Living The Red Life - Gary J. White on Why Modern Men Are Lost

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

SUMMARYGary J. White, entrepreneur, speaker, and founder of Wake Up Warrior, joins the show to deliver one of the most raw, honest, and transformational interviews in recent memory. Known for his direct, no-BS approach to helping men reclaim power across their business, body, and relationships, Gary unpacks the origin story of his own breakdown—and the breakthrough that followed. From being millions in debt and emotionally destroyed, to launching a global movement for men, Gary reveals what it really takes to lead as a modern man.Throughout the episode, he dives into what it means to live the "Warrior’s Way"—a four-part framework that empowers men to find balance and build legacy. He opens up about the moment he hit rock bottom, the pivotal decisions that changed his life, and why so many men today are quietly suffering. From business and marriage to fatherhood and faith, this conversation goes beyond self-help—it’s a roadmap for transformation. The episode concludes with a powerful announcement of The Man Arena Tour, a nationwide event aiming to reignite purpose and leadership in men across America.CHAPTERS02:35 – The Real Wake-Up Call05:01 – When Business Success Isn’t Enough07:37 – From Powerless to Powerful10:43 – The Rise of the Warrior Framework14:15 – Training Men to Lead Again18:21 – Balancing Business, Marriage & Fatherhood22:47 – Breaking Through the Bullsh*t27:04 – The $3K Gamble That Changed My Life31:16 – Sleeping in the Park, Betting on Himself36:00 – The Man Arena TourConnect with Gary J. White:Website: https://www.wakeupwarrior.comInstagram: @garretjwhiteYouTube: Wake Up Warrior OfficialPodcast: Warrior Week PodcastEvent Site: https://manarenatour.comConnect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedInInstagramFacebookTwitter

We actually ran a campaign that was Ads Equal Freedom. And we'd explain that ads aren't about ads. It's about without ads, you don't have traffic. And without traffic, you don't have sales. And without sales, you can't pay your mortgage and you're worrying how to grow your business. If you know that what you sell works and you know that what you sell

can benefit the person deeply, then there is a place of deep pain and darkness. You're willing to take this prospect in your marketing and in your sales conversations that most people will not because the cost of them not moving forward in your mind with what you're selling is so great the intensity of not buying is life or death. Any of a big marketing tips or things you've noticed so the challenge I watch with and this goes with any product any service somebody's offering is. My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast.

I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life. What's up, welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life. Joining me today is a face you'll probably recognize if you're watching on video.

Here with Garrett, founder of Wake Up Worry. He's the highest paid PE teacher in the world and we'll get to that in just a second. But he's totally crushed an industry for over a decade. He's got a big event coming up, 7,000 people. And what I admire the most is how he's built such an amazing tribe community and following over many, many years, which we're gonna dive into today. So welcome to the show, buddy. Excited to be here. And legitimately my background is I graduated from college as a PE teacher.

Oh, wow. But they called it a pedagogist. A what? A pedagogist. This is a fancy way of calling PE teachers who are at the bottom of the teaching food chain, making them feel special. That's funny.

Well, and now you just teach adult children. It's exactly, I would tell you now, coaching 60 kindergartners on how to maneuver a gym is easier than working with a thousand grown men, yes. Well, so let's talk about it. Obviously, you coach men. If someone for some reason doesn't know who you are, I know most will, can you summarize what you do?

Yeah, so I I was looking for a model after successfully being in real estate mortgages for 10 years and then losing everything in 2008 I knew there had to be a different way to live life. I was a whore for money I was shitty father a shitty husband and disconnected from God But I knew how to make money and I created a system that put KPIs to my life That let me know I was being a great father, let me know I was being a great husband, let me know I was connected to God and that I was still making a ton of money.

Well, I love that, because I think a lot of salespeople fall into that trap. Yes. The progression of a salesperson as an entrepreneur. And everyone always asks me, like, when I look at life, I'm like, I kind of built this thing in my own head. Like I'm always optimizing around five elements., I'm like, I kind of built this thing in my own head. I'm always optimizing around five elements.

And I'm yet to get all five perfect. It's like you get four good, but it's like, you know, your money and finances business, your personal relationships, right? I always say hobbies, stuff that inspires you, something around religious or spiritual, right? And then family life, right? And it's like, for me, I've always been like,

I get really good at four and one drops, right? And health's in there too, health, in the hobbies part, health and wellness. And I've got like really good at four or five. And that's kind of how I see you. The reason I'm bringing this up is you really work to optimize like those main buckets for a person or a man or now a family too I feel. Yeah well it's if you look at it so that with the

concept for me was like I looked at how I had been successful in business and then I wasn't successful and I'd lost everything I was like okay what is it that gives I didn't have the courage to actually do what's required like a lot of people trying to market they just don't have the courage they know what to do they won't fucking do it or they know what to do, they won't fucking do it. Or they know what to do in sales, but they won't do it. Or they know how to launch their brand and you've taught them everything.

