Curt Storring 0:00

Welcome to the Dad.Work podcast. My name is Curt Storring, your host and the founder of Dad.Work. Remember, if you would like to find out more about what we're doing blog posts, more podcast resources, everything else, you can find that at Dad dot work, that's our URL. And please, if you have been enjoying this podcast, would you do me a favor? Would you just hit pause and go to Apple podcasts, Scroll down, leave a rating and review. It's one of the best ways we can help get this work to more men. I very much appreciate it. Today I'm excited to talk to Dave Weale. Dave was my coach through one of the most difficult times that I've gone through in the last couple of years changing direction and making a decision in my life that would impact me for years to come. So I was very excited to get his feedback from his experience, which is absolutely insane. You're not going to believe the two enormous shifts that Dave has gone through already setbacks that turned into success. We go deep talking about what young men need from their fathers mentors in society. The role of a father in young man's life from days perspective as a mentor, why failure is mandatory if you want to do big things, resilience, what happens to a pro skier when he breaks his neck, the power of mindset and recovering from huge setbacks. Importance of cannabis as part of Dave's journey, the creation and collapse of a seven figure company and how Dave got through a second enormous hardship. Moving forward despite challenges and choosing to face things head on high intensity men's work for high performance men. And a little story of my own failure that led to this entire project called Dad.Work. Dave Weale is the founder of Alpha Rising, a community of men embracing high intensity performance with emotional intelligence and integrity of self. As a men’s coach and breathwork facilitator, Dave leads with years of experience in athletic coaching and his own success as an athlete. After his career as a professional skier ended with breaking his neck in 2012, he discovered a passion for diving deeper into the coaching space, helping men achieve true fulfillment in their lives; the way he supported his athletes to win. He currently lives in Costa Rica with his wife and is on a mission to continue supporting his clients as they evolve into better husbands, fathers, and leaders in their communities. The world needs better men, now more than ever. You can find Dave online alpha-rising.com, or on Instagram, alpharising.menswork is his handle. With all that being said, this is an incredibly exciting conversation very wide ranging, Dave goes very deep talking about his struggles and the way that he has been able to master those struggles and come out on the other side, just way better than if he had not got the mindset that he has developed and had not done the work he has done. To get to the point yesterday, this is incredibly inspiring. And I hope you'll love it, let me know in the reviews, or send me a message Curt at Dad.Work. I read every email. Thank you very much once again for listening, and let's dive in with Dave.

All right, Dave, thank you for joining the Dad.Work podcast I am very excited to have you on as a friend as someone who's coached me, and as someone who leads young men in their transition into adulthood. So thank you, how is how's your life going down there in Costa Rica, isn't?

Dave Weale 2:55

It is Costa Rica, we are living in Nosara. And it's pretty wonderful down here. Speaking of all the Dad.Work stuff, I've been getting, like a sample of what that's like, because some of our really good friends live beside us and have two young children. And I've been playing with them a lot and having them come in like randomly interrupt work and be like, hey, what you do and you go play. It's a it's been awesome, because I've been down here.

Curt Storring 3:22

Nice. Yeah, that's so amazing. You're telling me about your experience with the kids down there. And it's like, that's fantastic training, because we talked beforehand, like you're not a dad yet. But you are an entrepreneur so that you have more space when you become a dad when you and your wife have children. And I love that because I'm the same way I wanted to have all the space and time in the world to do what I wanted. And I just, you know, love being entrepreneur. So I think we'll get into that, because you've got some just incredible stories, that for me, like I can hardly believe the resilience of thought it would have taken to get through all of that. But I'd love to start with the young man's mastermind that you ran. Because I want to know, just personally, like what do our young men today need? My kids are eight, six and one. They're not yet into that sort of adolescent teenage years. But you worked very closely with them in a way that that was different than just being a father or a family member. And so is there. Can you give us like a quick overview of what that looked like? And then maybe things that you noticed that our young men need from our from us as fathers and maybe from society at large?

Dave Weale 4:33

Yeah, for sure. A huge topic. Very excited to dig into it. It's, it kind of started actually, I'm sure we'll talk about this a little bit later. But before I got into coaching and entrepreneurship and all the stuff, I did ski coaching for about 10 years, and that's actually part of where the young men's group started because one of the families that I coached in skiing, I coached their boys for a long time in that capacity. When I was doing coaching I stayed in touch with the family and their mom was also a coach and working in that industry, and she kind of was a bit of a mentor of mine. But classic, like, you can be a coach, but then you're not going to be the coach for your kids, you know, like, you have a very different relationship and all the things and, and she was having a bit of trouble connecting with them. So I came in and did some one on one stuff with a few of our boys. And then once COVID Hit we I was working with a couple young men clients, and one of my friends Ben Gorecki, who you may not have, you may have interviewed already, but if not, you should. He was also doing some stuff with young men, and we just were talking about like, why don't we put them into a group because we've both done so much stuff with with samurai and running men's groups and all this stuff for like, it's gonna work much better with it. Because they'll get to hear from each other, they'll get to, like, share their experiences, and, and really, you know, support each other. And as well, they don't always have stuff going on every single week, you know, they're not as hungry for growth and change, typically, as a full grown adult, it's paying their own money and coming in be like I want to, I want to grow and evolve, I want to get as much as I can out of this, it's often more in that capacity, it's like the parents kind of paying for this and wanting like, hey, like my son is needs help, like help them, you know, he's broken, can you fix,

