ISI Brotherhood Podcast

118. Investing in Brotherhood: The Power of Male Friendships

• Aaron Walker • Season 2 • Episode 3

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The culture tells men that success means going it alone, but nothing could be further from the truth. Real achievement and fulfillment come when we surround ourselves with brothers who challenge, support, and walk alongside us through life's journey.

We dive deep into why isolation is the true enemy of excellence, and how the right male friendships become essential foundations for character growth, faith development, and leadership success. You'll discover why vulnerability becomes not just possible but productive when you're surrounded by unbiased trusted advisors who genuinely want to see you win.

Many men struggle with balancing their professional ambitions against family relationships. We share powerful personal stories about the wake-up calls that forced us to reprioritize our focus. As one raw moment reveals: "You can always make more money, but you get one chance with your wife and kids. This is not a trial run."

The power of community extends beyond emotional support into practical advantage. Through real examples, we demonstrate how relationships formed without transactional motives often yield unexpected opportunities that transform both business and personal life. Men who join communities seeking business connections often find personal growth, while those seeking personal development discover professional opportunities they never imagined.

Whether you're a seasoned networker or someone who's historically gone it alone, this conversation challenges you to examine the quality and depth of your male friendships. Are you surrounded by men who celebrate your wins, hold you accountable to your goals, and speak truth when you need it most? Your answer might determine how far you'll ultimately go.

Ready to stop walking alone? Connect with brothers who can help you achieve more while becoming the man you're meant to be. Visit isibrotherhood.com and discover why the relationships in your life truly do matter most.


Key Takeaways:

  • You don't have to go at it alone.
  • Why isolation is the enemy to excellence.
  • How to make time for what matters
  • How to prioritize family relationships
  • What it means to leverage community for mutual growth.
  • How to build relationships that pay dividends


Connect:

Speaker 1:

Have you ever had trouble connecting with other men? Well, I wanna tell you. In today's episode, we talk about how the world says that you should go it alone. I don't want you to go alone. I want you to go with other brothers, because you can go much further when you go in community rather than in isolation. You know, in this episode we talk a lot about the value of brotherhood being in community, being vulnerable, being authentic and being genuine. I want to encourage you to listen to this episode today because we teach you how to make time for those relationships and then how you can leverage those relationships to be mutually beneficial for you and others. Be sure and tune in. Let's go to it.

Speaker 1:

Well, welcome back to ISI Brotherhood Podcast, and today I'm pretty amped up. This is probably my favorite subject to talk about, and the reason it is is because the world tells men to go it alone, and I want to be the first to tell you isolation is the enemy to excellence. If you want to go further, man, you've got to go enemy to excellence. If you want to go further, man, you've got to go with the community. If you want to go faster, you can go alone, but I promise you going with the community is far better. You know, real success isn't just about business wins. It's about the men you surround yourself with, and I've had the distinct privilege for years to surrounding myself with trusted advisors, and I can't even begin to tell you the difference it's made in my life. Today, we're going to dive deep into why strong male friendships are essential for your character, your faith and your leadership, and I've got none other than our co-host, Seth Buechle.

Speaker 2:

Seth how's it going today, buddy? You know it's good. I'm out here in southern Oregon. The sky is gray and the water's coming down, but that's nothing new. I'm super excited to be here with you talking about this topic. Lots to think about when we choose our tribe right?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no question about it. I don't want to rub it in, but it's 68 degrees here, bluebird skies and the birds are singing. The deers are running around, robin's tulips are coming up, and it's pretty cool here, not tulips, the buttercups, that's what they are, they're coming up Nice, they're coming up.

Speaker 1:

Man, good to see you. It's always good to see you. You always make me smile, so I'm glad you're here with us today. What about a brotherhood man? Iron sharpens, iron brotherhood. What impactful story can you tell? Just personal experience at how ISI brotherhood has impacted your life.