You're like, bro, I've given you the fucking blueprint. It's right here, just do this, and they won't do it. But this is the most reason people don't create, they don't market, they don't sell, is because of capacity issue. So I started looking and I said, if I have a body that's weaponized and feels powerful, I actually market and sell harder.

If I feel certain in my connection with God and who I am, I have more fuel and I will courageously market harder. If I have great sex, communication, intimacy with my wife and I'm not fighting with her all the time, and I have a great connection with my children, I don't feel guilty all the time, when that's all lined up, doing what's required in business is actually simple and it's much lighter. Yeah. Well, you know, I teach you as the entrepreneur,

you're the all star player or you're the car, right? The F1 car, you've got to be well serviced. If you're shitty, everything else is shitty. It'll be shitty for your staff, everything, right? And I think now, I think in the last five years, there's been this big movement in entrepreneurship because I came from the health space. I was a sports scientist, super fit.

And it's funny, I like fell out of it and got unfit. And during that time, everyone in entrepreneurship got fit, you know? Like, especially during COVID, it was like this flip flop, right? Like I saw Andy Frisella do it, then started 75 hard. Then all my entrepreneur friends started that. You know, so it's kind of funny how in the last five years

there's been this big realization, I feel. I think it's the consciousness that come into just entrepreneurism, I think. There's been so many, and a lot of that's the push from the younger generation in their 20s and 30s. They've watched the failure, which a lot of guys I work with in their 40s and 50s, they failure to their parents,

failure rate of older people. And they're like, ah, some, I don't know exactly what to do, but what they're doing is fucked up, it's not working. So recently the funnest part I've watched in the last two years is a consciousness when God has come back into entrepreneurship at this level that seems almost like a virus. Yeah, it's massive.

Like Muslim, Jewish, Christian, doesn't really matter. They're not spaces. There's just an awareness. Even here in Miami, moving, yeah. Like an even Muslim, Jewish, Christian, doesn't really matter in that space. It's like, there's just an awareness. Even here in Miami moving here, there's an awareness here that wasn't even in Southern California. The same for me. It was just awareness of,

okay, I'm conscious being there's something, I need to be about something more than just, I'm gonna do this. I need to make money. I need to make money. So I was like committed to bring my whole life with me at the same time. So I was behind the curve with a lot of people

in entrepreneurship when I restarted after lots of everything, because they were committed to make money. And I was tempted to go do that, just make money. But I was like, I don't wanna be the dude who's fat as fuck on my third marriage with a side chick and my kids hate me, but I'm rich. And then I'll lose half my money into divorce, spend the rest of my rich. And then I'll spend, lose half my money in a divorce,

spend the rest of my money to fix my health, spend the rest of my money to try to buy back the love and affection from my children. I was like, I'm gonna move this like a phalanx and I'm gonna move slower. But when I get to your front door, I will have no weakness. I will be bulletproof.

My marriage on fire, my kids are on fire, my fitness is on fire, my body's on fire, my money's on fire. So every move I make is a groundswell now. So people are seeing me now and they're like, the rise of Man of the Arena Tour, the stuff we're doing. They're like, shit, we didn't think Gary was doing anything. I was like, bitch, I've been doing this for 13 to 14 years. All that's happened now is momentum has to be. Yeah, you're right. It's like the snow falls on a mountain over many months

and then eventually there's an avalanche, right? That's kind of how it feels. And that's great because I think one thing that, you know, I'm sure you agree, most people can't do that because they're not disciplined. That's why they can do one thing good, but then when it's like five things or four things, it gets really hard because you've got to be up

at 5 a.m. to train, and then you've got to run the business, then you've got to block out time for the marriage and the kids, and that's where discipline and organization comes in. It's easier to centrally focus, right? So everybody wants to preach no balance, no balance of balance, which I agree.

Can't really balance everything. I put way more time into my business than I do into, if you were just to look at quantification of time, most entrepreneurs will spend 80, 90% of their time thinking about or executing in their business. And then there's the rest of life, right? My kids, I can't give my children the same amount of time

