Keys to Podcasting for Purpose AND Profit w/ Rory Paquette, Podcast Coach

Thinking about starting a podcast to share a powerful message or passion with the world? Wish you knew how you could find a way to make enough money to make it a reality? 

This episode will show you how one dedicated creator did just that. 

In this conversation, host Allen C Paul sits down with Rory Paquette—a full-time content creator, podcaster, and coach—who has not only built a thriving podcasting career, but done so while remaining grounded in faith, family, and authenticity. 

 Together, Allen and Rory dive into what it really takes to make podcasting a sustainable, purpose-driven lifestyle, why authenticity matters more than flashy downloads, and how responding to life’s toughest setbacks can fuel an even greater sense of calling.

Whether you’re a creative, a podcaster, or simply someone looking for encouragement at the intersection of faith and artistry, this episode is packed with honest, heartfelt insights that will leave you inspired to pursue your own creative mission—without losing who you are.

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Rory Paquette is a professional podcaster, coach, author and speaker. He currently hosts three different podcasts:  The Power of Man, Wake Up the Lions, and THE Podcaster Nation.

 He has decades of experience in public speaking, coaching, management and sales and has brought all of this together into his current coaching programs.  Rory provides Life-Coaching for Men through his program, "Power of ONE!" He works with men and women in becoming better, more profitable podcasters through his podcast coaching program, "WAKE UP THE MIC!" He also offers his own affiliate program to podcasters who are looking to monetize quickly called "The Rising Tide System."

LISTEN TO RORY'S PODCAST

THE PODCASTER NATION
https://podcasts.apple.com/gr/podcast/the-podcaster-nation/id1762108753

THE POWER OF MAN
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/power-of-man-podcast/id1591806172

