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EP248: Tom Pfanner - How Fathers Can Fix Their Broken Relationships With Their Teenage Kids · The Sovereign Man Podcast

• 0:00
  Tom Pfanner: As men, a lot of times we don't think about it.
• 0:01
  Tom Pfanner: We're just told to take action.
• 0:04
  Tom Pfanner: We don't reflect on like, my son just said, fuck you and slammed the door.
• 0:09
  Tom Pfanner: Maybe what I said wasn't effective.
• 0:11
  Tom Pfanner: What do I need to do differently next time?
• 0:14
  Tom Pfanner: How can I get better?
• 0:15
  Tom Pfanner: We've got to be willing to understand how we are as men
• 0:19
  Tom Pfanner: and how our leadership is impacting and affecting our family.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: You're a man living in the modern world
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: in a time when men and manhood are not what they once were.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: You live life on your own terms.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: You're self-sufficient.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: You think for yourself, and you march to the beat of your own drum.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: When life knocks you down, you get back up,
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: because in your gut, you know that's what men do.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: You're a badass and a warrior, and on the days when you forget,
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: we are here to remind you who you really are.
• 0:54
  Nicky Billou: Welcome to Cyberman Podcast, where we aim to make men masculine again.
• 0:59
  Nicky Billou: I'm your man, Nicky Ballou, and we have a very special guest for you today, Thomas Fanner
• 1:05
  Nicky Billou: of Dads Who Lead.
• 1:06
  Nicky Billou: Welcome, Tom.
• 1:07
  Nicky Billou: Thank you, man.
• 1:08
  Nicky Billou: Really excited to be here.
• 1:09
  Nicky Billou: Good to have you here.
• 1:11
  Nicky Billou: So we met through a mutual friend who's actually a client of both of ours, Lance Riggan, and
• 1:17
  Nicky Billou: we got to have an initial get acquainted call last week, and I decided to bring you on the
• 1:23
  Nicky Billou: show because the work you do is super interesting and I'm very curious about it. Tell me your
• 1:29
  Nicky Billou: backstory. How'd you get to get into do this work with fathers and their kids?
• 1:36
  Tom Pfanner: It starts when I was a teacher. I taught middle and high school PE. And that was really my first,
• 1:42
  Tom Pfanner: the first path that God had me set out on was to help young men and women become men and women,
• 1:48
  Tom Pfanner: which I still do. I just do it through coaching their coach now, a little higher frequency.
• 1:56
  Tom Pfanner: But being in schools, I saw this huge gap. I saw a lot of my friends who were adults who did
• 2:04
  Tom Pfanner: everything they were supposed to do in school. And either their relationships were off,
• 2:09
  Tom Pfanner: their finances were off. And it just, the young men specifically in my own walk,
• 2:17
  Tom Pfanner: I could see they weren't playing with a full deck of cards.
• 2:21
  Tom Pfanner: And so I was like, hey, I want to do something that shows them some of these other pieces,
• 2:26
  Tom Pfanner: the pieces around masculinity, around finances, mindset, relationships, these different pieces
• 2:33
  Tom Pfanner: that school teaches, you know, math, reading, language arts, social studies, science.
• 2:41
  Tom Pfanner: That's like every day for an hour a day for at least in secondary, like seven years, you're learning about that.
• 2:50
  Tom Pfanner: But those aren't the sticking points that are, it's not the target that really matters to men and our lives.
• 2:56
  Tom Pfanner: And so.
• 2:58
  Nicky Billou: They're not day-to-day life skills.
• 2:59
  Nicky Billou: They're definitely not.
• 3:00
  Tom Pfanner: No, no, no.
• 3:02
  Tom Pfanner: Not at all.
• 3:03
  Tom Pfanner: And so I started a program.
• 3:07
  Tom Pfanner: And when I initially kicked it off, it was just going to be for the kids.
• 3:11
  Tom Pfanner: Hey, how, you know, it was going to be like a kind of a summer camp, like a one week type summer camp.
• 3:16
  Tom Pfanner: And I had a really hard time getting people signed up and interested, especially from going from nothing into something.
• 3:25
  Tom Pfanner: And so I was like, well, what if I got the dads involved?
• 3:29
  Tom Pfanner: And I did that and I changed my marketing and I was able to get, make it as a father son retreat on this rite of passage.
• 3:37
  Tom Pfanner: And it was the first year was successful.
• 3:40
  Tom Pfanner: We had three families that attended and my son who was 14 at the time was a part of it.
• 3:47
  Tom Pfanner: And things were looking really positive for it.
• 3:50
  Tom Pfanner: And we're going into our second year.
• 3:53
  Tom Pfanner: My son had been living with my wife and I for eight months because his mom moved out of across the state.
• 4:00
  Tom Pfanner: And it was in January of my son's eighth grade year that I got the call and he said,
• 4:06
  Tom Pfanner: Dad, I'm tired of you.
• 4:08
  Tom Pfanner: I'm tired of being told what to do.
• 4:10
  Tom Pfanner: I'm moving in with mom across state.
• 4:13
  Tom Pfanner: Peace out.
• 4:14
  Tom Pfanner: Wow.
• 4:15
  Tom Pfanner: And so here I had done a whole like year of everything,
• 4:20
  Tom Pfanner: putting together a father-son retreat program for teenage sons and their dads.
• 4:24
  Tom Pfanner: And my own teenage son walks out of my life.
