a 10 out of 10, and I was to be coming from that place, which is difficult to do energetically, more than anything, how you’d be giving and attentive and all the stuff, right? The likelihood is you might get what you want in that scenario, right? Again, it’s difficult to do because it means giving so much which you also may not be willing to give. You may not be there, right? There may not be enough connection between you guys in order to actually be willing to do that. But it is one strategy or philosophy that the listeners could consider them some of them might find helpful.
Doug Holt 59:41
Yeah, I agree with you what you’re saying. I just think there’s also a fallacy of guys getting everything they want, like, you know, if I get everything I want, it’s also horse trading, right? And I think that you’re alluding to is, hey, if she gives me x, I’ll give her y, that’s a transaction, right? Okay, I know you know all this, but some of the listeners that might not think of this way, you don’t want to be in a transition, transactional relationship with your wife. No, if we’re doing commerce right, hey, if I give you $100,000 then you’re going to remodel my house. That’s a trade. Cool, that’s an agreement, but you don’t want to do that with your wife. Hey, if, if I clean the whole house, you’re going to give me a blow job, right? Every once in a while, cool, right? It’s kind of a joke, especially if you make it a joke, great, that’s fine. It’s fair, but don’t make that a normal transaction. And people have so many you know, we call them hidden contracts, essentially, right? They’re, they’re covert contracts, what we really call them, but they’re hidden contracts, they’re, they’re, they’re things that you don’t talk about, that are agreements. Like, you know what, when my wife is nice to me, that then I’ll be nice to her, not that I’ll just love my wife no matter what she’s she, she has, she gave me two kids, or she set her career aside, or whatever it may be. There’s a new story. I had a guy that both of us know, Tim recently going through a rough patch with his wife right now. I mean, a rough patch.
And I had him do an exercise. I have a lot of the guys do, and I go write down everything that happened. Just write it all down. Be judgmental, petty, whatever you want to do. And so he wrote, wrote this huge thing down three pages or so of the story. He’s like, Alright, I’m done. Now what’s next? Oh, great. I want you to do is highlight the undisputable facts, the undisputable fact in a quarterly nobody could argue it. So if you know part of his was, well, she yelled at me. I’m like, did she yell or she just talked loudly? He’s like, crap. You could argue that. I guess maybe she just was talking loudly. So that’s, that’s we can dispute that, right? You can’t dispute the fact that she walked out of the house. That’s true. Okay, great. And so he ended up with, I go, now read just the things you highlight, just the facts. And he goes, holy shit. I go, because the rest of it, you made up the rest of its story. Now it could be true story, but it’s story. I go. Now you could rewrite that story any way you want. He goes, Man, he came. So he called me the next day and goes, just sent me a thank you note, and just said, Man, this has totally changed my perspective. Totally I’ve been holding on to baggage for 20 years around some of these things, and when I look at the actual facts, I can see it from her point of view. And so allowed him to change it around. So when I look at what am I doing wrong with my wife? No matter what’s never enough. Maybe we’re doing the wrong things boys, and maybe it’s us gotta we work on ourselves. We take responsibility for our side of the street.
First and foremost, take care of us. Then we clean up things and figure out what the real complaint is. Now, again, I’m making up the percentage, but 10% it’s just incompatibility. You’ve grown apart. You know, maybe you married when you’re really young, naive, you know, you got married in your 20s, or hooked up in your 20s, and now you’re in your 30s or 40s, or 50s, 60s, she’s gone to the left, you’ve gone to the right. Maybe there’s a way to bridge that right. That’s that could be cool. I see that happen all the time with our men, but I also see the 10% that don’t, but most likely, you’re chasing the wrong thing, and that’s where you got to look and figure out what’s really going on. Does she feel emotionally safe with you? Yes, no. If the answer is no, no matter what you do, it’s not going to be enough. So that’s what you got to work on. It does she feel seen, heard and desired? If the answer is no, that’s what you get to work on, right? But if it’s yes, for those and you’re not doing enough. Just like some guys are just assholes, some women are just bitches. I hate you know, I’m sorry if you got kids in the car, guys, but it’s just the truth. I know some guys that are just jerks, whatever their season of their life, whatever’s going on for them, they show up representing the jerk. And I know some women that know what they’re Karen’s right, whatever they show up. Feel so bad for women named Karen.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:30
That’s like, Man,
Doug Holt 1:04:33