Speaker 2:

You know, I can think about being with my ISI guys for the first live event, because every every uh, twice a year we get together normally as ISI brothers. And I had a funny experience with um, with one of the guys in ISI. We do this, this little exercise called duct tape, and you don't use literal duct tape but you're supposed to keep quiet while other people talk about what they experienced with you. It was funny, and one of the brothers, he said, man, you don't seem very happy and and um, this was a guy who didn't practice faith, and that hit me really hard and and I had to kind of diagnose. I'm like well, why is he saying that?

Speaker 2:

And I thought, well, part of it was because I had practiced the art of bringing my problems to my ISI group, and so all they were hearing was a steady dose of crap from me about you know, like, ah, this is so hard and all that. And frankly, relative to that topic, I wasn't happy, right, and so in some ways it was like a feature, an outcome of the process, but also it just reminded me of like, hey, man, don't just focus on the negative things in life, because you have a lot to offer you should be happy. Of all the people in the world, I should be the most grateful, right.

Speaker 1:

You know, I think about brotherhood and what that means to me. The first 20 years of my career I went it alone. Yeah, man, I didn't want anybody to know that I didn't know certain things. I didn't want anybody to know that I didn't know certain things. I didn't want them to know the amount of debt I was in. I didn't want them to know the arguments that Robin and I had. I didn't want them to know that I wasn't a perfect dad and I bluffed my way through a lot of things. You know the imposter right, I really was the imposter and I was like I don't want anybody to know. When I was invited to be in a mastermind for the first time, I didn't want to go. I told robin I didn't want to go yeah she goes just go check it out.

Speaker 1:

and I did for three months and didn't say anything. I just sat there and kind of listened until they started really peeling the layers back and they started sharing their challenges and their marriage problems and their lack of cash flow and their debt. And I'm like God. I found my people. They're as messed up as I am and then I started sharing personally and it helped me escalate to a level of solving the problems 10x faster. It was like I don't have to grind through this, like I didn't even know that was a thing. They would share something and I was like I didn't even know to even think about doing it that way. Or some of the guys were married longer than me and I'd be having a challenge with Robin and they would say why don't you go home and say this to her and maybe ask her this question? And I'm like that never dawned on me.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know it's interesting because some groups have these rules like don't give each other advice, right, and other groups are like, no, that's why I'm here, I want the advice, you know. So, coming up with the norms right, and it's not necessarily implied that just because you trust, you have a trust relationship with some brothers, that they're going to be in your grill telling you exactly how to behave, right. And it's also not the opposite of that, which is you're going to share your stuff and they're going to ask you questions, but they're never going to say, hey, man, what would you do if you were in my shoes? Right, that's frustrating. When you ask a question of somebody, well, what would you do in my shoes? And they ask you a corresponding question. You know that's no fun, but you know, as you were, you were talking big A.

Speaker 2:

You know I've come to learn a couple of things about relationship that you know you just pick up along the road. One of them is relationships actually get stronger after you endure some conflict, and so I'm not implying you join these groups to get in conflict, because you know there's not a lot of conflict in these groups, but it was an interesting point that I would have never thought about, had somebody not said it. And then I looked back and I thought, man, how many times have you gone sideways with somebody and worked it through and you actually end up having respect in a deep relationship? I can give you a dozen of those in my life if I really worked at it. But the other thing about relationships, that came from a biblical teacher actually. He was saying relationships are born out of revelation. As you reveal yourself to somebody else, right, your relationship really is born. And until you reveal yourself you actually can't have a genuine relationship. And that really stood out to me and I believe that.

Speaker 1:

How many men do you think are unwilling to go through any level of conflict to that degree, though?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I don't know A lot of people are conflict avoidant.

Speaker 1:

They're like my personality doesn't lend itself Like I. Like a good tussle you know I like to get in there and mix it up.

