Speaker 1: Have you thought about the cost of men that opt
Speaker 1: out of leadership opportunities to society.
Speaker 2: I think we're seeing it. I think we see it
Speaker 2: in the degradation of family values. I think we see
Speaker 2: it in the degradation of our institutions when there is
Speaker 2: no leadership. This is what happens. America has a shortage
Speaker 2: of male leaders. Men are quietly checking out of leading
Speaker 2: in their communities, their own homes, and even their own lives.
Speaker 2: Is this the great destiny of my life is to
Speaker 2: just bring home paychecks and be sad? Is it in
Speaker 2: a cubicle all day and make money for somebody else?
Speaker 2: Is this my purpose? This is what God called me too?
Speaker 2: Is to look another man in the face and say,
Speaker 2: don't worry, man, there's more.
Speaker 1: This is Frank Schwartz. He's the CEO of F three,
Speaker 1: which stands for Fitness, Fellowship and Faith. Men at over
Speaker 1: five thousand locations across the world join free, pure led
Speaker 1: workouts at five point thirty am that are outdoors, no
Speaker 1: matter if it's freezing, blistering, raining, or snowing. You're the
Speaker 1: CEO of one hundred thousand man movement. Current we ain't done.
Speaker 2: The mission of F three is to plant, grow, and
Speaker 2: serve these small workout groups for men in order to
Speaker 2: invigorate male community leadership. One of the poor principles of
Speaker 2: F three is that it's pure let right. It's all volunteers,
Speaker 2: and if you come out long enough, we'll say it's
Speaker 2: your turn. You got to lead. We want to teach
Speaker 2: men leadership because if they learn how to lead, then
Speaker 2: they can take that home to their families.
Speaker 1: By the end of this episode, you're going to walk
Speaker 1: away with a blueprint for real leadership. You'll have a
Speaker 1: deeper appreciation for where your leadership matters most. You'll also
Speaker 1: discover the F three movement and that just might change
Speaker 1: your life or the lives of men you care about
Speaker 1: who really need to hear this episode. F three ain't
Speaker 1: gonna change the world. That's not what we're for. We're
Speaker 1: here to change men who will change them life. This
Speaker 1: is army of normal folks where our mission is to
Speaker 1: make service easier for all of us and together change
Speaker 1: the country. All right, everybody, we have super exciting news
Speaker 1: coming at you. I mean, Alice is excited about it,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure how excited I am. The podcast
Speaker 1: is now live on YouTube, which means now you get
Speaker 1: to see me in case you prefer watching it there,
Speaker 1: and we're switching up the audio format of the podcast.
Speaker 1: You can now either listen to the full version of
Speaker 1: the podcast on the same episode, meaning you no longer
Speaker 1: have to go to part one in part two to
Speaker 1: hear a whole episode we got going, or you can
Speaker 1: listen to a thirty minute version of the podcast that
Speaker 1: will be labeled as highlights and we get it. Many
Speaker 1: listeners who aren't as into long form podcast or struggle
Speaker 1: to find the time to listen to the whole thing
Speaker 1: each week have requested something like this, and so Alex
Speaker 1: got off his button. We finally created it. We're really
Speaker 1: not perfect, nobody is, but we really do try to
Speaker 1: take in all of your feedback and advice. We hope
Speaker 1: to create a product that makes service easier for you
Speaker 1: and all of us. So check it out and keep
Speaker 1: it coming. You can email us anytime at Normalfolks dot
Speaker 1: org and we will respond. Now, let's go to the
Speaker 1: episode you joined F three for one blunt reason. What
Speaker 1: was it huh to not be fat anymore? That was
Speaker 1: really the Cruxoup?
Speaker 2: How long ago?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: So? That was twenty fourteen? So I guess I'm I'm
Speaker 2: finishing up your twelve of this deal.
Speaker 1: And so what I mean, what did you look in
Speaker 1: the mirror? And I mean so true? They have these
Speaker 1: things called planet fit they do.
Speaker 2: I mean, why very true? What was very true?
Speaker 1: So?
Speaker 2: Well, I went to the doctor, my doctor, it's been
Speaker 2: my doctor since we moved to Charlotte twenty something years ago.
Speaker 2: And she was like, look, you got high blood pressure,
Speaker 2: you got high cholesterol, you're overweight, you got sleep apnea.
Speaker 2: She's like, you're basically just a stroke waiting to happen.
Speaker 2: And I was like, well that, thanks for that. I
Speaker 2: appreciate that. And uh. And so it was like she said,
Speaker 2: basically like either you start actually exercising like I've been
Speaker 2: asking to you too for years, or you can beyond
Speaker 2: some medicines. That's so I don't want to do all that.