• 4:27
  Tom Pfanner: Crazy, bro.
• 4:29
  Tom Pfanner: And so I had to, at that point, really look inward and say like, okay,
• 4:35
  Tom Pfanner: because Charles was gone.
• 4:36
  Tom Pfanner: He didn't want to talk to me.
• 4:38
  Tom Pfanner: He didn't want, I wasn't going to talk to his teachers and kind of like, hey, let's see what we can do to kind of support him through this.
• 4:44
  Tom Pfanner: Like I had in the past, there wasn't any counselors for me to talk to.
• 4:48
  Tom Pfanner: The only person left to change was me.
• 4:50
  Tom Pfanner: And so I really had to look in order and I'm like, all right, what am I doing within my leadership that's causing this reaction?
• 4:59
  Tom Pfanner: What do I need to change?
• 5:01
  Tom Pfanner: So that as this young man is becoming a man and he's going into high school, I am a leader that he wants to lean into.
• 5:08
  Tom Pfanner: that he wants to have a relationship with and that I'm in a position to guide him.
• 5:14
  Tom Pfanner: And so that summer, I had to really do a lot of work.
• 5:20
  Tom Pfanner: I hired a coach.
• 5:22
  Tom Pfanner: I got more into the word and just dialed in on how I could shift my leadership over
• 5:29
  Tom Pfanner: to bring him back into my life.
• 5:31
  Tom Pfanner: And so as that happened in that next year, we got him to turn around
• 5:36
  Tom Pfanner: because when he left and he went with his mom and there were a lot of factors that went into his
• 5:42
  Tom Pfanner: downfall but um wasn't attending school he was like at a 70 attendance which anything below 95 is
• 5:51
  Tom Pfanner: at risk because that means like 70 means out of three days of school he's missing one
• 5:56
  Tom Pfanner: so that's very high like it's very hard to be successful in that with that rate he wasn't in
• 6:01
  Tom Pfanner: sports. He wasn't working. He was failing all of his classes, which none of those things were
• 6:08
  Tom Pfanner: happening when he was in Eugene. Again, like a lot of factors that contribute to that. But I knew
• 6:12
  Tom Pfanner: one factor that was missing was I wasn't involved. So I knew I needed to get back in the game as his
• 6:19
  Tom Pfanner: father, or there was very likely that I could have a high school dropout drug addicted kid
• 6:24
  Tom Pfanner: by the time he got to the fresh, the Christmas of his freshman year. And so my wife and I and our
• 6:31
  Tom Pfanner: We left Eugene where we lived.
• 6:35
  Tom Pfanner: We left a teaching job.
• 6:36
  Tom Pfanner: We left the home that we owned, that we bought when it was, you know, a good rate before everything got crazy.
• 6:44
  Tom Pfanner: We moved across state so that we could go after the lost sheep.
• 6:49
  Tom Pfanner: And now ended up, Charles is, now we have a great relationship.
• 6:55
  Tom Pfanner: He's working and living on his own in Nevada.
• 6:58
  Tom Pfanner: After we moved out there, he and I started training martial arts together and just getting a focus back on what he needed to do to grow as a man.
• 7:09
  Tom Pfanner: And so I just, as I've gone through this experience, God's really led me like, all right, I took you through this journey now.
• 7:17
  Tom Pfanner: He's told me he wants me to help other dads who are going through the same struggle with teenagers do it with less effort and more clarity.
• 7:26
  Nicky Billou: That's a heck of a story, man.
• 7:28
  Nicky Billou: And the truth of the matter is there's a lot of fathers who struggle with their teenagers.
• 7:35
  Nicky Billou: I got two sons.
• 7:36
  Nicky Billou: One of them is 18.
• 7:37
  Nicky Billou: One of them is 20.
• 7:39
  Nicky Billou: When my oldest son turned 17, he did something messed up.
• 7:47
  Nicky Billou: Him and a bunch of buddies were staying at a house of one of their buddies who was away on vacation.
• 7:56
  Nicky Billou: They took the mother's car, they panged it up a little bit.
• 8:03
  Nicky Billou: And when all that happened, I just, I don't live with his mom either.
• 8:08
  Nicky Billou: I just laid down the hammer and had him stay with me.
• 8:13
  Nicky Billou: And I was tough on him.
• 8:14
  Nicky Billou: The only thing I let him do was play soccer.
• 8:16
  Nicky Billou: I took his phone away.
• 8:18
  Nicky Billou: A few months later, you know, he started taking things more seriously.
• 8:22
  Nicky Billou: Stopped doing that kind of crap.
• 8:25
  Nicky Billou: He ended up becoming the captain of both his school soccer team and his club team.
• 8:30
  Nicky Billou: Both teams did really well.
• 8:31
  Nicky Billou: The school team won the city championship for the first time this century.
• 8:36
  Nicky Billou: Wow.
• 8:37
  Nicky Billou: Which was pretty cool.
• 8:37
  Nicky Billou: Yeah, under his captaincy.
• 8:40
  Nicky Billou: And he was about to go to university, college, as you would call it in the U.S., and he got
• 8:46
  Nicky Billou: a job working as a fitness coach for the same company that I hired out to get me in the
• 8:53
  Nicky Billou: shape.
• 8:53
  Nicky Billou: He's been with them for just under two years, and he works 80, 90 hours a week.
• 8:59
  Nicky Billou: He loves it.
• 9:01
  Nicky Billou: He's in control.