WAKE UP THE LIONS
https://open.spotify.com/show/4Xi96EAx8klcaBIfkgEpDO

Transcript

0:00

Do you wish you could make a full time income with podcasting, but without losing your mind, losing your soul, or losing your family, trying to chase a dream that you feel you can't achieve? Or more importantly, getting lost in the whole reason of why you have a message to share. Well, our guest today, Warrior Paquette, has done just that. He's got a full time lifestyle as a content creator and podcaster and coach, but he's had to pay a heavy price when it comes to learning what it takes to build something like that. And he's going to show us what it takes not only to be a podcaster with purpose, a podcaster with a mind for profit, but more importantly, being a man of character the entire time. Ladies and gentlemen, this is an absolute honor. This young man that I'm speaking to usually is on the other side of the questions. Usually on the other side, he's asking, he's asking the questions, but now he has to answer the questions. But I am so, so looking forward to hearing what he has to share with us. Everyone, welcome to the Got and gig show. Rory Paquette. How are you doing, my brother? Oh, brother, I'm doing fantastic. If I was any better, I'd be twins. Thank you for asking. See, that's what I'm talking about. The very first line. I mean, he's a professional. He, you don't, you don't, you just pop out of the womb and say stuff like that unless you are a professional. So, my friend, we have had the honor of meeting on, I think this is our third or fourth recording. You have had me for some reason on a couple of shows. And so I feel like we're old friends. But you are not old friends, unfortunately, yet to some of my listeners, to our community. So the way I like to start up all these shows instead of doing the 30 second elevator pitch, which everybody hears, and they've already read your bio and they are enamored of you already because they wouldn't have clicked if they didn't think that this was interesting. Right? That's already there. They're already a captive audience. So if you were to meet some of these people for the first time, but they weren't reading the bio, they didn't see your podcasting, they didn't see your coaching, they didn't see anything else. What are those first few things that you'd want them to know upon first meeting? Christian, A father and a husband, and frankly, everything else is just window dressing. And I think I could leave it right there and they would know exactly who I am. See, again, this is why I love you. Because no extra words are needed. But there is a lot in those words, right? Yeah, there is. There's a lot in Christian. We know this. There's a lot in fatherhood. There is a lot in being a man of faith and being a man that's had to go through some stuff. So we are going to unpack what's behind all those words. So first of all, I do want to ask you kind of about the father, the man. You know, you clearly are someone, as I know, who, who cares about family. But if you care about family, it's probably because you've dealt with situations in your family. So can you share a little bit about your upbringing, your family? Was it rough? Was it easy? And, you know, how did that form how you view family now? Because as I read, you now have an amazing family, some grown kids. But just talk a little bit about, like, where did your viewpoint or perspective on why family is important come from? 100. I appreciate that, actually. The. I do have three fantastic kids. I have a wonderful wife, three wonderful kids. They're all grown. They're 32, 24 and 21. And so, you know, I'm officially. I've been an empty nester for three years now. Still hurts. Still hurts. It's weird, man. It's like. It's like a badge that you don't want. It's a trophy. You don't want to. Exactly. You spend their whole lives raising the people that you love more than anything in the world to live without you, and it just. And then you succeed and you wish you could go back in time. But yeah, man, family's huge to me. And it's been the cornerstone of everything I've done my entire life, because I didn't really have that growing up. It was really, really rough, actually. So very abusive father. If he was there, he was beating the living daylights out of us and getting drunk. And if he wasn't there, then, you know, I was trying to figure out how we were going to eat, you know, and stuff like that. So it was, it was really, really brutal childhood growing up. But, you know, you, you take what you can and you take that and you go, all right, this is the hand I've been dealt. You can't get mad at anybody else. You just go, look, I have to make the best of it. So I really, I spent my youth learning to overcome whatever adversity came to us from my father, mostly, and then my stepfather, who was worse, frankly, when you Go through that kind of thing, you come out one way or the other is what I've been finding. And all the men that I talk to and the work that I do, you either follow that subconsciously and end up making all the same mistakes, or you come out of that situation with a firebrand and you say, there's absolutely no way I will ever make those mistakes. And I'm going to make sure in every single thing that I do that I will never make those mistakes. You know, when you're raised by a father who's an alcoholic, for instance, a lot of guys end up having alcohol problems after that. I came out of that and said, I'm never even going to give myself a chance for that. So I don't drink at all. Just don't like, why open the door? You know, I saw what it could do. Donate it. Don't want to go anywhere near it. Keep temptation out of my life. Lord, thank you so much. It's stuff like that. And then when you have your, you know, your kids, you want to make sure that not only you're giving them what you didn't get in terms of, you know, materialistic things and, and teaching and education, but you want to make sure you're giving them that love and that support, everything else that you didn't have. So I was blessed enough to find a lady that felt exactly the same way. Although she had a good upbringing, she wanted to pass on another good upbringing. And when we met, we talked, and from the get go, kids were our number one thing. I had a daughter when I met her because I actually had a daughter with my first marriage that was very short lived. And she took her in like she was her own and has treated her that way since moment one. And then we had two more boys together. And brother, my family is the reason that I get up in the morning. Even though they're not here now, I'm going to be needed at some point. I kind of feel like Batman now. Like when that signal goes up, I need to be ready to jump. And I'm in the Batmobile going, and I don't know when it's going to come, but I got to be