I can figure it out. So that's kind of where it started. And, and it was really cool having the group, we we had it a little bit different than a normal men's group in that we also incorporated a lot of reading. So we read a book together every month. And then we had sort of like a samurai group, we had space to share, we had space to talk about what was going on in our lives and relationships, stuff, school stuff, you know, sex drugs, and all the things that they can't talk about with their parents or not, that can't but, you know, most teenagers don't want to talk about that kind of stuff with their parents, they're not talking about it with their teachers, you know, unless they have maybe an older brother, then they don't usually have someone to talk to you about this kind of stuff. So that was essentially, where that was a big part of what we we talked about and we focused on was, was helping a lot of them through it. Because, you know, these are big, important things, they're in this transition of going from high school into becoming a man for the first time into making their own decisions into deciding what they want to do with the rest of their life. And, you know, it's overwhelming. And then on top of all of that, when we started the group, it was actually right after the start of COVID, as well. So, you know, on top of all of these other things, they're now trying to do all this online, on their own, like, you know, managing their schedules and trying to like keep their mental health in check, while sitting in front of a computer all day long, and like, maybe not eating very well, maybe not exercising a time losing that social connection we have from being in school, which is, for a lot of kids, the only thing they really enjoy about school is getting to see the friends there. So, you know, it was it was kind of a timing, and, you know, the fact that we've already been doing some work already, they were just like, this makes sense. Let's put this together and, and we ran it for a couple years with that group, we're actually just coming to a completion with that particular group right now, because they're all stepping off in the university and, and a few of them are transitioning over into regular semi group, so they're not really young men anymore. They're, they're kind of graduating into full on men's groups. And we are probably going to start another group in the new year. But for now, it's, it's been really cool to be with these guys for the last two years of, of not helping them navigate that transition, like out of high school into college university and to basically into being their own man for the first time. And, and being able to share all of this stuff that we're learning and men's work, being able to share so many of these amazing books, like all this personal growth stuff, Tony Robbins and digging into books like mindset, and brainstorm, which is like helping them really understand their minds, helping them understand things like goal setting, and like, and meditation and intentions and breath work. And like all these things that are really important, but they don't teach in school, you know, they teach a lot of crap that you don't really need at school, but it was cool to have the opportunity to actually share a bunch of this work that's been so impactful to me and like so many other guys that I've seen in both clients, but also in the groups that I run and stuff. And and you know, it's kind of this whenever we talk about it with guys that are in samurai or guys that are doing this work, they're like, Oh my God, if I had access to that at that age, like holy crap. And, but it and it's interesting, because they don't see that that you know, there's just, you know, 1617 They're like, man, we kind of we sit in a weird place and like you said, we're not quite a teacher, who we're not quite apparent. We're not quite appear or like somewhere in the middle. You know, like, so it's, it's been a cool space to be able to, to guide and mentor and, and let them open up and talk about the shit that's going on at home with their, with their parents or with the girls they're chasing or, you know, like a couple, we had quite a few guys that actually opened up about having some struggles with the drugs or things that they're like not wanting to be smoking too much weed or, you know, whatever, getting pulled into partying too much, and then worked through it and had space to get back on track with these things. And it was really cool to be able to share all that with, like to hold the space for them to go through that and know that we, you know, planting a lot of seeds, essentially, you know, it's like a lot of the stuff we were doing, mate, you don't necessarily see all the benefits from it right now. But knowing that they've got this base of understanding and of being able to talk about the things that are going on, and that the normal for them now, like, I'm really excited to see how they just, you know, take off from here.

Curt Storring 11:01

Yeah, yeah, thank you for all of that. And I've got like, at least four follow up questions. But I love the planting seeds idea that is like what I'm trying to do with my kids. And it's actually what I'm trying to do with as Dad.Work project is just introduce more mindfulness tools, more modalities, more ways to heal and grow, that are not really mainstream, and not because they don't work. But there's like this. I don't know, people aren't really into this yet, unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, which I won't get into. But just like having those seeds planted so that when five years from now they need them. They're like, Oh, man, I'm really stressed out, oh, oh, yeah, I know about meditating. Like, I'll just meditate for a while. And suddenly, like, boom, you have a tool. And that's like, for me with my kids. I and I know many of us on this journey, had to figure out like what was wrong with me, and then what was a tool and then how to build that tool and how to use that tool. I'm trying to share these things with my children so that when they need them, they already have the tools built and they know how to use them. So that's such a brilliant, the planting seeds idea is so important. And I wish, I wish like more men and more young men were doing this kind of stuff. So first of all, thank you for running such an awesome program. Thank you, what

Dave Weale 12:15

most of how we sometimes get like, All right, who's done the reading and no hands go up, you're like, all right. Like, okay.

Curt Storring 12:28

Yeah, how important is that role that you played in their life? Like, could you see ways that you spoken to their life that without you, they might have gone off the wrong track.

Dave Weale 12:38

For sure, especially as a as a kind of touched on there, especially the drug piece, I feel like, you know, being someone, especially, you know, not everyone could even talk about this kind of stuff, at least, you know, because I'm someone who I worked in the cannabis industry for a long time. And, and I'm open about that, they know that they, I'm a huge proponent of cannabis and fight medicines, and psychedelics and all these things, not every day all the time, but as tools as, you know, vehicles for growth and things like that. And, and I also know that, you know, they're not good to be doing all the time, and that they can hamper growth, they can hamper progress and things like that, especially for a young mind that still developing and still trying to figure out what it's doing. And having that space to have open non judgmental conversations about things like drugs, with these guys that are just starting to experiment with it for the first time. And, you know, it's powerful and drinking as well and partying, like, you know, that having a space so they can be the normal conversation around drugs in, in most homes, and in the schools in particular is don't, you know, like zero tolerance, you don't do them. They're bad, you know, period, you know, and I think that's just bullshit. And, and not talking about it not having space to have any sort of dialogue around it. Makes it so that, you know, they have to almost explore and try things on their own, they have to figure out how to make it work. And, you know, When you demonize something when you put it in that it's like, if you don't push the red button, like what does someone want to do? They want to push them but it's like, that's just the way our brains right, especially teenagers, you know, I was actually, most of the books we read with them. I have read myself and that was why I brought them in. But I had a mentor of mine recommend this book brainstorm, to us to read and I hadn't read it, but I took their advice. And it was it's all about the teenage brain specifically and how it develops and how like the stages of development and the phases that it goes through and learning really about the teenage brain, like more in depth. And that's one of the pieces that you know, you kind of I knew this intrinsically, but it was really cool to see it outline and explain that. The teenage mind is naturally very readable And, and that's not just a problem to deal with, that's, that's an inherent part of growth. Like, the teenager needs to, like, kind of go off on his own and do things in his own way to learn boundaries to learn what's important to him to learn about life himself, as opposed to, you know, just being, like, doing what he's told and believing everything that he's told, and, or she, and so on the drugs thing, like, you know, the zero tolerance, just don't do it. And don't ask questions is a terrible model, in my opinion, so it's cool to have space to, to dig into that and to be like, alright, well, it's like, let's find out what works for you, like, try, try not smoking for a week and see how your school does see how you feel, see how your anxiety is, and, like, see how you actually feel with and without having these things in your life. And, and, you know, supporting them, helping them set goals to like things out and be more, you know, use more intentionally if they're going to, and, you know, and for most of them, it was way better for them, just not for the majority of the time. And, you know, and encouraging them to, like, set bigger goals around that and not fall into peer pressure to, you know, to actually give a shit about their growth, and doing well in life and in their studies, and just to feel better. So versus like, just don't, you know, it's like, actually helping them, experiment for themselves and learn for themselves and make choices for themselves. Because, inherently, if you tell a teenager not to do something, he's probably going to want to do more. And this way, they actually got to come to that conclusion, rather than on their own and choose that, like, actually, I don't want to do this, and I feel better when I don't. And, you know, that's way more powerful in my mind, and more likely to stay so empowering. Yeah.

Curt Storring 16:56

Yeah, that's, that's amazing. And the book recommendation is fantastic. Dan Siegel is the author of that one, he's also the author of one of my favorite books called The Power of showing up. And I highly recommend all of his work for all parents. It's like the base rock, fundamental, research backed, compassionate parenting piece that I rely on a lot. So it's a fantastic recommendation. And what you're talking about is well comes up the teenage brain being rebellious, I think that they touch on an in iron. John, when he talks about moving into the white knight phase, he says you have to go through a Red Knight phase before you can become this, like, you know, fully embodied masculine, mature White Knight like you just have to, you have to be a little bit rebellious, you have to like, you know, go the opposite way. You have to get that out of your system in a way, and sort of an architect archetypal way to get to that mature manhood. And so I think that's super important for parents to understand. And I know that's like, for me, it's so hard to imagine being okay with letting go of the control as I see my children do things that I don't agree with. And it sounds like from your experience, that's absolutely vital. So I want to know, like, what, what is the dad's role in this? I'm sure you saw some relationships that you're like, Okay, maybe you should be doing X, Y, and Z dad, or you might have seen relationship, which is like, Okay, this looks pretty healthy, and the kids doing okay, so did you come away with any idea of what a father's role in this particular time of life should be?