oh, I had a guy the other day said I ran into a Karen. I go, what was her name? He goes, Karen, that’d be horrible, but you get the idea. But most people, I believe, most all people around the world, I’ve traveled all over the world, are great people trying to do their best. Want love connection, want the best for their family, don’t want to hurt or harm anyone else, right? We’re all trying to do the best. We can then there’s a small group of just jerks, right, male and female, that are screwing it up for everybody, and they’re the ones that end up on the news. But when you look at this like, what am I doing wrong with my wife? No matter what I do isn’t never enough. I’m gonna guess that what you’re doing are the wrong things, and you probably aren’t gonna be able to solve this yourself. Doesn’t mean you have to join TPM, but surround yourself by some some other people that can give you insight. Now, we’ve been doing this for over eight years together. Tim, you and I and our coaches have been around for a long time. Man, collaboratively, if you look at our coaching team, it’s probably 500 years of experience there, but we’ve been doing it for a very, very long time. But find somebody who can give you insights. Can help you see the blind spots you can’t see your own blind spots. And odds are, this is gonna be the real slap in the face. It’s not her fault. Now she could be complicit, and she could be part of the problem, but as much as man man, as many times as I could tell you that I want, I believed. I believed wholeheartedly. If Aaron, my wife, would change, then everything would be better. What a crock of crap. That’s what I believed. You would be hard pressed to convince me otherwise. So I’m not going to try to convince you guys differently, but you’re talking or you’re listening to two men who have helped 1000s, 1000s of men be it’d be a coincidence. If we’ve done 100 right? That’d be that’d be remarkable, 100 but I’m talking 1000s of men. So we see patterns, boys, we see patterns. And so when you look at this like, hey, what’s on your side of the street? Just focus there. Just focus
Tim Matthews 1:06:54
there so much truth and wisdom in that.
Doug Holt 1:06:58
Why do you seem surprised? You
Tim Matthews 1:07:03
a year since we’ve done one like this, so you know, but you know, so much wisdom, just even for me listening right? So many great reminders. So I really hope the listeners who might be new to this, or even when I think about I’ll use his name, because I don’t know his nickname right now, Donnie, Yep, he’s on a crazy streak. Even somebody like that who listens to this the entire time, I think this is worth going back and, like this particular segment, worth going back and really listening to. I mean, even the entire podcast, what an hour and seven minutes. But there’s so many nuggets within this that you know, if the men chose to take it seriously and not just skip and jump onto the next thing, it literally could transform their life.
Doug Holt 1:07:56
There’s men going through The Activation Method right now, a group of men going through, and one of them in particular, on week two, two weeks into a program right marriage on the rocks. Divorce is going on. Wife wants separation. Wife wants divorce. She wants him out. Two weeks in, he turned it around. Tim two weeks. How do you do it? He listened to all the trainings that we provide, all the recordings, three times. He’s just like when I was driving, that’s what I was doing. When I was working out, that’s what I was doing. And he started practicing. And that’s what you guys wanna do. You wanna study this? This is a learned skill. Jump over to YouTube. Me Look at me like this is something I had to learn. Man, like this is a learned skill, like any other learned skill, like negotiation, like sales, like marketing, like operations, finance, they’re learned skills, and we didn’t learn them. Nobody teaches us in high school or college, at least nobody I know. That’s why we have marriage and family counselors in our program. They’re great guys, and they’re saying the same thing. They’re like, Man, I, I, this is my profession, and I didn’t learn this stuff. This is in the trenches methodologies that we have honed for over eight years. More than that. If you look at all the trials and tribulations all of us have been through, we have a staff of was it 3436 people now in the movement. And every time we make it better, right? We want to make every time that we coach a man, the worst time or the next one better than the previous one. It’s a better way of saying it. We’re always tweaking and improving, right? And we hope the next one will be better and better and better. So this is in the trenches back by the that’s why the activation methods called The Activation Method. It’s a methodology, a proven methodology, time and time again, it just flipping works. Yeah, now this so to your point, Tim, listen this podcast, 234, times. Guys take notes. You’ll get something different out of it. And when you start applying it, go back and listen, you’ll go, Oh, now I get it. You’ll get something new. That’s what I used to do. Just don’t jump from one thing to another. If this is the area, the territory. So, TPM. At the original your starting point with TPM, you’ll get five territories, self, health, wealth, relationships and business. Those five, if in the area of relationships, that’s the area that’s probably struggling the most, that’s where your focus gets to be. Double Down. The ironic thing is, is, if I were to ask 10,000 men, if on your deathbed, what’s the one thing that is most important to you, it’d be the territory of relationships.