ready at any moment to go serve my kids. And so it's everything to me. Man, that is such a good analogy. I love the superhero, man. We are in the cave just waiting for the bat signal to come back up. And the beautiful thing about what you just shared, which is I came from a family where I did not know what my father had gone through. My father had a similar type of. Well, actually kind of absentee father situation. And I did not know how did he become the man that he became. But he clearly picked your path. He picked a path where I'm not going to make the same mistakes and echo and do the same thing that I saw, model or didn't see at all. Right. And one of the things that helped my father figure that out was sports and being mentored by coaches. Clearly, from both what I've read and from your approach, coaching and being a mentor and saying, hey, I'm going to model what I want you to do and show you how to do it, walk the path. Right. Walk to walk before I talk, to talk. That also seems to be a part of your DNA. So talk a little bit about that. Like, you know, your coaching, whether it was sports, life, all that stuff. Again, seems like that's a theme for you. Great question, and it is 100% absolutely a theme for me. I've parented like a coach. I've coached like a coach, you know, in terms of, like, raw, actual coaching. I've coached all three of my kids through their sports since they were basically able to throw a ball of any kind, you know, So, I mean, it was, you know, it was baseball, it was basketball, it was football, it was, you know, track. It was, you know, throwing the shot, putting the discus, it was, you know, volleyball for my daughter, it was softball for my daughter. It was everything. So I was always was a coach of a team, or even when I got in high school, I was an assistant coach, volunteer for a team or something. So I've always been very involved in those aspects because I really wanted them to be able to do whatever they wanted to do with it. I wasn't pushing them like, you have to do this. They wanted to do it. And I wanted to make sure I was there to help them in any possible way that I could. So that's really where most of that comes from. Since then, I've run several businesses. I run them like I'm a coach. I've had people that I've been in charge of. I run my staffs like I'm a coach. And, you know, now what I do for a living is I'm a podcaster and I'm a coach. So coaching's been a pretty big theme in my life. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Man, it's so incredible how God kind of just constructs our lives and puts those things in our DNA and in our experience where. Yeah, you. I say this all the time, at least as far as our age, you don't grow up saying, I'm going to be a podcaster. Like, that's not. That wasn't a thing you could say on your, you know, elementary school. What do you want to be when you grow up? And essay. And yet it fits so much of what I believe. Both coaches, teachers, ministers, communicators, like, this is the medium that God saw clearly long before we did, was going to exist and was going to allow us to transmit some of what we're sharing, even right now, in terms of both faith and family. Now, yeah, let's talk about the creative side. Let's talk about, like, the actual, you know, how the sausage is made in terms of becoming a podcast coach, becoming a podcaster. I mean, when did this bug bite you? You know, because it's, again, it's not something that all of us, even those who think it's glamorous, who think they're going to become Joe Rogans and all this kind of stuff, like, it's not something that everybody picks up. So when did that first come into your orbit? You know, it's funny because it does go back to the coaching thing. And I was having a particular. I mean, I've had a couple of really, really low points in my life. Two in particular. One was really centered around my weight at the time. I mean, I'm a big guy. I've always been kind of a big Italian guy, you know, but I was just out of control. And it was kind of a depression, weight gain, everything, just, you know, career wise, all the stuff going on. And I was heavier than I've ever been, like, really heavy. And it was just kind of one of those moments where I realized how bad it was, came to grips with how bad it was, figured out how to lose it. And like, as I was losing it, I just started posting on Facebook about what I was doing. And I could see people getting encouraged and people going, how are you doing this? And the engagement and stuff. And right then was when I kind of said, you know, people want to hear this. They want to know what you're doing, how you're doing it. They want to cheer you on, they want to be inspired. And so I said, okay, well, how can I inspire people like that more? Because I felt like I was kind of being called that direction. So I wrote a book, actually, my second book at that time called the 5% diet, threw that out there. That was great. It's done very well. I've been very happy with that. It's nice to get a check in the mail every once in a while, you know, So, I mean, you know, even if it's a couple of bucks, but it's done. Well, so I did that, and I was like, you know, I got to do more than just write the book. I'm going to do a website and a blog and all this. And in the middle of all of that, we had the pandemic going on. We had all of the political stuff happening, you know. You know, all the religious persecution that was going on all around us, and, you know, at the time, and you couldn't congregate in a church, for instance, you know what I mean? It was. It was. It was fine to go to a demonstration, you know what I mean, and not wear a mask, but you couldn't go to church, right? Those were the days. I'm saying, thank God they're over. In the middle of all of that, I had a very, very huge existential crisis that had spoken to me earlier in my life that I was really reliving. And I went, okay, when this happened to me back then, and I had no help to get out of it, how did I do it? You know, I was alone. How rough was that? And I started to kind of connect with guys online in different groups, talking about things like masculinity and fatherhood and parenting and all that. And I was able to give advice to guys based on real life things that had happened to me. And I had guys coming to me more and more in these groups going, you know, hey, Rory, I know you've been through this already. Hey, you know, how do you handle this? You know, stuff like that. And I just said, you know, I got to get this word out more. And then one day I heard a podcast by a guy named Ryan Mickler who runs, you know, a masculinity type podcast. And he said, honestly, guys, you need to do your own, you know, male movements, fatherhood movements, these types of things. Here's how. And it just hit me like a ton