I Owe Me More: How Two Men Rebuilt From the Ground Up

You didn't hit a wall, you hit the ground, with your bank account gone, your body wrecked, and your mind broken somewhere underneath all of it. And in that darkness, you either begged to tap out, or you made the one decision that changed everything.

Most men never tell that story out loud. This episode tells two of them.

Dennis Procopio sits down with Charles Ledbetter, a former Man-UP! Life Coaching client who came into coaching with cocaine addiction, suicidal ideation, and two rental listings he had no idea how to run. Charles now owns a multi-million dollar property management company with 104 locations, and a marriage he says flat-out would not exist without the work he did with MULC. Dennis opens up about his own origin too: poverty, 24 schools, Rikers Island on attempted murder charges, and a handshake in New Orleans that became the day he never drank again.

Two men, two completely different paths, and the same ground-level moment where everything either ends or begins.

This episode gets into what it actually takes to rebuild from nothing, not through hustle culture or a 30-day program, but through one decision made with your back against the ground. Dennis and Charles dig into why the powerlessness model keeps men stuck, what real masculinity looks like from two men who lived the broken version first, and why the men who go deepest into the dark have the most to offer on the way out.

TIMESTAMPS 0:00 - Meet Charles Ledbetter: Former Client, Current Coach 2:04 - What Brought Charles to Coaching: Addiction and Crisis 6:50 - Diminishing Returns: When Consequences Outgrow the Reward 9:11 - Dennis's Origin Story: Poverty, Rikers, and 24 Schools 17:52 - The Handshake That Ended Dennis's Drinking 22:06 - Charles's Turning Point: I Owe Me More 24:53 - From 2 Listings to 104: The Real Transformation 31:30 - Khabib, Fedor, and What Real Masculinity Looks Like 36:14 - Masculine and Feminine Polarity in Relationships 58:01 - The Powerlessness Lie: Why 12-Step Fails High-Achieving Men

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

• Why the men who lose the most often have the most to give back
• What a single moment of self-accountability can actually build over time
• Why the powerlessness model is the wrong framework for men who want to lead
• What healthy masculinity looks like from two men who lived the broken version first
• How masculine and feminine polarity transforms the dynamic in your home
• Why coaching men almost always means healing the little boy still running the decisions

THIS HITS IF YOU'RE

• Wondering if your worst chapter disqualifies you from building something great
• Sober or getting there, but still running the same patterns in new situations
• In a relationship that keeps breaking the same way regardless of who she is
• Carrying a version of yourself you've never said out loud to another man
• Ready to do the real work and need a man in your corner who's actually been to the bottom

TAKE ACTION Free 30-minute strategy session: https://www.manuplifecoaching.com/application

CONNECT Website: https://brocoach.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/manuplifecoaching TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@manuplifecoaching YouTube: https://youtube.com/@manuplifecoaching

ABOUT THE SHOW The Bro Coach® Podcast with Dennis Procopio. Not red-pill garbage. Not therapy. Real coaching for guys who achieved success but missed the point. Dennis has 25,000+ hours working with high-earning men ($150K to $3M+) who look successful but feel stuck.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Most men want more, more clarity, more respect, more control over their lives, but few know how to get it. Welcome to the Bro Coach Podcast with Dennis Procopio, the founder of Man Up Life Coaching and the man behind thousands of transformed lives. Not red pill, not therapy, just the evolved man's blueprint for strength, presence, and purpose. Welcome to another episode of the Bro Coach Podcast. I'm Andrew Bontz. I'm here with Dennis Procopio. And we have a different format. Today, we have a guest, Charles Ledbetter, a former client of Man Up Life Coaching. Great to be here with both of you. I'm going to just kind of get out of your guys' way and let you talk. So, Dennis, why don't you kick us off and just dive in with Charles today?

SPEAKER_05 0:48

Okay, Andrew, thanks. I appreciate it. Hey, I'm Dennis Procopio, the bro coach, as it were, and I am the owner and founder of Man Up Life Coaching, which has been servicing men uh for going on 14 years now. And I have a really interesting guest with me in that this is a guy who is the graduated client of my coach, um uh mentee, uh Coach Faisal, who himself couldn't be here today, but uh as um uh Al Green, um or sorry, Miles Davis famously said of Al Green, um, if he had one tid, I'd marry the motherfucker. All right. So I lay I love me some Coach Faisal, and uh I um really am interested in talking to one of my clients who I've really never chatted with before. His entire relationship in man up life coaching has been with Coach Faisal. So this is really interesting for me. Charles, thank you for being here, brother.

SPEAKER_02 2:04

My pleasure, man. Thank you for having me on the show. Um, yeah, my experience working with Faisal was amazing, and it's an honor to get to be here and and speak into the source as it will, and uh get back to the genesis of this whole thing that helped me so much. So thank you.

SPEAKER_05 2:23

I appreciate you now. Speaking of the source, I want to go right to the top and say that when we talk about source, I have advertisers who asked me, marketers who asked me, as you move your business forward, do you want to be a process-oriented business model, like come do the man up life coaching coaching system? Do you want the guru model where you're the Tony Robbins or the Helio Gracie of this thing? Or do you want the David Goggins, you know, the talking head influencer? Or do you want a hybrid model? And I said, absolutely the guru model with a caveat. I don't like the term guru, and I don't like the idea of playing too close to that line between culture and cult. So before we go any further, I want to say that Faisal is a practicing Muslim. I, in my life, have been everything from a baptized Catholic with an Ashkenazic Jewish mother who has whapped a tambourine in the deliverance evangelistic church in of God in Christ in northern uh Philadelphia. I have been raised in religion and I identify as someone who is probably more spiritual than religious. But if we're going to talk about source, um, sorry if this word is a turnoff for you, but God is my source, and that is who I am and what I do. So if you work with Man Up Life Coaching, you are working with a dude who believes in brotherly love, and that love is a love that follows the rules. Love God, love your brother. Can I get an amen?

