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From Divorce to a Global Community: Building Help for Men with Ralph Brewer · Better Together

• Shawn Sundsvold: Welcome back to the Better Together Podcast. I am Sean Sunsvold, along with Kelly Sunsvold, my co-host and my partner in business and in life. Today's guest is the author of five books. They're titled Rebuild, The Dead Bedroom Fix, Divorce Panic, Red Flags, and Real Talk. Books that have been read by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Our guest, Ralph Brewer, didn't set out to build any of this. More than a decade ago, he went through a painful divorce and he started writing about it purely as a way to process what he was going through. There was no plan, there was no business model, it was just therapy on a blog. There was one chapter people couldn't stop talking about, and that turned into a self-published book. That book turned into three editions and roughly 300,000 copies sold. And that attention from that turned into something nobody could have predicted. A global community called Help for Men. With close to 850 pain members, six annual conferences held in the US and four in Australia, and a social media following of more than six hundred thousand people. Today we're gonna go into how that happened, how something that started as just a guy trying to survive his own worst year turned into an international organization, and then everything he's had to figure out along the way to build it and run it. So, Ralph, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here. Ralph Brewer: Thank you for having me guys. I appreciate it. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah, so for our audience who's just meeting you, give us the short version of what Help Frimen actually is and who it's for. Ralph Brewer: Global community for men that are needing help, probably if we had to encapsulate it within the world of relationships. That's who I attract to my world. So you have guys that are married. we did actually a poll here recently of our membership and the majority of them still are married men who aren't quite happy with the status of their marriage and they're trying to do better, be better guys, be better husbands, better fathers. And then we have those guys going through breakup, divorce. And then we have those guys that have already been through divorce and now they're single and they're they lost their title of of husband and now they're a part-time father and they're very lost. And so every every every little iteration in between. And I started it because I went through the same thing. I was a guy, a dad starting over. That was that's my social media handle for a reason. You know, some fourteen years ago I was basically thrusted into the world of being a single father and I didn't ask for it. I didn't want it. It was very traumatizing to me. I didn't expect this. I thought I had my whole life planned out for me. And so it was a major rebuild for me and to start all over and try to figure everything out and try to figure out what got me into that mess and how to proceed in life. And I've been learning ever since all about myself and the world of relationships and helping other guys. And I absolutely love what I do. Kelly Sundsvold: That's awesome. you know, very much needed. I think the book titles are just they're they catch your eye, right? Ralph Brewer: Mm-hmm. Kelly Sundsvold: so entrepreneurship sometimes happens by accident. It sometimes happens very intentionally and there's sometimes a lifelong entrepreneurship journey. So take us back to the beginning of this business and tell us What was the catalyst? What got you started and what was happening in your life? Ralph Brewer: Entrepreneurship in general is not new to me, but it is not something that I've ever dedicated myself 100% to. It's always been like a little side gig in things. That's always been my thing. in hindsight, I've always been working for others, not out of it's not like an expression of my innate who I am to work for others and be a good employee. It was always out of necessity. It was always like I need a paycheck, I need my benefits. But I got my fulfillment at a personal level from doing this thing and this other thing and this other thing. It's just that after divorce, I actually was still r remaining as an employee for this one company, working from home. And then I actually be went and worked as a consultant for some other company. So I was still always doing that. Half my one foot in the employment world and one foot outside. But it wasn't until this whole thing. with dad starting over and then what would become help for men is what kind of pushed and covet also helped with this as well because one of the companies I was working for that paid me a lot of money said we don't need you anymore COVID sorry and I was like crap I better I better come up with something. So I really jumped into this and later became Help for men and this whole global organization. But it was all born out of I would love to say I sat down with a plan and said how am I going to do this and put together a business plan and everything else. But no, it was basically If I can point to something that's the secret to my quote success, it would be I was really hungering for something, some kind of mission, something to really focus in on and something to light a fire under my butt after going through such a trauma. And it was people telling me, you know, you're really good at filling the blank, you should do that. I'm like, Cool, yeah, say no more. So the first thing was, I like what you say on this subject matter, you should write a book on it. And so I did. And then there was a success in that. And I was like, wow. And then I, put my email in