of bricks. I went, you know what? Why am I not doing a podcast? I sound better than this guy. You know, I have more experience than this guy does, and he's huge. And I'm like, you know, that is how you get the word out. And, yeah, after a bunch of hemming and hawing and my wife kicking me in the butt and saying, you know, go do what you're going to do, you know, because I put it off. Paralysis by analysis forever. And one day she said, why don't you just go record something and get away from me and stop talking to me right now and just go. Go. So I did, and episode one was born. Was terrible. Hated it, threw it out, and then figured out how to fix it. And then episode one was good enough to put up, and that was it. The bug was like, just got me. And I said, this is how you get all of that hope and inspiration and your dreams and everything else out of here, out there. And I just said, I got to do this. I haven't stopped since. Haven't stopped since is the understatement of the century. I will not try to make you count. But roundabout between your show. Your shows, right. And now actually guesting, which is amazing. I'm glad you're entering this side of the microphone. About how many episodes would you guess you've been a part of or helped produce or hosted? It's been over 600. That's really the only thing that I've been able to come up with between all my podcasts and what I'm guessing are my guesting appearances. And I have you to thank for part of that. You were very instrumental coming to me going, when are you going to be a guest? When are you going to be a guest? When are you going to be a guest? I don't see you on Pod Match. What's going on? You know? And I was like, you know, I'm missing all these opportunities to go on these awesome shows with these fantastic guys that I've interviewed on my shows. And I said, plus, you know, how am I coaching people right now? I coach podcasting, among other things. And I'm telling people that I'm coaching. You need to get on other shows and guest. Right. And I'm not leading by example. And I'm going, you know what? I'm. I got to just get back in the water. So you are my third guesting podcast. Okay. Yeah. On my guesting tour that I'm putting together now through August and September, I'll. Take a first, second, third. It's still on the platform. Yo, I am. I. I'll take it. And I love the fact that you are. I think one of the biggest things about this is where we're just going to, like, drop all pretense and just, like, talk, right? Because we could go point by point by point. Oh, this is how you become a podcaster. This is your best mic, and this is your best thing. This is all these things, right? All these. Again, I see this all over the Internet. It's why to Be honest with you, I have not felt comfortable being a podcast coach because I feel this, this need from everybody to have this, you know, million dollar download process, which I, you and I both know does not exist. And so I've oftentimes felt like if I can't walk it out, I'm not going to try to teach it. So if I'm not going to walk out how to have a million download podcasts at it, and I don't want one, then why would I teach it? So I think it would be great if you share what you do get out of it in terms of your podcasting process and why someone should start one without all that stuff, right? So when someone comes into your, your orbit and they're like, oh, I want to start a podcast and they, they start spouting off all the things, right? I want to be Joe Rogan. I want to be, you know, millionaire. I want to have brass sponsorships and all sorts of stuff. What's your response to the people who want to start but have kind of like those, those stars in their eyes? You know, I think a little dose of reality is always a good thing. And, and just saying, you know, hey, listen, first of all, we need to understand you're not going to make a million dollars of this in a month. It's just not going to happen, you know, so I'm very upfront with folks. I mean, I do teach monetization on podcasts. I do teach folks how to make money. You do not need to have a million downloads to make money, but you do need to be creative and you do need to be able to do the work. You have to be willing to do the work. So it's, there's a lot of ways to do it, but I have found a way to be a full time podcaster with what I do and with my coaching and with everything else that I've put together. I just train folks on that and I also talk to them about why is it you want to be doing this? There's a lot of folks who get into it. I mean, I love your example, but there are a lot of folks who get into it that has nothing to do with the money. They want to get a word out or they want to spread, you know, their faith or, you know, anything. And if the, if the why is right, then I'll, I'll help them right now, you know, let's, let's go and, and we can accomplish that. So monetization helps because then it pays some of those bills and you Know, it's. You can at least turn it into a good side hustle that way. But I'm very upfront with folks. I never promise anybody anything that I can't deliver on, period. I don't have millions of downloads, but I am fully monetized, you know, enough to do this for a living. So I come from a place of authenticity on the whole thing. Yeah, I think that's the key is authenticity and, you know, results do speak. Right. But that's why I appreciate you so much, like, leading in with that, like, yes, we need results, we need money. We need to effectively share our faith effectively, share our message effectively. Share what you have to share what God put in your heart, the passions, all that kind of stuff. And there's the beauty of podcasting there. You know, thank goodness you mentioned the pandemic. But, you know, so far no one has put censorship on rss. That's one of the main things I kind of hang my hat on, which is this is the one medium which has allowed me the most freedom. Even if you go to video on YouTube, which I know we're probably sharing this on YouTube right now. Right. But there's still, there's still some gatekeepers and all these different platforms where things could kind of go awry and people can like, tag you, like, oh, you know, hate speech this or whatever. But as far as I can tell, podcasting had remains what I saw Adam Curry call this at one of the conferences I saw him speak at. The Podfather, as some people call him. Right. He was co inventor of podcasting, by the way. I don't know if, you know, this got saved three years ago. Yes. Like, okay, this is, this is an aside, but a huge aside that the co inventor of podcasting now has openly said. God gave me that idea so that people can spread the gospel. Like, he has come to that realization that this technology was God's idea. So when us faith focused podcasters are out here, like, brother, we