Dave Weale 18:31

I would say, you know, from everything that I saw, and everything that I've read, I think the ideal way, if you could peg an ideal around this is is to challenge especially with young boys, is to challenge them a lot. And, and then let them fail. Essentially, it just like give them big tasks to take on. And, and let them have a go at it and try not to interfere too much, because I definitely hear a lot from not all of them again, like they all have different dads and stuff like that. But, you know, some of like the ones that deal with this, it's one of the biggest problems in their life that their dads don't listen to them or their dads don't, you know, they just they yell it's they don't like they don't communicate well. And and they don't let them just have their own have like free rein to kind of do what they want, especially once they're in the kind of 1718 You know, I feel like those are probably some of the hardest years because they're there are 1718 year olds, they live on their own and you can make it on your own at that point. But if you want to stay in a house if you get into the power struggle, that whole phase and it's like that if you want to live under my roof, you got to follow my rules and and I can see how that would, you know, in so many ways. It makes sense, but at the same time if you want if you want your child to grow if you want your young man to grow And, and find his own way he needs to, he needs to fuck up, he needs to go and try things and fail and he needs to splat sometimes. And that's how they've learned that's how they will become stronger is by failing. And by, you know, not just doing what they're told all the time, especially if you want, if you want your child to be able to think critically and to, to experiment and swing big things in life, you know, if you want your kid to just be a factory worker, then by all means, like, don't let them do any of that. I want my kids to change the fucking world. That's what I want, I want to like empower them to think be creative and tackle big problems and go after stuff. And, and that's my, you know, my thought on that is, is, yeah, limit screen time. And, and challenge the crap out of them as much as you can. You know, I definitely, part of that is also coming out of reading Richard Branson's autobiography, just hearing about his childhood and how much his parents did that for him and like, like ridiculous things that probably could have killed them. You know, like that, but that ability to try stuff like that, and fail and, you know, wait until the very, if they need to get rescued only do it right when they're, you know, as leave them as long as you possibly can to, to fail and figure it out on their own kind of thing. Because it's just that, yeah, I feel like we just learned so much that way. And not just learn, but also you build resilience, you build the willingness to try, you build the willingness to fail. And, you know, combine that with encouraging failure, encouraging, learning through failure, and making it not a taboo, but uh, but, uh, you know, the, like, in the book mindset, they talk a lot about encouraging progress and effort over results. And that, that they kind of all ties together, you know, if you can, if you can, you can encourage them and train them to, to try hard and work, like be willing to fail on stuff and be willing to go for what they want, then, like that they're going to be unstoppable.

Curt Storring 22:19

Yeah, that's there's so much that, like, I'm looking forward to testing things out as a father that is, unlike what most people do, by the sounds of it. And also a very scared about the feeling of control that I will have to give up for sure, knowing that exactly like you say, and I mean, I, we try to do this now as much as possible. And it gets harder and harder in this age, when, you know, you can hardly let your kids go out by themselves. Because someone will be like, Oh, my goodness, there's an eight year old Oh, by himself, like the parents must be so neglectful. And this sort of helicopter parenting is so pronounced now that even having my kids like walk by themselves to the park, which is like two blocks away, seems like unacceptable. And so I love what you said about ensuring that they can fail, because a lot of us don't feel comfortable with failure ourselves. And that, as you well know, was my sort of latest transformational piece was just like, yeah, failure, finally letting myself fail. He hadn't because it wasn't okay, when I was a kid when I was younger. And so yeah, man, I would have loved to have been challenged to fail to tell me that I wasn't a failure when I failed, that I still mattered, even though I failed, because I am not the things that I do. And so it sounds like teaching our kids that they have value outside of what they do, just like inherent value, and really affirming them probably would go a long way, just from what you're saying.

Dave Weale 23:49

100%. And, and also to add to what you said, you know, like, success, and achievements are a big part of who you are. It's not you're not entirely removed from that. But also trying to instill the lesson that failure, failure isn't a potential for, like, failure is mandatory, like you're going to fail. If you're trying to do big things, it's not so so actually encouraging them to fail, encouraging them to want to fail, because every failure that you make, brings you closer to successes, and you learn things that will be of huge value as you continue in life.

Curt Storring 24:29

Yeah, that's a good lesson.

Dave Weale 24:30

It's like reframing failure as opposed to, you know, yeah, it's such a big piece of it. And on the parenting thing, I feel like that's also a bit of a North American thing. Being down here in Costa Rica, it's just it's very different. Like there's and and a lot of other, you know, like having been to Africa and like other more third world countries, like kids just run around in the streets and like sure they get hurt, but they like figure it out. And being here even we live in a nice little town. Unity right now that's that is quite safe. And there isn't too much to worry about. And Costa Rica in general has a very, very safe vibe. Like it's just a, the culture is a lot more warm and caring. So it's not as it's not necessarily like Mexico or someplace where you're maybe worried about nefarious people everywhere. But, you know, the kids that I mentioned earlier that I hang out with a lot, they're they're three and five years old. And forensics, either way, they're, they're very young, and their parents just, like, let them they let them go outside, there's a pool, they, you know, it's like, they know that the kids know that if they want to go swimming, the little one in particular, it's like, if she wants to swim on her own, she needs to wear a life jacket. Other than that, they don't really have a whole lot of rules. And they just run around and play outside for hours on their own, like, unsupervised, you know, no screens, they have to make up their own fine, they play games, they color we, our house is like the coloring station. Markers and stuff on our, on our table on our patio all the time. And, you know, but and there's another girl that lives here that now is like part of their little posse, and they just run around and play together all the time. And it's, it's beautiful to see just the curiosity and the creativity that's naturally present for them because of that. They're also Waldorf kids, which huge fan of the Waldorf school system and like, it helps to breed that as well. But yeah, they're like, and the parents have the blinds closed, and they're just doing their own thing, you know, for hours. And it's really, it's been really cool to see that, because it's not a normal thing, like you said, for your kids that are two blocks from the park. And it's like, you know, oh, man, you didn't walk with them, and you didn't sit there and make sure they didn't fall off the jungles during the whole time. Like, it's that that whole idea of helicopter parenting and like, me know, nerfing the world is, it's just, it's, it's, it's ruining, you know, we're creating a lot of soft children in my mind by that, you know, when I, I remember, actually, when I was a kid, having like, the jungle gym that we played on in my school, and then washing it over the years, it just kept getting, like, more and more and more safety. Like, they kept like, removing all the really fun pieces. So it's like, it's a lot safer now. But it's, it's pointless, and it's boring. And it's like not, you know, it's like, part of learning. And part of fun is the danger element. If you you know, at first not every kid, but it's like, it's that they come back to the same thing. It's like, you need to be able to be okay with the risks involved. And if you if you never have to face any risk or any danger, then you're going to be weak as heck. And, you know, that's not good. And I feel it's just probably a big part due to the whole liability thing in North America, wherever I was just afraid of getting sued.