the book and the email started flooding in saying, Can I talk to you one on one? And I would do it for free for like I don't know how long I did that for free, not very long. And then somebody said, You know, you should charge for this. It's not really fair that you just give away your time for free. And I'm like, That's something I never conceived of. And I'm not a counselor or a therapist. Like, no, but there's this whole thing called coaching and mentorship and people pay you for your time. I'm like, Okay. So I started doing that and that really took off. So it was always me going, okay, what do I got to lose? I'll try it. And it was succeed. Not every time. Sometimes I would waste a lot of time and money and go down the wrong path. But a lot of the time it was something that really fulfilled me personally, professionally, put some money in the bank, and I just kept building on it and building on it. And then eventually built this community. I hired a guy to help me sell more books and everything. And he said, He's his name is Tony, he's still with me to this day. And he said, You know, selling books and your time one on one is not gonna last forever. You need something more, something like residual income coming in, something to build a community and bring guys coming in and help more men. And that's what we came up with, the Brotherhood, which is our private support community. And that's really done well. So and then I've branched out into my social media is really taking off. That's become its own little gig, you know, YouTube paying you for putting stuff out and Facebook of the world. Now X is taking off. And then what else are we doing? I just launched an app that's doing really well. It's bringing in a good amount of money every month. So always looking for the next little opportunity and to grow the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood's my that's my big thing. That's the thing I'm the most proud of because we help out so many men and I'm able to work with guys one-on-one and in group meetings. I love it. That's what keeps me going every day. So right now we're going at about I we do the math on this. I think it's like 1.49 members per day is what we're you know bringing in to the group. So I would love to bring that double that, bring it up to three new guys a day. So it's something just keep hammering away at and trying to figure out. But obviously it keeps me energized and I love it. Shawn Sundsvold: Fantastic and I just to hear that that story of growth and all of that, I think it's amazing. you know, just kind of going back to where you started this just a little bit, you know, it was it started out as as the blog and you're writing on parenting, you're writing on finances, you're writing on, you know, things like fitness, and all are great topics, but you weren't really getting a lot of traction on those. It was the chapter on sex and struggling marriages that got the real attention and eventually became the book, The Dead Bedroom Fix. What Ralph Brewer: Mm-hmm. Shawn Sundsvold: was it like? realizing that that specific topic, was the one that resonated and and not the ones you hoped would the whole other categories of it. Ralph Brewer: Well And you know what that is to be honest with you, that's something I still struggle with to this day because I think I will put out something really big and good and interesting and and really thought provoking and it will just land flat like nothing. And then I'll put another article or another video. Video is my big thing now. Another video about the old dead bedroom, as they call it, and sure enough there's another hundred thousand views and two million on X. I'm like the writing's on the wall. The And you hate to say this because it makes us sound like a bunch of shallow knuckle draggers, but it's true. The number one pain point for men in long-term monogamy in marriage is the lack of sex in the bedroom. And that's the thing that gets more men in the door than anything else. Now, the thing is, once they're in the door, then we realize, it's a way deeper issue than that. That's just a surface level thing. It's always he's a very insecure man that has a lot of issues that stem from childhood. He doesn't like himself very much. He connects himself with men and women who treat him poorly and on and on and on. Mr. Nice Guy syndrome, very codependent men. But as far as what's the pain point that raises the eyebrows and gets men going, I can relate to this. Sex. It's sex sells. It's a titillating thing. It's you know, it's every marketer who's ever lived will tell you that. If you want to sell something, sex sells. And so I learned that pretty early on. And you know, knock on wood, it continues. But that was Yeah, that was my foray into marketing and what sells online. It was at the time when I first got into this, Facebook marketing was relatively cheap. And so just timing, I got lucky. So I was able to put something like $25 down. And I was selling books online via PDFs that I was selling directly to people. Plus, they could go to Amazon and buy, and then I created an audiobook version. Day one, I put twenty-five bucks down and said, let's see. what kind of sales I get. And I woke up the next morning and I checked my PayPal account and I had seven hundred dollars worth of sales in my PayPal account from day one of spending twenty five bucks. And I thought, I'm on to something here. instantly I'm like if I spend twenty five and fifty and it can scale that way. It didn't quite work that way. But that's like it made me realize that I'm onto something here. It's the subject matter is pretty impactful to a lot of guys. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah. Yeah, I can imagine. So, your first self published book, which w was called Ralph Brewer: The dead bedroom fix. Kelly Sundsvold: The Dead Bedroom Fix. So eventually that sold around three hundred thousand copies across like all three editions. But what did the actual growth curve look like? you mentioned like getting money back on Facebook ads back when Facebook was probably just, you know, not even meta yet. was Ralph Brewer: Mm-hmm. Kelly Sundsvold: it a slow build or was it something specific that happened that it really took off? Ralph Brewer: It was in an i it's funny. It was an initial holy crap level of success followed by, my gosh, what happened? It just kind of stopped. Followed by, yay, more success. And then, my gosh, it just stopped again. From what I understand from, you know, a lot of research. And I really when I get into something, I tend to really get into something. And I researched the heck out of this and hired people to help. And they're all like, Yeah, welcome to online advertising, Facebook advertising. It's just kind of the way it is. You kind of have to adjust all the time and Change headlines and change art and do this and do that and and hope for the best. So it wasn't a constant trajectory of of sales in that way. But what I learned is you have to have all these different channels and and avenues for people to find you in your books. So it was audible as well as eventually Spotify Premium, eventually I'm on my audiobooks alone. I don't know how many channels, a hundred different ways you can find the audiobook. I mean, there's so many out there. Everyone Audible's the primary. Followed by Apple Books is a big audio, followed by Spotify premium, and then like dozens and dozens of rest. So you gotta put yourself out on all of those. And then you have to, you know, sell the PDF on your on your website. That's the best way to capture a lead so you can market to them further. And then you have the paper version. Funny enough, audio version followed by paper copy is the two most popular with men. Don't know why, but they just love a paper and they love the audio. so you have to do all those different ones, and that's something that took me a while to learn. Can't just put on Amazon and that's it. You gotta branch out in all the different formats. what else did I learn? once you get some momentum, you have to kind of capitalize on it because you have a lot of eyeballs on your stuff. So you have to say, here's more content, here's more interesting stuff, here's a regular email to you, here always be hitting people with more and more stuff. And then that's when the brotherhood really fit into that because once they're in the door and they have a paid membership to that, then the floodgates open for we have all kinds of stuff in there. In our brotherhood group, we have over two thousand hours of audio that they can listen to and we add to it every single week. So guys just love that. And that's just one small part of it. So it's a constant work in progress. I would love to say it's like, I figured out the formula and it's boom, boom, boom, and done and everything's taken care of. No, it's always adjusting, changing, fixing it One day all of a sudden I'll get one of my audio channels will result in $2,000 worth of sales of audiobooks in one month of from across all my titles. I'm like, yay! And then the next month it's $27. And there's no rhyme or reason to it whatsoever. I would love to say it was because of a certain ad, a certain post, or it just it's hard to say. There's so many different avenues and so many things that I have out there. So my advice to people would be like just cast your net widely when it comes to this e commerce and online thing, especially if you're doing something like I do, which is sell books in order to sell other things. Don't count on one or two little channels for selling. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah, and I I think there's something really interesting you mentioned there and I I wanna touch on it for just a second because it's you started with one thing and you got that going. Ralph Brewer: Mm-hmm. Shawn Sundsvold: And then as that got going and was self-sufficient, you went to the next thing and then worked on that while keeping this other thing going. For a lot of entrepreneurs, it's there's this idea that they need to go and they gotta be everywhere all at once. Right? And I have to be on everything the minute I get started. And that's that's not really feasible in a lot of ways, is it? Ralph Brewer: No, I think the primary thing is you gotta find some thing. In fact, I have a lot of like content creator types that come to me and say, How did you get, you know, two hundred and some thousand people on Facebook? How did you, how did you, how did you? And I say, you know, I'd hate to say, keep plugging away at it and eventually you'll get there and give it a year or two or whatever it is, but it was the that one product, the the dead bedroom fixed book got so many eyeballs, which got people looking into this and this and this and which led to and branched out. I got lucky with one good product and that got the momentum going. So I, you know, I feel feel kind of sorry for the people that are like brand new, I have no image, I have no brand, I have no nothing, I'm just Joe Blow and I'd like to start talking about fill in the blank online. I'm like, good luck, you and about a bazillion other people just had the same idea today. So y find the thing, whatever the thing may be that you're really good at in something that has some momentum and just really run that into the ground. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah, and y and y the other piece we talked about is like this was all accidental, right? And and Ralph Brewer: Mm-hmm. Shawn Sundsvold: we've talked to a lot of entrepreneurs who, you know, they've become the accidental entrepreneur, the accidental CEO. what was that realization like for you? Ralph Brewer: It was it I'm not necessarily a very spiritual man, but it it really I don't know what what the term is. Somebody told me this once. It's like a like a a skill stacking thing. It was interesting how it happened. It was like I always loved to write as a kid and I never did anything with that. And then this came along and somebody said you should write a book. I'm like, that's something I always thought about as a kid and as a young man. I never got around to it. Let's do it. And then when I did that, And I narrated it. Somebody said, I really like your voice and all that stuff. Why don't you do a podcast? Well, actually, I was in radio. I was in radio when I was in high school, simply because nobody applied for a job as a radio announcer engineer at a local radio station when I was a kid. And so I at 17 I applied and they're like, Nobody else wants a job, here you go. So I did that for a few years. And then I was in radio in in college. So I have kind of those skills as far as how to enunciate and how to work and how da-da-da-da, hitting the post on on on songs and all that other stuff. I know all that lingo. So that's helped in the podcasting world and that's helped with the video engineering. And I love the cameras and the equipment and all that stuff. I'm nerdy with all that stuff. And that's helped me with all this. So all those things are kinda all came together. And you know, again, if I were a spiritual person, it was almost say it's like it was almost meant to be kind of thing and how it all worked out. so yeah, I got very lucky, very fortunate in that way. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. i it's there is a there is an element of luck in entrepreneurship, obviously strategy, Ralph Brewer: Mm-hmm. Kelly Sundsvold: planning, but you can't always predict how the audience is gonna go. We talk about that with a lot with our clients, like can't totally predict. so kind of going back to your book, is it purely a man's audience or do you find women engaging in your work too? like maybe like wives, partners. or even just women not attached to a partner or were Ralph Brewer: Mm-hmm. Kelly Sundsvold: you know. What who are curious about what's actually going on in men in their lives besides men? Ralph Brewer: If I do hear from women, which is on occasion, more and more so as my as my stuff spreads out there all over the internet, it is always women saying, It's funny, I can very much relate to the perspective that I hear that you give as a man. And when you share these stories from these men, it's almost like I am a man. So I can totally relate to what your guys are saying in terms of the dead bedroom thing and everything else. And you realize when you hear these stories, the women share the story. And sometimes I'll hear women just say, I like your perspective as a man. May I share my story with you? Sure, go ahead. And when she does, it's just like, this is verbatim, what I hear from men all the time. It's just word for word. And you realize it's not a man-woman thing necessarily. At at the at the foundation, it's a human experience thing. And so we're all just so very similar. But with that being said, the dead bedroom fixes aimed at men. that's it's the book for men because we are when you look at when you pull therapists and so forth and and you say from your client base, what percentage of the time would you say it's men saying, I am not happy with the level of sex within the relationship? It's roughly 70% of the time it's the man. So the vast majority it's the man who's complaining about that. But still pretty good chunk of women out there saying, I'm not too happy with this and something's going on with my husband and I don't like it. So but I don't I don't address that in my book, but I recognize that that's a pretty big and growing population we're noticing. That number's getting larger and larger pornography is not a so not such a great thing for relationships and and health, physical health and things like that. Not so great for relationships and a lot of men having a lot of health problems. So it is a growing population. And those women that can totally empathize with men in that role, those are the ones that come to me. And those that just value the male perspective and they just want to hear something something different. But I don't necessarily think that represents the society as a whole. There is still to this day a big stigma against any kind of relationship oriented vice that is aimed towards men. A lot of people think that it is going to primarily be a lot of he man woman hater type stuff. It's just gonna be a bunch of guys getting together saying how much we hate women. And now I'm gonna be completely honest, you get a bunch of men in the room who've been hurt by women. There's gonna be an element of that for sure. and there are corners of the internet that are devoted to that kind of talk, but that's not us. It's what we like to think is a bunch of mature, healthy men who say, Let's help each other get better. And we don't do that by stepping on the necks of women. If anything, we need to empathize with our ladies and understand their perspective. That helps out a lot in a lot of this relationship stuff. So that's something that we preach in our group for sure. And women that dig into my material and understand that, they appreciate that. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah, for sure. And I I I I love your perspective on that and thank you for sharing that. you know, I I think there's a lot of emotional intelligence, you know, that is is missing, right? And and for most men, we were never taught the language of what feelings are, right? You Ralph Brewer: Mm. Shawn Sundsvold: know, we know something's wrong, we know something's off, but we don't have words for it, you know, and we're we're like, well I'm angry. Well, no, I'm yes, I'm angry, but that's like layer one of a of the emotion you're feeling underneath. So, you know How do you help a guy who literally doesn't have the words for what he's feeling? Ralph Brewer: Well, I don't necessarily know if that's as big of a problem as it is for my community, simply because the guys that I represent are pretty sensitive creatures, pretty in touch with their feelings. there there is to use the psychological vernacular, there is a particular subset of men that seem to be attracted to my materials simply because that was me as well. So it's funny how that works. And that is anxiously attached men. There's this whole theory called attachment theory in psychology. Basically how we were raised and how we attach to our parents has a great deal of impact on how we attach to our romantic partners down the line. And the more you look into it, boy, does it fit a great deal into a lot of what I talk about with the dead bedroom stuff and everything else. So wouldn't you know it? A lot of the men in our world are very anxiously attached. They're very preoccupied with the relationship. They're always seeking reassurance from their partner. Do you love me? Show me affection. Show me physical affection. the then with the hugs and the touches and the cuddling and the everything else. And they do want to talk a lot, a great deal about things. And so if they see something is wrong with the wife, they want to talk it out and they want to fix it and they want to get it over with so she can be happy, please. because when she is unhappy, that ruins his day, his week, his month. And if that sounds exhausting to anybody listening to this, it is. To be a secure or the polar opposite is the avoidant partner, to be around a person like that is exhausting. It's too much. They're too needy and that you you need some space in order to have a healthy relationship. And that's why a lot of those guys fail. So for them to hear, you need to open up a little bit more and you need to be a little bit more sensitive. You need to be a little bit more communicative. They're like, I I I've always been told I'm a little bit too much. So they got a point. They're a little they need to dial it down a little bit. It's okay to be a little aloof and be an independent guy and and have some distance there. on the other hand, their partners, the avoidant ones, the avoidant wives, Who are the minority overall in in society overall, they're the ones that need to open up a little bit more. They're the ladies that say, I don't want to talk about this. I don't want to go to the therapy. I don't feel comfortable talking to a therapist about my stuff. I don't want to talk about the sex stuff for sure. That's a very personal thing. that's not me. I don't like that kind of stuff. that's my world. So flip the script, flip the genders. It's the women that need to hear that. But with that being said, yeah, there's definitely something to the whole men need to be better in touch with their. deeper level of feeling. a lot of that's been shamed out of men over the years. how dare you show any sign of any kind of weakness and vulnerability. That's ugh don't like that. We s stereotypically we think that comes from a lot of men in our lives and it does a lot of bullying and things like that. But a lot of the ladies do that too to our men as well. Punish their men for showing any kind of vulnerability and weak weakness, quote unquote. And so we need to stop that because it's prohibiting a lot of men from having positive mental health, basically. We know that anxiety and depression, women I was gonna say win the award. That's not necessarily award you wanna win, but when we look at statistically who has the higher rates of anxiety and depression, women win that award, so to speak, but men are the ones to take their lives more often. men are the ones to have, you know, that kind of level of suicidal ideation. Those are the one they're they're the men that feel isolated. I don't have anybody to go to with this stuff. I don't it's I'm really at a very deep level bothered and I feel like there's no hope. That's it's not good. And that starts with a guy who's like, I don't feel free to open up about anything. And some of those guys discover that it's okay in things like twelve step programs if they have a substance abuse problem. abuse survival issues or come to a group like ours and like it's a room full of people, so to speak, who are open to talk about this kind of stuff. That is huge. And you'll see a lot of guys get genuinely very emotional in that that they've never had that avenue before. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah, for sure. I could see it really being a discussion that is is needed, you know, especially giving that permission to be vulnerable with a group of people that maybe they've never been vulnerable before to that level. So giving them some I guess some experience to even practice so that they can take those conversations home. so how has entrepreneurship How has that really changed your life? Ralph Brewer: My goodness, in so many ways. you know what has forced me to become more disciplined for sure. I am the ty I have not been formally diagnosed by any means, but I have spoken to enough therapist and all my work and so forth that I'm 99% sure that yes, some ADHD things l lurk in this brain, which from what I understand is common within the world of entrepreneurship. So with that being said, my temperament is such that I have