• 9:02
  Nicky Billou: My other son stayed with his mom more than me, but he also works.
• 9:09
  Nicky Billou: He's got a little summer business he has doing car detailing.
• 9:13
  Nicky Billou: He played two sports, hockey and soccer.
• 9:17
  Nicky Billou: You know, he's got a girlfriend.
• 9:20
  Nicky Billou: Like it could have easily gone the other way if I had not found a way to connect with these
• 9:26
  Nicky Billou: boys.
• 9:27
  Nicky Billou: Yeah.
• 9:27
  Nicky Billou: And I see so many men whose relationship with their kids is a shit show.
• 9:33
  Nicky Billou: It's just a shit show.
• 9:35
  Nicky Billou: So what you're doing to help these men out, I think there's such a massive market for it.
• 9:41
  Nicky Billou: But a lot of men are embarrassed to even talk about the fact that things aren't going well
• 9:46
  Nicky Billou: with their kids.
• 9:47
  Nicky Billou: You know what I'm saying?
• 9:49
  Tom Pfanner: Yeah.
• 9:49
  Tom Pfanner: It's, um, there are two things I feel like as men, we over inflate and under receive or under like, uh, accept help with.
• 10:01
  Tom Pfanner: I don't know exactly the word I'm looking for.
• 10:03
  Tom Pfanner: Men don't, men don't, men don't like getting help.
• 10:06
  Nicky Billou: They don't like asking for help.
• 10:07
  Nicky Billou: They don't like getting help.
• 10:08
  Nicky Billou: It is hard on them, man.
• 10:09
  Nicky Billou: It takes something for a man to open himself up to help.
• 10:12
  Nicky Billou: It's like, he feels like he's a loser if he just asks for help.
• 10:15
  Nicky Billou: It's crazy.
• 10:16
  Tom Pfanner: Yeah.
• 10:17
  Tom Pfanner: It's fighting and fatherhood.
• 10:19
  Tom Pfanner: Those are the things that like seem to define us as men.
• 10:23
  Tom Pfanner: Like, hey, if you don't have your family figured out, well, then you're not a dude.
• 10:28
  Tom Pfanner: And if you can't fight like, oh, I beat you in a fight.
• 10:31
  Tom Pfanner: Okay.
• 10:32
  Tom Pfanner: Well, like how much, what's your strategy?
• 10:34
  Tom Pfanner: What do you train?
• 10:35
  Tom Pfanner: What's your tech?
• 10:36
  Tom Pfanner: Oh, I don't know.
• 10:38
  Tom Pfanner: Well, what are you going to do as a dad?
• 10:39
  Tom Pfanner: Like, what's your plan?
• 10:40
  Tom Pfanner: Well, I'm just going to do it.
• 10:41
  Tom Pfanner: At those two things, it seems like until there's an ego crack, men want to be able to just figure it out on their own and then have that pride of like, yeah, I did it.
• 10:53
  Tom Pfanner: And the truth is champions.
• 10:56
  Tom Pfanner: I cover this in one of the presentations that I do.
• 11:00
  Tom Pfanner: There's a slide and I put up of all like six or seven different people that you would have never you would never know who they were.
• 11:10
  Tom Pfanner: And I asked the audience like, hey, who are these people?
• 11:13
  Tom Pfanner: They were like, I don't know.
• 11:14
  Tom Pfanner: Maybe sometimes somebody knows one.
• 11:17
  Tom Pfanner: And then I'm like, well, all these guys coached this dude.
• 11:21
  Tom Pfanner: And then they put up a picture and it's Tom Brady.
• 11:23
  Tom Pfanner: So Tom Brady's fine.
• 11:25
  Tom Pfanner: He has a throwing coach.
• 11:26
  Tom Pfanner: He has a strength coach.
• 11:27
  Tom Pfanner: He has a body coach, a nutritionist, an offensive coach,
• 11:30
  Tom Pfanner: like all these people who have accomplished less than he has.
• 11:34
  Tom Pfanner: But he's still trying to get better because he doesn't care about his ego of like,
• 11:38
  Tom Pfanner: oh, hey, I've won the most Super Bowls.
• 11:41
  Tom Pfanner: I've had the most, you know,
• 11:43
  Tom Pfanner: he just cares about helping his team perform at the highest level.
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: And that's ultimately what you're talking about,
• 11:48
  Tom Pfanner: this crack in our ego as men has to be from this space of,
• 11:53
  Tom Pfanner: it's not about showing that I have everything figured out
• 11:57
  Tom Pfanner: and that I can do it on my own, which maybe you can.
• 12:00
  Tom Pfanner: But what's more powerful is how can you go farther with what you have,
• 12:06
  Tom Pfanner: with what's available, with the resources that God's put around you.
• 12:12
  Tom Pfanner: That's ultimately what drives an athlete to get coaching.
• 12:17
  Tom Pfanner: And in the same way, in the same breath, we can ask like,
• 12:20
  Tom Pfanner: hey, is an athlete winning a championship any more important
• 12:25
  Tom Pfanner: than us raising our young heroes to become men or women?
• 12:34
  Nicky Billou: Actually, it means nothing, man.
• 12:36
  Nicky Billou: Athlete winning a championship means something to him.
• 12:38
  Nicky Billou: It doesn't mean anything to us.
• 12:40
  Tom Pfanner: No.
• 12:40
  Nicky Billou: And nothing.
• 12:41
  Nicky Billou: Who cares?