Speaker 2:

I kind of don't, to be honest, I would avoid it. And I, I I have been guilty of like having a switch, like, okay, I'm passive, passive and now I'm aggressive. You know, yeah, rather than just being passive, aggressive, like passive and then aggressive, you know, at some point it boils up. But I don't think we're very practiced, frankly, at working through conflict. We either escalate it, or I had a pastor, in fact I shared this with the ISI group, I'll share it now. He said one of the reasons is we're not clear. What are the things we should be discussing, what are the things we should be debating, what are the things we should be dividing over and what are we willing to die for right? And so it was kind of this- Wow those are strong, those are good.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's imagine this target he called it a target of conviction and the middle is like these very few things that we're willing to die over, and then the next one out is these things we'll actually divide over because we just can't be compatible. But a lot of the things we're just debating, right, and then some of them we're not even debating, we're just discussing. And it occurred to him and he taught us like in this culture we're not very good at that anymore, like we get it all blurred out and we need a little bit more practice working through that.

Speaker 1:

I think one of the things that we've got to do is I think it's important to surround yourself with unbiased, trusted advisors. When you have something to gain or lose as a result of that conflict or that conversation, it's harder to be unbiased, just naturally. A lot of people say, well, my business partner is my accountability partner, they're my mastermind group, and I'm like, ah, and then family members. It's really hard to do that with family members as well, because it's hard to be unbiased. Matter of fact, I recused myself from a decision recently in our business because I couldn't be unbiased in the decision, because my daughter is involved in the business and I couldn't get to a place to where I could make a decision, not as her father.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, I agree with you. I mean, I do think you can get good advice from people that you're in some sort of relationship with, but advice that is free from entanglement is a big deal, right? The only reason that you're speaking that truth to somebody is it's being spoken in love, exclusively for their benefit, like I gain nothing or lose nothing from this, but it's just for you know, for your benefit.

Speaker 1:

There's a real stigma among men about being vulnerable. Let's talk about that just for a second. When I think of vulnerability vulnerability I don't want to be vulnerable in front of the masses, like I will to a certain level, right, but there are certain things that I'm just not going to go there. But when I have trusted advisors that have earned the respect and the trust for me, I know they have my best interest at heart. I know there's not anything in it for their gain. They love me unconditionally. They want to walk with me to see me win. They want to walk with me to see me win. They want to celebrate with me when I do win. They want to challenge me when I'm not doing the right thing. They hold me accountable to the things that I say that I want to accomplish, and they do it in a spirit of love, but in a spirit of firmness. I have a much easier time being vulnerable with those people. So would you find it to be the same or is it different for you?

Speaker 2:

I would say generally the same. I mean, it kind of depends on the magnitude of what's being held back. Right, there are things, there's varying layers of things, that you might, you know, reveal. It does feel a bit, can feel a bit disempowering, right, Vulnerability is a weird word. It's like somebody saying you know, I'm really about relational intimacy. It makes you want to take about a half step back.

Speaker 1:

You're like I'm not for sure exactly what's entailed in that? Right. What does that mean?

Speaker 2:

Right. And so you know again, vulnerability being, you know I'm going to be transparent, I'm going to, I'm going to and I'm going to, I'm going to take some input and I'm going to tell you how I'm really feeling. And, and I think the other side of it is and you've you've mentioned this quite a bit in, you know, past weeks big A is got to be really careful. Who you're opening yourself up to, absolutely, like you know, biblically, pearls before swines. That's a great concept, right? Yes, not everybody's at the same maturity level, you know, I remember my dad. One time he said something like, you know, the barber doesn't want to hear about your trip to Costa Rica.

Speaker 2:

You, know, he just randomly said that Like not everybody wants to hear you big time about how well you're doing or how you, because you know it's just it's not fair. But if you get the right stratum of peers meaning they're in it at the same level, you are Right and I think that's important. Like there's no billionaires in you know my ISI group. That doesn't mean that we couldn't talk about stuff, but to be honest, I'm not sure.

