We often think of the difference between a boy and a man as a matter of age. But Brian Tome says that there can be 15-year-old men and 45-year-old boys, and that the real difference maker in being grown up isn’t a matter of the number of years you accumulate but the qualities, behaviors, and mindset you possess.
Brian is a pastor and the author of The Five Marks of a Man. Today on the show, Brian unpacks what he thinks are the marks of mature manhood. We talk about the need to have a vision and how life-giving hobbies can create that vision. Brian argues that manhood requires staking out a minority position, being part of a pack, and creating more than you consume. And we discuss the ways men can still be protectors in the 21st century.
Resources Related to the Podcast
- AoM Podcast #78: The Myth of Following Your Passion
- AoM Article: The Ultimate List of Hobbies for Men — 75+ Ideas For Your Free Time
- AoM series on the 3 P’s of Manhood: Protect, Procreate, Provide
- AoM Podcast #926: The 5 Shifts of Manhood
- AoM Podcast #810: How to Turn a Boy Into a Man
- AoM Article: Why Are Female Friendships the Ideal? (‘Cause Dude Friendships Also Rock)
- AoM Article: Modern Maturity — Create More, Consume Less
- Brian’s Man Camp
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Brett McKay: Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of The Art of Manliness podcast. We often think of the difference between a boy and a man as a matter of age, but Brian Tome says that there could be 15-year-old men and 45-year-old boys. And that the real difference maker in being grown up isn’t a matter of the number of years you accumulate, but the qualities, behaviors, and mindset you possess. Brian is a pastor and the author of the Five Marks of a Man. Today on the show, Brian unpacks what he thinks are the marks of mature manhood. We talk about the need to have a vision and how life giving hobbies can create that vision. Brian argues that manhood requires staking out a minority position, being part of a pack and creating more than you consume. And we discussed the ways men could still be protectors in the 21st century. After the shows over check at our show notes at aom.is/marks. All right Brian Tome, welcome to the show.
Brian Tome: Brett, fantastic to be here. Long time listener, first time caller.
Brett McKay: Well, glad to have you. So you have spent your career as a pastor who’s particularly focused on working with men. What are the problems that you saw come up over and over again with the men that you interacted with that drove you to write this book, The Five Marks of a Man?
Brian Tome: Yeah. Well, it probably started when I got a lot of feedback from women saying, Hey, could you do something to get the men in this church in line? And I at first took it as well, you’re just complaining ’cause the guys who you want to ask you out, they’re not asking you out. So I didn’t pay much attention to it, but the more I heard them and the more I observed a lot of men’s behavior, the more I realized there is a bunch of, a bunch of guys who haven’t grown up yet. A bunch of guys who still aren’t willing to make a commitment. Like even a commitment to talk to a woman, even a commitment to date somebody. I tell fraternities, I’ve spoken to a number of fraternities around the country, and I tell them, I say, Guys, if you will talk to a woman, you can have any woman here you want. Because young men are afraid to talk to women.
They’re okay to text them. Okay to be in a group context, but just not comfortable. And I saw again, and again and again how young men are struggling. And then I saw older men, and I used the men loosely. The premise of the book, Brett, is there’s such a thing as a 15-year-old man, and there’s such a thing as a 45-year-old boy. It doesn’t matter how old you are, it’s a matter of these marks that I started discovering. And I saw these guys, some of… A couple of them were my friends who I just thought, gosh, dude, you’re 45. You still have a hard time getting up early and going to work and keeping the same job? You still have a hard time keeping a commitment to a woman after all this time? You still act like the way I acted when I was 15. It just seemed odd to me. And so that was all part of the stew that I was swimming in at that point.
Brett McKay: Yeah. These 45-year-old boys, in the words of my son, 13-year-old son Gus, he would say, they don’t mean business. They don’t even know their business.
Brian Tome: I like that. Yeah. Well, that’s one of the marks that I uncovered. And when I say these marks, I would just have the listeners say, if you picture a man who you respect, your father, a father-figure, even a man from history, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, I think you’ll find that these five things come up again and again, and again, and again, and again. And one of them you just mentioned with your son’s amazing quotes. I’m gonna have to write that down. If I do a revision of the book, Brett, I’m gonna quote your son.
Brett McKay: Great.
Brian Tome: They don’t mean business. And what he’s basically saying there is these guys don’t have a vision for their life. A man has a vision. A boy lives day to day. And until there’s something out in the distance that you don’t have that you want and is going to take two things, time and difficulty, that’s what a vision is. There’s time and difficulty before you get there. And boys want it all right now. They don’t want to work out and get their physical goals. They don’t wanna work their way up the food chain in the business world. They think immediately everybody should hear their ideas because they’re so amazing. Now, when you have a vision, there’s something out there that’s giving you reason for why you’re doing what you’re doing today, whatever that vision is. And they change over time, right? It’s just something out there. It could be getting college education, getting married, being the first person in my family to actually stay married, starting a business, doing a triathlon, whatever it is, a boy will never take off a goal like that ’cause he just wants to have a good day.
Brett McKay: I’ve noticed this too in a lot of grown men, is a lot of themselves who are floundering, they seem listless they lack a vision that they’re shooting for. Why do you think there’s so many men lacking that bigger vision for their lives and for their families?