Now maybe health at that moment, depending on what their deathbed was, but it’d be relationships. And so why aren’t we focusing on that? Guys? You guys are. I applaud you guys for being here with us right now. You’re focusing on it. We’ve done 1000 podcasts guys, not all in relationships, because we have different programs that tackle different things. You know, Tim and I both been business coaching for a long time. So a lot about business, a lot of our men go in through the inner circle that Tim talked about, which is a Ultra High Level Mastermind group, with intense coaching and extra sessions that go on and the brotherhood and another one of our one year programs, we dive a lot into business, because that’s important too, but also the relationships. Get the relationship figured out. First, regain your passion, regain your mojo, and you can the business becomes easy. You Tim, it’s been awesome. Man, 1000 episodes. Guys. Thank you so much for being on this journey with us. We couldn’t do without you guys, the feedback we’ve gotten for the men that have been around and this movement coming around in August, a lot of the old vets are coming to the ranch. I think we got 14 or 15 flying from around the world, men that have been involved in the movement for 456, years coming in here to celebrate. We will do some growth as well. Hats off to you guys for continuously doing the work. For you guys that are new listeners, thanks for being here with us, and we look forward to 1000 more, at least
Tim Matthews 1:12:27
million downloads. It’s a lot of people, a lot of people.
Doug Holt 1:12:32
Yeah, we thank you
Tim Matthews 1:12:33
for encouraging the idea in the beginning. Welcome. I’m feeling hurt. Yeah, you’re welcome for me trusting you, but yeah, a great idea. I love that we did it. I love that we took imperfect action. And if you do go to YouTube and see those early episodes, you’ll see what I mean. But I love that we did and, yeah, brother, I love doing them with you. I’ve missed doing this with you, and I’ve done them for like this anywhere for maybe a year or so, maybe a bit more. But yeah, I love it. I love the journey we’ve been on and the conversations that we have and the impact that we get to make
Doug Holt 1:13:17
likewise and and guys, if you’re listening to this. You got questions. Send them in. Email them to VIP at the powerful man.com that’s our VIP inbox. VIP at the powerful man.com if you’re in the app, if you’re a member of our community, go there, right. Go there and post those. Those are the first ones we look at for podcast ideas and new trainings. Tim and I are committed rolling into q through to q3 to do a lot more trainings in the app and and get more of them out there. We want you guys to do it. If you’re not in the app, email VIP at the powerful man.com and ask them to get you in the app. We’ll see what we can do for you. We have our own app. It’s on iPhone, it’s on Android. It is the movements community, and this is where powerful conversations are happening every single day. There’s interest groups in there for men of all walks in life, walks of life. And there’s also just a general community. And then, of course, the communities of guys that are in programs have their own private communities where they can have discrete conversations with other men there. Likewise, if you decide you want to send Tim a 40th birthday gift, just go ahead and send that to the TPM ranch. If it’s whiskey or anything else good, I’ll make I’ll make sure to send him a picture of it so he knows that you were thinking of him. He’ll never get it. But although you’re thinking of him, Tim, it’s been awesome, man. I really appreciate all you do, all you do for the movement.
And as we go through, gentlemen, as I always say at the end of these, or at least, I started to Gosh, a couple years ago, right in the moment of insight, take massive action, and think of the insight we had, an insight to start a conversation, a conversation, and hit record. The Record button this many years ago, what we’re now. We’re talking seven years ago, maybe, I guess at this point, six years ago, based on your recollection, and here we are now having a great time, really enjoying it, but also making an impact across the world. And we’re, we’re just two guys, two guys that have learned lessons along the way and want to help other people learn them as well. If you’re interested in any of the TPM programs, head over to the powerful man.com where you can look for those. There is an application process to get into the programs, just because we want to make sure it’s a good fit for you, but also a good fit for the other men, right? We keep our community very tight, and we’ve been successful in doing that. And get on a call with one of our advisors, it’s a free conversation with one of the people that just to tell you what your situation is, and if it’s a good fit, and if it’s not, they’ll at least give you an insight, an insight on what to do next, the best next step for you. And most of our advisors are graduates, men and that have been through the program. Now we do have some female advisors. They just can’t go through our programs, but they know the content forwards and backwards, and they can help you as well, until next time we’ll see you on The Powerful Man Show.