• 12:42
  Tom Pfanner: Yeah.
• 12:43
  Nicky Billou: On the weekend, I have season's tickets to the Toronto FC Soccer Club.
• 12:50
  Nicky Billou: And on the weekend, Miami FC came to town.
• 12:53
  Nicky Billou: Leo Messi is their captain.
• 12:55
  Nicky Billou: He's one of the greatest soccer players of all time.
• 12:58
  Nicky Billou: And I took my son and a friend.
• 13:01
  Nicky Billou: It was awesome, dude.
• 13:03
  Nicky Billou: It was a great game.
• 13:04
  Nicky Billou: Fantastic game.
• 13:05
  Nicky Billou: It was awesome being with my boy.
• 13:07
  Tom Pfanner: Yeah.
• 13:08
  Tom Pfanner: It's those moments that we can find a way to remove ourselves from the regular environment
• 13:12
  Tom Pfanner: and just go in.
• 13:14
  Tom Pfanner: And especially at your kid's age of 18 and 20, where I told my son this when he turned
• 13:21
  Tom Pfanner: 18, I said, hey, well, you're 18 now.
• 13:24
  Tom Pfanner: If you want to take my leadership or not, that's up to you.
• 13:28
  Tom Pfanner: The last 17 years has been an arranged marriage.
• 13:31
  Tom Pfanner: But now if you want my help with something, great.
• 13:35
  Tom Pfanner: If you don't, great.
• 13:36
  Tom Pfanner: It's up to you.
• 13:38
  Tom Pfanner: And so when you're in that phase that you're in,
• 13:41
  Tom Pfanner: like if you get that bonus time, overtime, extra time with the kid,
• 13:45
  Tom Pfanner: like they're going to be more likely to call you up and be like,
• 13:48
  Tom Pfanner: hey, dad, what do you think?
• 13:49
  Nicky Billou: Yeah.
• 13:50
  Tom Pfanner: Yeah.
• 13:51
  Nicky Billou: Yeah, yeah.
• 13:52
  Nicky Billou: It's a beautiful thing.
• 13:53
  Nicky Billou: It's a beautiful thing.
• 13:56
  Nicky Billou: So why don't we go over some principles of what a father ought to do
• 14:01
  Nicky Billou: to get a kid who's not communicating with them, to communicate with them.
• 14:06
  Nicky Billou: I think I'd like you to speak about what to do in the case of a son and then what to do
• 14:10
  Nicky Billou: in the case of a daughter.
• 14:11
  Nicky Billou: Sure.
• 14:12
  Tom Pfanner: It starts the same.
• 14:14
  Tom Pfanner: And it starts with our faith and our presence as men.
• 14:18
  Tom Pfanner: So for me, I'm a follower of Jesus.
• 14:21
  Tom Pfanner: But like these principles that I go over, my book is called Dads Who Lead.
• 14:24
  Tom Pfanner: So if you're like, oh, this is cool.
• 14:25
  Tom Pfanner: I want to dig deeper into it.
• 14:27
  Tom Pfanner: Dads Who Lead on Amazon.
• 14:30
  Tom Pfanner: The foundation is our faith in ourselves and our faith that God has called us to be our kids' dads on purpose.
• 14:41
  Tom Pfanner: It's not an accident that he's blessed us with those kids specifically.
• 14:45
  Tom Pfanner: So in my case, I'm very organized and structured, and I know if I take certain actions, I'm going to get certain results.
• 14:54
  Tom Pfanner: And so initially when I was parenting Charles, I thought, okay, well, I'm responsible for this person.
• 14:59
  Tom Pfanner: And just like if I was responsible for coaching a team, if I have them do these tasks, they'll get these outcomes and then it'll be successful.
• 15:08
  Tom Pfanner: So the difference between parenting or leading a teenager and leading a team is that a team, like when I coached for the Oregon Ducks, I was a strength coach.
• 15:22
  Tom Pfanner: And everybody on the team, whether you were nutrition, running back coach, custodian, didn't matter.
• 15:29
  Tom Pfanner: everybody's doing their role to get the players prepared to perform on saturday at the highest
• 15:34
  Tom Pfanner: level right on so that's a lot of how i had previously addressed fatherhood i'm here to
• 15:42
  Tom Pfanner: help move charles in a direction but it's the opposite when we're parenting because we're not
• 15:48
  Tom Pfanner: moving in the same direction we're actually teaching and guiding our young heroes to be
• 15:53
  Tom Pfanner: able to drive in their own direction. We don't want them to be on our ship forever. We want them
• 15:58
  Tom Pfanner: to be able to lead themselves. And so having that understanding that when I had something that was
• 16:06
  Tom Pfanner: challenging for me as a dad, that was a planned lesson from God to help develop me into a more
• 16:15
  Tom Pfanner: evolved, mature leader in the next step. And I have to have faith that I have what it takes
• 16:21
  Tom Pfanner: to be a strong leader. And I have to have faith in my kids. I have to have faith that if I'm
• 16:30
  Tom Pfanner: teaching my daughter to hit a softball, that she's got what it takes to do it, that she's going to
• 16:37
  Tom Pfanner: keep doing it. This is one of my favorite stories. I have a daughter who just turned four and she
• 16:42
  Tom Pfanner: always asks like, oh, hey, can I help crack the eggs, put them into the pan? And my first instinct
• 16:49
  Tom Pfanner: every time my nervous system is like,
• 16:52
  Tom Pfanner: this is going to be messy.