Curt Storring 27:55

Yeah, this is I mean, we could take this very current events ish. And I don't, I don't want to do that. Yeah, a lot of what you're saying right now in safety versus freedom. And risk, I think, is quite worldwide.

Dave Weale 28:11

That's another part of why we are down here in Costa Rica.

Curt Storring 28:16

But I really love the perspective of a non of someone who's not yet a father, but looking to become a father noticing these things. And going like, yeah, this feels right to me, because you have a different perspective, like you're in some cases looking closer than the parent because they have all these things that they just see every day. But this is all new to you, because they're not your kids. And you're seeing all this and it's like, yeah, you can just tell the benefit of this and huge fan of Waldorf our kids are Montessori like, yeah, it's so important, in my opinion, to get them into something like that if you are able. But I think maybe just wrapping up, the two things that are coming up for me in terms of the young man is I think that we have a duty as fathers to be able to have better conversations with our sons and our inner daughters. But like you're saying, they mostly can't come to their fathers to talk about drugs, or sex or whatever. And I'm very intentionally building these talks into everyday life already. So that we can talk about this because I don't want my kids to, like, have to chance to run into you who's running this like mentorship program, because, like, however, many people were in there, probably less than, you know, 20 or something. There's millions of kids, you know, it's very hard for them to come across a mentor like you who they can talk about it safely. And so I think it's incumbent on us as fathers to drop the ego, drop the control and be like, yeah, it's my responsibility to have these conversations, even though they're uncomfortable and a lot of reasons we don't is because we never got these conversations. They're still taboo to us. And so where can you as a father, find these things? Maybe a men's group, maybe a coach, maybe your own friend group, just be like, Hey, guys, like I need to talk about this because my kids are going to be whatever age I don't want them learning about this from tick tock. You know, that's, that sounds terrible. And, you know, I want to be there for them. And I also want to make sure that they have mentors, like you around. Are there any other groups beyond what you guys are doing? I mean, you said you might launch again in the new year, but are there any other groups or like initiation practices that you have seen, that dads could look into for their sons

Dave Weale 30:26

100% In, I don't know, too many, globally, like large, massive ones. But in the Vancouver area, there's the East fan boys club, which is a pretty big organization that does, they bring in guest speakers, they do all sorts of meetings with young men and they have their dads get involved, sometimes they do a lot of great work. There's also the young men's adventurer weekend, which is that's it's an annual event. It's not an ongoing thing, but it's a full on weekend initiation into manhood, essentially, and it is beautifully done and prepare, they haven't been able to operate it for the last couple years. Next COVID. Unfortunately, they are still doing something smaller events now, I believe, and they are planning on getting going again, but it's it's a, they'd have, it's a whole production where they bring 50 young men out and 50 Older men that come and help facilitate it, they do it all completely off grid in the woods, and it's camping, but with all sorts of games and a sweat lodge, and they do, it all kind of builds up to this one big process called the push, which is anyway, I'll just plant that seed you can look into it if you want. But it's it's like doing some deep inner work with these young men and really challenging them to step powerfully into manhood and and it's an awesome organization, the guys have been doing it for over 30 years, they're, you know, it's a, it's a well oiled machine at this point. And, yeah, so those would be two of my recommendations. But I'm sure there's others as well, I haven't gone too deep down the rabbit hole of exploring what's available,

Curt Storring 32:00

that's just another seed I think we can plant for men is find a mentor, find a group for your sons. Speaking of initiative for yourself,

Dave Weale 32:08

so even just before you finish that, for yourself, being having a space to talk about things that are going on with your son with other guys is huge. You know, that's one of the things, there's, again, just hearing about this space, like in the young men's group, there's one of the guys who's done some counseling sessions with him and his dad, and but then they just stopped. And it's like, he got so much out of that, like actually being able to sit down with his dad, and have someone be a third party to have more of a level discussion, because I think that's one of the bigger problems really, is that inherently there's a huge power dynamic that, you know, it's hard to have a level conversation with your son, because you're obviously way older than him and more experienced and, you know, but in order to connect with him and her to communicate, well, you kind of have to drop that in. Not entirely necessarily, but you need opportunities to drop that and connect kind of like on an even playing field. And, and yet either having a counselor do some stuff together or are just trying to intentionally do that. And like take off your I know what's right. And I'm going to add hat everyone smile and like really listen, is is important.

Curt Storring 33:26

Yeah, absolutely join a local men's group for like you said for the dads to talk about his son and his problems, parenting maybe not problems, just challenges. You know, we're both part of samurai brotherhood, in Vancouver and also online. We are launching? Yeah, yeah, we are launching Dad.Work men's group for dads. You find that a dad.org/ Men's dash group. And in episode two of the Dad.Work podcast if you want to know more about initiation, Brandon Archer. He discussed initiation that he did with his son. And that was a very powerful conversation. So if you're listening to this, and you want to learn more about initiation, go back to episode two. Now, Dave, I am super excited to talk about what comes next. Which is your story and your journey, because I think it's highly unique. It's extremely unique. And there must be like a treasure trove of things in there that can benefit men. And I think the overarching theme, at least to me is resilience because the things that you sort of went through starting at the end of your skiing career, and continuing up until a couple years ago, and I guess still today, I mean, you're always on a journey, just I think would have broken a lot of men. So why didn't it break you? Can you tell us the story going back to your sort of waning days as a skier and maybe just take us through the first big Mack truck of an accident?

Dave Weale 34:55

Totally. And and before I do all So you know, the end of the there's also the beginning of the ski career story as well as a big piece because because I grew up in Ontario, but I, as soon as I finished high school, I moved across the country to Whistler BC to pursue that dream of being a professional skier, by myself without any, you know, without any support, or any, you know, I just went for it and, and that piece is a big part of all the things that I'm about to share is the willingness to just go for stuff to just go for the things you want and be willing to take risks. It's a huge part of it. But to answer your question, at the end of that journey, was essentially due to breaking my neck in a mountain biking accident. And