Brian Tome: I think there’s a confluence of a lot of things that have come together. The men today and bro, by men, I’m talking about anybody in their 20s, 30s, 40s. Everyone thinks that the earliest generation is the weakest generation that’s been part of American history. Every generation from John Adams back, all thinks, oh these new Americans, they’re just gonna be weak, they’re horrible. But I do think if we look back at the things that we’ve done to bless our kids, the things we’ve done to set our kids up for success, I think we’ve made them more short term focused. I think as we’ve talked about things like, follow your passion. Follow your passion. You get up every day and you go to work and you find that you’re really good at something and then that becomes your passion because you’re finding you’re having results with that.
But follow my passion, what’s that supposed to mean? Every 18-year-old is supposed to be a social media influencer? That’s never been an option Brett, for any male in history. So we’ve got all these things that are first offs that we’re dealing with right now in America. Things that have never happened in anthropological history. Even the idea of adolescence. That term wasn’t known until about 1900. It was coined like 1900 oh, adolescence. There’s this weird thing that’s happening with kids as they come into puberty. Well, that went from being when you were 13 to when you’re 13 to 18 now, what’s 13 to 35? You know, people feel like they still can’t make commitments. They’re still trying to find themselves. Hey, try to find yourself. It’s okay that we’re all on a journey of self-discovery. But we have to say, if this point, I don’t know enough about myself to move I’ve got some outages and I’ve gotta look at those instead of just an idea for what I might do in the future.
Brett McKay: Yeah. I love that idea of not following your passion. Instead, this is from Cal Newport, from that book he wrote, So good They Can’t ignore you. And he talks about, instead of following your passion, find what you’re really good at and then just throw yourself into that. And then you’ll develop a passion ’cause you’re displaying mastery and you’re actually having an effect on the world. And he says, yeah, the problem with passion, you following your passion, passion’s, fleeting. You can be excited about being a social media influencer. You can be excited about, I don’t know, lifting weights or being a coach it could change from day to day, but if you find that one thing you’re really good at, you discover what life has called you to and try to do that with all your might, then you’ll develop that passion as you do that.
Brian Tome: Yeah. And you discover it, not by taking an online survey or seeing somebody else’s life that has a lot of expensive things. You discover it by working. By putting one foot in front of the other. That’s actually the second mark, that I found in my research is that men work and boys play. Men wake up, they feel like they have a job to do, they want to add value. And a boy isn’t so much concerned or interested in that. But when you have a work ethic, when you just start hitting the same nail, something happens. And I think Brett, that’s one of the ways that our younger generation of men are at a disadvantage. You and I could probably compare all the crappy jobs we had from, you know, age 13 on. We could probably one up each other. I could tell you about when I delivered papers, satchels over both shoulders cutting into my neck when I had the big Sunday edition and having to figure out how to do it in the snow.
We all have our horror story. I could tell you about flipping hamburgers at Hardee’s over an open flame, getting third degree burns under my inner thighs when cleaning out the fryers. I could tell you about when I was a grunt worker, all of us who are older have those sort of stories of things that we’re just crappy to do. And those jobs, many of them are just gone. There’s no paper boys anymore. The demands on school also contend to be so high that people don’t even have time for jobs. Like how many kids do you know actually have a minimum wage job? I think our parents, and we’re trying to bless our kids by maybe letting them have it easier than we did. But in the process, we’re short circuit a way for them to develop work ethic, which will help them discover what their passion is because they find that they’re good at it.
Brett McKay: Okay. So finding your vision or developing a vision isn’t about… You basically, it sounds like you have to just start doing stuff in the world. And as you do those things, you’ll discover what that vision is. But it takes action.
Brian Tome: Yes, yes. You’ve gotta test things out. You’ve gotta try things out. And again young males in the history of all of civilization, that’s what they did. They had a path that they had to get on and follow that path. Get myself a teepee, go out and hunt, take care of these things, sleep outside. These are all things that every man in every corner of the globe, through out history have done until the last a hundred years or so. And so I think that there’s been things that naturally were in place to grow a young male into a man. And some of those things we’ve evolved out of, and it’s actually to our destruction.
Brett McKay: Yeah. Well I think it’s interesting. So I think one of the reasons that also may be contributing to a lot of men these days, maybe in their 30s, 40s, who don’t feel like they have like a vision for their life, is that before, let’s say a hundred years ago, this is kinda related to what you were saying about the rites of passage in cultures, you had a vision given to you in your culture. This is what you need to do. And so you did it right. And now we live in an age where this is a blessing. You get to decide what you’re gonna do. But that blessing can also be a curse. ‘Cause it’s like, oh man, there’s so many things I could do, so many things I could have as a vision for my life. That it can become so overwhelming that you just don’t do anything.
Brian Tome: Yeah. I interact with people in corporate America who are making huge amounts of money, massive, massive amounts of money. And it’s very common for them to think, yeah, but what would’ve happened if I’d been a stockbroker? You know, what would’ve happened if I started my own business? Great point, Brett. We didn’t have these options way back. We just put our head down and went after it. And I think that we’re spending too much time navel-gazing as men. Put your hand to the plow as the Bible says, here goes first Bible quote because I am a pastor by day. Put your hand to the plow and don’t look back when you’re plowing a field, you wanna fix your eyes on a tree on the other side of the field and let your horse pull you towards it. So your rows are nice and straight. Most of us don’t have the attention span to fix our eyes on a tree on the other side of a field. We’re just looking left and right, wondering, does somebody else have a better ox than we do? Is somebody else doing it better than I am looking behind ourselves, second guessing my past? No man, just look forward to what you think is best and go.