Speaker 2: So she says, well, then better start work now. So
Speaker 2: I started going to the gym like I did, like
Speaker 2: YMCA thing right, And but I kept hearing about this
Speaker 2: F three thing, F three F three And I knew
Speaker 2: a couple of guys who had been in and there's
Speaker 2: a guy that I that I worked with who had
Speaker 2: lost some weight and stuff and was looking pretty good
Speaker 2: and looked like he was feeling good about life. And
Speaker 2: so I said, uh, hey, man, what have you been doing?
Speaker 2: And it's like I've been doing this F three And
Speaker 2: I was like what, why does everybody keep talking about
Speaker 2: F three? Like what is that? And so he explains
Speaker 2: it and told me kind of what they do for
Speaker 2: workouts and stuff.
Speaker 1: And I was like, well, I'm not doing that.
Speaker 2: Like it was terrible, Like I was, that was the
Speaker 2: world is very hard, Like this is what it sounded
Speaker 2: like to me, you know. I was like, I'm more
Speaker 2: of like a jog on a treadmill for a mile
Speaker 2: and go and pretend I know what some of these
Speaker 2: machines do. And that's you know, that was it. So
Speaker 2: I uh so I decided just one Saturday, I was like,
Speaker 2: you know, I'll just show.
Speaker 1: Up, like what to see?
Speaker 2: Right, how bad can it be?
Speaker 1: It's November.
Speaker 2: Bad choice. It was probably one of the colder days
Speaker 2: of that year. And I went out there and and Bill,
Speaker 2: I had never really exercised in earnest, you know, since
Speaker 2: like high school, you know, and uh and so I
Speaker 2: mean it was it was horrible. It's an hour long
Speaker 2: and one of the core principles of F three is
Speaker 2: that it's pure lead. Right, It's all volunteers, and if
Speaker 2: you come out long enough, we'll say, hey, it's your turn.
Speaker 2: You got to lead, right. You don't get away with
Speaker 2: just showing up. Everybody has to participate, and not just
Speaker 2: in the workout, but also in the leadership of the workouts.
Speaker 2: So the way they did it on Saturdays then used
Speaker 2: to be they would do two halves. It's an hour long,
Speaker 2: and they would do you know, one guy would lead thirty,
Speaker 2: another guy would lead thirty. But I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I just had shut up out of nowhere,
Speaker 2: and we they start running us around. It's all this
Speaker 2: horrible stuff. And it's about thirty minutes in and this
Speaker 2: guy goes all right, man, bring it in, and everybody
Speaker 2: kind of comes to, you know, gathers around him, and
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, thank goodness, that is over. That
Speaker 2: was a horrible I think that was the worst thing
Speaker 2: I'd ever done in my life. And he was like,
Speaker 2: all right for the second half, I'm gonna head it
Speaker 2: up to this guy.
Speaker 1: And I was like, how is there a second half?
Speaker 1: Like we're all gonna die, there's no way, right, And
Speaker 1: and then we did the second half and it was horrible,
Speaker 1: but you know, you survive. But the thing was is
Speaker 1: so that you know you can get a workout a
Speaker 1: lot of places, right, And it's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a misnomer to call us a.
Speaker 2: Fitness We use fitness, right, that is, that is kind
Speaker 2: of the trojan horse, if you will, to get a
Speaker 2: man to come out right. But really it's about and
Speaker 2: not ironically an army of normal folks, right, but it's
Speaker 2: about community. It's about bringing men together. So F three
Speaker 2: stands for fitness, fellowship and faith.
Speaker 1: All right. So I went down a rabbit hole. I
Speaker 1: had on my underwear in one sock, and it was
Speaker 1: late last night and got on my leasas out of town.
Speaker 1: So I disturbed, absolutely nobody noted. And I watched a
Speaker 1: couple of videos and what I saw is a bunch
Speaker 1: of people about my age jumping curbs, lifting cinder blocks,
Speaker 1: doing some other stuff that looked like Jane Fondo workout
Speaker 1: from the eighties.
Speaker 2: That must have been Memphis.
Speaker 1: No it was not. I just get I'm just saying
Speaker 1: that because they're all here and and like getting a
Speaker 1: serious workout in, but just like using what was in
Speaker 1: the parking lot. Yeah, and I just started giggling. You know,
Speaker 1: it was not what I expected to see.
Speaker 2: No, so.
Speaker 1: When you showed up and you joined F three for
Speaker 1: that one blunt reason, yeah, was that what you found
Speaker 1: in the workout? Was that kind of atmosphere?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, very much. Yeah, a lot of joking locks, Ben,
Speaker 1: are you kidding? Oh yeah, that's why I was like,
Speaker 1: how what's even happening to me?