I give the business. Lifestyle doesn't exist for them. So what time I do have with my children, I have to be present. I don't spend all day like marketing either. But if I'm working on a sales funnel, or I'm sitting with my teams and we're working on copy, or I'm working on ad sets, or I'm working, I'm like here. I'm not anywhere else, I'm right here. I'm not with my wife, I'm not on a sales funnel, where I'm sitting with my teams and we're working on copy, or I'm working on ad sets,

or I'm working, I'm like here. I'm not anywhere else. I'm right here. I'm not with my wife, I'm not with my kids, I'm not with the sales team, I'm right here. This afternoon I'll be with the sales team. We're all worried about sales. I'm just gonna be right here with the salespeople,

but most of us can't be present enough to actually be here. And then to try to be here, and then here, and here, and keep life moving forward together, it's a stressful game. Well, is that and also, you know, I've grown, we grew our team to 110 employees and now we're sat about 85, 90, which should have been like a sweet spot for us right now. But a lot of them don't build the team and systems too. So I was saying to someone the other day, they're asking, how'd you do all the triathlon? I'm like, I actually only work like five hours a day now

because I have 80 employees doing everything else for me. So I think part of it is that growth as an entrepreneur. If you always stay the hustling entrepreneur, you'll always burn out and not balance, like be able to do all those things. But if you get good at building great teams and people, you should be able to actually buy your time back to go spend more time with family.

And sometimes you have to go deep to build the business and then you can come out the other side. The challenge that a lot of men like in their 40s and 50s face that I'm trying to help the younger generation see that it doesn't have to go this way, which there's a lot higher trend to it. A lot of direct response marketers, a lot of entrepreneurs,

and I know that in their 20s and 30s, are starting to see a better path to doing it, which is they're actually into having more fun in life and experiencing life and traveling in life. Now they're not getting married and not having kids, so they're like playing into play. My generation just got married in their 20s, started making babies because that was what the game was, because that's what our parents did and everybody else. So by the time I was like 30, I already had two children. By the time I'm in my 30s, had, you know, two children. By then in my thirties, I had three kids now at five children. So it's like, it's different. I'll be 49 this summer.

So like pushing into that place of not having to bottom out and then come back and repair became our goal, which is how, which means I'm going to have to let some things go. There's certain fires in the kingdom and the, in the kingdom of warrior, they're going to burn. Anytime. Every day, something's burning. It's like the size of my house is now is like something's fucking breaking all the time Yeah, every day you have a small little condo. Maybe some breaks every couple weeks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah when you got big houses Doorknobs broken toilet breaks the pools not working the fucking shrubs are dying something says something always kids spilled shit over here

Dog shit on the carpet. It's like There's something happening all the damn time. But that's no different than what's going on in business too. Yeah, and the bigger the business, the more problems. More problems. Yeah. That's why I remember Robert Kiyosaki back when I first started Dallas Badman to about 23 years ago.

Had read Rich Shadport out, that was my entry point in. He's like seven millions of entrepreneurs on fire. And we were sitting in a meeting with him and there was like a small room, 20 of us. I was young and I had like a yellow notepad. I'm taking the notes and I don't know what the fuck I'm writing because I'm getting dumb. But I'm so excited to be in a room and I'm like,

I put $20,000 to be in this room, I don't have a fuck clue what all they're saying, but I'm super pumped, writing some shit down that I'm never gonna go look at again. And all you young bucks listening to this right now, you're like, writing on a yellow pad? Yeah, dude, we we rock the yellow pad. And iPhones, chat, GPT, shit.

You should beat us. If you don't beat us right now, you're just a slow, lazy bitch. So this gay man of creating, for me, he was like, what's hard, having a lot of money or having nothing? And I had come from nothing, so I was like, way harder to have nothing. He's like, oh no, way harder to be wealthy and to keep it.

Yeah, keep it. And that's what I'm proud of what we've done, Warrior. Warrior, because we've grown year over year for 13 years. Dudes have come and gone in the space of men's space, but we continue to operate, we get bigger every year, grow, grow, grow, affected 26 other men's movements have launched out behind us. And people say, well, how is your marketing different?

Because when you come to our events, you watch our marketing, et cetera, it's distinctly different We couldn't follow the same models of direct response the way that it was when you were selling money So like advertising agencies or sales training companies or coaches who coach coaches to make big money, which I think is a big circle jerk See hi. I made all my big money. I'm really rich. How did you get rich teaching other coaches how to get rich? I'm like dude. Have you ever actually coached anyone? Yes.

Besides coaching broke people to be rich and you took the money from them and you got the money and it's a big, huge Ponzi scheme. Yeah, yeah. Or selling money, which I had done in banking in the real estate, which is selling cash. I'm like, here, let me sell you an ATM machine. So we had to find a new way to market,

which was soul-driven, which is I had to get my content to not just follow the frameworks of direct response, but I had to reach into and rip your fucking soul out. I had to reach into you and pull you to me. So we love that everybody wanna funnel hack us because we laughed the whole time. You're like, you're gonna get sucked into the vortex. Please funnel hack us away.

Because half of them would come through our follows trying to funnel hack away the way Russell taught them became our clients. Yeah. Because they get sucked into our movies. We created a specific type of movie that my friend Jeremy Finlay and I worked with for seven years called Salesumentaries. Yep.