Brett McKay: Okay. So I think the takeaway there, if you’re a young man and you wanna develop that vision for your life, try differently. Do different stuff. Try different things because that’s how you’re gonna find it. What advice do you have for a guy who’s in his 30s and 40s. He is got a career, maybe he’s got a mortgage, he’s gotta pay and he doesn’t feel like he has the ability to go do other things, try different things ’cause it might just mess everything up, you know, make it so he can’t pay the bills. Any advice for those guys who feel listless because they don’t have something bigger they’re shooting for?
Brian Tome: Yeah, I think there’s a couple things that they could do. One is to just look under their nose, see what’s around them, and recognize that there is long-term lasting impact they can have in their relationships around them. You know, as we’ve put off having a family, I know that you did a bit a while ago when you said one of the marks of man was procreation as we take a look at history. I really like that a lot. Maybe there’s six marks of a man but there is this thing of I’ve created somebody who’s going to outlast me. You know, your business isn’t gonna outlast you, but you create a person it does. That’s a great vision if you have kids. That’s an unbelievable vision that is going to outlast you and you can replicate yourself in those guys and women in huge ways.
Brian Tome: I think the second thing that you’re probably touching on here, Brett, which is another passionary of mine, is many men feel that way but the answer isn’t finding a new vision or a new purpose. The answer is you need a life-giving hobby. You need some hobby that captures your imagination. Something that you can improve in. Because I think it’s important for us men to feel like we’re on some sort of improvement plan. You know, I know for you, at least for a while ago, your hobby seemed to be cross training and power lifting and stuff. And that’s a good hobby for me. I’ve got elk hunting is one for me, I don’t know much about it. I’m learning, I’ve gotta get in shape. I’m dreaming about it. I’ve gotta plan trips, all that stuff. I’ve got another hobby of restoring old cars.
Gotta learn things about that. Ask other men questions about how to rebuild a T-150 transmission and it takes creative thought and it’s a vision. It’s something that’s fun to do. And I just made a lot of guys who aren’t doing anything fun and they think the answer is, I need some huge career shift. Maybe I’m okay with if you do a career shift, but first, is there anything you do that brings to you life that you’re not paid for? Is there anything you sink a lot of money in simply because you like it? That’s a real outage for us.
Brett McKay: Okay. So don’t just, your vision doesn’t have to be just constrained to your career.
Brian Tome: Correct.
Brett McKay: You can look beyond that. Yeah. I think that’s a good insight. So sometimes a hobby itself can form that vision or purpose for your life. And something I’ve noticed too in my own life is hobbies can inspire a different vision for your career too.
Brian Tome: Yeah. Well I was on one of my hobbies is adventure motorcycling riding. And, I never thought that that would do anything other than just be fun to camp with other guys. And we were on a campfire one day and I wasn’t looking for a new vision. I wasn’t looking for anything different to do. And one of the guys around the campfire opened up about something really vulnerable in his life. It was one of those moments, like when someone goes there, everyone around the fire says, wow. And I don’t hear that very often. And I could probably say something like that right now if I had the courage. And there was this really great bonding moment, and the next morning before we were heading out, we were on the same campfire. And I said, guys, every time we come do this, people open up, we get vulnerable, we go back as better men.
And I don’t think it’s the fact that we’re on motorcycles. I don’t think it’s the fact that we’re staying away from our home for a couple nights. I think we’re tapping into this thing of camping and being around a campfire. Like every man from all of history has sat around a fire and shared their heart or encouraged one another or had drinking stuff or gotten ready before a big battle. I said, what could we do to make something like this accessible to more men who are never gonna get in a motorcycle? Who cares if you ride a motorcycle or not? And that became this thing that has become a vision for my life that I never ever, ever, ever, ever would’ve thought of. It’s called Man Camp. And it just came outta nowhere. And I would’ve never stood around, Hey, how can I have, we have, 3000 guys, 7 different countries, 40 different states coming together actually tomorrow, and it’s gonna be really crazy.
And I could have never ever, ever, ever, ever thought, well, what could I do that would gather 3000 people from around the world? I would never. But because I was just trying to take a break, I was trying to have a hobby, I was trying to detach then an idea came to me and I realized, oh, I’m actually kind of set up for this. That’s how these big visions come. These “big visions,” when you’re just being faithful with what you feel you need to do. And then something comes to you and you decide to step out and put one foot in front of the other.
Brett McKay: Going back to that idea of just putting your hand to the plow and just looking at the tree and just keeping going. I know a lot of guys, once they’ve, they’ve decided, this is my vision. This is what I’m gonna work on. It can be really tempting to be like, well, I’m just getting tired of this. I wanna do something else. I’m gonna jump ship and do something else. Any advice on playing the long games? As you said, boys live for today, men play the long game. So any advice on getting better at playing the long game?
Brian Tome: I think if you’re gonna make a shift, it needs to be because you’ve been doing the same job for a long time and you’ve really tried to innovate in that job, but you’re repeatedly seeing really bad negligible results. If that’s your situation, you’ve been faithful, you’ve been hitting the same nail over and over again, then you might wanna look at a change. But I think for most of us, the problem is that we don’t hit the same nail. You could line up a railroad tie and you could put tent nails in it and you could take your hammer and just start hitting each of those nails as you feel hitting them. But the only one that’s gonna go down is the one you stay on and you keep hitting the same nail to sink it.
There’s a lack of tenacity that’s bred into us by our culture. We don’t have to be tenacious. There’s so many safety nets, there’s so many options, there’s so much distraction, right? We’re losing that focus. So when a man can learn to focus on a thing, he’s almost always going to find that he’s gonna have success ’cause very few men are able to focus.