worked for giant companies before. I've been a wheel in the corporate cog and everything, and that is just not for me. I it talk about the anti Ralph, that is it. To s go to a you show up at your cubicle at this day and do these things and this is your lunch hour and this we you must go to these meetings, even though they're pointless and useless and you must do these things and these reports which no one will read and it's hell to me. I just I I don't function within that. And some people are like, You're so lucky to have that. I have love my nine to five. I love my that ain't me. I love it's my brain goes into a point where it becomes bored and there's no challenge and there's nothing to strive for and there's no sense of ownership of the thing. And that's what gets me going. That's what keeps me cranked up. That's why I always had little side things going on, just to keep me engaged and keep me mentally healthy. So entrepreneurship Check, check, check. It's checking all those boxes. But it also allows you to go down roads which are not productive. They keep you busy, but they don't put any dollars in the bank. They don't get any customers in the door. It allows you to go down roads of just total distraction. So you got to be like, Monday is this, Tuesday is this, Wednesdays, with enough flexibility to keep you engaged. And I think just naturally, by virtue of what I do, it checks a lot of those boxes in terms of. I'm talking to guys every day and so I'm meeting new people. I love that. I love to talk to people and meet new people and learn their stories. And John from Las Vegas and then Bob from Australia and then s Steve from Nebraska all in the same day and they all have these different little cool stories and I meet three new friends and it's exciting. I love that aspect of what I do. This is amazing. combined with the business aspect of it. That really checks some of my man boxes in terms of keeping score and winning and what are we gonna do to do better this time and This compared to October last year. How can we beat that? And that really all keeps me going. But another caveat is another thing by virtue of my brain is that I am very susceptible to burnout. Meaning I just keep going and going and going and I put blinders to everything. And I can sit in front of this computer right here for six hours straight, writing, doing something, analyzing, sticking and it takes somebody to go in, are you still alive? You know, peeking their head in the door, like what y what's going on here? Yeah, I gotta get out of this. I haven't eaten lunch today. I haven't had water in the last six hours. This is nuts. So the discipline comes in where you're like, take a break every now and then, get up stretched, go to the gym, come back, go grab a coffee, something like that. You have to do those kind of things. And my world, this isn't for everybody either. And the majority of people that try this don't don't make it. So, and you also gotta get a lot of help. You gotta kind of be free or open yourself up rather to networking. And talking to other people who've been there and done that, like you guys. And that's that's a secret sauce right there I've seen. And that come that's in a lot of things to be able to network and form a community and learn from everybody. That's what our group also is about. that's the key I've learned in all of my business experience. That's what all the successful guys do, is that they all network and learn from each other. And that's something that I've had to get comfortable with, being a very introverted kind of guy. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah, thank you for sharing that. and it it is amazing, you know, we were talking to somebody the other day, you know, as a podcast guest, and that was one of the things they mentioned was the discipline side of it, right? They're they were a very left brain person and you know, it was like that first Monday out of the gate, they were like What do I need to do? and here you are now you as you you know, you've you've figured that part out, you've grown your company. So I'm I'm curious, you know, what's what's next for you in this? Where do you where do you take this and where do you see this five years from now? Ralph Brewer: Five years from now, that's a great question. That's the that's the stereotypical question everybody says. What's your five year plan? What's it is to grow the group. And my my goal has always been five thousand members. And the fact that, you know, like when I started advertising on Meta, Facebook at the time, now Meta, it shows you like here's the criteria for what you're looking for, divorced men, men with relationship difficulties, this is the age group, et cetera, et cetera. It was something like just on the meta platform alone, it was like 30 million guys. combine that with y my YouTube presence and my ex presence and all these other things, I would hope I can get five thousand paying members to my group. So that seems like a very realistic, but from what I've learned, my gosh, is it difficult to get a bunch of people to sign up for a membership and keep them? Our churn rate is relatively low. It's three percent, which is pretty low for a membership group I've learned online. so churn rate for those that don't know means the number the percentage of your total that are quitting every month that say, I don't want to do this anymore. We're Either their payment fails or they purposely get out of the group. So it's really tough to maintain. but five thousand members and how am I going to get there is the question. what I'm doing now, which is a lot, is getting at about 1.5 a day. How can we bump that up to getting double that? I'm going to need to do more public speaking. I'm going to need to get on bigger podcasts. I've been on a lot of small, middle, and kind of up there podcasts, but I need to hit the I'm not saying I'm gonna be on this, like a Joe Rogan level, a diary of a CEO level, a modern wisdom level, that type of podcast level that hits millions of per episode. That's the I've talked to a lot of guys who have hit that level and that's what they all say. Once you hit that big time thing, then things start rolling for you. So I need to work towards that specifically, which means getting out of a lot of the day-to-day minutiae of running this thing. Isn't that what every entrepreneur eventually gets to? I love doing this, but All right, here you go, John. You do it. You take it over. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Ralph Brewer: And even if John doesn't succeed a hundred percent at doing it, it's still worth handing it over to John to get him to do it because it frees you for the big picture things and to really grow the organization. And as of now, I'm the marketing arm of help for men, period. I've really pushed for a lot of guys within my group and my team to really get out there and put yourself out there and make make yourself your own little online personality stuff. But So far nobody's really interested. And I can totally see why. It's a daunting, annoying thing to put yourself out there and to put your face in your name and everybody knows who you are. There goes your privacy. It is kind of an ego stroke for me when I'm out in public and somebody recognizes me. But at the same time, it's also like a, wow, that's I don't know if I like that. What if I just want to be completely I can't imagine I'm like a Z level celebrity, right? If you so quote I'm doing air quotes for people listening, celebrity. I can't imagine what a genuine T V personality or what they endure. Ugh, that's gotta be annoying. I mean, I was in Las Vegas with friends walking through a hotel lobby and some guy goes, Excuse me I'm like, Yes. He goes, I YouTube, I know you and he's just like, my gosh, I love what you I'm like, this is awesome. Then I walked away from him feeling good and then I realized, Well what if I was up to no good? What I was in I was in Las Vegas. What if I was drunk off my mind or something like that and in in bad shape or what what if I was having a horrible day or whatever? And so you gotta deal with that. So I understand the trepidation, hesitation of doing something like that. But for those of you listening that want to do something like this, you gotta put yourself out there and you gotta be comfortable seeing your dumb little face show up on your news feed all the time online and to because that's what it takes. You gotta reach millions of people in order to sell an online product and a membership and books and everything else. It takes a lot. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah, for sure. You know, you we we kinda talked through the growth piece a little bit of this and we we mentioned it early on that you have six conferences in the US and now you're doing four in Australia. Of of all the places, what was the draw Ralph Brewer: Yeah. I know. Shawn Sundsvold: to Australia? Ralph Brewer: No idea. Total total accident. when I first sold the book, The Dead Bedroom Fix, it was US number one, obviously, for sales, followed by Australia, followed by Canada, Europe, South Africa. So I just started getting all kinds of messages from guys in Australia. And when I opened up and we started our membership group, a whole bunch of guys joined from Australia. And so one of them took it upon himself to say, How about I start like We already had the American conference going. How about we have an Australian version, get twenty or thirty guys together? And they did it and they've done it. Their fifth one will be coming up here next month, actually, in Melbourne, I believe. And so one of these days I'm gonna go join them, but wow, we'll talk about a trip. but yeah, total accident. Now the question is, what is it about my material that appeals so much to Australians? I've had some local people there say there's some real Cultural issues around marriage, around relationships, around sex and all kinds of things that may contribute to that societally, culturally within Australia, but I have no data or science behind that. But you know, thankfully we've kinda hit that market and I continue to get guys joining from there. Kelly Sundsvold: wrapping this all up, how can people find out more about you, your programs, your book? what be a good way for people to get in contact with you? Ralph Brewer: If you want to follow me online, you can do so across social media. Just do a search for dad starting over. That's my social media handle across all the different channels, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok. You'll find me. Just look for the bald head. the website is helpformen.com and our brotherhood group. You can go jump right to the join page at helpformen.com slash join. And on that website, and you can see links to all the books and everything else that we offer on there, the brotherhood group. And the dad's starting over social media, that'll get you to everything as well. YouTube is big for my world, so check me out on YouTube. And we're growing on X quite a bit on there too, which was formerly known as Twitter. So check me out on there. Shawn Sundsvold: Awesome. Well, Ralph, thank you so much for your your insights and your knowledge and sharing a little bit of your journey for our audience. I really appreciate your candor and your openness about it. So thanks for being here. We'll make sure all that information is in our show notes as well. Thanks a lot. Ralph Brewer: Thank you guys, appreciate it. Thank you for having me.