Speaker 2: Right now?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: It was a lot of it. Now, at that one,
Speaker 2: we didn't have a lot of cinder blocks in that
Speaker 2: kind of foolishness, But it's not uncommon to you know,
Speaker 2: you'll be running and they'll be like, oh, a rock pile
Speaker 2: and everybody stops, and then you work out with the
Speaker 2: rocks or you know whatever whatever. Right, all in trees?
Speaker 2: All right, pick up a log and carry that around.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It's it's this peer lead thing.
Speaker 1: Sounds like it's like, Okay, if I'm leading this week,
Speaker 1: what kind of stupid can I come up with it?
Speaker 1: I'm going to make my group d.
Speaker 2: Uh fellas would you agree? Yeah, that's that's about That's
Speaker 2: about it. Yeah, that's that's about it.
Speaker 1: That actually makes it fun. Yeah, it's fantastic. All right,
Speaker 1: So I kind of get that. But you have said
Speaker 1: that F three is a men's fitness group, but it's
Speaker 1: really a clever disguise, it is it is, Frank, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what are you hiding?
Speaker 2: We're cult No, I'm no, it's uh. The mission of
Speaker 2: F three is to is to plant, grow, and serve
Speaker 2: these small workout groups for men in order to invigorate
Speaker 2: male community leadership. We want to wake men back up.
Speaker 2: There's a lot and this is It was very true
Speaker 2: in Charlotte. It may be true in Memphis, and I
Speaker 2: know it's true in a lot of cities and towns
Speaker 2: throughout America. But men of our age, right, poor similar
Speaker 2: as you mentioned, right, and that kind of late thirties
Speaker 2: ish to mid early fifties ish.
Speaker 1: Right, you mean the dad bought exactly well, not me,
Speaker 1: but some of that don't know your s felt. I'll
Speaker 1: show you a picture later. You know, I'm a fat
Speaker 1: kid waiting to happen. But but no.
Speaker 2: But you know, they they maybe they got a couple
Speaker 2: of kids now right this early stage of career in life,
Speaker 2: and uh, probably they probably just had their second kid
Speaker 2: or something. They had something, just had to buy a
Speaker 2: bigger car, right, get maybe a bigger house, Get out
Speaker 2: of three bedroom into a four or five.
Speaker 1: Right, God forbid, drive a minivan. There it is, we
Speaker 1: say all the time. We're an army of minivan centurions.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, that's that's what we are. Right, So you
Speaker 1: got it.
Speaker 2: You get in this lifestyle, and pretty soon what you
Speaker 2: find is, after a few years of that, these guys
Speaker 2: who thought they were achieving, much like you, sitting in
Speaker 2: their underwear, one sock in their hand on the end
Speaker 2: of their bed, and they go, was this It is
Speaker 2: this all I'm for? This is this? The great destiny
Speaker 2: of my life is to just bring home paychecks and
Speaker 2: be sad and shuffle mindlessly and listlessly in and out
Speaker 2: of these giant high rises in Charlotte, sit in a
Speaker 2: cubicle all day and make money for somebody else or
Speaker 2: whateverybody else, you know, like, is this my purpose? And
Speaker 2: you look in their eyes and you can see it
Speaker 2: the hurt I was telling guys just this morning, like
Speaker 2: I can't not do this. This is what God called
Speaker 2: me too. Right, is to look another man in the
Speaker 2: face and say, don't worry, man, there's more, there's more,
Speaker 2: and we get that's that's really what we are. It's
Speaker 2: a leadership group, and we want to teach men leadership
Speaker 2: because if they learn how to lead, then they can
Speaker 2: take that home to their families, right, they can take
Speaker 2: that out in their communities. They can go places and
Speaker 2: teach others to know what they know, right, to teach
Speaker 2: them how to be functional. I mean, that's why the
Speaker 2: fitness is all functional. Everything about what we do is functional,
Speaker 2: you know. So it's it's speaking to those men in
Speaker 2: those situations. Certainly at first, that's what it was designed for.
Speaker 1: Why do you think so many men, especially middle aged men,
Speaker 1: have never with purpose? And when I say lad, I
Speaker 1: don't be mean. Managing a business gave.
Speaker 2: True community and that's part of what I love about
Speaker 2: F three and really about what you guys are doing too,
Speaker 2: is that it's volunteers.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: If you got hired, as it were, to be in
Speaker 2: the position you're in and that's your leadership, then you
Speaker 2: really are a manager. Right, somebody's paying you. You're paying
Speaker 2: the people beneath you, and that means you have the
Speaker 2: leverage and the power of them to say, like, well,
Speaker 2: if you don't do what I say, I'm gonna pay
Speaker 2: you anymore. Right, So that's managing, which isn't bad. It's
Speaker 2: a form of leadership, right. But leadership in its most
Speaker 2: pure fashion, I think, is a man or a woman
Speaker 2: with vision who can articulate that vision and then persuade
Speaker 2: others to come with them.