• 16:54
  Tom Pfanner: It's going to be a pain.
• 16:55
  Tom Pfanner: And I'm like, okay, pause.
• 16:57
  Tom Pfanner: Yes, you can do that.
• 16:59
  Tom Pfanner: Come up here, crack an egg.
• 17:00
  Tom Pfanner: If it messes up, if it like,
• 17:03
  Tom Pfanner: sometimes she'll tap it
• 17:05
  Tom Pfanner: and she'll tap it so lightly that nothing happens.
• 17:07
  Tom Pfanner: And then she'll crack it and it goes everywhere.
• 17:10
  Tom Pfanner: But I have to show her that I have faith
• 17:12
  Tom Pfanner: that she can do it.
• 17:13
  Tom Pfanner: If I give her eight eggs,
• 17:15
  Tom Pfanner: eventually she'll get one and she'll do it.
• 17:17
  Tom Pfanner: If I'm like, no, Leela,
• 17:19
  Tom Pfanner: I'm not going to make it. Have you cracked an egg? It's going to be too messy and too much of a pain.
• 17:23
  Tom Pfanner: Well, what if I just communicated to her about her abilities? It's too much of a hassle for me to
• 17:30
  Tom Pfanner: teach you, for you to evolve, for you to develop. So we have to have faith that our kids have what
• 17:36
  Tom Pfanner: it takes. And life is a lot like cracking open eggs. It's just a matter of if it's, whether it's
• 17:43
  Tom Pfanner: a sales call or asking a girl out or whatever it is, you're just going to make some messes
• 17:49
  Tom Pfanner: for a while until you figure it out.
• 17:52
  Tom Pfanner: But it's just an evolution of continuing to be willing to fail and try and grow and learn.
• 17:59
  Tom Pfanner: And so I mean, there's there are five different attributes that I talk about in the book.
• 18:04
  Tom Pfanner: But the foundational one, whether it's with a boy or girl, is like faith and yourself and
• 18:09
  Tom Pfanner: faith and who they are.
• 18:11
  Nicky Billou: Right on.
• 18:12
  Nicky Billou: So what's the difference between connecting with a girl and a boy, especially if they've
• 18:16
  Nicky Billou: decided not to talk to you?
• 18:19
  Tom Pfanner: Well, this is kind of going into level three, but let's do it.
• 18:23
  Tom Pfanner: Yeah, we can go into level three, which is mutual respect.
• 18:28
  Tom Pfanner: I guess I'll just briefly touch on level two and level two is ownership.
• 18:31
  Tom Pfanner: So faith is the belief, the belief in God, belief in yourself, belief in your kids.
• 18:35
  Tom Pfanner: Ownership is the action.
• 18:36
  Tom Pfanner: So that's then like, all right, I believe I'm capable and I'm going to get up in the morning and I'm going to work out.
• 18:44
  Tom Pfanner: I'm going to do the work and understand who I am, do my time with God, take care of what I need to take care of, talk to people the way that I need to talk to them, handle my own, handle your own ship before you try to direct somebody else's.
• 19:01
  Tom Pfanner: that's kind of level two is taking the action, which typically as men, we're stronger at that
• 19:07
  Tom Pfanner: than the belief and the feelings part. So those are the first two. But going into the difference
• 19:12
  Tom Pfanner: between boys and girls, when we get to the respect level, there are two types of respect that I talk
• 19:18
  Tom Pfanner: about. The first is called action respect. And this is what the most important to the boys. It's a
• 19:25
  Tom Pfanner: sliding scale, but most important with the boys. And action respect is like, I respect Michael
• 19:31
  Tom Pfanner: Jordan as a basketball player because he's won six championships. He has a great jump shot.
• 19:38
  Tom Pfanner: He has a shoe deal. All of these things that he's done has nothing to do with me,
• 19:44
  Tom Pfanner: nothing to do with his interaction with me. I respect him for the presence that he holds
• 19:50
  Tom Pfanner: and what he's accomplished in his ability to perform. Same can go like somebody built a house.
• 19:54
  Tom Pfanner: Cool. I respect that dude. One, he built a house. That's cool. But also I respect his abilities in
• 20:00
  Tom Pfanner: that domain, that area. So for young men, it used to be three decades ago, your dad was like the
• 20:10
  Tom Pfanner: dude in your life. You knew him, you knew what he did for work, how he got there, his story,
• 20:16
  Tom Pfanner: all of that. Now with social media, the young men can see all of these dudes' stories,
• 20:24
  Tom Pfanner: all these influencers, the TikToks, whatever. They know everybody's story.
• 20:30
  Tom Pfanner: So our story, you're not going to be able to be the Michael Jordan or be in the NFL,
• 20:36
  Tom Pfanner: but you can control, do I lift weights?
• 20:40
  Tom Pfanner: Do I take care of my business?
• 20:42
  Tom Pfanner: Do I control what I can control?
• 20:44
  Tom Pfanner: Am I somebody that my son would look at and say like,
• 20:47
  Tom Pfanner: hey, if I ended up like him when I was 35 or 40 or 45, would that be pretty cool?
• 20:55
  Tom Pfanner: Would that be all right?
• 20:57
  Tom Pfanner: And if it's no, gosh, I hope my dad and my kids are nothing like me.
• 21:00
  Tom Pfanner: Well, then we need to create shifts so that you can start embodying the person that you
• 21:06
  Tom Pfanner: want and that you kids can respect.
• 21:08
  Tom Pfanner: So that's the action respect.
• 21:11
  Tom Pfanner: That's what boys are going to latch on to.
• 21:14
  Tom Pfanner: They're going to tell their friends like, oh, my dad, like for me, I compete in jujitsu
• 21:19
  Tom Pfanner: tournaments.
• 21:20
  Tom Pfanner: When I was younger, I competed in cage fighting.
• 21:22
  Tom Pfanner: So I know my son, when he's hanging out with his friends and they're talking about each
• 21:27
  Tom Pfanner: There's dads. That's probably some of the stuff that he's bringing. Oh yeah, my dad just did a
• 21:31
  Tom Pfanner: jujitsu tournament last weekend, you know, as they were watching the fight. And he said this about
• 21:35
  Tom Pfanner: whatever, you know, so that's like, oh, okay. Your dad's, your dad's cool. Or your dad's respected,
• 21:41
  Tom Pfanner: right? That's really important to the masculine. For the feminine, there's the connection respect.
• 21:48
  Tom Pfanner: And that is, I use this story. You go to the grocery store. There's a little lady behind the
• 21:54
  Tom Pfanner: counter and she greets you and she knows your name and she knows your kid's name. She knows
• 22:01
  Tom Pfanner: everything that's happening in your life. You're going to respect that person because she takes the
• 22:07
  Tom Pfanner: time to respect and understand your story. And that's something that's really missing in this
• 22:14
  Tom Pfanner: world where everybody is trying to share and send to slow down and really dig in. And a lot of times
• 22:20
  Tom Pfanner: as dads, like if my son or my daughter is telling me something that happened at school and it seems
• 22:27
  Tom Pfanner: totally unimportant, it's really easy to just kind of check it out. Be like, all right, you were on
• 22:32
  Tom Pfanner: the playground and this kid came up to you and said, oogie boogie, oogie boogie, and then ran off.
• 22:39
  Tom Pfanner: And then you were sad. What? Like whatever it is, right? So to them, it's an important enough for
• 22:47
  Tom Pfanner: them to share. And as you start to learn your kids' stories, again, this is for the feminine,
• 22:52
  Tom Pfanner: but this connection in respect of them knowing that we know their story. And for men, it's important
• 22:58
  Tom Pfanner: too, or for your boys, it's important because if you're going to compete with the influencers and
• 23:03
  Tom Pfanner: all those folks that have all the, I don't like this word, but it's what's coming up for me,
• 23:08
  Tom Pfanner: clout, right? The status, you've got to be able to bring something to be able to guide them in a
• 23:15
  Tom Pfanner: that's unique and nobody's if you're a great listener nobody's going to be able to compete
• 23:21
  Tom Pfanner: with that you're a great listener and their dad and you have cool stuff going for you very very
• 23:27
  Tom Pfanner: hard to compete with so being a great listener is a super uh advantageous tool because as you learn
• 23:36
  Tom Pfanner: their stories and melissa from the soccer team did something funny or mean or whatever it was
• 23:43
  Tom Pfanner: It might not seem important until you're somewhere and Melissa shows up and you're like, oh, that's the girl from the story.
• 23:52
  Tom Pfanner: I get it.
• 23:53
  Tom Pfanner: Now your kid's story becomes like a TV show.
• 23:58
  Tom Pfanner: Like I don't watch TV shows anymore, but when I was younger, I watched a show called Friday Night Lights.
• 24:04
  Tom Pfanner: Oh, I love that show, man.
• 24:05
  Tom Pfanner: That's a great show.
• 24:06
  Tom Pfanner: Yeah.
• 24:07
  Tom Pfanner: And so if I was picking up on a different episode, I could, even if I skipped an episode,
• 24:12
  Tom Pfanner: I could see and understand like, oh yeah, because I remember what happened in this,
• 24:16
  Tom Pfanner: between this story, like relationship between these people.
• 24:19
  Tom Pfanner: And I know this person's personality.
• 24:22
  Tom Pfanner: And so I can jump right into a scene with more depth because I understand the backstory of it.
• 24:28
  Tom Pfanner: If you don't understand the backstory, you're just turning on for the first time.
• 24:32
  Tom Pfanner: That's how a lot of parents role is like, they just turn on the TV and they're like,
• 24:36
  Tom Pfanner: All right, what's the problem?
• 24:37
  Tom Pfanner: Now that there's a problem, let me try to figure it out.
• 24:39
  Tom Pfanner: But they don't have everything that they maybe needed.
• 24:42
  Tom Pfanner: They don't have the context.
• 24:43
  Tom Pfanner: The context, exactly.
• 24:46
  Tom Pfanner: So boys and girls, again, both connection and action respect is important to both.
• 24:51
  Tom Pfanner: Men tend to action, like what you've done, tends to be more important.
• 24:55
  Tom Pfanner: For girls, the connection and the understanding tends to be more important.
• 24:59
  Tom Pfanner: But I think it's important to fill in both.
• 25:03
  Tom Pfanner: But knowing that girls are really going to want to be heard and understood at a day, that acceptance for just being is more important.
• 25:13
  Tom Pfanner: And for guys, it's often, you know, you do first and then you're accepted.
• 25:18
  Nicky Billou: Yeah.
• 25:18
  Nicky Billou: You know, this is really good.
• 25:21
  Nicky Billou: This distinction between the two types of respect is excellent.
• 25:25
  Tom Pfanner: Yeah.
• 25:25
  Tom Pfanner: I see respect a lot like love.
• 25:28
  Tom Pfanner: Like often it's just kind of, oh, give respect, give love.
• 25:32
  Tom Pfanner: Like, what does that mean?
• 25:33
  Tom Pfanner: There's such, it's such a deep word.
• 25:36
  Tom Pfanner: I think it's Greek.
• 25:38
  Tom Pfanner: Greek has like four different types of love
• 25:39
  Tom Pfanner: because there's so many intricacies.
• 25:42
  Tom Pfanner: And I think respect is the same way.
• 25:44
  Nicky Billou: Yeah, eros and filos.
• 25:46
  Nicky Billou: Yeah.
• 25:48
  Nicky Billou: Erotic friendship and brotherly love.
• 25:50
  Nicky Billou: Yeah.
• 25:51
  Nicky Billou: Yeah.
• 25:53
  Nicky Billou: And it's pretty wild.
• 25:55
  Nicky Billou: No, you've created some good IP here, man.
• 25:58
  Nicky Billou: I like it.
• 25:59
  Nicky Billou: It's unique.
• 26:00
  Nicky Billou: it inherently makes a lot of sense i believe that there's way too many fathers that don't
• 26:08
  Nicky Billou: understand this i've never heard it articulated quite this way before it's brilliant it's
• 26:12
  Nicky Billou: absolutely brilliant um thomas the world right now is messed up many men are out there in society
• 26:23
  Nicky Billou: and they don't know how to act they don't know how to be they don't know how to be with their wives
• 26:26
  Nicky Billou: because traditional masculine roles have been under assault, under attack.
• 26:33
  Nicky Billou: So a lot of men instinctively feel that it's correct to be playing out those roles,
• 26:40
  Nicky Billou: but society is telling them it's not.
• 26:42
  Nicky Billou: Society is telling their women that it's not.
• 26:45
  Nicky Billou: It's messing men up.
• 26:46
  Nicky Billou: It's messing women up by having them be more masculine.
• 26:49
  Nicky Billou: It's causing too many relationships to be under strain and frankly break apart.
• 26:55
  Nicky Billou: And the world is moving at a rapid pace.
• 26:59
  Nicky Billou: And these digital devices are messing us all up because they're like digital prisons.
• 27:04
  Nicky Billou: They're digital overseers.
• 27:06
  Nicky Billou: And fathers just don't realize the most important thing they can do is put that damn thing away for themselves and their kids and actually be with their kids.
• 27:14
  Nicky Billou: That's the best thing they can do.
• 27:16
  Nicky Billou: And I think the point that you've made here that you have to have faith and presence is very powerful.
• 27:25
  Nicky Billou: You know, most people don't understand that.
• 27:28
  Nicky Billou: They just don't understand that.
• 27:29
  Nicky Billou: But if they spend some time listening to you, they'll start to understand that.
• 27:34
  Nicky Billou: And to me, I think someone like you, it's important that you have a book out there.
• 27:38
  Nicky Billou: It's important that you have content out there that talks about these issues.
• 27:44
  Nicky Billou: It's important that you go on a lot of different podcasts as well and talk about these issues.
• 27:48
  Nicky Billou: Because most men don't understand this.
• 27:51
  Nicky Billou: This is not something that's commonly understood out there in the culture.
• 27:54
  Nicky Billou: Yes.
• 27:54
  Nicky Billou: And it's important for someone like you to become a globally renowned thought leader because you're going to help save a lot of fathers, a ton of heartache, and you're going to help save their children from growing up messed up because without a father's influence, kids are screwed.
• 28:12
  Nicky Billou: A young man needs his father as an example of how to be a man.
• 28:16
  Nicky Billou: Learning it from social media ain't on.
• 28:18
  Nicky Billou: And a young woman needs her father as an example of the type of man she ought to pair bond with
• 28:25
  Nicky Billou: and marry.
• 28:27
  Nicky Billou: Because otherwise it's going to mess her up.
• 28:29
  Nicky Billou: You know, and then you find these girls, like these OnlyFans girls that are like sleeping
• 28:32
  Nicky Billou: with a thousand guys on camera for money, which is absolutely insane.
• 28:37
  Nicky Billou: It's absolutely insane.
• 28:38
  Nicky Billou: And the reason for this is because men don't understand what they need to do to be present in their children's lives in a way that is meaningful to those children and will help them be set up for success.
• 28:53
  Nicky Billou: And I really appreciate what you're doing, man.
• 28:55
  Nicky Billou: This is super important.
• 28:57
  Tom Pfanner: Yeah, I appreciate that.
• 28:58
  Tom Pfanner: Yeah, it's really, it's all, if I'm being honest, it's all from God.
• 29:03
  Tom Pfanner: And it's just, I really feel like I'm the messenger that he's guided through this.
• 29:10
  Tom Pfanner: And it's simpler than we often feel like it is.
• 29:16
  Tom Pfanner: It feels.
• 29:18
  Tom Pfanner: It's simpler than how it feels.
• 29:20
  Tom Pfanner: Because as men, a lot of times, like you've said, we don't think about it.
• 29:23
  Tom Pfanner: We're just told to do and take action.
• 29:27
  Tom Pfanner: And we don't have a lot of chance to reflect on like, oh man, all right.
• 29:32
  Tom Pfanner: My son just said, fuck you and slammed the door.
• 29:37
  Tom Pfanner: Well, that doesn't really matter because I'm his dad and I'm supposed to just do what I'm supposed to do and move on to the next thing.
• 29:45
  Tom Pfanner: You know, that's like that's how we're brought up as leaders.
• 29:49
  Tom Pfanner: Like, well, if somebody gets mad at us, let's just let that roll and on to the next.
• 29:54
  Tom Pfanner: Because if we feel bad about it, then it's going to affect us.
• 29:58
  Tom Pfanner: And so it's just like, oh, OK, maybe what I said wasn't effective.
• 30:02
  Tom Pfanner: what do I need to do differently next time? How can I get better? And then just keep getting better
• 30:09
  Tom Pfanner: and adjusting and growing, but we've got to be willing to understand how we are as men and how
• 30:16
  Tom Pfanner: our leadership is impacting and affecting our family. So, yeah. So your book's called Dads Who
• 30:23
  Nicky Billou: Lead by Thomas Fanner on Amazon. Yes. If you look on there, it'll be as Tom Fanner, but
• 30:31
  Tom Pfanner: Tom Fanner.
• 30:31
  Tom Pfanner: Yeah.
• 30:32
  Tom Pfanner: Tom Fanner on Amazon.
• 30:34
  Tom Pfanner: The ultimate guide to stop parenting and start leading.
• 30:36
  Tom Pfanner: So in the book, I go through the five levels or the five attributes of leadership, which is faith, ownership, respect, groundbreaking adventure.
• 30:49
  Tom Pfanner: So that's kind of going into some of what you were doing with the soccer and finding activities to do that transfer the values.
• 30:56
  Tom Pfanner: And then finally at the top is expectations.
• 30:58
  Tom Pfanner: And how do we hold expectations while still having the base and relationship that we need?
• 31:06
  Tom Pfanner: So I go into that in depth of each of those five levels.
• 31:12
  Tom Pfanner: And again, it's not from the space that I have everything figured out.
• 31:15
  Tom Pfanner: It's from the space that I was a dad and it didn't go so well for me.
• 31:20
  Tom Pfanner: And so if it works for me and it's worked for a lot of families, yeah, I try to keep it as simple as possible.
• 31:29
  Nicky Billou: We're going to make sure we put that in the show notes.
• 31:31
  Nicky Billou: Like I said, I know someone you've worked with that swears by the work that he's done with you because without it, he said he wouldn't have a relationship with his daughter or son.
• 31:42
  Nicky Billou: And he's a man that I greatly respect.
• 31:44
  Nicky Billou: He's a fellow believer, Lance Friggin.
• 31:47
  Nicky Billou: And I know he's not the only one who went through this.
• 31:50
  Nicky Billou: I know it for a fact.
• 31:51
  Nicky Billou: It's important for a father to be involved in his children's lives.
• 31:56
  Nicky Billou: And if for whatever reason those children are not speaking to him or rejecting his love and his fatherhood, he needs to turn that around.
• 32:07
  Nicky Billou: And if he can't do it on his own, he needs help.
• 32:09
  Nicky Billou: He's got to reach out to someone like you.
• 32:10
  Nicky Billou: He's got to read your book.
• 32:11
  Nicky Billou: He's got to engage in coaching with you because otherwise his kids are in deep trouble.
• 32:17
  Nicky Billou: Deep, deep trouble.
• 32:19
  Nicky Billou: Kids can't parent themselves and the sure as heck can't be parented by influencers on social media or their friends.
• 32:25
  Tom Pfanner: Yeah.
• 32:26
  Nicky Billou: And that's an important thing for every father to understand.
• 32:28
  Tom Pfanner: Yeah.
• 32:29
  Tom Pfanner: Very important.
• 32:30
  Tom Pfanner: And it's even deeper than that.
• 32:33
  Tom Pfanner: You know, look at, I mean, we've got our kids' personal journey, but on your own journey as a man, like inherently our role is to not just protect, but prepare our young heroes.
• 32:45
  Tom Pfanner: Yes, sir.
• 32:46
  Tom Pfanner: And if we're not doing that, it's like if you've put off your oil change and you just keep putting it off like, Joe, I know.
• 32:54
  Tom Pfanner: And then you know, like, oh, man, I'm going to go in and it's going to be bad.
• 32:57
  Tom Pfanner: And then there's going to be another problem because I didn't change the oil.
• 33:02
  Tom Pfanner: And so, like, it starts to add up and you put it off until it's a crisis.
• 33:08
  Tom Pfanner: But in the background that, like, oh, I got to change the oil that's always running through everything that we do and operate.
• 33:16
  Tom Pfanner: Right. Like taking, making sure that who we are as men and who we are as a father, husband,
• 33:23
  Tom Pfanner: leader is in place. It opens up the love that our wives and our kids have to pour into us so we can
• 33:31
  Tom Pfanner: refill an overflow as men of God into the world. Because he doesn't want us to be isolated. He
• 33:39
  Nicky Billou: wants us to be united. Amen. Well, Spanner, man. Honored to have you here. Thanks for coming.
• 33:45
  Nicky Billou: Appreciate you, brother. Thanks for the time.
• 33:47
  Nicky Billou: Yeah, you bet. And that's a lot.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to the Sovereign Man podcast.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: If you're ready to take charge of your life and become the man you've always wanted to be,
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: we invite you to join the movement at SovereignMan.ca.