SPEAKER_02 4:21

Yeah. Amen reverend. I'll lazy on that one.

SPEAKER_05 4:26

Well, all right. Now it's time to pass that basket because cash rules everything around me. Um I kid, I kid. We'll share our pricing models later. Um, Charles, what were some of the things that brought you to coaching?

SPEAKER_02 4:44

Oh man. Well, my life uh at the time that I was seeking a life coach was obviously in a rebuilding phase because I had just destroyed it. I mean, absolutely. Um for me, there was addiction, there was depression, um, you know, uh, there was suicidal, you know, idea idealization. Like I was I was going through it, brother. Um, I had a business uh that I had just started. It was in its infancy. Um I really had no idea how to run, but I just had this kind of dream. And so I needed some guidance. I needed some a brother in my corner who was uh a little wiser than me, who could walk me through it. And I at least knew that for all the things that I was screwing up at that point in my life. I was like, damn, I need some help. You know, I need somebody who, and you know, that I had familiarity with God. I similar to you, I had done a lot of different things and just pursuing what is the source of all this. And I at least had an awareness of God and knew, like, okay, if I can just get closer to that, right? The the understanding that I do have, maybe this can all turn around. And so I started pursuing life coaching and uh interviewing really. I I didn't just talk to man up life coaching, I talked to five different life coaches. Um, and and man up is where I determined, okay, this feels right, it's in alignment, I can see that how this can be effective for me. Um and yeah, made the made the decision to pull the trigger there.

SPEAKER_05 6:40

Okay, cool. I want to I want to uh swing back to some of the things that you said. Um addiction. Talk to me about your addiction.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

Oh yeah. All right, let's get into it. So um there was just about nothing that I wasn't addicted to. You know, my my favorites were cocaine and alcohol, but I mean I struggled with it. Been there, been there. Yeah, I mean, uh, I struggled at at some point with pornography, with unhealthy women, with um control issues, money. Uh I mean you name it, I dabbled in it at some point, just looking for an answer to what wasn't working for me. You know, and so that took me to a pretty dark, lonely kind of place because any of those negative addictions have diminishing returns, right? Inevitably the consequences just start to get bigger than the reward. Um, and that's where I got to a place where my bank account was drained, my body was ruined, my mind was wrecked, right? Um, and I found myself sitting in a house all by myself wishing for the end, you know, and and and begging for it, begging for God as I understood him to like just let me end this. Because I hadn't had the the courage up to that point to do it the quick way. I was trying to do it through the cocaine and the alcohol, right? Yep. Because that seemed that seemed more palatable than putting a gun in my mouth. Right. But the result was the same, right? I was still just a zombie. I was still just the walking dead. My body just hadn't caught up to the death of my spirit and my mind, right? Yep.

SPEAKER_05 8:41

So I hear you. Um how much do you know about my backstory? Anything?

SPEAKER_02 8:48

Not a whole lot, no. Mind if I share some stuff? I would be offended deeply if you did.

SPEAKER_05 8:55

Okay. Well, then I'm I guess oh, you mean I gotta put my pants back on? God dang it. Um I was gonna stand up. Um so here's Told you I used to be out there too, bro. You're not the only one. Um here's a little bit uh about my backstory. So I kind of came up with some physical abuse, um, unfortunately, sexual abuse, like you hear about these Epstein files and everything. I was a uh victim of child predation, um, unfortunately. Um I was raised in poverty and abuse. So if it's like, you know, white trash, ghetto, you know, white kid in the black and Spanish-speaking neighborhood that had then has the identity crisis that doesn't know if he's white or black or whatever, you know, k roaches, rats eating, you know, kids dying from eating lead paint chips, water on your on your uh generic cornflakes, you know, like just you know, hot sauce sandwiches or whatever. Like that that was um that was unfortunately my familiar. And uh I came up I went to 24 different schools just because it was kind of like dysfunction and I just kind of moved around. So when I tell people I've been to 24 different schools, they think I'm saying that I was like an army brat or something. I'm like, nah, I just we just couldn't pay the rent, you know, and just moved a lot, you know. And uh and so anyway, I guess I'll synthesize that into saying that I recognized that school was my ticket out of that neighborhood and that lifestyle. So I took it. I used drawing, which for me was a meditation. I used anything I had learned about religion as a way to sort of aim my belief system at some deity who was listening to me and was eventually gonna get me out of there. It was just I was stayed talking to God. I didn't know what God was, but I knew that whatever God was, that was my only hope because this was hell.

SPEAKER_04 11:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 11:30

And I was asking to get bailed out. And um there was a lot of suicidal ideation because, like you say, I was it's like looking to be bailed out. I was like, just tap just I want to tap out, man. Like I'm done. Um I ended up doing well in school. I ended up um graduating with high honors, which is kind of crazy. Um, I ended up getting really good at the drawing because it's all I did. It was just self-regulation 24-7. That led to an art scholarship at a school that called Cooper Union in New York City, which is kind of fancy. And if you get accepted, at least at the time, you got a full four-year scholarship to a historic school, which is like a low-key, like it's like an Ivy in the sense that it has a hell of a history. And Lincoln made his right makes might speech there, which won him the presidency. So I went from uh, like I said, Roaches and Rats in Liverworth Sand, which is on Wonderbread, to on a good day, to the pinky up crowd, like the shiny people, the uh fuck you money people. And I didn't know what to do with that incredible transition in lifestyle. And that's where I started picking up alcoholism, cocaine, recreational drugs, stupid hot women like nines and tens, who, of course, as you know, were all I mean, sorry to say it, but like myself, daddy issue, you know, chicks who you ended up in these caustic lust relationships with that are the classic codependency situations. And the result was that I started uh getting into these nasty fights with other dudes out there in the world, and those fights led me to become a recidivist. I started going to jail, and so because I developed a fondness for cutting people up, I was like Jack the Ripper. I'm really not kidding, I'm not trying to say it funny, but it is, you know, it's true. I like I was I was the razor blade guy. I it was broken bottles and razor blades. I was just fucking out there cutting people up. Like every time I'd get drunk and somebody would say something stupid, next thing you know, they're bloody, and I'm in jail. And so I started spending time like I was on Rikers Island in the freaking 90s, dude. That was no fun, and I was there on like assault, like not just assault charges, but attempted murder charges. So let's pause for a second. At I'm a life coach in Southern California, but those are my beginnings. So as long as we're showing our ass here, do you feel me?