Speaker 1: Right. Have you thought about the cost of men that
Speaker 1: opt out of leadership opportunities to society.
Speaker 2: I think we're seeing it. I mean in terms of
Speaker 2: dollars and cents, incalculable, incalculable, But I think we're seeing it.
Speaker 2: I think we see it in the degradation of family values.
Speaker 2: I think we see it in the degradation of our institutions.
Speaker 2: I mean it's as obvious. I mean, we're seeing the cost.
Speaker 2: We're seeing the cost. This is what is the problem
Speaker 2: is when there is no leadership. This is what happens.
Speaker 1: And now a few messages from our general sponsors. But first,
Speaker 1: earlier this year something we're really proud of, Army members
Speaker 1: launched six A and F local service clubs around the country.
Speaker 1: Their design is to make service easier for your fellow
Speaker 1: community members by really having zero requirements of the club's members.
Speaker 1: All you got to do is just sign up and
Speaker 1: join our service activities whenever you can when it works
Speaker 1: for you and welcome kids to join us for everything,
Speaker 1: and they cultivate an in person family like tribe for
Speaker 1: lack of a better term, that makes service even more rewarding.
Speaker 1: We are now really, because of the success of these
Speaker 1: first six, looking at launching more local service clubs and
Speaker 1: if you'd be interested in either leading or serving on
Speaker 1: the leadership team of a new one in your community,
Speaker 1: email Alex at Alex at Normalfolks dot org and he'd
Speaker 1: love to connect with you about this cool opportunity. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back. Being a producer, has done his due
Speaker 1: diligence for me over the last three years prepping me,
Speaker 1: and he's also a data minor and I can't go
Speaker 1: we don't have time to go into the depth of it.
Speaker 1: But basically he found that Pew Research did a cool
Speaker 1: study that said that about a forty percent approval rating
Speaker 1: of the White House, and historically over the last eight
Speaker 1: presidential elections after two years, regardless of it's a Democrat
Speaker 1: or Republican, that's about the number, so it's really not
Speaker 1: about the politics. Same number for Congress, a little bit
Speaker 1: lower number for Senate. For the first time in our history,
Speaker 1: there's less than a fifty percent approval rating of the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court. It's supposed to be a non partisan body.
Speaker 1: Even more surprisingly, for the first time in our history,
Speaker 1: there's less than a fifty percent approval rating of CEOs
Speaker 1: of our fortune five hundred companies. Interesting don't approve, And
Speaker 1: at the same time, the same Pew research found that
Speaker 1: everybody knows that if they're watching Fox or CNN, ninety
Speaker 1: four percent respondents said they realize, depending on whose news
Speaker 1: they're watching, that it's going to be slanted toward one
Speaker 1: viewpoint or another. Yeah, and when reading social media that
Speaker 1: at the very least it's slanted all the way to
Speaker 1: pot patently false when getting introduced from that. So we
Speaker 1: don't approve. We know we're being fed. Yet the exact
Speaker 1: same respondent said they spend and average are two point
Speaker 1: two hours a day either listening to Fox, inn or
Speaker 1: on social media. I know that this poison is terrible
Speaker 1: for me, but let me have more of it like
Speaker 1: a bunch of sheep. Look, man, we continue to follow
Speaker 1: narratives that we know are and then we wonder why
Speaker 1: we feel bad about ourselves and we opt out of
Speaker 1: service and leadership because we think the world's broken because
Speaker 1: feeding ourselves.
Speaker 2: With yeah, one hundred percent true, yeah.
Speaker 1: F three, it seems to me breaks that down.
Speaker 2: We like to think, so, yeah, we like to think
Speaker 2: because here's the thing, and to your point, I think
Speaker 2: it's really encapsulated well in our second core principle, which
Speaker 2: is that it is open to all men. All we
Speaker 2: make no qualification, no kind of I mean, there's no fee,
Speaker 2: there's no I mean number one, number one core principles.
Speaker 2: That's free, right, It's always free, no matter what period.
Speaker 2: And the second is opened all men, and so there
Speaker 2: is no barrier to entry. We don't care who you are,
Speaker 2: what you look like, who you worship, no, who you love,
Speaker 2: don't care how you vote, don't care. I was telling
Speaker 2: guys this morning, there's a and these are started to
Speaker 2: crop up all over the place. But one of the
Speaker 2: original workout spots early on in Charlotte is at a
Speaker 2: local treatment facility, right, and you know, I think it's
Speaker 2: the one hundred and eighty days now that they give
Speaker 2: for free. It's a Charlotte rescue mission. And a guy
Speaker 2: named John Lambert, who is my predecessor, was started that
Speaker 2: and he says, you know, these guys and he was
Speaker 2: an addict, right, so he knew he also runs a
Speaker 2: multi pajillion dollar construction company now, right, and so he
Speaker 2: was like, these are men that he had a heart for.