are walking literally in the purpose that I think this medium was made for. Now, of course, it's for everybody, right? So we know people can spread whatever they want, whatever message it is. But just that gives. That gives my. That does my heart good to know that this is a place where you can be free to speak and share, like you said, authentically, and make a living doing it. So what has been the biggest hurdle, I guess would be the question, the biggest obstacle that people might not know about or might see is, hey, I have a message. I want to share something from faith Business, whatever. But what's the obstacle that maybe hit you that they need to also watch out for? That's if I can give this a two part answer. If I'm talking to someone who's not in the masculinity, fatherhood, you know, type of space and is not in the religion space of any kind, not in the faith space. If you take those two out of it, then the biggest issue is consistency that I see and that I deal with, folks. And it's because you, you pour so much of your heart into something and at some point you want to see something back, you want to see a return. And if you're not getting money from it, if you're not getting engagement from it, or messages back from it, if you don't get that message from that guy that says, man, I had no idea. Thank you so much for doing that. You know, if you don't get any of that, then it's really hard to keep pouring into, waiting for it. And so it isn't like you said, it's not all about money. It's also all of that feedback. So that's the first, the first obstacle, I would say, you know, right there. And when I had nothing but crickets until episode nine, and in episode nine, I did an episode on bullying and I told a story about, you know, me getting bullied in school. And I found out that day exactly how many of my classmates were listening to my stuff and paying attention to it. Because, I mean, out of the blue, okay, and this is really weird, off of 30 downloads, which is all I got on that episode to start with, I got 97 direct messages. I can't, I can't, to this day, I can't figure out that, how those numbers worked. I'm like, okay, 97 people who all talked about the podcast, but I had 30 downloads. What? So, but I got direct messages from people going, I can't believe this happened to you. You know, I mean, I was an athlete, you know, did the whole bit. I mean, and people were like, you, you had bullied. You know, and they couldn't believe their ears when they were, they heard it. But that charged me up so much that I don't think I doubted what I was doing again until maybe episode 50. It was like I was good to go for months on that feedback. So when you don't get that, it's really, really hard to keep going every day and, you know, put into it what you put into it. Personally, my biggest hurdle has in fact been censorship. Has, in fact been Shadow banning. And we've done a lot of tests and stuff. I'm directly connected to my wife, my kids, everything else through all the social medias. I'll tag them in things that have to do with the podcast or the. Those accounts that have those names on them, you know, and they don't get them. I mean, I'll tag them directly and it doesn't show up for them. So it's. It's just funny the way it's going. It's like if my wife, who I tagged by name, doesn't get the. The post I put up about my episode of my podcast, which probably. Yes, which literally could be. She could be. She's literally mentioned in it. It could be all like, yeah, yeah. Then I'm not getting any reach, you. Know, so look, here's. Here's what's funny about that. I don't want to cut you off, but, like, immediately, as you said it, because, right, we can go spooky, we can go spiritual. You can go all different kinds of ways. You can go like, you know, the man, you know, Zuckerberg, you know, like, you know, Musk or whatever you name. Name your name, your oligarch. Right, Right. I can't believe I pulled out that word. That was catchy. Oh, gosh. But I think so much of this is the fact that whether it's shadow banning or whatever reason, it's still playing on somebody else's field. It's. It's. At some point, you know, the reason why I mentioned RSS in terms of the freedom of these podcasting apps and why I'm a huge proponent of. I'm going to go geeky here, but you guys need to look into this podcasting 2.0 of all of these other areas of podcasting, which are trying to stay algorithm free, is because of that, what you just said. Because at some point, when you give somebody else the content and say, share it for me, they can say yes or they can say no. Like, it's just that simple. And again, it could be religious. It could be whatever reason that they say no. But the fact is they have the. They have the power because it's their field, it's their platform. So as much as possible, I'm counseling all those people. I say again, do your YouTube. I'm on YouTube. I'm on the socials. I, you know, Paul said, you know, be all things to all people so they might win some. So for some, I'm TikTok. For some, we are Facebook. For some, we are YouTube. For some we are whatever Spotify, which is, you know, the devil, but neither here nor there. So what I love about this is that you are honestly saying, hey, this is an issue, be aware of it. Because you clearly didn't stop. You didn't stop sharing what's important. And what's more important is the engagement thing. You said, talk a little bit about those highs now that we talked about the lows of being, you know, shadow banned and obstacles. Talk about some of the high moments, not just the one of the first episode, but talk. Tell me some other successes that have revealed to you why it was worth it to stay and produce show after show after show and so many different things. And some of the things that, like, have, like, reinforced your passion over the years. Yeah, I appreciate that. That's a great. That's a great question. And that's the thing that we should be focusing on, really, as podcasters. You know, what are the. What are the highs? What are the big ones? Right. What makes you feel good inside? I have had several occasions, especially, you know, over time here, where I've had a. A particular guest that really, really struck a chord. Had a guy, father's lives matter, you know, who. A guy's name's Alan. He came on and he was talking about the divorce situation, you know, dads, this sort of thing. And he. He had a huge following, but he came on my show and he shared it on his show, of course. And all sorts of folks from his following commented on my stuff and came to me going, thank you for having him on, because so many people won't have him on and so on. And then they also were talking about my story because, you know, my daughter's from my first marriage. It was very unfortunate, you know, just the way