SPEAKER_02 14:45

Yeah, oh yeah, no, absolutely, man. I feel you. That's I find that usually that's what happens is the people who stare the deepest into the abyss have the most to offer. I mean, that's a wealth of experience to be able to climb yourself out of and and build a life that's happy and fruitful and full. So fuck yeah, I get it. Yeah, completely get it, man. You know, my uh not quite to the extent of some of yours, but I mean, growing up, I dealt with a lot of death. My brother got shot and killed in a drug deal. My sister died the very next year. I was in and out of gangs, right? And so, like, that was the thing. All the mistakes that could be made, I kind of did them. And it was just looking for answers, is really all it was. It was just looking for answers either in the bottom of a bottle or on a mirror or on, you know, uh in between a woman's legs. Something it was repeated bad decision after bad decision, trying to find something to mend what seemed broken inside me.

SPEAKER_05 15:55

I hear that.

SPEAKER_02 15:56

Where were you raised? Gulf Shores, Alabama. Oh, yeah. And then Mobile, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 16:02

So yeah, I uh you know, I have a long history in New Orleans before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina. Like I was living in New Orleans. I was a street performer in New Orleans in the in the late 80s, early 90s. Oh wow. And then and then I I got to play with some jazz greats um because I had a talent for percussion, just another one of those God-given gifts, little drummer boy out there on the streets in New Orleans. And uh, you know what it is. It's it's strippers, it's you know, you know that world. There's a world out there.

SPEAKER_04 16:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 16:40

And uh got caught up in that. So now, okay. So now I started this by saying, you know, that I have this business called man up life coaching, that I've been doing this for 13 years. So I'll let you know what happened. I ended up being a um, while I was in New Orleans, um, I made yet another of many really poor choices. I ended up in jail again, on a drunk bender again, somebody got cut again, and I'm in OPP, Orleans Parish Prison. And at that time, a good friend of mine, a guy by the name of Mark Landrew, whose father was famously Moon Landrew, after whom the Moonwalk is named by the by the river, uh, whose sister Mary Landrew was the governor at the time, and whose brother Mitch Landrew would go on to uh replace uh Ray Negan and would become the mayor of um New Orleans. This guy and I became friends when I was running a sign shop. Um, and uh his daughter Ashley was a binge drinker. He recognized that I had a similar problem to her, and when I got myself in big trouble, he said, Hey D, I'm gonna do you solid. I'm gonna I know your judge, I'm gonna talk to him and I'm gonna help you to get out of this jam you're in, you know, white slacks and mint juleps, you know. It's kind of this is the South, you know. And uh and uh and he said, I'm gonna I'm gonna help you to get out of this peace that you're in, but I want you to do me a favor, I want you to shake my hand, I want you to look me in the eye like a man, and I want you to tell me that you're not gonna drink again. And um, Charles, I was in my early 30s and I shook Mark Langer's hand and I told him, You have my word as a man. Now my father, Italian mafia, you know, who had taught me how to shake a man's hand at you know, 13 years old, um told me you're you're you know, your word is all you have in this world when you give somebody your world your word, you keep it. So I haven't had a drink since. That was the day I quit drinking. It was that day. I quit drinking. I went to the New Orleans Athletic Club. I started working out, started benching 300, freaking deadlifting like 450 to 500, squatting about four, four fifteen, became a monster in the gym because that was my new addiction. And wouldn't you know it, but at the bar, because they had a bar in the gym because it's New Orleans, at the bar, I'm drinking that's real though. All all all wood polished wood and brass, like speakeasy vibes. I'm sitting there having a um having a uh like a NO2 explode or something, and the guy next to me drinking a damn like old fashioned is my judge, Judge Judge Marulo. And he's the guy who got me off. Well, he kind of I'm not saying he let me off, but you know, he he helped help the brother out, and he said to me, he said, It's good to see you on a straight and arrow. And I said, Thank you. And from there, I started working out all the time. I started really getting back into meditating. I started really looking into the doing the things that we do in coaching to become better men. I met my current partner, Celia, who has been my partner and my child's mom now for the past uh she's been my partner for 18 years and uh his mom for or 17 years and his mom for 16. And uh she's a lawyer, interestingly, and she was a public defender at the time that I met her. And uh so she had no problem with my dirty history. She's like, oh, whatever I've heard worse. And uh and we ended up we ended up moving out here to California where I've lived um and where her family's from. I never drank again. We came out here, I recognized a need for lots of men to have a Mark Landrew in their lives. And that's when I started man up life coaching 13 and a half years ago. Kind of a fun story, yeah?

SPEAKER_02 21:51

Yeah, no, absolutely. There's a there's a lot of excitement and twists and turns to that one, so yeah, and

SPEAKER_05 22:00

Now, now let me ask you this. What was your turnaround point in working with Faisal? Like what with with me, with Landru, it was I looked a man in the face, I said, You're right. I need to stop fucking up, dude. And I just yeah, I left it right there. It was there was a moment where I felt that I made a choice.