And our theory was, could you take a documentary, marry it to a VSL, put them together and have people share your sales video like it was talked about as a documentary on Netflix. And it worked. And so our movies were visceral. They went dark and light. They would rip people into pieces as they watched them.

Our target, not everyone, but our target market, we knew who they were. We built huge paying books of thousands of applications. We had books that were this thick with exact verbiage that our guys used to describe the pain of the situation. So we could embed that language into our sales inventories and into our copy in a way that we could describe the painful pit of this man's reality

in words and language that immediately resonated but was better and more clear than he'd ever been about his own problems. Yeah, so they're going through it and going, he's talking to me. I always say great marketing is when someone goes through and goes, they're talking exactly to me. Yeah, and our goal was to have guys be like,

almost feel like we had followed them around with the camera. And even when I would talk about simple things about their habits and masturbation, because we knew we were dudes, we did the same shit, and we had data points on thousands of men. We knew how they did. So when I would describe, your wife is in bed, you're terrified, you can't reach across and even touch her.

Everything in you wants to connect with this woman, but it feels like the great wall of China is between the both of you. So instead of reaching across that pressurist way to touch her, you'd dip off into the bathroom, go find your favorite porn again, and find yourself jerking off in the toilet, only to be filled with guilt and shame over the fact that this is happening, waking up and it's more with rage and anger

because of the fact that you have put yourself in this situation, the one vagina you chose, and you're trapped like a motherfucker. When I describe it with those words, I'm describing not only my experience, I'm describing the experience of thousands of other men Well now to single dudes who don't have a wife and three kids. Yeah, we were after them Yeah, so people like you need to broaden your message right? Hell no. We're staying right here in our vertical and

If we're gonna expand the vertical then we're gonna language a different vertical But we're gonna stay in this vertical and we're gonna master this vertical all the way to the bottom Well, there's a enough people to marry man Plenty yeah, I was fun with our younger guys to that sauce when we first started they would see our marketing be like wow It's really good then they get married. Okay, and they'd have their first baby and then all of a sudden they come back Holy shit coach everything I've been watching of your shit for the last five years now makes sense. I was like, of course, you're married,

you just had a baby and you're in the sex prison. We know, welcome to Warrior. Now let us help you. So just to recap for everyone listening, because I wanted to talk about the marketing. We've already gone there, like the deep psychology, right? Knowing the avatar audience, storytelling to sell right three things I'm already hearing, playing the long game I'm hearing right putting out it's not like

you're just trying to sell a low ticket offer and upsell right away which nothing wrong with that but you're playing the long game and really getting them to you know you're creating the emotion so they follow you and maybe the life cycle's long too, right? Some of them are even before the awareness stage. You know, they're gonna come into that awareness stage when they get married and have kids. And any other big marketing tips or things you've noticed on top of those that you wanna add? So the child they're watching with,

and this goes with any product, any service somebody's offering, is that their vision of that client journey for them is too small. Because they want the cash quick. They're living day to day. I want to sell this shit right now. So they're like, how do I get the lease? I remember Frank Kern was one of my mentors like 14 years ago, or 13 years ago, and we

were talking about some of the sales funnels I had built and he was comparing it to a bunch of other direct response bar sales in the room. And he looks at me and he goes, this motherfucker runs people with traffic straight to a four-part video funnel and sells a $35,000 program. Do you know why he can do that? Because he can talk to people. If the Reds, you idiots, they can't talk to anyone,

has to write great copy, because direct response was built from guys who didn't like to talk to people. They tried to figure a way to never have to talk to another person so they could say- Yeah, they were mostly fat copyright. Exactly. So we started looking at a through line and saying, if here's where my guy's starting and I solve this problem, he hits a new peak of possibility,

it opens a new problem, which then opens up another possibility, which opens up another problem, which opens up another possibility. And instead of that first sale being a sale for, how do I get you to buy this now? It's how do I get you to be with me for the next eight years? And so we would sell from the ad to the landing page to the first offer, to the first sales call. We were not selling a $10,000 program. We were selling a three to four to five year journey with us.

So we would speak about this place of freedom that was way over here. four to five year journey with us. So we would speak about this place of freedom that was way over here. And we would identify it as this is checkpoint number one of seven, welcome to the journey. So let me just ask you a question. People are listening saying it sounds great, but I got a cashflow the ad somehow.