Speaker 2: So he goes and he starts to work out there,
Speaker 2: and originally didn't even want us there. They're like, everybody
Speaker 2: fails these guys. Everybody fails these guys. We don't need
Speaker 2: one more, you know, great hope to come and pretend
Speaker 2: like they care and then wash out after a few weeks.
Speaker 2: And then these guys once again look at their lives
Speaker 2: and go, well, I got nothing right.
Speaker 1: Many of our longtime listeners will understand the phrase turkey person.
Speaker 1: I'll explain it to you later.
Speaker 2: When I got it perfect, I have a feeling, maybe
Speaker 2: a check writers like kind of the same.
Speaker 1: Yeah, show up on Thanksgiving giving out there, then never show.
Speaker 2: Up and they never show up again. And so they said,
Speaker 2: we were not really thrilled with this idea, but we'll
Speaker 2: give you a shot. Well it's been now, I don't
Speaker 2: remember ten twelve years or something. We've been doing this
Speaker 2: every single Saturday. And at that location you have men
Speaker 2: who are in the depth of chronic addiction and homelessness.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Sometimes they've been in and out of this facility a
Speaker 2: couple of times working out next to men literally who
Speaker 2: are billionaires and really outside of I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: if you're a stute, right, you can pick it up.
Speaker 2: But really they're all wearing the same T shirt. Nobody asks,
Speaker 2: nobody cares, right, I only know because I know the guys. Right,
Speaker 2: if you know him, you know him maybe, But but
Speaker 2: they don't look at it and go, this guy's less
Speaker 2: or oh he's a project or whatever. We really have
Speaker 2: a true deep ethos of every man is every man.
Speaker 2: God created every man to be a leader. He created
Speaker 2: every man to be successful. He created every man to
Speaker 2: have purpose in his life, whatever that purpose is. Some
Speaker 2: purposes are bigger than others. Right, you reach thousands and
Speaker 2: thousands of people, right, other guys that may not be
Speaker 2: their deal, that might not be where they're called to impact.
Speaker 2: But we believe that every single man on this planet
Speaker 2: has been called to impact. And so our intent is
Speaker 2: to go and to find them and to unlock them,
Speaker 2: to give them leadership, skills and purpose, and to set
Speaker 2: them free.
Speaker 1: All while lifting cinder blocks. It's the weird jumping in herbs.
Speaker 2: Bill if knitting was the thing that brought men together
Speaker 2: into community and unlock their hearts and minds. We would
Speaker 2: knit with a fervor unknown to man. That's what we
Speaker 2: would do. It just so happens at the workouts. A
Speaker 2: pretty good way to get guys in.
Speaker 1: You know, my generation, or at least how I grew up,
Speaker 1: was we didn't have a lot of catchphrases for stuff.
Speaker 1: We just said what we thought, rolled with it, and
Speaker 1: there's good ambat to that. Sure, in today's world, there
Speaker 1: seems to be a catchphrase or a type for everything.
Speaker 1: So when I think about masculinity as I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: F three, the two are basically synonymous. Bill, So it
Speaker 1: makes sense, I understand. But see, here's the point. Because
Speaker 1: of that tongue in cheek comment, I think about the
Speaker 1: terms mat toxic masculinity, row culture, masculinity, soft masculinity. What
Speaker 1: is an F three masculinity? Uh, real masculinity, true masculine.
Speaker 1: Tell me what that?
Speaker 2: We would say virtuous masculinity. That's that's the way theyphrase
Speaker 2: it masculinity to us. Uh, most of the things you
Speaker 2: described there, like the bro culture, you know, these red
Speaker 2: pill guys you know or whatever, and the Andrew tastes
Speaker 2: and the you know, these kinds of guys that are
Speaker 2: out there. I don't believe that that's masculinity. I don't
Speaker 2: think there's such a thing as toxic masculinity. I think
Speaker 2: that's masculinism, much like feminism or other isms. Essentially, what
Speaker 2: you've done is you've taken this thing that really is
Speaker 2: beautiful and holy and good, and you've turned that into
Speaker 2: your God. You've turned that into the thing that you worship.
Speaker 2: So these guys that spend a lot of time in
Speaker 2: the gym, well, sure they do that because they worship
Speaker 2: their bodies. They think they're very handsome and very strong,
Speaker 2: and some of them are right, and they're there to
Speaker 2: do that because that is who they believe that they are,
Speaker 2: their identity, that's that's right. We don't believe in that.