as you can imagine, that would be fairly traumatic, there was there's a lot of things that come up, I spent better part of a little over 10 years actually living in Whistler, British Columbia, pursuing my dream of becoming a professional skier, you know, I had sponsors, I was filming, I was competing, I was also coaching, and spent, you know, a lot of that time in the along the way, coaching youth and, you know, up to the world championship level athletes, and, you know, to have that whole dream, and that whole life essentially stripped from, like, pulled out from underneath me, it was a lot, it was, it was a lot to take it was, you know, the, I did actually make a full recovery, I am very healthy, I'm very capable. So I still get to, you know, I can still ski I can still do all the things now. But in those first few weeks after it happened, I didn't know if that was going to be the case. You know, doctors, obviously there, there's so many uncertain things with something like a broken neck where you don't know you don't know how things are gonna heal, you don't know how things are going to come back together. nerve tissue does regrow, but very slowly. So I was luckily, it wasn't as bad as it could have been. I didn't, I only had a little bit of paralysis on the right side of my body that did come back after about six months. And, and I didn't, you know, there was no major complications or anything. So it was it was a pretty smooth process. But it was still weeks and weeks and weeks of lying on my back staring at the ceiling, and not really being able to do much else. And you know, the the resilience piece that you mentioned, a big part of that is mindset, it really comes down to your perspective on things. And I remember for myself, I spent, there's definitely a couple of weeks at the beginning where I was in more of a fuck my life kind of mentality. And like this terrible is the worst thing that ever happened to me and like, what am I gonna do? But I hit a point where I was like, Okay, I'm ready to start moving forward. You know, a big part of it is acceptance. And then, okay, now what, where am I going to go from here? How am I going to? What's my next step? What am I going to do with my life? Or how am I going to progress from this point? You know, you can, if you just keep resisting and staying in the place of like, this is terrible. And this, you know, shouldn't have happened to me like rejecting and denying that thing even happened, then you can't move forward. So for me, that was a big part of it. And and as I mentioned with the cannabis piece of my story that actually kind of came in at the same time, I had dabbled before living in Whistler, naturally, I smoked weed before and being from skier. But the, when I broke my neck, I had a friend who I didn't even know at this point was in the industry, he brought me a huge, like, massive, like, you can't see this at home, but like one of those really large ziploc bags that you can get stuffed, and as like as a gift and it was just, you know trimmings and stuff, but I use that to make some oil. And then I use that as a big piece of my of my medicine and my healing as I was going through it. And, and it actually did play a big role for me because it didn't, it did help a little bit with the pain, but it helped more with the mindset and with being willing being able to accept where I was at. And then be creative on thinking about where I'm going from here because obviously what I've been doing up to that point wasn't going to be happening anymore, at least not the same way as it was before. So it's like, Okay, it's time to get creative and it's time to think of a new path. So it really helped me to shift my mindset into a more positive more optimistic kind of forward thinking lens. And, and then I also around the same time I started being like, well, I can't move my body a whole lot I can't really do too much for for exercise, but I can, if nothing else, I can exercise my mind. So I really started digging into more audio books and podcasts and you know, not just listening to music and I did listen to music, obviously but like spending my time inactive, something at least even if I was just lying down, I was actively learning active. And for me at that point, it was learning as much as I could about meditation and mindset and healing, and nutrition, and all the things like I wanted to get back on my skis as fast as I could. So I was like, How do I knew that I need to learn everything I can about how this machine that I inhabit works, and, and how to how to feed it how to, you know, make it get better, as fast as possible. And through that, I learned a lot about meditation and mindset. And literally, like how much capacity our bodies have to heal through your mindset through the thoughts, you think through the attention that you set out, learning about the power of, of literally intention, you know, since then, I've learned, you know more about quantum physics and how it actually like, they proven a lot of this stuff of like, the,

the power of intention to change substances essentially. And, and, you know, the power of your mindset in meditation, too, you know, like, a lot of people step stuck in that kind of like, just really angry about what happened, they'll be angry at their injury or angry that part of their body. And if you can shift your mindset to more of gratitude and love and treating that piece of your body like you would your best friend, if they got injured, as opposed to just being annoyed about it. It made a huge difference. And I recovered way faster than I, I'm sure I would have otherwise. And, and that became kind of the foundation that I ended up continue to, like, I really love that stuff. So I kept going down the rabbit hole and learning more. And that was what kind of inspired me to shift focus and get into coaching in the first place. was because I'd spent, I knew I was really good at working with people and supporting them through challenging things from being a ski coach for so long. And now with all this new learning about health and nutrition, and mindset, and all these things, I just started pointing towards that I was like, I'm going to teach more people about this basically, and make that you know, like, not a full, like, one ad or sharp turn, but like, you know, it's just a pivot in what I was doing. And that was kind of what led me to enter into all the things that are you know,

Curt Storring 42:17

wow, broken the back end of your professional skiing career, which, you know, that's that's like one of those things that you dream about. And you know, you finally get it and then just poof, goes up in smoke. Man. Incredible what what I'm wondering from this is like, you seem to be able to get your mindset right pretty quickly. Did you have support? Were there specific things that cuz I'm just thinking, if you're listening to this right now, and you're like, out of the tools, how did you establish that mindset originally, instead of just being like, oh my god, that was me, everything's terrible. I'm never going to do anything again. To really be like, Okay, I can dig in here. I can do this. I've got the support do this, I know that it's not the end of my life. Are there tools out there that guys can like look at to get that sort of mindset because it sounds like you have a very, very strong mindset here. smoke some weed kidding,

Dave Weale 43:20

not kidding, that was a part of it. But also a big shift or a big piece for me, I did have some support, I had some really great people in my life that that gifted me, you know, like a friend was offered like offered me a bunch of Reiki treatments, which was really helpful and sharing more about that side of the whole like the power of mind energy. Another one was the book quantum healing by Deepak Chopra, which goes into that and a lot of the science around healing and mindset and all that as well. And another one which is actually tying into what we were talking about before was the fact that I have had a lot of other injuries before that one I had probably spent on average one to two months a year like out with injuries and my whole skiing career. So you know multiple torn ligaments in my in both ankles, both knees, both shoulders, I'd broken my foot super badly and then the breaking the neck was kind of the big one essentially. And so like I've learned a lot through a lot of those as well about I've had some real serious battles with depression I had I learned that moving my body and having progress having some sort of outlet is really powerful for keeping your mind state like in check in a positive place. So it kind of ties back to that like I've been willing to fail before I've been through failure I've been through building myself back up in the past and this was just a bigger version of that essentially.

Curt Storring 44:49

Right Okay, so like building up tolerance to come up to hard things which is why we do this for sons like you're just talking about with a young men thing allow them to fail. I think that's super important. Just for you know, every man to hear is that you need, you can start doing things right now to build tolerance to doing hard things. And that is waking up half an hour earlier that is doing a cold shower for one minute, every morning that's sitting in meditation, that's doing breath work that's going for a run, just building these small instances where you can build up tolerance to discomfort, so that when something big does happen, like a broken neck, or a marriage dissolution or something, something else in your life, you don't come crumbling down, I think that's a key component. So thank you for going there. Again, it's huge.