How would you do that on a more strategic financial level? Right, like would you spend, I'm gonna spend 200 grand a month and expect nothing back or in the first month they're buying something to at least break even? Can you tell us about that? Well, we're still like everybody else looking for a slow off the first, right? We're trying to liquidate off that fresh program. But like, I would say about 50% of the time our ad spend off the first initial lead development

with our bump sells and our upsells, we will liquidate. The other 50% we don't, that happens on the first initial lead development with our bump sells and our up sells, we will liquidate. The other 50% we don't, that happens on the first offer. And then we have some paths where we take where we're okay, like our insurance company, we know the retention of that client, we're okay to be profitable at six months. Because Dan Kennedy was the one who was teaching me

back in the day too, he's like, the guy that can spend the most money to get the lead is gonna dominate. Yeah, I mean, every big company on the planet play the long game. It's only the mini little marketing world where everyone's trying to, and I used to be like that,

and it capped me at like a few mill a year. And then when I really learned from whoever, a few people, I think Alex Mayer was, someone I worked with, Ty's partner, and he built a software company, and software companies inherently are LTV based, not cashflow based. And that was like a trigger for me.

And I instantly jumped to a million a month or 10 million a year, just because I'm like, I look differently now. I like kind of like you, I like, I still want to make some money for now because I don't want to have 5 million in debt, but I can wait and really build that long term and make it over time. We actually flipped the model too, because I tried in the beginning to go down the path of like this Ascension model everyone's talking about, low to Ryan Dice, all these things were like,

sell the low thing, then upgrade, then upgrade, then upgrade, then upgrade. I was like, dude, I'm just too dumb to do this. Like I'm not smart enough to put all this shit together. So I'm just gonna flip it upside down. And when they say they're gonna go over here at 25K, I'm just gonna to flip it upside down. And when they say they're going to go over here at 25K, I'm just going to flip the whole funnel and we're going to close all traffic to this one thing and then we're going to

sell it, we actually have a $10,000 program. For six years, we only had one offer. $10,000, live event, that's it. And that's not a way, I think the key is Ryan, it's like for me too, we probably couldn't do that because when you're selling like Facebook ad training, your differentiator is the emotion. You're changing someone's life, saving a marriage, they're in deep pain, like miserable,

whereas someone that wants a Facebook ad training, they're not in that much deep pain, right? So I think your business plays so perfectly into jumping quicker because you've done such a good job on the psychology level and with the salesmen, you know, the doc, you used to do that. James, you take Facebook markets, so if I was running an agency for a bit,

and if I'm running an agency, it doesn't matter what I'm selling, I can put people into the same emotional pocket. So if you look at, this is where people fuck up too, because when they're looking at selling something, they're looking at the first level of problem solution. What they're not looking at is a cascading binary effect of that problem. So if I'm talking about, I don't know how to do Facebook ads and I need to learn how

to do Facebook ads, if we back that away and say, okay, you learning Facebook ads, how is this affecting your marriage? How is it affecting your children? How is it affecting your ability to eat right? How is it affecting your body? How is it affecting your certainty in you? So we'll cascade the core for, which is our values for it. Which means I can take somebody, a girl getting $3,000 natural beat or hair extensions, my

wife around the hair industry over the last 10 years. People are like, three to 5,000, get your hair done? Oh yeah. In less than 60 minutes, I have a woman who's never spent more than $800 on hair, not only happily pay $5,000 for hair, but at the same time, come back every six to eight weeks to redo it from 1500. These are women that will stop paying their car payments before they'll stop their hair.

Why? Because we created a container with hair that had them feel the benefit, more sensual, more sexual, felt more beautiful, their marriage was better. So I think a lot of marketers don't go the next level with their conversation. So they have to start with low tech.

It's the psychology side, right? It's like the hair is the confidence, right? And the feeling good. And we actually ran an ad. I want to use this ad example because we actually ran a campaign that was ads equal freedom. And we'd explain that ads aren't about ads. It's about without ads you don't have traffic. And without traffic you don't have sales.

And without sales you can't pay your mortgage and you're worrying how to grow your business and it was the same like psych you know go in five layers deep on the psychology and it doesn't and we you know people start wearing t-shirts Adams equal free and it was funny because it you know when you really play that long game and hit the psychological it's what Trump does you know and all the greatest marketers they play that high game and hit the psychological, it's what Trump does, you know, and all the greatest marketers, they play that high level game. I love that.

Well, and that requires a level of depth in a marketer. And I believe it also requires a care factor, right? Because if you actually care in marketing, if you know that what you sell works and you know that what you sell can benefit the person deeply, then there is a place of deep pain and darkness you're willing to take this prospect in your marketing and in your sales conversations

that most people will not because the cost of them not moving forward in your mind with what you're selling is so gray. The intensity of not buying is life or death. It is life or death. In our world, my trainers and my salesmen, we're not closers. They're. It is life or death. I mean, in our world, my trainers are not, my salesmen were not closers. They're harvesters of souls. So when they get on it, they're coming into this call going, okay, if we don't get this guy shot with everything we have,

which means there's nothing we will not say, we will not lie, but we are going to get, we will go as deep and dark as we need to. Most people are competing on the surface level shit, now you're seeing it with chat GPT, everybody's shit's looking the same. It's like all the rookies are just, oh chat GPT's gonna save my life.