Speaker 1:

I have a lot of different challenges.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, they have different challenges and opportunities and burdens, and so you kind of need to pick a stratum of people that are, in my view, a few steps behind you, a few steps ahead of you. Right, that way you're getting that full perspective.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, some guys that are listening to this today are like yeah, seth, big A, this all sounds great, but I just don't have time for relationships like that. It's just something that I'll get to later and I want to give you some words of wisdom here, if I could, related to that. I think you've got to make time for it, because our life is kind of cyclical, right. I mean, it's like a roller coaster it's up, it's down, and when you need somebody, it's too late to build the relationship.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's a very transactional view of life. In my view it's if I can't see an immediate ROI. Therefore, I'm not going to justify it Now. I understand that. I just disagree with it, and part of you know I'm a, I'm a connector. That I would say. If somebody said what's a superpower, that's probably one of the ones that I have, of if I have any right Cause I'm a connector. Well, one of the reasons I'm a connector is I get my butt on an airplane and I drive and go to the airport and I fly places and I get to know people and then I stay in touch with them and then I see him again next year and then next year and pretty soon. We have trust and we do business. Yeah, and I literally had a friend talk about an industry's largest conference the industries he's in, say the other day. Well, I calculated the ROI and it just never made sense and I just was like I mean, I bump into five people that day that could change the business trajectory, but not if you're sitting home, right?

Speaker 1:

Yes, you know the old cliche your net worth is directly proportionate to your network. There's a lot of truth in that, because relationships matter most, they trump most everything, and if you're not spending time developing relationships, friendships. Now I'm going to be honest with you. I probably take it to a whole other level because I know the value of it. I've got a very extensive contact list because I really care about people genuinely and the thing that I do oftentimes just a few little tips for those that are not as well connected relationally.

Speaker 1:

I reach out to people when I don't need anything. Yeah Right, it's like hey, seth, how's it going? Just checking on you, how's Helen, how's the kids? You had any ski trips, how's it going? Most of the time, on the heels of that comes a question. Well, while I've got you on the phone, let me ask you a question about a merger and acquisition. You're like well, okay, now we're getting to why you called. But if you don't ask that question, you just really called a check. It leaves an indelible impression on people that he really called me to check on me. He cared about me, so something forges there.

Speaker 1:

Another thing I do a lot is just send videos to people. Hey, seth had you on my mind today. Just a little short, 30 second video. Hope you're doing well, hope business is well. If you need me for anything, give me a shout. Just a short little video text message I'll text I don't know how many guys a day just checking on you, just thinking about you, and then I don't do it for this reason. But then when you do need something it's much easier to get them to comply.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know, john Maxwell has a great quote, which is you know, you need to be bigger on the inside than you are on the outside. Right, and I actually see a real parallel to this building of relationships versus trying to build a platform.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and I've been very Platform will come if the relationships do.

Speaker 2:

I've been very guilty of this Spend time and energy and emotion on platform, platform, reach, reach, you know. And I could peel it all the way back and saying you know you're chasing fame or notoriety, or one of the great old theologians called it called it chasing honor, you know, it's like just wanting to be recognized and ignoring the people that are right here with you every day, Like that's the practical level. And when people who say, oh, I don't have time, it's like no, actually what you're doing is you're saying your platform and the thing that you think you're going to build that's big and massive, is more important than the people that are here right, that are maybe building relationships. So it's not a perfect science, but I do think part of it is. We just minimize the value of relationships because we'd rather chase big things that reward us with money and power and fame, and I think the Lord comes from time to time just to remind us. You need these relationships.

Speaker 1:

Yes, you know, I want to talk about some key relationships that I think we do wrong oftentimes, and that's the people that we're the closest to.

Speaker 1:

Let's just talk about our wives for a second. And I know I got really caught up in my career. I reference a lot the first 20 years of my career. I did it wrong. I did it right financially, but I did it wrong relationally because there was relationship capital that I spent as a result of the successful business.