Speaker 2: We don't believe in that. We think your identity comes
Speaker 2: from something bigger than yourself. And most of these people
Speaker 2: who protect or practicing what I would call masculinism are
Speaker 2: those who believe in themselves and only themselves. You hear
Speaker 2: a lot of oh self care, and you know this
Speaker 2: kind of stuff, and you know these guys, when you
Speaker 2: listen to what they're talking about, it's very, very damaging stuff,
Speaker 2: very very damaging stuff. So a virtuous man, or a
Speaker 2: man who practices virtuous masculinity, which I think is true masculinity,
Speaker 2: is a man who I think practices courageous love, you know,
Speaker 2: full and complete self abandoned in the service of his
Speaker 2: fellow being. That's really what we're for. The reason we
Speaker 2: get strong out there, lifting you know, rocks and trees
Speaker 2: and whatever else. The jumping over, you know, pick the
Speaker 2: tables or whatever, you know, whatever idiot stuff we're doing,
Speaker 2: is because Bill Heaven forbidden. I'm not that much younger
Speaker 2: than you are. I know you might think I am,
Speaker 2: but I'm not. You like, I'm so so bad, it's
Speaker 2: so bad.
Speaker 1: No, honestly, I thought we're the same age, pretty close, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I see, it's good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't look bad for ninety eight, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: I can tell you with clarity if you were in
Speaker 2: a dangerous situation. Right, Let's say, you know, the car
Speaker 2: crashes and it catches fire and you're unconscious. Right, I know,
Speaker 2: I know because I've done it. We did it this morning.
Speaker 2: I can hoist you on my back and run flat
Speaker 2: out for one hundred yards and you'll be fine and
Speaker 2: that's who I am, you know what, I tell you
Speaker 2: a story about that actually not about carrying somebody, but
Speaker 2: but this idea of kind of the the masculinity we're
Speaker 2: going for. So I have this bad tendency to to
Speaker 2: sort of stop for folks on the side of the road.
Speaker 2: My wife says, is dangerous and you gotta go somewhow, right,
Speaker 2: But if I see somebody in distress, I just that's
Speaker 2: part of who I can't really help myself. And this
Speaker 2: is a few years ago now, but I stopped one
Speaker 2: time and it was just a you know, car stop
Speaker 2: flashes on. I can see people in the car, so
Speaker 2: I pull over and and I'm gonna, you know, get
Speaker 2: out to help or whatever. Now I'm not a big guy.
Speaker 2: I'm not like a menacing presence or something. I'm not
Speaker 2: a you know, big fellow. And I didn't play you know,
Speaker 2: college sports or anything. But I'm not you know, it's
Speaker 2: just a random dude like getting out of his truck,
Speaker 2: you know, walking back toward your car. You know you
Speaker 2: might might be a little weirded out right. Well, it's
Speaker 2: the beauty of it is. It's this. It's a clearly
Speaker 2: several generations of family in here right. The lady driving
Speaker 2: the car will look like probably her mom and probably
Speaker 2: her daughter in the backseat. I start walking back towards this.
Speaker 1: Car, and she hops out and runs up and she's like, oh,
Speaker 1: thank goodness. And I was like, oh yeah, you guys, okay,
Speaker 1: And she says, well, we've had people pull over and
Speaker 1: I just kind of waved him on.
Speaker 2: She says, but this is truth. I saw your F
Speaker 2: three sticker and I knew that I would be safe
Speaker 2: and I knew that you would help. Wow. Now part
Speaker 2: of that's the blessing of being in the Charlotte areas.
Speaker 2: A lot of people know what F three is. But
Speaker 2: in my mind, Bill, that's masculine.
Speaker 1: That's a great story. The truth confidence be able to
Speaker 1: fix their car. You just did.
Speaker 2: I end up having to give them a ride, Okay,
Speaker 2: yeah yeah, I know. Now, real masculine you would be like,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, And I fixed the car and I changed
Speaker 2: the tile.
Speaker 1: Like no.
Speaker 2: I walk into the car and I'm like, car broke.
Speaker 2: I don't know, you know, like I have no idea.
Speaker 1: How car broke? I have truck, Yeah exactly. So I
Speaker 1: gave her a ride or whatever. Right, So we got
Speaker 1: him home and got people called. But yeah, but that
Speaker 1: was the point. We'll be right back. You talked about
Speaker 1: the location that had billionaires and formally incarcerated folks working
Speaker 1: out together. That was kind of the the passion project
Speaker 1: of your founder, not the founder, but yeah, another guy,
Speaker 1: but yeah, another guy. That's the beauty of it.
Speaker 2: Too, Right, the founder didn't think of that, just somebody
Speaker 2: in the crowd had an idea.