Brett McKay: Yeah. One bit of useful advice. I got from my dad, so my dad was a federal game warden. He did that for 30 years. And I remember when I was like 18 or 19, but at this point he was probably 25 years in the job. And I asked my dad, how do you do, like every day it’s the same day for you and you’ve been doing this for 25 years. Like, what do you do? And his advice was, he says, I just focus on each day and try to make the best I can out of that one day. Then everything else just kind of takes care of itself. I thought that was pretty good advice.
Brian Tome: It is a good one.
Brett McKay: Okay. So the second mark you talk about in the book is men take a minority position. How do boys do the opposite of this?
Brian Tome: Yeah. Well, boys are always looking to be in the majority. In Cincinnati, we don’t have a pigeon problem because somehow, and it’s debatable how this happened. Was this introduced or did they just come here? There were peregrine falcons that came to our city. There was a couple families actually went to one hotel a number of years ago, and there there was the falcon nest sitting right outside. It was really crazy. And what happens is these peregrine falcons, they just waste all the pigeons that that’s how they eat. They come down and just crush them and destroy them. And that’s what it’s like with boys and men. Boys are like pigeons. They squawk around, they poop all over the place. They make a lot of noise. They don’t clean up after themselves. They run in big, big, big packs. And then men are, there’s few of us, Brett, there’s few of us who have principles that we’ll die for.
There’s few of us who will play the long game. There’s few of us who will endure hardship and feel like it’s a mark of manhood to just endure it and suck it up. ’cause sometimes you have to do that as a man. And there’s few of us who take a minority position. Your beliefs as a man, you’re gonna find they’re in the minority relative to the rest of the culture. I’m not trying to be in the minority. A man doesn’t intentionally love to be in the minority. He just recognizes whatever it is, he’s got a guiding star. He’s got a north point on his life that that’s more important to him than the approval of the masses, which is what the boys need.
Brett McKay: Yeah. I can see this happening. Let’s say a man who’s got a career in a particular profession and there’s a lot of pressure to spend a lot of time at work, right? That’s what you do. But this particular man says, no, family’s more important. So I’m gonna spend more time with my family and less time at work. And they might get derided for that. They might have opportunities to advance in their career, be limited because of that position, but they gotta be okay with that.
Brian Tome: Right. Right. You can’t have it all. You can’t work out five times a week, be well read, be up to speed on the latest TV shows, binge those, have a career that’s thriving and going someplace. Have a wife who loves you, have kids that respect you. You can’t have all those things. You gotta be happy having a couple of those things to a really, really high degree. And then other ones you just play and dabble in from time to time. It’s choices you have to make. And boys just don’t wanna make choices.
Brett McKay: Alright. So having a vision will sometimes require you to take a minority position. And that can mean being a minority in terms of the smaller number of people who recognize that everything in life has trade offs. So you gotta make choices, but it can mean also bigger things. Big professional, moral, ethical decisions. Any advice on strengthening the non-conformity muscle that will allow you to go against the tide with your vision and principles? Because I mean, a lot of men, as soon as they meet with some resistance, they’re tempted to just give up. ’cause it’s easier to go with the flow.
Brian Tome: Right. Well, what I do personally is I look at the historical figures that inspire me, and it seems like all of them were a voice in the wilderness. Winston Churchill saying, Hey, we have gotta take the Nazis series here. This is not, not good. He was taking a minority position until finally they realized, okay, we have to go to war. I was over in Germany just last week touring some of the sites of chaos and destruction from the Nazis. And at all these sites, there’s a person that’s memorialized because they didn’t go with the majority. One of the sites I went to was a concentration camp outside of Weimar, it’s called Buchenwald. And there was a pastor there who got thrown in because he refused to give Nazi propaganda when he was doing a funeral. He got thrown in there and then refused to take his hat off in respect to Hitler on Hitler’s birthday.
So they threw him in solitary confinement, which is right where the buses came in, unloading all these inmates. And the guy started preaching out of the window. And so they took him away and they killed them. And then they put boxes over all the windows so that nobody could do that in the future. And you could see all that stuff there. So when I see these things, Brett, of people who stand for what is right, who go a different path, I’m always inspired. And I just try kinda log it away in my mind and say, okay, Brian, when people don’t understand you, when they think you’re doing the wrong thing, even if you think it’s the right thing, don’t expect everyone to applaud. That is not the lesson of history.
Brett McKay: All right. So look for historical examples. That can be a great way to strengthen, to steel yourself up.
Brian Tome: Yes.
Brett McKay: I like that.
Brian Tome: I’ll give another one.
Brett McKay: Yeah.
Brian Tome: Another one would be, look in the past to when you took little mini stands. What were those stands that you took? It’s the mini things that we do that prepare us for the future. And so with the minority position, we think back to, I remember when I was in college and it was a psychology class. I think about this frequently, actually. I use it to psych me up. And I remember they were talking about the Idd and how some people believe in God. And this wasn’t some Christian Bible school, it was a secular university. And my professor’s name was Dr. Heckyll. I kid you not, that was his name. Dr. Heckyll. And he said, well, for instance, does anybody in here happen to believe in God? And there was about 80 people in this classroom.
And I sat there, I looked around, I started to have a cold sweat break down on my face. And like no one, and I knew people there did. This is 1983. No one was, it felt like it was three hours. And I remember raising my hand and then he didn’t belittle me, he just asked me a question or so. And that was it. And when I was done with that, I thought, wow, that was a big deal. I think it’s the first time I stood up and was the only one in a room and raised my hand. That formed me for things on down the line that were later on. And so I think about those things and I tell myself, you’ve done this before, Brian. This is just the most recent one, but this is in your history. You can do this.