it happened. A lot of things went down, but it was a very, very open, honest conversation with he and I. I shared a lot about my issues. And these guys were, like, really resonating with the stuff I had shared, not just because Al was on, but because of what I put out there. You know, the stuff that was inside me that went out, that was huge. That was huge. It was a very big deal. That Also pretty sure that episode got me my first death threat out of all of the ones that I've received over the time. But it was still. We were not talking about mortal harm. This has not entered my radar yet. I am a little nervous. Please elaborate. I'm not going to add anything else. Please elaborate. I've, since the time I've been doing Power man podcast I've. I've received three different death threats, actual death threats, because, you know, I was. I mean, as soon as you say power of man, you start talking about husbands, and you start talking about, you know, men getting stronger and taking accountability for their lives and these things, you're the enemy, and they don't want you talking about that. That's just that, you know, I have another podcast called Wake up the Lions, which I just started. We're. We're not even at 20 episodes yet. And, you know, I put up a post talking about that one coming out, saying, hey, here it is. It's a place for, you know, Christians to come share the testimony, you know, so on and so forth. And I got 270 comments on the reel. I put out roughly 50 of those were positive. All the other ones were atrocious, borderline threatening, just tearing me to pieces, calling me every name in the book because I dared to talk about Christianity openly, you know, and so it's. It's. When you talk about certain subjects in podcasting, it's part of the game, and it's part of the deal. And I do actually counsel folks on that. When they start telling me, this is what I want to do a podcast on, and this is how I want to do it. And I'm like, listen, I love what you're doing. Be ready for what you're going to get from the social media aspect of it. And so I do. I do everything I can to prepare folks for what may be coming, because then it's a little easier to take when it happens. It's not as jarring, you know, but spiritual warfare is real, man. And, you know, this it is. And it comes against you in many, many, many different ways. I take solace in the idea that. And this is one of my highs. Every time something like that happens to me, I feel great. I really feel great. Because if. If nobody's shooting at you, then you're not over the target. That's that. And, you know, if. If everyone's leaving you alone and nobody cares and nobody's saying anything, then you're not a threat. And if somebody has a problem with me saying I'm a Christian, and if somebody has a problem with me saying that men should step up, take accountability, and lead their families, then I want to threaten their way of life and their belief system. I want them to view me as a threat. So I am very happy to get the. I have. Oh, I have. I have no words. It's very hard to make me speechless. I am Floored that that finally has come out in a way that I can share it, because I don't have. I didn't have those words. That's exactly how I feel when it comes to not just haterade from social media, right. But being able to say, basically, like Paul says, you know, when it comes to, like, everyone that was the apostles, not just Paul, the apostles that they were counted, worthy to suffer for the name, that being shot at is how God says, yeah, you can take this. Yeah, yeah, I need you at the front line, right? Paul out there getting stoned and all this stuff. Like, we seem to think that Christianity is a religion of comfort. It is not. Not for those who are. We are the comforters, but we will not always be the comforted, especially not by the enemies that would stand against us. So, brother, I'm just going to put that one out as a real and leave that alone because. But I'm standing right with you because here. And here's what I think is so, so impactful for maybe both those who are nervous about taking the potshots right before they start the platform being criticized, and probably more for the people who worry about the other side, which is being ignored, because I think that part is maybe more fearful for many, many podcasters, Christian communicators, and specifically that they will not take a stand because they're trying to be nice, because they are, like, scared to be criticized. And then they get the crickets because they didn't take a stand or perspective. So talk a little bit about that, having a point of view, just going out, whether it's a show, whatever your media is, right? Instead of just saying, oh, I'm just gonna try. I'm gonna make a show for everybody and wondering why nobody comments. Is it because they didn't actually have something to say? Like, let's. Let's be honest. We're hitting. We're hitting hard today. So help us, coach. Help us out with people who don't. Who don't hear anything because they're not really saying anything. I mean, you said it, brother. You know, it's if. If you make a podcast with a message that's for everybody, it's going to be heard by nobody. It's going to be reacted to by nobody. It's going to reach nobody. I never worried about the ignored part because, you know, when I was going through my lowest point ever alone, in terms of no friends, you know, family, nothing, it was just my wife, my kids, and me. Um, but when I was going through that, I had no Help. No help at all. And when I started Power Man, I started it with the idea. And I said in episode one, so anybody can go back and listen. Episode one. And I say these words exactly. And I've held to them for 266 episodes so far today. If one person, one person gets anything out of what I'm doing, then it's worth every single thing I'm doing. If I impact one life, and when you look at that and you just apply the compound effect to it, if every single one of us on this planet impacted one life, we would literally double the impact of the world. And that's how many billions of people. You know, it's. When you think about it like, hey, if all I do is talk to one guy, I didn't make a difference. Well, you know what? I might have made a difference to that one guy, you know, if he went home and he was better to his wife. If he went home and opened up the want ads and said, I need a better job. If he went home and he didn't yell at his kid and he took a breath first and said, you know what? I've had a hard day. I don't want to take it out on him. If he went home and it's tough to talk about, brother. If he went home and felt like he wanted to, you know, end it all and didn't, and I've heard that, then everything I did was worth it. Everything I did was worth it. I'll do. I'll do 500 episodes for that, for