SPEAKER_02 22:21

Yeah. No. Um I don't know that it was anything direct. So I think what happened is I had written the accountability letter to Faisal to Faisal, and um, I hadn't done like half of it. And it was coming up, and I was so angry and ashamed of myself that I was about to have to own up to I really just wasn't doing what I was supposed to do. And I got to a place where I got furious with myself and was like, I fucking owe me more. Like, why? Why do I not have higher expectations and higher hopes for my life that I would fucking go to the point of death from making all the wrong decisions to hiring a life coach and trusting him to teach me a new process and how to deal with life like a man and then not do what he was fucking telling me to do? Yep. And it was like, what the fuck am I doing? Like, is that what I want to go back to? Do I want to just go back to being worthless and helpless? Or do I really want what I say I want? And I kind of had a conversation with myself and I was like, all right, I'm I'm not fucking doing this anymore. I'm gonna show up and do what I said I was gonna do and trust this process that it's gonna be fucking worth it in the end. And it has been exponentially so. Exponentially so. I'm absolutely a different man. I mean, I went from a complete deficit in every area of life. I mean, I was a liability in my body, my psychology, my what I had to offer women, uh, you know, uh financially, like every way you can think of, I was falling short of what I knew I was capable of. Like, and it was these weren't things that it was like that I truly didn't have a vision for in my life. It was just I had I had given up all hope that I was actually ever gonna be anything more than a hopeless, violent drug addict, right? Like at that point. But when I dug in and I truly committed to the process, and today it's different. I own a multi-million dollar business now. I'm married to the woman of my dreams. I'm gonna have a kid in about three weeks with her. You know, I have amazing relationships with friends, with family. My life is so full and and blessed and wonderful right now that it's I'm unrecognizable. And I'm encourage men with this all the time. They're like, if you actually double down on investing in you and you just set the fucking bar way higher than you think you can actually accomplish and refuse to give up on it, every year when you look back, you will be a different man than the year before. It like just absolute transformation.

SPEAKER_05 25:41

Absolutely. Hey, let me ask. So the business that you run, tell me about it. The business that you own.

SPEAKER_02 25:47

So I own a short-term rental management company.

SPEAKER_04 25:51

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 25:51

Um, this was the one that I had started, but I couldn't figure out how to get any momentum with. I was just not responsible enough with myself. Well, at the time I started, it was uh well, that I started with man up, it was two locations. I had two listings that I was managing. Um, and we had started with the rental arbitrage model. Do you are you familiar with rental arbitrage? Okay. So that is now 104 locations. Um, so 104 listings that we manage in Birmingham and Tennessee, and I'm negotiating two deals right now to where it'll put me at around 200 listings by the end of the month. Um, so I mean, absolute exponential growth in that. And so it's cool business, you know, that's uh it allows me to be present for my wife now, which is the amazing thing. We've built systems and hired the right people and uh created some insulation to where it's I get to work as hard or not as I desire. You know, which is pretty fucking awesome, right? And most of the days I enjoy work, I kind of have realized that I need something to do. I'm not good with no plan and no goals, right?

SPEAKER_05 27:20

But that's right.

SPEAKER_02 27:21

You know, the the goals just keep evolving. And I've got a level of autonomy and freedom that I never had before.

SPEAKER_00 27:29

Hey man, stop spinning your wheels. If you're serious about leveling up your career, your relationships, and your mindset, it's time to man up. At Man Up Life Coaching, we cut the excuses and build discipline, confidence, and purpose. Book your free strategy session now at manuplifecoaching.com/slash application. Don't fill it out if you're not ready to grind. But if you are, this call could change your life. Man up life coaching. Elite life coaching for men by men.

SPEAKER_02 27:59

Right. So we're able to design. I go I'm able to go to the gym, you know, when I want to. I'm able to start when when I want, stop when I want, and it's been a it's been a wonderful thing, you know.

SPEAKER_05 28:12

So Andrew, I want to bring you into the conversation. You're kind of being a real respectful sort of um host here. Um what are what are you hearing in this that's interesting for for you, just as my usual sidekick guy?

SPEAKER_01 28:32

I think it's interesting on like how you guys started off the conversation to where like the deeper the hell you mentioned the staring into the abyss, Darren uh Dennis, you mentioned you know, kind of the the word hell and being you know, hitting that bottom moment, right? And then and then the momentum you take going forward. But I also like you both mentioned a decision. You both made a decision. You you your back was against the wall. For you, Dennis, it was facilitated by another man. For you, Charles, it was kind of like a conversation with yourself. And that just like that that moment where it's like, fuck this. Like, I deserve better. And I I really like loved when you said that, Charles. So it's like I deserve I'm better than this. You know, I'm better than my choices of the past. And and with you, Dennis, you and all all of the choices you made prior to that conversation, that handshake, and what happened after, I think that those are both beautiful moments as men to to where you make that decision, that kind of that that word to yourself. Like you you and then you stand on that. Like that's all of a sudden you both kind of developed your core values and or just solidified them. It's like, you know what, I have core values. Now it's time to freaking do it. Like this is this is this is as a man what I'm gonna do. And I'm sure there are days where you're tested and hundreds of them and hundreds of hours and hundreds of moments, but you guys stood your ground, man. It's it's it's pretty amazing to to hear both stories side to side and uh and see the inspiration kind of you know in the past couple decades for each of you.