Brett McKay: Alright. Take courage from the small things. I like that.
Brian Tome: Yes.
Brett McKay: We’re gonna take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. And now back to the show. A third mark you talk about is men are team players. And you argue that it’s boyish to want to be a lone wolf. Why is that?
Brian Tome: Yeah, I’ve heard guys say this. I’m a lone wolf. And I’ll say to guys, I’ll say, you mean you’re weak and you’re gonna die sooner than you need to? And they always look at me like, what are you talking about? And I say, well, anybody who knows wolves knows that when you’re a lone wolf, you’re weak and you die sooner because wolves can only live when they’re in a pack. ’cause that’s how they can pull down an elk. We’ve even dramatized, mythologized this beautiful characteristic of not needing anybody or not being able to play with other people. Well, and it’s coming to our detriment. I think this is why men are four times more likely to die of suicide. And all of our other statistics are horrible because we are not making relationships, which is another way of saying team. We’re not entering into team environments with people, other guys or women.
Brett McKay: Yeah. There’s that quote from Rudyard Kipling for the strength of the pack is the wolf and the strength of the wolf is the pack.
Brian Tome: Oh, that’s good. Brett, why didn’t I talk to you before I wrote this book? I should have that in my book. What am I doing?
Brett McKay: No, it’s a good one. And because it goes to this idea of going back to ecology when they observed wolves, the lone wolves are usually the ones that got kicked out of the pack. ’cause they were a runt or they were just mean, they just weren’t cooperating. They weren’t helping the pack out. And so they oftentimes they were like the pack reject and like, you don’t wanna be that.
Brian Tome: Interesting.
Brett McKay: Yeah.
Brian Tome: No, you’re right.
Brett McKay: So I know a lot of men these days, we’ve talked about this on the podcast, a lot of men these days feel like they don’t have a pack. They don’t have a group of friends that can strengthen them. Any advice to those men who, particularly in their 30s and 40s, that’s when it gets really hard. When you’re in your 20s, you’re still in college. It’s easy to make friends. Any advice for men in their 30s, 40s, 50s who are looking for a solid group of friends that can help them become a better man?
Brian Tome: Absolutely. It’s not an easy path but I 100% have the answer. The answer is life giving hobbies. That’s the answer. Women, there was an old book decades ago, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Do you remember that book, Brett?
Brett McKay: Oh, of course. Yeah. It was huge. All over the place.
Brian Tome: Yeah, it was massive. And he said, yeah, women go to lunch, men go to their cave. Women tend to be more able to just go to a meal and look at somebody and talk, or have a book study. Tend to be able to do that better than men. I’m not saying those things aren’t manly, I’m just saying that tends to make more sense or come more naturally to a woman. Men on the other hand, we get friends when we do things together. It’s not because we’re in college that we had friends. It’s not because we’re in high school that we had friends, there’s no magic friend dust in high school and college campuses. It’s that we were doing things with people. We were on athletic teams. We were in intramural things. We were on debate teams. We were doing things that cause us to be around people. And then friendships popped up.
Then what happens is we age, we’re so immersed with our career or with our streaming or with whatever it is that we’re not doing things with other men. And when you’re not doing things with other men, you are not gonna be able to find another friend. But if you take up a hobby of, just name it, I just named a couple of mine. You take up a hobby of restoring a 1978 Jeep CJ-7. There’s things that you don’t know and YouTube won’t help you with that a friend of mine has, a new friend by the name of Pete, who’ll come over and like, Hey, you gotta do… Oh, I didn’t know that. And all of a sudden we’re friends. You take up whatever it is, you’re gonna find people to do that with you. And that’s where the friendship starts.
I had a group of closest friends, we were riding motorcycles together. A couple of them dropped out. So we said, we can’t let these friendships die. So we started hunting together, lower impact. And so we have text threads of where are we gonna go this year? What kind of gear are you getting? Here’s the new gear I’m getting. And it’s banter and it’s beer planning meetings and all that stuff because it’s a hobby. We are starved as men as hobby. And I wanna tell you brothers, you’re not a bad person if you don’t have a hobby, you’re not a bad person. This isn’t a moral thing. It’s just, it’s okay to spend money on yourself and time on yourself. It’ll make for a healthier you and a healthier family.
Brett McKay: Alright. So find a hobby. It could be CrossFit, it could be jiu-jitsu. I know a guy who joined a bagpipe band and he does that and he does like they do parades and he’s made a lot of great friends doing that.
Brian Tome: That’s awesome. Yeah. We’re not talking about doing stereotypical manly things. I just shared some stereotypical manly things.
Brett McKay: Well, bagpipes are pretty, bagpipes are pretty manly.
Brian Tome: Bagpipes are very, very manly. But I’m even saying you wanna go to a a poetry writing class and learn how to write poetry. And there’s other men there and you’re like bouncing haikus off each other, something great. This isn’t a matter of doing classic masculine stuff, it’s just doing something that fills you up, that gets you and other men where who knows a friendship just might happen.
Brett McKay: Yeah. I mean like back in the day, and people still do this today, but I think you had more, it’d happen more a couple decades ago. Like men would get together just to play cards, play poker, play bridge. And I mean, look, you might not, and what’s the thing about doing this stuff together, like doing stuff with other men? You might not have these deep vulnerable conversations, but doing the stuff allows that to happen if it does happen.
Brian Tome: Well, yeah, you named a couple of them right? Cards, I remember my dad going to, he wasn’t a poker player, but he played bridge club. He’d go to Bridge Club. So cards that’s gone for most people. Elk’s Club, that’s gone. Lions Club, that’s gone. Softball teams, they’re pretty much gone. You go by a softball field 30 years ago every night you’d see guys out there playing who probably shouldn’t have been playing, but they’re grown over. Guys aren’t there anymore. Bowling leagues they’re pretty much gone. All this connective tissue we had in our culture, Brett, that would enable us to connect with other one another, ’cause again, men connect with other people when they’re doing something. So all this stuff that we would do and meet men, that connective tissue is gone and it’s really unhealthy. So a man’s gonna have to really figure out how to create that connective tissue for himself. But it is job number one for your mental health and for your future.
Brett McKay: And I think the advice there for men who wanna start growing that connective tissue, I think something that helps is just manage expectations. Like it’s going to, it might take a while and it could be a lot harder than you think, because I’ve noticed this. When you try to get other men together, like they’re busy, they’re like, they’re not used to doing stuff with other people. They’re used to prioritizing other things. So the idea of prioritizing friendship or doing stuff, it’s hard for them. So they might flake out or they, oh, I can’t make it. But you just gotta keep being consistent with it. And you gotta play the long game with this, going back to that other mark of manhood.
Brian Tome: Brother, you’re right. This goes right back to the vision. It’s gonna be time and difficulty, and there’s gonna be misses. And actually what you might find too is the initial guys who wanna be your friend are the guys that nobody else wants as a friend. That’s why they’re available.
Brett McKay: Yeah.
Brian Tome: I mean, there’s some people out there that are just not helpful. And it may take you a while to break into a friend group that will have you, or to find another person like yourself who has all the right stuff, just is dealing with the same thing. But you’ve gotta keep trying. This is a vision you need. The mental health statistics are very, very clear on this. It’s gonna take time, it’s gonna take effort. And once you find it, it is worthy. It is gold.
Brett McKay: In this section about men are team players, you talk about how boys reject authority and men respect authority. And you talk about respecting the authority of like teachers and law enforcement. But something that I thought was interesting is that you said you need to respect the authority of your friends. What does that mean and what does that look like?
Brian Tome: First of all, it’s a complete turn on that you’ve actually read my book. I can’t tell you how many podcasts I’ve done where someone just looks at the thing, they sit down. So dude, I’m truly honored. That’s awesome. Yeah. Let’s go to one of the greatest teams that a man could in, ever be on. And that is a marriage. It’s the ultimate team. You’re with a person who compliments you. That’s what a team is. You’re in a relationship with people who have skills and abilities you don’t. And so you’re married, you’re with somebody who has body parts that you don’t, skills and abilities that you don’t, whatever your skills and abilities are and theirs. Now, when you think about the number of people who’ve been divorced, which that statistic is incredibly high. And then if you think about the number of people after divorce who say, their friend says, I saw that one coming.
It’s heartbreaking. So I encourage young men to get references on people they’re going to date or while they’re dating them, ask around, do you know this woman? You know this girl. What’s her history been like? What’s she been like? You’re not looking to see some perfect woman, but you’re looking to see if this woman is somebody who can’t pay attention and always goes from one guy to another. You need to know that if this is a woman who doesn’t serve, she never serves, she’s always about herself. That’s a sign. We do references when we hire somebody for our business. Why don’t we do references when we go on a dates with somebody? Our divorce rate will be lot, lot, lot, lot lower.
Brett McKay: Okay. So if you’re a friend, part of being a friend is letting your friends know like, well, maybe you’re not making a great decision here. And that’s another thing you talk about in the book is that men wanna make other men better, boys just wanna make sure everyone feels comfortable.
Brian Tome: Right.
Brett McKay: Yeah.
Brian Tome: Yeah. There’s a scripture verse that talks about the wounds of a friend bring healing. It’s when my friends see me doing something that I get healed. I’ve taken significant amount of time off every summer. And I thought a couple years ago, Brett, I thought, you know what? I’ve been doing this for a while. Maybe I won’t do that this summer. I know you’re really in love with Vermont and doing all that. I’ve got my different places where I go to. And I had a friend of mine say to me, he said, man, you sound like someone who has bipolar, who’s feeling good and thinks they can now go off their meds. He said, this rhythm has worked for you. You’re doing well. Don’t change it. And I didn’t listen. I didn’t listen and I changed it.
And I paid a massive, massive price. I just wasn’t fresh. I started getting into destructive behaviors. I couldn’t weather criticism the same way because I didn’t have just the clarity of detoxing and detaching. I was less energetic, less resilient in the face of criticism. It just let me down a dark hole. And I didn’t listen to my friend. And my friend was trying to tell me something that I didn’t realize. That’s why you need friends. You need friends not just to laugh with somebody and have some beers with them, you need friends that give you golden wisdom and insight that no book or no counselor is gonna give you ’cause they get you.
Brett McKay: Okay. So if your friend gives you hard advice, they’ve taken the minority position. They’re giving you hard advice. Don’t reject it outright, maybe listen to it.