that one guy. That's what it's about. Don't know where this is coming from. I apologize. Usually takes me, you know, a little while to get worked up into almost losing. How dare you apologize for sharing truth. How dare you apologize for emotion? Now, again, this is where. Okay, so here's where I get to dig into. Like I alluded before we hit the record button about the bomb drops. I want to share with you and why this is so impactful for just us and has way more to do with what God is doing in both of our lives and lives of men and women that we. That this is about families, about the family of God. Right? My pastor, Pastor Steve Alessi, wrote a book about four or five years ago called 42. It was about the story of the 42 minutes that he was worked on after he had the Widowmaker heart attack and five paramedics worked on him for 42 minutes to keep him alive. That 16 years ago that the heart attack. And he has now dedicated his life to helping men to grow past their what we call the 42 moment. I have been stewarded it. Stewarded it. I can't talk there. I've been given the. The responsibility of helping to carry that message, first by translating his book into Spanish, which was a book, which is a language I don't speak, and then also helping to produce the podcast. The family business with Alessi is about the family of the podcast. So that all came out, me joining the church, becoming a podcaster, then becoming a podcast producer, so that I could eventually see the kind of impact that it's having on men, just like you. Now, I read that you had some type of experience. Where was it a year ago? Was it two years ago? Something like that, where God makes no mistakes. So talk a little bit about that, because I think the reason you're emotional is because you realize your life has purpose and meaning that you've been giving. And clearly the enemy was not happy with that. So he's tried many different ways to knock you on your back physically and mentally. So can you talk a little bit about, like, what you've overcome? Because someone else, again, just like my pastor in his 42 moment, someone else needs to hear that there's life on the other side. So tell me a little bit about that, because clearly, again, you're a man of faith that's still going after something tried to knock you down. I appreciate that. Yeah. It's like I said, I've had just a couple of very low moments in my life, and that was one of them. And it was about a year ago, and I really had no idea what was going on. I thought I was just, you know, had the flu or something like that, and I was, you know, battling it for a couple of weeks and was sitting there with my wife one night, and I realized that as I was sitting there, my breathing was getting more and more shallow with each breath, and I looked at her and said, you know, at this rate, I'm not gonna be breathing. We need to go to the hospital. And she, you know, mobilized, grabbed me, threw us both in the truck, ran some red lights, got me to the hospital. My math was pretty good because I walked into the hospital, walked into the ER and hit the floor, blacked out, stop breathing, done. It was. I was. I was it. So she got me there just in time to get in there, and, you know, they. They figured some things out. Turned out I had had been dealing with a worsening pneumonia for over a year, and it had just been filling up my lung a little bit along the way until the whole lung shut down, just stopped. And when the left lung shut down, the right one said, you know, uncle, I'm done. I'm not carrying all this on my own. And the breathing stopped. And, you know, it's kind of a funny thing when your breathing stops, so do you. So I could not take a breath. It was just awful. So, turned out they had to do a big major surgery on me. They tried everything to try and fix it without surgery, but they couldn't. And so it was a big, major surgery. Lucky to be here, even. The surgery probably should have taken me out, but it didn't. And my wife was there every minute that I was in there and taking care of everything else in the world. You know, my kids were there. And it absolutely changed my life that moment, looking back. And you always get to look back, right? You know, as long as you survive, you get to look back. God's been trying to get my attention for a while. He's been trying to get my attention for a long time, my friend. And you know, I'm hard headed. I'm Italian, right? So it takes a minute. But this was clearly him going, enough, enough, and saying, look, you got another shot, but let's get moving on it. I have things I need you to do. And from the time I came home, I mean, it was like a three month ordeal just to be able to walk around again. And I'm, I'm still not healed from it, to be honest with you. It's probably over a year of, of moving and healing and trying to rehab. But the I, I didn't really know what the mission was when I came out. It wasn't like I came out and there was a bright light and it was written in neon letters. It was, something's wrong. You can't go back to what you were doing. You can't. What you're doing doesn't work. Here's what you got to do. And I just started making some changes and, you know, really started appreciating my life and my wife and the. Where we needed to go and what we needed to do and what I wanted to do with my life. So, I mean, I had been doing podcasting, you know, part time. I had been doing, you know, coaching for a long time along with it, but I was still working other jobs, doing other things. And I just said, I'm done. I'm never working for anybody else again. I'm not wasting another minute of my life for somebody else. I'm just going to dig into this and see where this takes me. And I've been. I've been led, brother. Every single step of the way since then, I've been led, and it's all worked out one way or another. Even when I had no idea how it was going to work out, it worked out. You know, where's rent going to come from? I don't know. We'll figure it out. Keep moving forward. We came up with it. Idiotic stuff like that, where you just sort of go, how. Really? That sounds so ridiculous. No, not when you look back on it. And so my third podcast that I have going right now is just part of it. There's much bigger things from that that are in the works, that are coming, that I know I'm being called to do and to use my voice for. And, yeah, I'm on the path now, man. So you have to wait till the next episode to find out about all of this. Oh, exactly. Exactly. Because. Stay tuned. Stay tuned, brother. I am absolutely, like, just. I'm grateful. That's the word that's coming back to me. I mean, the Bible verse, I might mess it up. I don't have chapter and verse, but many are the plans of the man. But it's the Lord that establishes his steps. And so we have so many plans. And then my theme verse