Dave Weale 45:35

It's a you know, and that's the whole piece of being willing to fail because failure is uncomfortable and it becomes less uncomfortable once you've done it a few times, but if you spent your entire life avoiding it, it's scary as hell no and or if you've you know if you've never like all these things, right? I could I could go on but it's that same core concept of like being willing to put yourself out there be willing to fail is is a core piece of you know, being able to achieve what you want life

Curt Storring 46:09

Okay, so the next thing that happened your life I mean, there's I'm sure there's a lot of that the next thing I want to talk about the next thing that I want to talk about is what happened with your company because you know you got guys going like okay yeah injury you know, he did some stuff and did some reading and like his body healed great. But you know, I've got x y&z But can you walk us through the creation of the cannabis company that you started and, and got very close to, you know, life changing event at the end? And then

Dave Weale 46:42

so as

Curt Storring 46:47

always, you didn't end this dough. So could you walk us through that, and then at the, at the end of this, I'd love to maybe just time together and provide some tools that you use from from getting through that as well. So that you know, the men listening can have the practices that you have used just to stay grounded through all of this crazy stuff that's happened over the last few years, for last few decades of your life

Dave Weale 47:09

percent. And similar to last year, I'm actually gonna start at the beginning of it, because it played a big piece in it. So I mentioned, you know, the breaking the neck for wanting to get into coaching, I ended up going to school for that and kind of stepping into that. But I was still quite young, at this point, I didn't have the business skills, I didn't have the chops to really have the confidence to build a business around or myself. And I realized, like, I went through this phase of trying to build that up and trying to step into it. But I was also because of everything that came up in my introduction into the world of spirituality and meditation. I was I was in this weird state of, you know, being in my own belief, like more spiritually developed, but not as an didn't have, like a lot of real life experience. At that point, I hadn't built businesses I hadn't gone out and, and faced a lot of those things. And I was I was fairly naive at that point as well. So I actually tried to go and, you know, make a career as a coach, I tried to actually start a little mini retreat center and do this whole thing. And, you know, I was able to get that going somewhat, but then I ran into this whole this problem of cash flow and needing to actually have the business side of it work and, and ended up falling flat on my face with that, and losing some friends losing a lot of money. And, you know, being basically having like living almost in my car for a little while out of that. And it was it was in that collapse that the seeds were planted for the next step because I was you know, at this point, I was, you know, trying to hustle trying to do the online stuff that was active on social media doing all these things. And I at that point, I just unplugged everything I was again in a bit of a depression and I was like I can't deal with any of this I just need to check out and go work a job for a little while. So I went back to working in a restaurant for a little bit and I got a job at a local cannabis dispensary. And that was that was essentially where it all started. I this was way back before it was legal. This was in Vancouver they've had dispensaries for quite a while but they've been you know pseudo medicinal for since the beginning and that it was better that I first started to see that you know, edibles were going to become a thing that was where I first learned about CBD as well. And you know, this whole other piece of the cannabis plant that was not didn't get you high at all. It was really more of just a healing part of the plant. And I also learned at that point that I had had anxiety my whole life and I'd never even really realized it. Only through trying CBD and kind of feeling this like more relaxed, not caring as much about what other people thought about me all the time not worrying all the time and You know, through that, I also saw that edibles were a huge thing and that I just had this kind of like forward thinking moment of like, this is gonna be huge. So, but there's also, it's all all the animals out there were just garbage, they were just sugar, it was like, you know, pot brownies for the most part that was still like one of the best selling things at the store that I worked. And there were no healthy options at all. So I kind of took it upon myself to start experimenting, you know, just doing little like hand rolled Power Balls, like with with weed in them. And that kind of slowly evolved, I made better and better packaging improved. The recipes eventually created this kind of energy bar that was

like if you've ever eaten probably like chocolate covered espresso beans. Yeah, so they're delicious. And I was like, I want to put that into a bar essentially. So I made these kind of like dates, nuts, espresso beans, chocolate, and CBD into these bars that were very, very high fat, low sugar, natural sugar as well and, and with a little bit of CBD in them, so they could kind of boost energy and improve focus, that was kind of the idea. And I essentially build the energy bar that I wanted to have for myself, and slowly built that up and turn it into it ended up being called the grind bar, partially because of the gross grind, which I was hiking a lot at that point, and, and just the entrepreneurial grind. So I built this whole thing up, I slowly eventually I took on some investments so that I could scale it and get better packaging, and we started getting into stores. Even though we're still in this kind of legal gray area at this point, it was because we were just CBD. And because the industry was evolving, and people were more open to it, we ended up getting into some not just cannabis stores, but mainstream. Like, we were in an energy club for a while and we were it was a lot of people were just like, Yeah, this is gonna be legal soon, CBD is probably going to be wide open. So they were more open to carrying them. We, we built up this company, I eventually at first it was just me like making stuff on my own. Eventually, it was like hiring people having a kitchen having a whole like commercial kitchen with an office manager and a whole team of people making the bars and, you know, orders were coming in bars were getting shipped, you know, like the whole thing was happening. And I had kind of built this whole machine that was there was churning, and people love them. And it was it was very cool to kind of get to that point. And we actually went on around this time we I took on an even bigger investment. And we I started developing new flavors. And we actually went on Dragon's Den as well with with the company. And and then this was leading up to this was in 2018, leading up to when cannabis legalization was supposed to happen in Canada. And so there was a lot of hype around it, there was a lot of stuff. And also for myself kind of looking forward, I was like, the way it was kind of being mapped out was that you were going to have to have one of these licensed producer kind of license, obviously, in order to do it legally. And so you could either go through this process, which was incredibly complex and require millions of dollars at that point. Or you could partner with one that already does and kind of go through that route. So that was what we were aiming for. I had some connections to go into that and I ended up having a partnership, like a letter of intent, Inc, with the company to do this, to sell the company to them to join their team and keep doing more product creation and development because I really love that part of it. I love being in the kitchen and creating new recipes and creating new types of products and you know, thinking in advance of like, where what types of things people are going to want. And so I was just in heaven, I had this deal. And paper that was like almost a million dollar deal to buy my company and fat salary to work for them and and keep developing more things and do what I loved. And, and I went out and bought a Tesla and was like on cloud nine. And then after working for them for a couple months, they again being naive and not having gone through this process of selling a company before I had assumed that once we had the letter of intent, and I was actually on staff with them that it was done. It was basically just like, you know, ironing out the legal, you know, paperwork, and

I was incorrect. And they actually ended up completely just, this was just before Christmas. And also like as soon as this deal was in the works. The other piece my wife does a lot of volunteer work in Africa. She's been over to this one community like eight or nine times now. And but I've never been so I booked a trip for us to go and spend Christmas in Africa, in Kenya, like helping out and kind of doing some volunteer work and meeting her like Kenyan family that she's gone over there. And the day before We were supposed to leave for this trip. Like in the afternoon, I was at the office and about to head out early to get a couple things ironed out before we took off and my boss is he's like oh, like before you leave I got to talk to you for a second and he pulls me into this into one of the meeting rooms and he's like, so we found out that blah blah blah like there's some things in Ontario and Alberta about brands not being able to transition into that from the gray market into the legal market which anyways isn't it was basically issues he's like So essentially when we don't really see fully II a lot of things because I was kind of this like free spirit like I want to work from home or have a kitchen like they wanted me to like sit in the office 24/7 And they were very like hyper masculine kind of militaries to cover this culture which I didn't know before I started anyways, they're like so we're gonna axe the deal entirely and you're we're gonna let you go