Brian Tome: Right. I’ve got a friend who I’m giving him hard advice and he is just not listening. So he just keeps, it’s a divorce. He’s been, he’s gone through divorce and he’s not detaching from his toxic previous wife, even though it’s over. The paper is signed and everything. He, he just keeps allowing himself to be manipulated and controlled. It’s the weirdest thing. And I’ve hammered him on it. I mean, I just, you start nice and soft and then you just, you take on this demeanor of a football coach who’s trying to fire up somebody in the locker room, ’cause you see their emotional welfare crumbling before them. And I’m making a little progress, but he will tell you that if it wasn’t me giving him some wounds from time to time, he’d be way, way worse off. We all need it. None of us are perfect. And that’s why we need our pack to build into us and round us out a bit.
Brett McKay: Okay, another mark you talked about, we kind of mentioned it earlier, is that men work. How does a boy’s approach to work differ from a man’s approach to work?
Brian Tome: Well, a boy just doesn’t wanna do it. A boy just wants to be supported, a boy wants to only work at something that is fun to do, a boy wants to work just long enough at minimum. Brett, I remember my first real deal job, I was 22 years old, a company sends in this financial guy to help me figure out what I’m gonna do with retirement savings, and he says, Okay, what age you wanna retire? And I said, I just mouth as a boy, ’cause I was a boy of 21, I mouth what I’d heard everybody else said, I said, Oh, I wanna retire like 55s. Okay, 55. So he put some pencil to paper and figure out you have to save this much every month to retire at that age, and I said, Okay, maybe I’m not retiring 55, ’cause that was too difficult. I’m turning 59 in a week.
I can’t believe that I actually thought at 55, 55 is when I wanted to be done. I feel, Brett, I’m just starting to figure out life right now. I can’t believe that I fell hood to boydom as a fantasy to be retired at 59. Why? To do what? So I can retire to Florida, play golf and watch Price is Right while the mosquito sucked the blood out of my geriatric skin, why would I do that, ’cause it was boyish thinking. A man, he’s here to work. I’m sorry to go Bible on you but I am a pastor. So it’s the most foundational story in the Bible, it’s Adam and Eve, most people know about it. Adam, are put on the Earth, whether you think it’s literal or figurative, that’s your prerogative. And what do they do? Before anything happens in the world, they work.
Before anything happens wrong before the bite of the forbidden fruit, they’re working. They’re working the ground, they’re naming the animals, that tells us that work isn’t something that is evil, it’s something that is good, and a man has to be working. And we see the statistics on this when a man stops working, the dementia and the physical fitness and the death comes way, way, way, way sooner. We talk with these guys who are old and still going on, like Clint Eastwood. Nobody would have seen this guy who created spaghetti westerns. Decades ago, I used to watch as a kid, no one would have thought that that guy would be a prolific director, winning academy awards in his 80s, his best work is in his 80s, and how is that guy still going at 95? You know how? You know why? Because he’s working.
That’s why. Because he’s fresh as a result of it. A boy doesn’t think about this, but a man wants to be first, and I’m not saying Brett, that you need to be in corporate America and need to be earning a paycheck until the day you die. There’s realities, you’re gonna be pushed out, you’re not gonna be as physically capable to fill a job, but that’s not what I’m talking about with work. When I’m talking about work, I’m talking about adding value. Making the people around you better. Having a reason to get up in the morning and a man should never, never have some goal of taking it easy and not working. It’s a recipe for disaster.
Brett McKay: Yeah, I like that. Works not just making money, work is also doing service or being a mentor or taking up some… And working for a non-profit when you retire, that’s also work.
Brian Tome: Yes.
Brett McKay: Yeah.
Brian Tome: 100%.
Brett McKay: And I like that, adding value and having that outward mindset can really keep you going for the long term, but also I think a lot of men, some men struggle with, they embrace work too much, they become workaholics. So how do you balance work with other areas of your life, like family or those life-giving hobbies you were talking about?
Brian Tome: Well, I think we have balance wrong, and I think most people when they think of balance, they think of it as a scale where you have equal weights on either side, and I think the best metaphor for balance is a golf swing. To hit the ball far as possible, you have to load up different sides of your body, load up your right side, on your back swing, load up your left side on the follow-through, and at no point are balanced. If you’re balanced, then you’re not gonna swing. The process of swinging is by its nature unbalanced, that’s I think the kind of balance we need. Recognizing there are certain seasons of our life where I’m gonna be really weighted up in one specific area, and there comes the problem because it takes wisdom to learn when you’re too weighted up on work. It takes wisdom to learn when you’re too weighted up on pleasure, but you need to be able to have both those things. Younger guys, I’ll give young guys the same advice. My son, my son has more hobbies, more outlets, more than I ever had at his age. Probably more than now, it’s just the younger generation, they’re in a different thing, and what I spoke with him about, and he’s doing really, really well with this, but I tell this to younger guys all the time, and I say, Hey, your 20s, it’s a time for you to be unbalanced, because right now what you want is to become amazing at whatever your job is, or fine, by the time you’re 28, what your job is, cycled through a few.
This is when you wanna be weighted up on that, loaded up on that because that’s gonna create freedom for you and financial margin and options in the future, but if you right now just wanna work 40 hours a week and have all your hobbies, you’re not gonna have the life as a 50-year-old the way you can, which is why one mentor of mine, Bob Buller who wrote a book on decades, he says the most successful, effective productive decade of a man’s life is his 60s, and the second most productive is his 70s. And the reason being, because we’ve learned, we have networks, we’ve got knowledge we didn’t have before, we can connect things together, and that happens because over the long span of your life, you’ve been doing the right thing. So for the balance, I think you’ve gotta say, where I am right now, what is the right amount of work life right now. You always have to take care of yourself in terms of having adequate friendship time and play time and all that stuff. But those things are gonna change over the years.