is Psalm 25: 42:47

10, which all the paths said the Lord are full of mercy and truth to such who keep his commandments. Brother, there's been many paths you've taken, and yet God has been in every single one of them, including making sure that, you know, he rebuked that, you know, that. That sickness that tried to take you out. And that's where, again, I feel like there's so much. This has been ringing in my head. So forgive me, guys, if this has nothing to do with this. And I'm just, like, throwing out a whole bunch of things that, you know, the holy might be holy Spirit or the coffee or both, but there's purpose in a pattern, and there's pattern in every purpose. And the pattern that your life has taken has purpose. And you are literally, again, like you said as a coach, walking it out so that other people can follow the pattern. Because the pattern is, like you said, what's. What? What do we know? We don't know. We're going to do it. We're going to follow through. We're going to step up. We're going to be consistent. What's the plan? I don't know. We're gonna. We're gonna Step forward. The same pattern that I followed when I left my, my school, Pat. My school at 2005. Sorry, I think it was like, yeah, about 2005, I left that school system for good. Stepped away from that, then stepped out of full time ministry in 2009 and had no idea where I was going. Same thing. There's a pattern, but there's a purpose and a pattern. And we're all figuring this out because God is ordering our steps. So your example, brothers. Why I feel like we're already brothers from, from another mother, from however many miles away. We are. Absolutely. Because I see that pattern and we're united in that purpose. So with all this, you literally just like dropped a huge load of encouragement, like a truckload, just boom, on somebody's head right now. So we're going to finish up with this because this has to be a part two, right. We're going to do a sequel. Hopefully be jumping into our membership very soon. You guys could be able to hang out with him if you're in guiding Geeks360, our app. I am anointing him right now as our podcast creator expert. Because I'll be honest, I have not monetized my podcast fully. I'm not doing this full time. I do three shows. I work with several different things. But this is not my full time gig. So I am absolutely want to get more, you know, more of the nuts and bolts from you. We'll probably do that in a workshop or something like that in future love. But this is the, the, the, the catch. Not the catch, but this is the, you know, the tied up with the bow. If you could go back and talk to the Rory that was just getting married, that was just figuring out second time. By the way, I'm mentioning something because I know the first one was not, not that long, but when you found your wife, when you realized you had a message when you got in that first, you heard that first podcast and you're like, I got. I have a voice of an angel. Why am I listening to this guy? Because you do have the, the voice of. You know, I think of Gabriel, I think of God is looking for Gabriel or someone to blow to Trump. And do I think he's going to pick you? I do, I do. I think he's going to pick your voice. Wow, thank you for that. But what would you say to, to that guy? Because someone is where you were, someone is thinking they've got a message, realizing that they've got something to share and they haven't met you yet they haven't joined your program yet. So what would you say to the person who is. Where you were when I was 25. Yeah. Yeah. Right before. Yeah. Well, wait. I'll put the age. You can go wherever you want with the age. I'm just wondering, you know, who am I. Who am I talking to? How old am I in this thing? Or where in my life back when I made the decision to go to podcasting? Or. Yeah, I'd say. Right, right. When you start to realize there was. There was something that you had to say, there was something that you had to say. Now, follow me. Somebody else's platform. When you were like, wait a minute, this is something I should be saying. So what would you say to that person? I got you. That's a great question. I love the way you phrase that. So I just want to be careful, you know, I got to make sure I'm giving you the right answer. Hey, let's be clear. Let's be clear. Not clever, man. So it's all good. When. When I. Yeah. If I was talking to the guy who was first saying, man, I really need to share this message. I need to get this out. I don't want anybody ever to be alone. You don't have to deal with this. What I would say to that guy is absolutely do it. Don't doubt it. It's all going to work out. Hug your kids as much as possible. It's rough, man. You're killing me today. And love your wife and appreciate your wife through this whole thing because you get to that point where you think that you treat each other like partners more than anything else, you know, instead of treating her like the queen that she deserves to be treated like. And that's a. It's a very big mistake a lot of men make, and it's a mistake that I made. It's one of the biggest that things that I would go back and change. So I would tell myself that. Appreciate your wife, love your kids much as possible, and do not stop and start now. That's what I would tell. And I believe in faith that someone literally just heard it. And just like, you got those 97 comments, whether we see them or not, right? Whether we see the results or not. Again, God's word does not return void, man. This is why you are, again, a brother. And I believe a brother is born for adversity and a friend loves at all times. So someone you just spoken to right now. So thank you, Rory, bro. Like, look, I'm just gonna let the Holy Spirit deal with the Holy Spirit's already done. We're not gonna try to add any more bows to it. God bless you, brother. I know this is not the last time we'll do this, but thank you so much for sharing your heart, your wisdom, and your. Your just everything that you are as a man. I honor you. I thank you for being the man that you are. I thank you for being the Father that you are. I thank you for stepping up and being the man of God that you've been called to be and have not been told, man. So get ready. Buckle up. Thank you, brother. I appreciate that. Bless you. Thank you for.