No, you just sound like a hollow idiot. Yeah, and I think that's so good because I kind of feel that too. Like I teach my team, I'm like, I make products where I wanna grab someone, shake them and say, you need to understand this, right? And a good example of ads to explain that is, people would be like,

why are you so passionate about ads really? I'm like, well, for four years, I wanted to grow an online business and I didn't know how to get traffic and customers. And so I failed. So, and then I figured out how to run ads and my business exploded. I made a million dollars

and helped thousands of people in fitness selling eBooks and I loved that and it was very rewarding to see the before and afters. So that kind of goes back to what you're saying. I had that emotional connection to why ads are so important, which seems very silly because ads are just a marketing tool, but I did have that emotional connection.

So I think that's why I became known as an ads guy because I had so much conviction of like, you need ads in your business, so you're not gonna reach people, and you won't sell your product, and if you don't sell your product, you can't change lives. We were on media for 12 straight years,

never stopped every day. And guys that get particularly into the coaching space, and the man's space, they're like, well, how do we get like, or anyone, how do we get convicted to do this? And I was like, when you start to see that the skill set or the mechanism is required and I remember the moment Happened I picked up the book by Glenn Livingston gorilla marketing in 90 days And I'd never really consciously studied marketing before I'm sitting in this library at Barnes & Noble back when Barnes & Noble is still doing

A saying and now most were shut down But as I'm sitting there I'm reading this and they had this moment which is if you control the rain You control the game. Um Because I was in 2009 at these events saying speaker author networking group and ryan Lee and all these other walkers were there and they were the dudes in like chuck taylor tennis shoes and jeans and hoodies And everybody else's suits and these motherfuckers walked around and owned everybody and I was like what the hell do these guys know? And they're like, marketing, bro. Gary V, crush it with cash, you know, and your passions.

Like I started reading tribes by Seth Godin and everything Seth Godin wrote. And then I started getting into this marketing mindset of, if I want to control my future forever, it is not negotiable to master direct response marketing. There is no, there's no way where you can't outsource that skill set even if you hire an agency if you're retarded And don't know what you're doing They will never be able to fulfill on the dream that you want because it's a collaborative experience with your agency. It's not Save me. Well, I say I say anyone that means agency is going to save them because they won't learn marketing.

It's like saying, I'm not going to learn how to be a parent. I'll just hire a nanny for the rest of my life. Like how stupid would that be? So be it. People try it. Yeah, yeah. People try it in both. It's probably the same person.

I have an nanny and an agency. Why don't my kids save me? My business, fair way. But it is a very empowering feeling. It's like learning to drive a car. You have freedom. Like when you learn marketing, it's so empowering because you have this like confidence.

Now, if you want to do a new business, you're like, I know the playbook. Right? It's like having a freedom of now I can drive to my friend's house when you're 17 or whatever. Well, this is, bro, this is why people follow you. It's why people buy from you. It's why they go to you because like,

there are people, men just like me. I'd been an entrepreneur for almost 10 years, and we had marketed, but it was never a conscious, it was like a thing we did at the end. Oh yeah, we should do some marketing. Now, the first thing we do is build the frameworks for marketing. What is the pitch? And we'll start running traffic, getting leads before even done with the offers. Because we're like, the first thing we have to do is can we get this to bite? But when that flips, they they have to I don't listen I love to market. I love it. I'm obsessed with it. I fucking hate training on marketing

It's not what I want to do. My guys are asking me to do it all the time But I'm like no, please train with Rudy Please yeah go train with somebody else who loves this shit God giving him the gift to do this Don't come to me for this hit. Yeah, but you know how to do it so good I was like just cuz I know how to do it good doesn't mean I want to teach you. Yeah. Yeah. Because I want to do the thing. I'm the best in the world at it. Marketing is something I had to learn. It's not like I woke up and said, I want to be a marketer. I said, no, no, I want to be a movement maker and to be a movement maker, you have to know marketing. Yeah. Every high performer, like if you play in the NBA,

you might play in a position, but you're still world-class in all the other positions That's the what people don't understand. Yes, right and that piece I think when when somebody makes this shift and when they come to programs like yours and they're getting the blueprints You know, what's interesting is you can give somebody the blueprint I'm talking about this with Russell all the time with his books and Russell What do you think you think I'm giving too much in a book? I was a bro you gave him everything in a book as it don't worry They're not gonna fucking read it.

And if they do read it, they're not gonna do anything with it. This is why anytime I was coming at FHL for 10 years of speaking, I didn't come in and train on marketing. They already got advantage at training. I came in to talk about the reason why they're not gonna do anything.