Speaker 1: With that perspective. Is background about some specific friendships that
Speaker 1: you know that are from two dissimilar worlds that now
Speaker 1: lead and serve and are friendship friends with one another
Speaker 1: specifically because of F three. Man, that's a I'll be honest,
Speaker 1: that's a long list. Give me one. That's a long list.
Speaker 1: Well what yeah, give me one of yours. Okay, I'll
Speaker 1: do that. That's probably easier. Even so, one of the
Speaker 1: things we believe in in F three is in shared leadership. Right, No,
Speaker 1: no one man can run anything. It kind of helps
Speaker 1: avoid a lot of problems. You know, you don't get
Speaker 1: this kind of cult of personality like I can't choose
Speaker 1: to do anything without you know, kind of this group
Speaker 1: of men that I've selected to come with me, right,
Speaker 1: we share leadership.
Speaker 2: Well, now, early on I didn't do it this way
Speaker 2: necessarily because you know, first thing you do is pick
Speaker 2: some of your buddies, like minded guys, and you think
Speaker 2: it's fantastic. You know, this will be great. We'll hang
Speaker 2: out with our buddies, will make decisions about things. And
Speaker 2: I've learned over time that that is a very ineffective
Speaker 2: way to lead a very large volunteer group. So there's
Speaker 2: a guy named Scratch and Win. Yes, I presume he
Speaker 2: has a real name.
Speaker 1: Win. First of all, I get that that's like a
Speaker 1: lotto cary. But I can't help but think of a dude,
Speaker 1: you know, scratch and scratch it when.
Speaker 2: I win. Yeah, exactly. I can't wait to share that
Speaker 2: with him. But John Horton, and he actually is now
Speaker 2: are He's our only employee, right, he's our fundraising guy.
Speaker 2: He's the only one who actually works for as everybody
Speaker 2: else volunteers. But anyway, he's a guy who has very
Speaker 2: different political leanings from me, let's say, and that's one
Speaker 2: of the things that we love to fight with most
Speaker 2: in this country, right, fight with those kind of people,
Speaker 2: people that are opposite of us. But I specifically ask
Speaker 2: him to come and serve with us and be a
Speaker 2: part of the team because I know how different he is. Now.
Speaker 2: I probably shouldn't even share this. I'm sure this first
Speaker 2: time some guys will ever heard it. But we were
Speaker 2: on a retreat as a leadership team and John and
Speaker 2: I don't want to say we almost came to blows,
Speaker 2: but it was it was warm. We'll just say that
Speaker 2: it was warm disagreeing over something. Right now. It's a
Speaker 2: guy that normally you would be like, forget that guy.
Speaker 2: I'm done.
Speaker 1: It's over.
Speaker 2: He's dead to me. Throw him off the team, and
Speaker 2: we move on, right and get done. We need to
Speaker 2: get done. Well, some good advice from guys on that team,
Speaker 2: you know, come to me and say, well, you know,
Speaker 2: he doesn't believe in God. I have a very strong
Speaker 2: faith in Right, he doesn't believe in in a lot
Speaker 2: of the social things that I do, or and vice versa. Right,
Speaker 2: there is nothing about us that is I mean, outside
Speaker 2: of the fact that we're both men, and I mean
Speaker 2: his ages, he's fair amount younger than me and whatever.
Speaker 2: But we shouldn't match on paper, and we shouldn't especially
Speaker 2: after fighting with one another and disagreeing so vehemently about
Speaker 2: certain things. There's no way that we should be getting along.
Speaker 2: And yet just before I came here, even you know,
Speaker 2: he's calling me, going, hey, man, anything else you need
Speaker 2: for the trip? What else can I do for you?
Speaker 2: And you know you're going to be gone, your wife
Speaker 2: need anything? Blah blah blah blah blah, all this kind
Speaker 2: of stuff, right, And he is one of my dearest friends.
Speaker 2: I disagree with him so strongly about so many things.
Speaker 2: You know that he still doesn't believes, you know whatever,
Speaker 2: And so we we don't fight yell anymore. But but
Speaker 2: those kinds of stories, I mean, there's guys who you know,
Speaker 2: on paper, it would like, why would you ever talk
Speaker 2: to this dude? But some of the greatest friends I have,
Speaker 2: Or there's up in the in the Northeast. There's guys
Speaker 2: who I worship very differently, non Christians, very differently, you know,
Speaker 2: different colors, different all this kind I mean. And when
Speaker 2: you when you remove all of the stuff that the
Speaker 2: world tells you you're supposed to pay attention to to
Speaker 2: make you part of the same group, if you remove
Speaker 2: all that, and you can get a man who believes
Speaker 2: in his heart what the mission is, what he has
Speaker 2: is a mission as a man, we can we can
Speaker 2: disagree about whatever you like, you know. And so you know,
Speaker 2: I call this guy now because sometimes when I'm upset
Speaker 2: about something else and I'll be like, hey, I need
Speaker 2: a different perspective from my own, because my perspective is
Speaker 2: just making me mad, you know. So I need somebody
Speaker 2: to tell me to get my head out of my
Speaker 2: rear end so I can come back around and be
Speaker 2: a normal person again.