Speaker 1:

And I came home one day to Robin and Robin's been my biggest advocate, a huge supporter, and I walked in the door one day, kissed her, like I always do, and she looked at me the kids weren't there and she said we need to have a talk. And I was like uh-oh, this is not good. Anytime Robin says that, I'm like uh-oh. We sat on the couch and she started out thanking me for all the things that I'd provided Thank you for our beautiful home we had a second home at that time in the mountains, thank you for my car, thank you for my ability to stay at home and I thought this is going to be bad. This is fixing to be bad. When Robin starts out like this, it's not going to end well. So we get to the punchline and I'm like okay, I'm ready, like Muhammad Ali's fixing to hit me. She ready, like Muhammad Ali's fixing. To hit me.

Speaker 1:

She said but I feel like a single mom and man. It cut to the core and she said I'd rather have less and you be present when you're home, than to have all these tangible material possessions and feel like a single mom. Yeah, and it ripped my heart out and I said, robin, I've got to do better. And so she's worked with me and helped me and helped build guardrails, because I love to work and I know, seth, you love to work. But listen, if we're doing that at the expense of our kids, your little boy comes up to you and wants to pitch baseball and you're like I've got to send another email, I've got to do this other thing, and he goes outside. They're going to find other relationships and one day you're going to come home with a pocket full of money to a house full of strangers, and I don't want that to happen to any of our audience.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well said, I can think about times being on conference calls and my dad would drop into my office and I'd be like I'm on a call Now. Of course he would never schedule anything, so it's part of his fault, but I had to finish the call and I'd end up kind of waving him off and he'd leave. And now I find myself that my son's working, trying to get an edge in, you know, with him or you know a word in edgewise into his world, and he's a little too busy for me and I'm like all right, did I create this, you know? Did I model this, you know? Moments of truth, right?

Speaker 1:

Well, here's the thing is. I tell people today you can always make more money, yeah, but you get one chance with your wife and your kids. You don't get a do-over. This is not a trial run. This is it. Right now, you're building the legacy that they're going to remember and you want to develop that relationship, even if it comes at the expense of not scaling your business as fast or whatever the case may be related to that.

Speaker 1:

Now, I'm not saying there's not seasons in our life that we have to work a little bit more but be really, really mindful and make time for those relationships. Well, the other thing that we need to talk about is leveraging community for growth. So leverage is a very powerful tool, right? And I tell a lot of guys they get into ISI and they never call anybody else, they never reach out to the other groups. And I'm like, do you realize, when you're in a community like we've got and there's been hundreds and hundreds of guys go through here because you're an ISI brother you get to leverage those relationships. And you've called me and said, hey, big A, do you know X or do you know this guy? Yeah, let me connect you. And I've done the same with you. It's like we run in different spheres but we all know people that can be beneficial to one another. So give me an example of a time where you've leveraged these relationships for the betterment. I mean it's a mutually beneficial happening for both persons, not just a one-sided.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah. Well, let me just start with saying you know, I view life in general like it's a scavenger hunt, right, we all have gifts, but we don't have all the gifts. And I think as we get a little older, we start to say, all right, now I'm clear on my gifts. I'm also really clear on my gaps and my deficiencies, right. And so what's cool about a group and it's the same thing that's cool about a company, once you start to add some people is you realize you know you play to each other's strengths and you cover each other's weaknesses, right, but a healthy team has all the different parts and all the gifts, so you don't have any glaring gaps. And so I kind of view ISI Brotherhood as a place where you've got all these gifted people and when I need to know something on that topic or in that domain, I can tap them.

Speaker 2:

It's been said that if I tell you something about myself, you're going to discount it a little bit, because it's self-promotion. And if I hire somebody to tell you something about me, you're going to discount it a little as well. But if you accidentally hear something about me, you're going to likely believe it. And so what happens in these groups in my mind, in my experience, I should say, is you get a lot of accidental learning because somebody's talking about their business system and you're like I would have never approached it that way. Or somebody's talking about a relational challenge that they're navigating through, you're like that's cool, I wouldn't have thought about that. And so this accidental learning that happens as you're interacting has been huge.