It's like, dude, you're not gonna do it. I would look at the room, 90%. 90% of you have wasted your entire week. Well, Russell, we did you because he ain't that type of guy to go on stage and say you're a little bitch. Get your net to work. Like let me teach you part of webinar. Here we go. Which was perfect. It was wonderful.

But the same thing in that tactical space like as you, as someone makes that internal shift to identity as a marketer. Yeah. You and I like we make, you market a ton. You teach and train on marketing. But marketing is simply taught by you because it's who you are. Mm-hmm It's not like somebody wake up like oh, dude, I think I'll do marketing. I am marketing Uh-huh when it becomes your identity. I am a marketer. I am a closer I am a leader not a savior when this becomes identity then doing marketing is Like taking a piss. It's part of life. Yes, you do. Yeah, I'm not gonna keep my piss what you do. I'm not gonna keep my piss inside of me,

I'm also not gonna keep my message inside of me, which means I gotta market. Well, the identity thing, we could have a whole nother podcast episode on that, because that's a prerequisite. You know, I teach my sales team, we have 45 sales reps, and we bring new ones in and out all the time.

And half of them I get on a call with, like when they join the team, I already know if they're gonna be good or not. Because it is like half of them I get on a call with like when they join the team I already know if they're gonna be good or not because it is like half of them are asleep I'm like if you ain't out there like I always say Muhammad Ali said he's the greatest before he's the greatest half you guys are half asleep on these zoom calls I know you ain't gonna close anything and then this other guy will join he's super loud confident bold read everything ready to go watching extra you I'm like you're gonna a lot, make a lot of money.

And it's like, that's your identity, right? Like how you show up. The fun part is like human nature is we can become that, right? So I think a lot of times people think marketers are born, closers are born. Like there are far more people who did not have the natural talent in marketing,

who didn't, couldn't spell direct response marketing, who couldn't sell anyone and marketing, who couldn't sell anyone in anything, but they made a decision. Yeah. They made a decision. I remember my decision with Brendan Richard, Experts Academy, and I was like, bought his program, I was terrified, I'd lost everything, I had $4,000 on my debit card, I had no credit cards, I was in debt millions, my fucking life was falling apart, I had an affair with

my wife, she was pregnant with her second daughter, I was a shit show. and I remember watching this video and making this decision just like people sit every day on your ass They come to your landing page. They're like dude is rooting my guy Mm-hmm and for many of you like watching this or listen to the podcast He is your guy and the fact that you keep listening to this shit You don't buy from them is a fucking problem And it's a problem because you're costing yourself so much because of your indecision Oh these three thousand dollars three thousand dollars too much too much this is nothing to do a question of what he can do and has nothing to do a question whether it

needs to be done it has to do a questioning whether you have the courage to do it and that was a piece for me I remember making shivering shaking my hands sweaty in my palms almost midnight I didn't realize the clock would still go and I could buy after midnight I was new to this game so I was like fuck the clock's going down the clock's going down, the clock's going down, shut the laptop. Open the laptop back up. Ah, I gotta excited and I'm terrified because I got like a thousand dollars left.

So I'm like, fuck, what have I done? The next morning I tell my wife, I'm going to this event. I have enough money for a Southwest flight to San Diego. I take my backpack with my old ultron at the time. Had all my shit in my backpack. I slept in the park first night. Somebody gave me a room the second night. And I go to this event.

My leave, my wife says, if you go to this event, I'm gonna divorce you. But like I knew there was no way out, like I had to go. And there's people listening to show right now, they're in no way out situations. And you're like, dude, a month's gonna pass, you're gonna keep listening to this podcast, you're gonna keep consuming this content,

you're gonna keep doing this show, you're gonna keep sitting on the outside, and every month that goes by, your capacity to make a decision to go goes down. Yeah, well, good day, because I'm, well, I said to my sales team the other day, I'm like, if you guys are in the bottom, like you're not performing right now,

you're at the bottom, you ain't gonna make little changes all of a sudden, become a top close. You gotta make big, drastic swings to get out the bottom, to the top, or even into the middle. You gotta watch your calls and become a totally different person on the calls today, or you're just gonna do the same or even into the middle, you gotta watch your calls and become a totally different

person on the calls today or you're just gonna do the same thing and definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again. So I love that story, cause that's like to me, I call it a catalyst. Yes. That was a catalyst for you that. Massive.

That's what people, like everybody has their guy. Like you're the guy for thousands of people who come to the door and say, you're my Brendan Richard moment. Like guys are sitting right now, men in their 40s, men in their 50s, young dudes in their 20s, young girls in their 20s, and they're like, my life is made for more.