Speaker 1: The man out there, or the wife out there who
Speaker 1: has a husband who's listening to us, not the husband,
Speaker 1: but the wife's listening to us. The man who thinks
Speaker 1: it's just too ordinary to make a difference, or the
Speaker 1: wife that sees in her husband a degraded version of
Speaker 1: what she fell in love with. What does F three
Speaker 1: say about what just one normal person can actually do?
Speaker 2: We often because people look at F three now that
Speaker 2: we have, you know, we're known a little bit in
Speaker 2: certain places, and they know we have some size, you know,
Speaker 2: to our ranks and things like that, and they get
Speaker 2: a lot of guys who say things like, oh, man
Speaker 2: F three ought to you know, fill in the blank,
Speaker 2: pick a number and do whatever it might be right,
Speaker 2: And we often say that man F three ain't going
Speaker 2: to change the world. That's not what we're for. We're
Speaker 2: here to change men who will change them. So to
Speaker 2: a one guy who thinks he can't make any difference,
Speaker 2: I think he needs to probably step back and decide
Speaker 2: what difference really means. He needs to figure out that
Speaker 2: it ain't building some big, massive, you know, billion dollar company,
Speaker 2: or flying to the moon or any other that nonsense.
Speaker 1: Right. I have done a lot of speeches all over
Speaker 1: the place, some I big, big, big ones and all that,
Speaker 1: And one of the things in the leadership speech that
Speaker 1: I do is, you can probably be the most effective,
Speaker 1: most important leader and servant without even leaving the front door.
Speaker 1: Your spouse and children, your family, and you don't have
Speaker 1: to be part of any big five oh one, C
Speaker 1: three or anything to have profound effect. And I know
Speaker 1: that because I lack that leadership in my own life.
Speaker 1: And I love what you're doing because I can see
Speaker 1: a man after joining F three and being involved for
Speaker 1: just a short period of time, I can see him
Speaker 1: feeling better about himself physically and better about himself emotionally
Speaker 1: and spiritually. And I got to believe that is most
Speaker 1: clearly reflected at home.
Speaker 2: One hundred percent. In fact, I say it a lot,
Speaker 2: and I feel like I'm not quite getting it through
Speaker 2: to everybody yet in f three, you know, but like
Speaker 2: if you're not taking everything that we teach you out
Speaker 2: there about leadership, about the principles of the workout, even
Speaker 2: even things like you know, our third core values, that
Speaker 2: we are third core principles, that we work out outdoors
Speaker 2: no matter what rain sean doesn't matter, right, no matter
Speaker 2: what we're outdoors. That's just a thing. And every man
Speaker 2: has to just you know, assess his own risk and
Speaker 2: decide whether or not he wants to be there. Now,
Speaker 2: that's up to him. But but all those things that
Speaker 2: we teach you about becoming more durable, right, the fitness
Speaker 2: is functional fitness. I want to know that if I
Speaker 2: have to pick Bill up, I can, right. I want
Speaker 2: to know that, I mean, even down to something stupid,
Speaker 2: like if the plane is late and I got to
Speaker 2: carry all the bags and our family has to run
Speaker 2: to the next gate or something, right, I can do that.
Speaker 2: I'm strong enough to do that. I have the mental
Speaker 2: durability to do that.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: If you're not taking all of those things that we
Speaker 2: teach you home, then there isn't any point. There's any
Speaker 2: point the family is the basic building block of society.
Speaker 2: How the family goes, society goes, how the man in
Speaker 2: the family goes is how the family goes. And that's
Speaker 2: just facts.
Speaker 1: Great story, great work. Thanks for being here, Frank Schwartz
Speaker 1: our body, and thank you for joining us this week.
Speaker 1: If Frenk schwar Or has inspired you in general, or
Speaker 1: better yet, to take action by joining an F three workout,
Speaker 1: sharing this episode with men in your life who could
Speaker 1: benefit from it, leading more intentionally in your home or community,
Speaker 1: or something else entirely. Seriously, let me know about it.
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear about it. You can write me
Speaker 1: anytime at Bill at normalfolks dot us. If you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this episode, do us a favor, share our friends, share
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Speaker 1: our local service clubs, Take the ten level challenge and
Speaker 1: buy our merch which we don't make any money on
Speaker 1: any and all of these things that will help us
Speaker 1: grow an army and normal folks. I'm Bill Cortney. Until
Speaker 1: next time, do what you can