Speaker 1:

I think about all the interactions and the people, how deep the wisdom and the knowledge is in different areas of different men's lives. And the people that come in, oftentimes wanting business, end up growing personally rather than professionally, and the opposite proves to be true. People that come in need relational help. They make connections and they form a partnership and they grow a business or they buy a piece of property together.

Speaker 1:

There's a guy in ISI that five years ago I didn't know and I'm a large investor in his company now. And I didn't know him five years ago because I built a relationship, I took the time to get to know him and today I invest in his business and that's leveraging that relationship in a positive way. He needed the resources and I wanted the investment. Yeah, there's two other guys recently bought a commercial piece of property together that the guy that was supplying the resources funded the guy that needed it and they've got just a marriage made in heaven as a result of it and it just happens across the board. But it's leverage in a good way, not in a useful way.

Speaker 2:

It's helpful, sure, yeah, you still have to have your eyes wide open and you know business needs. Everything needs to be done with due diligence. I can think about one. Derek Champagne is a great partner in ISI Brotherhood and I'm actually in his group and he introduced me to a gentleman. I can name names. His name is Scott Manthorne, and Scott is a very interesting dude. He's like a professional connector, networker guy and I'm on the phone, I'm listening to this guy and I'm like you get paid to do that, what, who, what, and it was just like this most interesting thing.

Speaker 2:

And so I took a little bet on Scott and engaged him to do some work for us and he was trying to network here and network here, network there. And I went down to Costa Rica with him one time and he introduced me to some people and we had a nice dinner. He picked up the tab. I'm like, okay, we'll see. And again, I had no direct line of sight to real revenue. This is the equivalent of taking a flyer.

Speaker 2:

But if somebody, derek knew, somebody that I got to know through referral, well, six months later I get a call from the leading developer in Costa Rica who Scott had introduced me to. He said, hey, I met a guy today that I think you should get to know. He's in the telecom space. I talked to this young leader and I ended up putting together a loan to fund and finance his business. He launched the first satellite provider to the rural districts in Costa Rica and now we've put reliable satellite communication.

Speaker 2:

Over 1,200 schools throughout the country have had presidential accolades and all of those kind of things, and I'm a business partner with him, and just this morning we were pitching providing fiber optic networks to this big development in town in Costa Rica and in the back of my mind, we're gonna do that through this telecom. And so there's an example, because I like to connect right, as I can see how those dots connected right. Was it a straight line? No, it never is right. But it starts with putting yourself in the room with the right people, following up on referrals, taking those phone calls when somebody says and you do this really well, big A, hey, you two ought to get to know each other bye, and you just back out of the conversation, right? Those are important things.

Speaker 1:

Here's the thing that we don't need to miss the reason that you took the flyer is because of your trust in Derek Champagne, not in the guy you met with. That's true, and if you hadn't spent eight years nurturing that relationship, never in a million years would you have taken that flyer and gone to Costa Rica with a guy that you didn't have any confidence in whatsoever because you didn't know him. But you borrowed the relationship from Derek because he had the confidence in the guy, and that's what we try to tell people all the time. You've got to get outside of yourself, get out of isolation, start networking, building rapport, building relationships with other people, because that could turn into a very, very profitable investment for you. As well as building a great relationship which he is going to connect you with more people.

Speaker 1:

Relationships are key. It's the reason that relationships are our number one core value in everything that we do. Whether you're selling a widget or you're providing a service, the relationships matter most. Brotherhood is so important in everything that we do. These relationships, I'm telling you, pay dividends at the highest level when you start thinking about building a life of meaning your friendships. They're vastly important in everything that you do. So having that value of brotherhood, making time for the relationships. Don't forget that you don't have time not to do it. Not that you don't have time to do it. I want to implore today, or encourage today, that you really invest in these relationships and then you'll do what we just said last you can leverage that relationship for community, for your betterment, for their betterment. It's mutually beneficial, it's helpful and it's just not something that we should do without. Thank you for being with us today, seth. I really enjoyed our time. Next time, remember, you can go to isibrotherhoodcom and learn more about the ISI Brotherhood community.