And I'm telling you right now, of all the skillsets you could learn, marketing starts at the top, sales follows, and leading people, you get those three things nailed, you could do whatever you want for the rest of your entire life. You don't like how things are going fuck off burn it down

do something else you don't like the people you work with burn it down do something else you're bored of what you're doing burn it down dual center I've done that three times three yeah free egg I could add free ten million dollar exits but all times well you know now I belong to at least exit the company exactly so burn it down is probably sell this problem yes Yeah, sell it, let someone else burn it down. Somebody else burn it down and sell it. This identity shift that you had, that I've had, that so many have had, it's like,

once you have this shift, you can't, like there's no going back. Yeah, love that. So last question, because I don't want to glance over this, tell everyone where they can come witness this live, and talk about the event. glance over this. Tell everyone where they can come witness this live and talk about the event. All about this. So we have, for a couple of years,

been just low key with our stuff. It's all been our clients behind the scenes. My social media representation is the far cry of what actually goes behind the base of what we do at Wake Up Warrior with our teams and our client. But we finally came together. We're doing something very unique.

We brought 10 of the top men's movement makers, guys who've committed at least five to six years of their life up to 10 years, just training men. This is what they do every day. They all know how to market. They know how to sell. They all make tens of millions of dollars doing it and they lead thousands of men.

Put them all together in a room. Mia's kind of pointing at it, leading it together, me and Dan Flashman as partners. And we're putting together a man arena tour. First stops, May 17th, Salt Lake City, Utah, here 2025. We'll do two other stops this year. 7,000 men, all in black. If you've never been to a men's event,

these are unlike anything you've ever experienced before. The minute you put a couple women in the room, the dynamic changes, guys get different. But the honesty factor in this is really a catalyst for permission. Motivational seminar, it's not a hypey seminar, it is a comprehensive game of transformation. We have done these events for 13 years

and when men come to these places, they become a line of demarcation. There's who this guy was before he came and there's this life this guy builds vertically after he leaves. So God has asked me for a year to put something like this together. And I have kicked against the bricks a bit with it because big events are a pain in the

ass. Yes. And I did them for years and they take a massive amount of effort, tons of people on the team so that people don't understand like- If people think big events are for you, it's like it ain't for me, trust me. It's a lot. Hardest way to make money in the whole game of business. If I was after money, I would not do it.

Exactly. I would do a whole lot of other stuff. Everything else. Hybrid events, virtual events, sell on a product, keep it tight, charge 100, 200, $300,000 for programs. And we do that, but I was like, this for us is a mission. Like there's an awakening happening on the planet. Men are suffering at numbers they've never seen before.

We are watching chaos in marriage, chaos in families, young boys, teenage boys, 20-something boys, clueless about who to look to as a father figure. And my theory is that the source of our problems is weak men. And if men become powerfully weaponized in their bodies, in their being in spiritual out with God and balancing their marriage with their kids and wife

and inside of their businesses that life will change. And there's old generation guys coming to Man Arena right now that are guys that are not married and they don't have kids. But they're saying, I don't want to live like my dad. I don't want to be like my uncles. I want to do it different. Well, this is the place to come. You'll find out more at maninthearenatour.com

and we're super stoked about it. And yes, there is a shitload of marketing that goes into this project. Well, I love it because I do think, you know, just to wrap here, there's such a, we're in this peak, right? With like, you had the old school men where, you know, I grew up in England, my grandparents fought in the war and my grandma made hand grenades, as this old school way. But then you got kind of, we went full circle, now you got all these people that are so weak,

so inactive, they won't take action, they'll just complain all the time. And like, there's the middle, you know, this, yeah. If you merge the hardcore work ethic, grind of the old generation with the modern tech and savvy of a modern generation, and you take the grind of the old generation with the modern tech and savvy of the modern generation and you take the consciousness of modern generation married against the unconsciousness of the old world

and you merge these two worlds together, what you have is a new world and what you have is a new revival, what you have is a whole breed of men who will lead women, lead themselves, lead their children, lead the marketplace, lead their teams, lead their companies from a totally different place.

And the fun part is the outcome of all of this, 100% of the time is prosperity. No, I love it. Cause yeah, I mean, we just, we jumped over the middle, right? It's very interesting. So I love that. And I will try and get there myself.

So guys, go check out the event. I mean, personal development wise, no matter what position you're in, you're gonna get value. I'm gonna try and make it in between my Amazon shoot. So hopefully I can jump across and I'll have to finally not wear red too. I'll put a red t-shirt on underneath a black t-shirt.

But dude, thank you so much. Lots of great combo there, marketing, personal development, and pretty much everything else. So go buy a ticket. I'll see you there at the event. Thank you buddy. Guys, take care.

Keep living the red life. I'll see you there at the event. Thank you buddy. Guys, take care, keep living the red life. I'll see you soon.