Curt Storring 56:01

but have a good trip like

Dave Weale 56:06

like the rug just completely pulled out from underneath me going from like having in my mind fucking made it like millionaire on paper at this point because it was mostly a stock deal and their stock took off after it went live and and you know, driving my dream car that had been on my vision board for you know, I had a had a P 90 D Model S wrapped matte black which was so sick too all of a sudden, no deal and in that time because edibles weren't allowed yet it was only it was only smokeable that we're allowed with the beginning of the legalization the we had put everything on ice we we'd laid off all of our staff we packed up the kitchen we'd stop production and put everything in storage essentially because we were just going to be doing more r&d and product development for the next year and a half until edibles were fully allowed and so I was I had you know the company was done essentially and I was fine on my ass and and then I shipped off to Africa the next day and spend two weeks like walking around the slums being feeling sorry for myself because I've just lost all this you know this deal and all this stuff and then hanging out with people that are literally have nothing, they're literally walking around barefoot, you know, kids walking around through like garbage and literally feces that makes up the street have built the company in the first place was to prove to myself that I could do business and to prove to myself that I was worthy so that I could go back to being a coach and go back to like you know, have have a big wind under my belt so that I could be like see I did it no now I'm going to coach other people and I'm going to be you know, this this coaches mentor, etc etc. And and I had to sit with at that point, I was like, Okay, do I want to go raise a bunch more money and go out and build the company back up and try to sell it again? Or do I want to just spend the next couple years instead building my coaching practice. So that's that's what I chose and I lost my passion for the company I lost you know, I had accomplished in my mind the thing that I set out to accomplish so which was proven to myself that I could do it and and so I just set to work on on building my coaching practice from that point. But it was it was a struggle and a grind I had to go back to working construction and carpentry which I did before to pay the bills while you know starting to build this whole thing up and it was it was quite a journey to get from there to where I am now actually having you know having a bunch of clients and having a practice being able to work wherever I want and do this whole thing but you know it was went through definitely a bit of a dark night of the soul in that but also got married in there which is weird timing wise but the Yeah, it was like again like we said it was choosing to move forward choosing to face all of the shit that was coming up and deal with it and and move through it you know it was it was a process and I don't know if I would have been able to if I didn't have the support I've had with with men's groups with coaches with you know people in my corner kind of cheering for me and encouraging me and space to talk about it space to feel through all this crap space to just cry and mourn the death of the company and and it's it's all probably aware it's all have prepared me to be in this place now where, you know, I know that for me, I really, I just love working with people I love, like I enjoyed elements of business, and building the thing up and creating, I like cooking as well. So that was part of I love, you know, I love creating things and having people enjoy them. But for me on the coaching piece, it's like, the thing that lights me up the most is seeing people transform. And, and when when I work with someone, and they, they get something, and that's, you see that, that switch flip in their mind and like they they understand, and they transform, like the feeling of helping cause that I can't, I don't get anywhere else. And that bad just lights me up so much.

Hats, that's why I do what I do. Now, it's getting to do that, you know, originally it was in skiing, it was learning a new trick or, or being able to jump off a certain size cliff, or, you know, hanging out with kids, it's digital underwriter by teaching them to do a new jump into the pool, like it's all a similar thing. But now I get to do that with men to actually make to actually create happiness in their life, to to learn how to make their relationships work, to learn how to make their health work and make their anxiety manageable and, and to be able to operate the machine that they're driving through life. And all the time. That for whatever reason, we haven't really been taught how do you know, so many people are out there trying? Like, if you ask them, they'll say that happiness is a big piece of what they're aiming for in life. But a lot of guys are really just aiming for money, because they think that will bring them happiness. And then they need to now get support on. Okay, now that you've made a bunch of money, how do you actually build the happiness?

Curt Storring 1:01:58

Yeah, wow, man, this, there's so like, I could ask a trillion. And I imagine that a lot of the ways that you got through this were similar to the the neck braking accident. So that was an insane story. That's two insane stories from the last well from your life. And you got through them in ways that had a lot to do with mindset had a lot to do with having support men's groups, coaches had a lot to do with good mental health practices like meditation and breath work. And now you help people do this. Now, you haven't gone through all these can use that. And I think when you say like, you've made it, you know, you wanted to, like build this business to prove that you've made it. What I see in you is like, you've just got through shit. And you've made it so much more because of just getting through stuff that sucked, then you would have if you had have closed the deal. And so like, I don't know, man, this conversation, I already knew you a little bit I hired you as a coach, and you've been so helpful. But from this, I just see that when you tell me for example, what's the worst that could happen here? I sometimes I hear people say that and go like, Yeah, well, you don't really get it. Now I get it. Now I know that when you say that, to me, it's like, I know that the worst that can happen is you don't so what's the worst? And I think that's a super important question for guys listening to ask themselves. What do you want to do in your life? Are you satisfied with the way it's going? And what's the worst that can happen? Because Dave has just shown us what it's like to get through to things that most of us will never even get close to experiencing, and has made it out even better on this side. And that is a message of hope. And I just love that. So what do you do now? How do you work with men? And where can people find you?

Dave Weale 1:03:47

Thank you. I appreciate that. Man. It's always nice to hear the reflections of of that, because when, before I answer your question, just to, you know, when you're in those transitions, it doesn't feel like yeah, this is I'm going to teach people about hope. Resilience, or like this bucket sucks. So it's always nice to know that that's how it's coming across. Now. What do I do now as I as I alluded to, they're a big part of my practice is, is helping guys create happiness in their life. It's kind of cheesy as that sounds, it is it there's science to it. And there's there's core pieces that a lot of people are missing, that if they implement and learn how to they can create a lot more happiness in their life, relationships are a big piece of that health is a big piece of that, you know, having time to actually enjoy your life is a big piece of that. So, my practice now essentially, the core of it is essentially high intensity men's work for high performance men. We you know, taking everything that I've done throughout the years of men's work and coaching in business and all these things. I've compressed it into a three month program that's intense. It can be done over six months as well if you'd rather take it a little slower, but it's just Working with people through the core principles of men's work of learning to understand yourself learning to process emotions, learning to dial in your mental health, your physical health, connecting with your values and your intuition. So you can steer your way through life more effectively. And learning to improve communication and relationships so that you can actually enjoy the people in your life and create more happiness. So that's kind of the short version, my brand is alpha rising, which, essentially, I chose because it sounds badass. But also, because most of my clients are, they've already got the Alpha part figured out. But now they need to rise into this more connected more embodied more, you're learning to use their intuition learning to more incorporate some of the more feminine skills, like intuition and communication and emotional intelligence, in order to step into that next level leader that they want to be, because, you know, just just working harder and pushing more and trying to get more shit done, can only really take you so far. If you want to move beyond that you need to learn how to work with people, you need to learn how to take care of yourself as well and and you know, be set yourself up to be able to be sustainable with your growth as opposed to just, you know, there's only so much more and faster and better that you can do before you just hit a wall and crash which is where a lot of people come to me a lot of people come to me when they've they've burned out or they've had some big health thing or they've had a breakup because their marriage went to shit because they were working so hard at you know that they've neglected some of the really important stuff in order to pursue business and pursue making money. And now they need support, kind of refocusing and aiming more actual happiness and fulfillment.