SPEAKER_05 30:28

Yeah, you know, so it's not so much back against the wall, it's back against the ground. Like you're at the bottom. And you know, there's a there's a peace that comes with being at the bottom that nobody really understands. Like, I never felt so much peace as when I was in jail. Like I smoked weed in jail, and it was the only time I didn't get paranoid because I'm like, what the fuck could happen that's worse than this? Where are they gonna play? You're gonna get arrested? Yeah, right. I was like, no, that's real. Like, I was in jail. I like I was in jail and I knew how to like throw cards because I was kind of a nerdy kid, which is what made my whole jail like experience ironic. I was like a little art fag, dude. I'm like a little autistic kid. I was never a gangster, I was never a badass that my dad was. I was like a little dweeb, you know. But somehow just trying to like play tough guy and you know flex out in the world to compensate for my insecurity, I turned into something scary and you know, left a trail of blood to prove it. Um, but anyway, but I wasn't a badass. I was I was a I was a pussy, really. Like, and we all know this guy. We we all know this guy. It's the loudmouth, you see him in reels all the time. It's the one who's barking and then just quietly gets tapped on his chin and dropped. Um, I was that guy and I was operating from a place of fear, I was operating from a place of sadness, I was operating from a place of rage. I was definitely coming from a feminine place with my energy. I was like a giant, scary man bitch. Um and like like look at Conor McGregor, right? Like, okay, the dude learned how to fight, but you still there's something the the thing about the dude that's unlikable, we all know what it is, right? It's that thing, right? Like that was me. Like I find the guy despicable because he represents something about myself that was despicable. Like I relate to that. That asshole part of Conor McGregor, like I relate to that. Um and I look at I look at guys like Habib Namogamedov and like, or if you want to go back in the day, like a Mark Hunt or somebody like that, that are just these quiet, you know, um quiet, respectful practitioners of of MMA. And when they take you out, they don't take you out because they have something to prove or they want to dominate you. They just they're just dudes doing their job. And that for me is what masculinity like that was elusive to me. I didn't understand, and you see this a lot, all these guys are hanging off of like Andrew Tate's jock or whatever. Um, you know, uh they they don't understand that real masculinity and healthy masculinity is it's not being it's not being threatening, it's having it and not using it, man. It's choosing love over vengeance.

SPEAKER_02 33:54

Charles, can I get an Amen on that one? I mean, absolutely, dude. You know what I was thinking of uh you're going the MMA route, Fedor Millionenka. Oh, yeah. Perfect example, dude. Do you you never saw the man smile or grit his teeth or have an emotional reaction ever, but yet he was the most lethal man in the sport for years. Completely relaxed. He doesn't have the what we think is macho and manly kind of body, right? He's not like full of definition and you know, imposing in that way, but just complete self-control and the ability to harness power and only use it when absolutely necessary. And because of that, you know, that translates, like you were saying, to masculinity out in the real world. It's when these guys can walk around and know what they're truly capable of. I was talking about this just earlier with somebody. When you've done martial arts and you actually know where what you're capable of and where you stand, you tend to not get invited to fights. Like they just it kind of avoids you, and you don't have the need like Connor McGregor to constantly prove yourself. Unfortunately, there's something broken in him that's real obvious that even as a billionaire, he still feels the need to prove himself and act like a little boy all the time. Right. And it's like real men, once you actually heal that piece inside of you, all of a sudden you go, No, I know exactly where I stand, and I don't, I don't have to show you. I don't, you're insult, I don't have to demand respect for you because I have such high respect for myself, right? At that point, I'm no longer threatened by it, right? And so there's this beautiful, beautiful thing that happens for men when when they train and do really hard things. There comes a confidence and a stoicness that it serves them in business, it serves them in dangerous situations, it serves them in the romantic relationships, right? I I was that so in touch with my feminine side that I attracted the worst women, right? Yep. Absolute worst kind of women that were in their masculine that could control me in the blink of an eye. Yep. Right. And it, you know, now I have this woman in my life who is the perfect picture of femininity, right? Who it who is soft, nurturing, wild, emotional, and creative. And I don't, when she has an emotion, I'm not threatened by it. Right. That that emotion can crash and do what it does and cycle. And I can be patient and wait for it and let allow it to resolve on its own. And I can be a strong place, right, for for her to crash up against. And we have this wonderful dynamic in our home that I thought was only a dream. I didn't have men model that masculinity to me, right? My father was an alcoholic, dude. And so, and while my father was a dreamer and accomplished great things, owned a hotel in Paris, you know, managed bands, did did all this, owned like five different businesses, did all this crazy stuff. He was an emotional wreck. You know, and he and he got lost and had terrible self-control. And so it it took some of the work that we did together, reading books like Men Are From Mars and Women Are From Venus, and reading things like, you know, um David Dita with the um the way of the superior man, things like this, and then starting to put some of those things into practice to go, oh, there's actually a spiritual order to this whole masculine-feminine thing.

SPEAKER_04 38:04

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 38:04

And fuck, when you align with it, when you get it and you start exuding it, man, everything in life improves, right? Everything. Like that that energy when they function well together, the divine feminine and the divine masculine, boy, it just compounds into to something wonderful, you know?

SPEAKER_05 38:29

I do, I do. Um boy, you know, I I I I'm I I knew that I was gonna enjoy our conversation, but I think that um I th I think that there's more overlap here than I I think I expected coming into this chat. And uh it's I find it really exciting, and I'm having to do my best not to like because I like I want to say a whole lot of shit, you know. Um but I'm gonna stay on my quest here. I have some I have some question marks that I wanna that I want to resolve for myself because I'm curious about you. Um how old are you? 41. 41.

SPEAKER_04 39:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 39:14

Um when are you current so are you currently married then? Yep. Okay, when when how long have you been married? A little over two years.

SPEAKER_02 39:26

Were you married before you started working with Faisal? Oh yeah. I've been I've been giving it a try for a while. This is my third marriage.

SPEAKER_05 39:35

Okay. My dad, my dad was married like six or seven times. So I I've seen I've seen that, yeah, I've seen that that cycle before. Yeah, one was on a bet. Um anyway, he wasn't he was this as vague in the eighties, and he's like, he goes, how much you want to bet how much you want to bet I marry that brute? And his buddy's like, I got a thousand bucks and you don't. Like, no, seriously. But I'm sorry, that's funny. I digress, I digress, I digress. All right, so so did you marry your current wife before or after working with Faisal?

SPEAKER_02 40:08

After.

SPEAKER_05 40:08

Oh, yeah. Oh, that's interesting, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Is there a story there?

SPEAKER_02 40:13

If I hadn't done the work with Faisal, that would have never worked. Wow. Absolutely not. Yeah. How long were you and Faisal together? Uh year and a half, two years, something like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 40:31

So at what point did you I know that when we started this, you said, hey, listen, I also now am coaching guys, but I want to be careful to be respectful of your hustle. Like I don't want to come in on your shit advertising my shit. But I kind of think of this more like churches. Um I don't ever see one church feeling threatened by another church, like that there's competition, like, oh no, you know, they're gonna go to my church instead of your church. I mean, I think that the point of a church is that every every church is an access point to get people to tune up to, you know, um develop a relationship with God. And and frankly, I think there are people who manage to find a relationship with God without going through a church. Uh Jesus was, in fact, one of those people. Um, so I think that um love God, love your brother is important, and I think that man-up life coaching works with Jews, Christians, Muslims, Zoroastrians, uh, agnostics, everything. And we somehow manage to white label uh spirituality so that we don't get lost in uh legalism, and we're able to provide um we're able to provide a safe space for guys looking to work on their relationship with the divine however they um ultimately, however that reveals itself to them. Um that's what the love God piece is. The love your brother piece is a little bit harder because um we we have a tendency to be self-judgmental, and you know that. I mean, you really were the poster child for it before you made your turnaround. Andrew said something about how you know it's how interesting how both of us, you know, learned, you know, a code of appropriateness and decided to embrace it. No, it's not that we learned it, we knew what it was. We were intentionally sabotaging it. We already fucking had our code. We were just saying I'm a piece of shit who either doesn't deserve the the the the fruits of those labors or who just doesn't have what it takes to do that work. So what happens is that you become judgmental, you judge yourself, and as I've always said, all judgment is self-judgment. When you judge yourself, you judge your brother. When you judge your brother, you judge yourself. And so loving your brother becomes an act of first being able to look in the mirror and love who you are, and then being able to look at your brother and see him as a mirror of sorts, and to be able to love what you see and offer him the love that he needs to see. And goddamn, is that challenging? Because God will give you somebody like Conor McGregor and go here, love this asshole. And then you have to go, ah, damn it, do I have to? Look, I made Jesus beg for you know forgiveness from a hooker, so don't You're too fancy. Yes, you need to love your brother. So, do you find in coaching that you learn about your ability to forgive yourself by running into characters that are very challenging and you want to put hands on them?

SPEAKER_02 44:24

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And so the funny thing is, is that's that's the because it's like a mirror, right? I'm I'm pointing at this guy, right? Something inside my spirit jumps and irritates the shit out of me. But really, what it is is just showing me the thing about me that I've judged myself the hardest about. And it's it's tough, man. It's tough. That's so speaking of Jesus, I mean, he talked about, you know, forgive it when they asked how many times must they forgive, right? And he said 70 times seven. That's so that's 490 times a day, right? How is that possible unless you're constantly judging yourself through every single interaction with other people? I don't fucking encounter 470 people, 490 people a day, you know what I mean? Right. Like nobody really does. It's not realistic. The only way is if we're constantly in every interaction going, okay, I hate that about me, and I hate that about me, and I hate that about me, and screw you for showing me. So now, you know, and it it's a thing, it's tough, man. Um also, though, uh that's the the irony is that the more that I coach, the the the more at peace I become. A lot of times I end up as if I'm coaching myself. Yeah. Right. I'm doing this speaking to that little boy in me, right?

SPEAKER_00 45:57

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 45:58

And going, okay, what did I need an older man to show me in that moment? Yep. Was it, hey, dude, it's time to toughen up. It's time to put this childish shit aside and to hold me to a higher standard. Or was it in that moment, hey man, it's okay. We all fuck up, dude. Like I had a situation yesterday where I met with a guy who's starting his own business, and you know, that guy didn't need anybody. And I could tell because I remembered exactly where what that was like for me. He's this guy could make he could make three quarters of a million tomorrow. He could accept a job offer for it, right? But he's decided to start his own business. And it's like, man, I could there's a part of me that at some time and given on any given day might have gone, oh, he's whining, oh, he's just complaining, oh, that's not a real problem. You know, you can. But then there's this other side that's like, fuck, I remember that though. I remember trying to do this thing on my own because I had a dream and how fucking scary it was sometimes.

SPEAKER_05 47:14

Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_02 47:14

How much I just feel like I was failing every time in every corner. And it's like, what do I fucking do next, man? Like I want to do this thing, and I I've made the decision to do with it, but now it's got to the point where it's no longer shiny in the distance. How the fuck do I get there? I kind of want to quit.

SPEAKER_05 47:33

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 47:34

You know? And all I needed in that moment was for a man to go, hey, dude, look, we've all been there, right? I needed a man who had a little further down the road to go, hey, look, I wanted to quit 10,000 times and I didn't quit. And here's what happened, right? Like, here's how I got through it. And you're not alone, you're not the only person who feels that way because that's what we tell ourselves in our head. It's like nobody else feels this afraid. Nobody else feels this self-loathing over the experience of powerlessness, right? And just having a brother there to go, hey, no, no, no, no, you're not alone. Hey, no, that it's okay to experience that. It's also not okay for you to give up on yourself, right? To both be able to encourage them and hold them accountable at the same time, which is what I needed so many times over and over and over again in my life, right? That's like to be okay where I was at, but also to be called forth to something higher and to have somebody believe on me and encourage me in that moment.

SPEAKER_05 48:41

That's right. That's right. And it is sometimes it really just is that, you know, in uh like people with people with ADHD. Um you know, there's there's this thing called body doubling where sometimes sorry, let me pull you out there. But people I know, I know Chester. I I got I got what I call I got what I call spectrum. I I know I can't I'm I know my people. Um so when when you have ADHD, there's a thing called body doubling, and sometimes all we need is just somebody in the room with us to just ground us a little bit because we do become victims of our own imaginations. And the same imaginations which, when grounded, can provide um can allow creativity to manifest through us. If we're ungrounded, that creativity arcs back on us and it creates a hell that we're subject that we're subjected to, and we don't understand that we are responding. It's kind of like being in a bathtub having a seizure. Like you're responding to the water that's falling on you, but you're the reason for the water that's falling on you. So you kind of get caught in a loop. And if you stop for a second, there's that stop gap where there's still some water falling on you, and you're like, see, it wasn't me, and then you go back to it, and you need to learn how to become long enough that you work through that air bubble, and what you're where you started was saying that it took having a man in particular, because men operate a certain kind of way. Um, we're on a frequency, we're on a channel, there is that stoicism, having a man be your be your not only be your um your teacher mentor, but to share to offer that vibration like a like when you're riding in a car with your dad or something and you're not talking, but there's just a male vibe. When you're fishing with a bro and you're not talking, but you get back, two girls for three hours would have talked the whole time. Two dudes fishing for three hours might have said you know a couple of words to each other, but that whatever that was was important. So Charles, I'm gonna move now to to another question. I'm keeping an eye on time. I figure we're about 10 minutes out. Um, how long have you been coaching at this point?

SPEAKER_02 51:34

Um, about two years.

SPEAKER_03 51:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:37

So officially, I mean I've I've had clients that were unofficial before I launched Lead Better Coaching, so it kind of happened organically for me.

SPEAKER_05 51:49

Um you know you know, I I was an educator for 30 years.

SPEAKER_04 51:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 51:57

I'm a I've operated for going on 14 years under the brand Man Up Life Coaching. Right. But shit, I've been teaching since the first time I've recognized I knew something that somebody else didn't. That's just some of us are just naturally generous with our our gift. So I understand when you say like two years technically, but with the caveat that dot dot dot. Like I I I'm not I didn't just show up on this planet and say I want to be a coach. I already had some stuff. So tell me tell me about your tell me about your coaching business.

SPEAKER_02 52:40

Yeah. Well, so my coaching business is lead better coaching. Um, you know, I my background and experience since you kind of brought it up, so I knew a long time ago that I had to serve men. Like that's what I was created to do, right? And that teaching was a part of that, right? Like it was just a gig because in sports growing up, I ended up being the leader of every captain of every team I was on, right? In my circles selling drugs, I ended up being the captain. Like it didn't matter what happened, I kind of found myself in this place of leadership and respect and imparting knowledge and and guiding and influencing. And so um, you know, I became the regional educator for two of the largest fitness companies in the world. I I worked as a uh a coach there. I hired and developed coaches all over Alabama and Mississippi, and then traveled and taught certifications all over the country. So like it was always there, but I didn't have a clear picture of it, right? It just the the it wasn't in 4K for me yet. And I had a lot of bad habits and a lot of bad ideas about myself and about life that until it became this. So when I had this near-death experience before working with Faisal, it became clear at that point. Uh it was I was having a heart attack because I tried to kill myself with doing the last of the cocaine that I had, right? Like just I had about a little less than a quarter ounce of cocaine. I was just like, I'm gonna just do all this right now and hopefully my heart will explode. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it started all of a sudden I went, oh shit, I guess I don't want to die. I kind of actually hooked up God, like, hey, if you always, always. I hear this story so often. Fuck my fucked up help. Yeah, go on, go on. And and the message that I heard was, okay, I'm gonna give you a new life, but you got to do what I told you to do. Yep. Do what I created you to do, right? And I knew that if I wanted to lead men, I needed to first up know how to properly lead men. I had a whole bunch of skills and pieces and everything. That's why I decided to look at life coaching, right? And so, my my, you know, even though I had studied pastoral ministry, even though I'd been at the top of some organizations and hired and done all these other things, I for me working with Faisal and and Life Up was my official training, right, at that point. And then so now I try to reach out to the guys who have had the same experience as what I have, right? That they've been to those dark places. And so for me, that looks like addictions coaching often, right? The the the the guys who have a secret that they don't really want to talk to anybody about. They need somebody they can trust who's done it, right? Or at least know somebody who has done it and been around it and been through it. So that tends to be who who I speak to, you know, the most.

SPEAKER_05 56:02

You know what's really funny here, dude? I'm gonna tell you careful because I'll I'm gonna end up pitching you coaching before the end of the before the end of the session. My demographic has shifted. When I started, I was you working with that demographic.

SPEAKER_04 56:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 56:19

Now I've evolved and now you're my demographic.

SPEAKER_04 56:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 56:23

Honestly, it's sure guys who were making really good money, guys who were through that survival stage, and they're now trying to go like doctors need doctors, you know, dentists need dentists, you know. Um and I work with guys now who are next, who were it's kind of like it's kind of like when I started training BJJ, I was getting trained by a purple belt who then got his brown belt, but he's being trained by a black belt, and that black belt is being trained by like red belts. So, so this is a teaching ladder. And that's why I not only wanted I I had the thought the moment you were respectful and said, we don't need to talk about my business at all, I made the decision right then. Nah, fuck that. I'm gonna put his business on blast. You know, but but it was important that you said that. I might not have done that if you hadn't said that. But I'm like, nah, fuck that. I'm gonna put his business on blast. So I want, I want, I want you to tell as much it uh tell me as much as you can about your business so that we can absolutely use this as promotional material for your coaching service.

SPEAKER_02 57:47

Oh, well, man, what an honor. I appreciate that. Uh-huh. It's uh so it originally I I started helping other guys who were s newly sober um start their own businesses. So I taught them my business model, right? Um and would help them that way. So because for me, there's an element of for all of this that I bought into this whole powerlessness idea when I when I did the 12-step things trying to get sober that way. Uh-huh. Um and I realized it was a major liability and uh not a strong belief system that I actually believed in. You you mentioned earlier that um, you know, men, the reality is we had a code, we just didn't fucking live by it. Right. Right. The the truth was is that the the idea that we're powerless was a lie that I told myself. Yep. Right. And uh what I help men do now is get in touch with the power that's inside of them through a a life of discipline. Right. And so when we take men through these disciplines and life in every area of their life, what I see is men may come to me for entrepreneurial aspirations, right? But we end up healing their marriage. Right. Or they come to me because they've got a relationship issue and we end up fixing what's going on in their mindset and how they relate to their identity that's affecting their marriage, right? Correct, correct. And so it here lately it's I I seem to be attracting and and speaking a lot to that wounded masculine. The the guys who are limping into life and no longer feel strong or encouraged or empowered whatsoever, and they're just operating almost entirely in their feminine. Yep.

SPEAKER_05 59:57

Yeah. I it's funny because if you and I were to if you and I were to have a man university, I kind of feel like you would be 101. Like they would come in, they would work with you, they'd fix a lot of shit, then they'd come to me, no disrespect, but like, you know, I kind of feel like I I earned my pedigree. They'd then they'd come to me and they'd say, Okay, now I've got that shit worked out, but I feel like there's still more. And I kind of take over where you left off. And then there are people who are further along the ladder than than I am that who I go to. Now, uh Andrew asked me recently, he said, Hey Dennis, just curious, you know, coaches need coaches. Um, do you use a coach? Um it's it's funny because forever I did have mentors. Um I learned most of what I know about mentorship from other mentors, and I cobbled together a pedagogy based on what I learned, you know, sort of a bit BitTorrent model where I took the best of and sort of quilted it together into my own thing. This is before there was any there there literally was no such thing as male life coaching. That didn't, I promise you, that didn't exist. My SEO was off the frickin' chain uh in in 2013, dude. Like it was nuts. Um and then a whole bunch of people moved in and I got butthurt because I'm like, oh damn, the secret's out. But then but then I waited it out.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:40

Social media did that.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:41

Social media definitely did that.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:43

Because I found you online, not on social media, right? So um I get that, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:51

Yeah, so so so all of this just to say, um I want to finish this episode out. Andrew, what would you say our listening audience, since you've been essentially sort of a you've been more of a more of an audience member in this conversation than a you know uh um a contributor, what would you say the essence of this dialogue has been for some if we needed to do a chat GPT sort of synthesis of what the hell this episode was about, what did we learn here today?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:29

I uh to me I feel like it's like the evolution of men, right? To where it's like going from you know, b necessarily broken, but kind of having your back broken in life by life or breaking it yourself, you know, to kind of stuff that Charles was talking about, towards like, okay, well, we need to rebuild your discipline through systems, through processes, through getting the reps in, right? But then also kind of like, okay, what's the next evolution or what are the next few evolutions of being a man? And like, what's next, right? Because I think like as you're a young boy, and there are still some 50-year-old men that are young boys uh in a lot of areas of their life, uh, as you evolve into manhood and whatever age that happens, uh, you know, through you do it through discipline, right? And keeping promises to yourself, and that's kind of the conversations that Charles has every day. But then like once you get your shit together, like what's next? You know, because you you thought it would be something, like you get the six-pack abs, you have the quarter of a million dollar income, you have the wife, you have the kids, and you have the family, and it's like what's next? And in my opinion, we just kind of in 60 minutes talked about through through the stories of like beginnings to middle to like okay, well where we are now, yeah. Watching two men in different phases of life and different phases of their journey as a man who also lead men and lead businesses and and uh just seeing that in motion, right? Where we all have work to do, we all have many, many opportunities to keep moving, but the opportunity to uh you know, well, one, give back to other men, which is is an amazing mission that that both of you have.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:22

Awesome. Charles, I'm just gonna say it's been a pleasure to have you here. Real talk, no bullshit, like for real, for real, for real. I'm like, I see you in my socials. Your socials look fucking better than mine, frankly. I hate social media. Um, and I I think you're killing it. And I do appreciate every time you make a comment, every time you say anything. I've gotten a sense from you from the beginning that you're a real one. Um, I think it's awesome that we got an opportunity to touch base today. And I want you to have an opportunity to um put yourself on full blast here. So give us everything that we need to know um now about how guys could get in touch with you if they're vibing with you and picking up what you're putting down before Andrew plays us off stage.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:08

Yeah, absolutely. The best way to find me is coach.leadbetter. Um that's all my socials Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. Um, you can find me there. You can find a link to reach out to me um to my website that'll immediately get you in contact with me. That's the way to go, man.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:27

And and and don't be uh uh fooled by the sign in the background. He's spelling his last name coach dot L-E-D B-E-T-T-E-R. I'm Dennis Procopio of Man Up Life Coaching. I do this shit and I vouch for this motherfucker. Hell yeah. Cool? Yeah. All right, Andrew, play us off stage.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:50

Aw, men. We all know you got value out of this. Uh, one thing we do ask is you give us a review on your podcast player, follow us on social media. Share this with other men so we can inspire and share this mission of just lifting men up. Because there's a man quietly suffering in silence that needs you, needs to hear this, needs to be around men like Dennis, men like Charles. And if they can't be in the vicinity of them, at least they can be feel like they're in the conversation with with these men. And uh they need it. And don't be bashful uh because uh, you know, don't suffer in silence, and don't assume that other people aren't suffering in silence. Just share the stuff, get it out, because yeah, that's brotherly love.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:35

Amen. I'm out of the way.