Brett McKay: You also have this chapter, I love the line, boys consume, men produce. So how can shifting from a consumer mindset to producer mindset, help a guy step into the role of a man?
Brian Tome: Well, it’s pretty funny, we’re known as Americans. We’re not even known as American citizens, were known American consumers. You hear that all the time. How do you keep the economy rolling? Consume. George Bush way back at 9-11, he said, let’s keep the economy rolling keep spending. We don’t spend that much time talking about producing, we just look at the consumer price index, we’re consumers. And if you could figure out how to produce something that somebody else doesn’t have, you’re gonna do just fine. It could be anything. Producing widgets, producing kids, producing wisdom for other people, but how can I add value and make things better because of my role and spot on the Earth? That’s how we make a life, we produce.
Brett McKay: Yeah. Boys, consuming is just about taking from the pot. Producing is about adding value to the pot.
Brian Tome: Yeah, was it Adam Ann who said it’s always take, take, take.
That’s what the boy says, take, take, take. And I said that one time to my son when he was a teenager, hey man, you’re just… I’m talking to my son. My son is an amazing man. Very, very, very, very, very proud of him. He’s crushing life. He’s doing amazing. But there was a lot of things, there were very, very hard conversations, and one of them was, you take, take, take. You take my tools, you take my car, you take… You’re always pushing, you’re always wanting more. And that doesn’t bode well for our relationship or for your future. You’ve gotta be known as a guy who gives more than he takes. You gotta be known for guy who creates more than he consumes. That’s a message for all of us to reminded of.
Brett McKay: Alright, so the fifth and final mark is, men are protectors. What does being a protector look like in the 21st century?
Brian Tome: Yeah, that’s a tough wrinkle. It was very obvious in the past, the way you’re a protector. You’re a protector of your tribe, we’ve needed men to have muscles, and that’s why today there’s even conversations in ivy league classrooms that have been on the cover of Time Magazine over the last decade or so. Like, do we even need men anymore? Like I can’t believe we said do we even need men? And what they’re saying is, we’ve evolved as a society and a civilization, we have machines that are doing work for us, and we’re not raiding the neighboring tribe where we need men and their muscle mass, so what are men needed for?
We’re needed to still protect. Now sometimes that does mean you’re going to have to put your body in front of a situation. I had a… No, this is years ago. I found out about a guy at the gym where my wife was working out, and he was hitting on her. I ran across an email or something like that, and he’s a trainer at the gym, and I had to walk in there and call them out in the middle of the day, called him out in the parking lot and he was training a client. I said, “I need to see you in the parking right now.” and he came out and fortunately I caught him off guard. Freaked him out. And I just told him, “Hey man, you need to stay away from my wife.” And he started jabbering around. I said, “No, look, you stay away from… It ends now.” And he said, “Okay.” And that was it. That was a sense of protecting there. I have a friend who’s a quadriplegic, he’s not gonna be able to protect, and I said to him, Ryan, because of your ordeal and your spiritual depth, you can protect people by giving them wisdom that they’re not gonna get anywhere else. That’s a way to protect. That’s a form of protection.
Brett McKay: No, I think that’s good. I like that. And also, I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten older, one of the protecting roles that I play as a man, just any group I belong to, I’m always looking to see if there’s any individuals who either intentionally or unintentionally are causing problems, and I think the boy thing would be like, Well, I just won’t say anything, I won’t do anything about it. As an adult and potentially in a leader position, I’m like, I gotta take care of this. I gotta make sure that the group is okay and that individuals feel safe and they’re not being annoyed, and so it requires having uncomfortable conversations with individuals saying, Hey, you’re doing stuff that’s making this person feel really, really uncomfortable, or you’re just messing up the dynamic of the group, and I’m here to make sure that that doesn’t happen. We want everyone have a good time.
Brian Tome: Yeah, that’s a great example, Brett. Yeah. Run to the problem. A man runs to the problem. He doesn’t assume somebody else is gonna do it. That’s passivity. If you look at these five marks, breath, and you said, is there any through line through all of them? I would say the through line is passivity versus being aggressive, and by aggressive, I’m not talking about powering up and dominate somebody. I’m just saying, you make the move, you’re pushing. Men do that. We make the move, they wanna make it right, where boys are passive. So yeah, a boy would not do what you’re doing. The boy would not invite a hard conversation, he would just wait for somebody else to do it, or he would just stop attending the group when he would just judge and complain about the person, ’cause boys, that’s what they do. They don’t take action, they don’t run after things, but a protector, that’s what he does instead of a predator. Men are protectors. Boys are predators. They take, take take.
Brett McKay: Well, Brian, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
Brian Tome: You can go to briantome.com, and The Five Marks of a Man is available in book stores everywhere.
Brett McKay: Alright. Brian Tome, thank for your time. It’s been pleasure.
Brian Tome: My pleasure, Brett. It’s been a bucket list item to be with you and honored to do so.
Brett McKay: My guest here is Brian Tome. He’s the author of the book, The Five Marks of a Man, it’s available on Amazon.com and book stores everywhere. You can find more information about his work at his website, briantome.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is/marks where you can find links to resources, we delve deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another addition to the AOM podcast, make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com, where you can find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles that we’ve written over the years about pretty much anything you can think of. And if you’ve haven’t done so already, I’d appreciate you if you take one minute to give a review on podcast or Spotify, it helps out a lot. If you’ve done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member, you think will get something out of it. As I always thank you for the continued support. Until next time, it’s Brett McKay, the Art of Manliness podcast, to put what you’ve heard into action.