Curt Storring 1:06:49

Yeah, that's amazing. There's a lot of good work to be done there. What is website social handle that people can find you

Dave Weale 1:06:55

out for rising men's work is what we are called Alpha rising dot men's work on Instagram, and alpha rising men's work.com or alpha rising.ca as well. And yeah, that's, uh, that's all there. We're gonna be our podcast is going to be launching in the next couple months as well. So we'll be we'll be getting that going. Because I love talking to people about this stuff, too. But that's, it's, that's it.

Curt Storring 1:07:22

You can find me awesome. And yeah, it's been awesome. I do highly recommend Dave, just from personal experience as well. He's been my coach, and was instrumental in a huge change in my life. So yeah, and

Dave Weale 1:07:36

we probably wouldn't be listening to this right now. If if we hadn't had those sessions way back, right.

Curt Storring 1:07:41

Absolutely. Yeah. And that was, that was totally instrumental and having the courage to move into this, to stop what I was doing to admit failure, which, much like in your case wasn't actually a failure. It was a necessary stepping stone to get to what I was truly meant to be doing, which I think is this.

Dave Weale 1:07:57

Do you mind if I can I poke in there a little bit before I wrap? Yeah, so not just stopping what you were doing. But listening to your body? If you remember, you had built this whole thing. And you're like, but I'm like, I'm having trouble sleeping. Every time I try to work. My body just gets like tense and tight. And you're like, I don't know. Are you going to share a tiny bit about that?

Curt Storring 1:08:22

Sure. Yeah, man, I can. So I had built up this structure to this business that I had always wanted to build, which was something local, because I have worked online for the last 10 years. And I wanted to go and do something, prove to myself much like it sounds in your story was the case that I could do something real, that had a real input to output ratio that looked like I could be the one making the things happen, rather than relying on Google relying on Amazon, whatever my other businesses had been. And I built this whole thing up. And I hired this team and I hired coaches, I spent 10s of 1000s of dollars, making it all perfect. And two days before launch. I pulled the plug. Because in the weeks leading up to it like you said, my body was rebelling, something fears. And this has never happened to be I had been anxious throughout my life, for the most part meditated a lot kind of calmed it down. But I couldn't sleep. I didn't really have a problem sleeping. I mean, I'd be waking up just like dreading everything in my life. And I just thought it was something to push through. I just needed to push harder because I've never done this before. It's just resistance. Just go Go, go go go. And I think that's very relatable because I know that's happened in my life before it's happened and a lot of other guys life that I talked to. And it turns out that with your help with the help of the other man that I talked to which side note, if you don't have a group of men, you can call to talk to about things like this. You'll end up doing things in your life that suck. I talked to elders and mentors in my men's group and it If it weren't for those guys and for you, I probably would have just kept going. And I probably would have just been miserable for years, thinking that like, oh, eventually I'll just make enough money and I would have been a client of yours five years more miserable, rather than having stopped when it felt bad in my body. And I think that's what you're getting at is it felt like I was grinding to a stop, I couldn't, it took all of my effort. And I'm really good at doing hard stuff, it took all of my effort just to like, open my computer in the morning. So that's a quick overview of when, when we first

Dave Weale 1:10:35

No, and thank you for sharing that, because that was a perfect plug for me and what I know, it's, it's so true that, like the that ability to push through, and to make yourself do things that are hard, is a valuable skill to build, like learning to be stoic, and to be able to like, the mind over matter, like it's an important thing to be able to do at times, and to be able to sprint sometimes to be able to push yourself. But when that becomes a when that becomes your, you don't know how to do things any other way. And you don't know how to listen to your body and your intuition. Because your intuition is essentially, you know, spirit source guy, whatever speaking to through your body. And if you just are completely disconnected from that, slash, purposefully ignoring that, you know, bad things happen. And, like, if there's a, there's like a saying, or a thought in, you know, most of in this whole personal development space and learn as you kind of delve down this rabbit hole that, you know, that God source Spirit speaks to you, at first and whispers, and then it gets louder and louder and louder and louder until you finally start to listen. And, and you get to decide at what point you want to start listening. If you want to start listening, if you want to wait until it's the two by four over the head, with a broken neck, or with a company getting pulled out from underneath you or with a heart attack, or a divorce or something intense like that, you can wait that long. But if you learn to listen to your body, if you learn to slow down and meditate and listen to your, your inner guidance, you don't have to wait for the big bad shit to happen to make changes in your life and to move in a healthier direction. So that was you know, and that's a big part of what I do is helping men connect with that helping them actually value that and discern like what is me just being lazy versus my intuition. What is me, you know, like, because we're kind of programmed to like, not just push through and you're just need to get better. But you know, for you in your instance, it's like you doing this work is impacting countless other men out there and helping more men connect with their their kids and helping them improve their lives like that. From a from a, you know, whatever context you want to look at, that's making a lot more impact in the world then, yet another cleaning business. Not that those don't need to be clean. But for you like your gift, your passion, your genius is in this work, and and you're not stepping into it is actually a disservice to the planet. So, you know, it was it's just my job to help you get out of your own fucking way. So you can actually do the thing that is going to make the world better.

Curt Storring 1:13:25

Yeah, yeah, man, I'm so glad I had it in my notes here to reference being hit by a Mack truck, which you call being hit by two by four. Because same thing in your instance, in my instance, in you know, I was talking to Brandon Archer before with his heart attack. And Dominic Courtney Chu, who had on the podcast a few episodes ago said, it's like in drift, you can wait for the little whisper, you can just keep waiting, you can wait for the two by four or you can wait till you get hit by a Mack truck. And you know, unfortunately, it sounds like you got flattened a couple times. But man, there's so much good that can come out of that if you had done the training. But imagine if you hadn't done the training. Where would you be I mean, like, you know, you see this happen all the time, guys just stop. Just stop living their lives. And so that's why I mean, that's why we're doing this. That's why I just want to scream it from the rooftops like guys meditate. Listen to the podcast, do the work, like sit with yourself, integrate everything that happens. Feel your feelings, feel your emotions, because when something bad like this happens, it's so much easier to get through it when you have that solid base of just like personal awareness and understanding. So yeah, thank you for asking, man. It's probably another important little story to tell at some point. Okay, well authorizing the men's work Dave, we all have really really enjoyed having you on here. Thank you my brother.

Dave Weale 1:14:36

Pleasure man. Thank you for for having me. And thank you for doing this work and sharing this with everybody it's it's I'm grateful to have been part of your journey and to have you as a friend and to keep watching is all of this grows. Thanks, man.

Curt Storring 1:14:56

That's it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. It means the world to find out more about everything that we talked about in the episode today, including Show Notes resources and links to subscribe leave a review work with us go to dad dot work slash pod, that's di d w o RK slash pod. type that into your browser just like a normal URL, Dad dot work slash pod. To find everything there you need to become a better man, a better partner and a better father. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai