Community is one of life’s most valuable but increasingly scarce resources. While we hear about a supposed epidemic of male loneliness, many men still resist joining groups or struggle to maintain involvement after initial enthusiasm wanes.
Today on the show, Frank Schwartz will help us understand the barriers to building male community and how to overcome them. Frank is the CEO of F3, a free, all-volunteer men’s leadership organization that uses workouts to bring men together and supports hundreds of decentralized chapters worldwide.
In the first half of our conversation, Frank explains the psychology behind men’s hesitation to join groups, how to navigate the “wish dream” of idealized community, and why expecting perfection kills participation. We then discuss what makes leadership in a decentralized group different from traditional hierarchies, the importance of embracing messiness, and why allowing men to make their own decisions creates stronger leaders than giving them a rulebook to follow. We end our conversation with Frank’s perspective on cultivating patience as a leader and how to measure success when building a community of men.
Resources Related to the Podcast
- F3
- AoM Podcast #324: How Fitness, Fellowship, and Faith Are the Cure for Sad Clown Syndrome
- Q Source: The F3 Manual of Virtuous Leadership by David “Dredd” Redding
- AoM article on phronesis/practical wisdom
- Dying Breed article on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s vision of community
Connect With Frank Schwartz
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Read the Transcript
Brett McKay: Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Community is one of life’s most valuable but increasingly scarce resources. While we hear about a supposed epidemic of male loneliness, many men still resist joining groups or struggle to maintain involvement after initial enthusiasm wanes. Today on the show, Frank Schwartz will help us understand the barriers to building male community, and how to overcome them. Frank is the CEO of F3, a free all volunteer men’s leadership organization, that uses workouts to bring men together and supports hundreds of decentralized chapters worldwide. In the first half of our conversation, Frank explains the psychology behind men’s hesitation to join groups, how to navigate the wish stream of idealized community, and why expecting perfection, kills participation. We then discuss what makes leadership in a decentralized group different from traditional hierarchies, the importance of embracing messiness, and why allowing men to make their own decisions creates stronger leaders than giving them a rulebook to follow. We end our conversation with Frank’s perspective on cultivating patience as a leader, and how to measure success when building a community of men. After the show’s over, check out our shownotes at aom.is/mensgroups.
Frank Schwartz, welcome to the show.
Frank Schwartz: Hey, thanks so much for having me man. I appreciate it.
Brett McKay: So you are, is it the CEO or president of F3?
Frank Schwartz: This is a very good question. And up until a couple of years ago, I could have said president, but now CEO. We kind of eliminated the president position. And the thing about F3 is, and guys who are familiar know, but those who aren’t, everything’s kind of very made up. So we have sort of different names for what we do that are a little bit kind of inside baseball. And so, yes, CEO on paper, but the official title within F3 is Nantan.
Brett McKay: Okay.
Frank Schwartz: Which is an Apache word kind of meaning cultural and spiritual leader.
Brett McKay: All right. So you’re the CEO of F3. We’ve had the guys who started F3 on the podcast. This was back in 2017, episode number 324. And we’ll link to that in show notes. But for those who aren’t familiar, what is F3?
Frank Schwartz: So F3, it’s a free men’s leadership group that uses workouts to trick you into coming out so we can teach you about leadership. That’s really what it is. But essentially it is to men’s workout group. Our stated mission is to plant, to grow and to serve small workout groups for men, in order to invigorate male community leadership. The founders, as you mentioned, Dave Redding, Tim Whitmire, Dredd and OBT, affectionately known within F3, kind of looked around and said, “Hey, we see a lot of guys at church and other civic organizations and at work, and whatever. A lot of guys just standing around with their hands in their pockets, and nobody doing anything about the world around them. And influencing their community, and there’s just not a lot of leading happening.” And Dave with his special forces background said, “Hey, the place I learned the most about leadership, and the way I think we could spread leadership throughout our communities and in our world, is via training, physical training.” It’s a great place, pretty low risk to do that. And that wasn’t the intention when it started, which again, you’d probably go back and listen and hear it, but when the intention when it started, but it is kind of where it ended up.
So the short answer to that very long answer I gave is, it’s a place where men can come into community with one another and get physically fit and learn leadership.
Brett McKay: And again, it’s all free, man. You can go to their website and you can find, there’s like chapters all over the world at this point. How many chapters are there at this point?
Frank Schwartz: Ooh, I should have had that much more readily available on the tip of my tongue. I think it’s about 450, maybe just shy of 450.
Brett McKay: Okay. And so, typically the workouts are early in the morning before work, and it’s a bootcamp style workout, calisthenics, things like that?
Frank Schwartz: Yeah, typically body weight, although some places, there’s kettlebells or sandbags and some of that kind of stuff that guys use. But yeah, typically, if you sort of shot at the middle of the curve on an F3 workout, it’s gonna happen about 5:15, 5:30, sometimes a little earlier, sometimes a little later, and it’s gonna be a lot of body weight and calisthenic type, some running, pushups, sit-ups, pull-ups, and then really get a lot of whatever we can find.
Brett McKay: Yeah. So you do the workout, and then there’s also a fellowship aspect to it, a leadership aspect to this. Tell us more about that leadership component, because again, the workout is the hook. That’s like the Trojan horse for that other stuff.
Frank Schwartz: Right, yeah. It’s just the way we sneakily trick you into coming, ’cause you go, hey, free workout, and a guy goes, aha, I could try that. What’s the problem? So the three Fs are fitness, fellowship, and faith. And really, we don’t have a program per se, but again, if you were to kind of shoot at the middle and go, “Well, what’s typical?” Guys get together early in the morning, and work out together. It’s a pretty strenuous, pretty vigorous workout, generally speaking. And then we get together for what we call a cafeteria afterward. You hang out, you make friends, and you get deeper in fellowship with one another, because, and you know this probably as well or better than most anyone, community is really where we’re gonna save the country, where we’re gonna do our best work, is in community with one another. So we put men in community with one another. And then what happens inevitably, once you do that, is guys start looking at their lives and go, “Well, now that I’ve got these things more or less squared away, I’ve lost some weight, I’ve got some friends. Well, now what? What am I supposed to do now?”
And they start looking outside themselves. Now that they are more settled, they start looking outside themselves and saying, “Well, what can I do for others?” And that’s the big question of faith. What is it that exists outside yourself, and how can you live in such a way that you can kind of wear yourself out in the service of that thing?” So we don’t make any kind of determination about, well, a guy ought to believe in Jesus Christ or a guy ought to believe in Buddha or a guy ought to believe in whatever. We just say, you’ve got to believe in something bigger than yourself in order to be a virtuous leader. And that’s what we do. And so, a lot of times in those meetings after workouts, guys will study. They might study certain kinds of books or whatever. We have a book that Dave wrote, Dredd wrote, called “The QSource” And it sort of outlines our overall leadership philosophy and framework. And so, guys will study that together, and we’ll discuss that together. We’ve got podcasts about it and all kinds of stuff. So I wouldn’t say there’s like a super formal program, but we do have what we call stuff worth trying.
And so, you kind of get in there, and you’re like, “Oh, hey, I don’t know if this will work for you or not, but here’s the framework, and maybe try it, until you find something better.” But that’s the idea, is to create leaders amongst men, and to take those things that we learn in what we call the gloom, which is that those pre-dawn hours when your family’s sleeping and work hasn’t started calling yet, those things that we learn there and take them home, take them to the community so we can be better people.
Brett McKay: And the leadership structure of F3 is unique. It’s decentralized. Tell us more about that, how that works.
Frank Schwartz: Absolutely. And this is conceptually, I think Dave and Tim early on were like, we can’t lead everywhere. We can’t be everywhere. And if really what we’re called to do is to create leaders, then we’re gonna have to hand off the power here as time goes on. And so, the idea is that, if you start making rules, then you have to make more rules to enforce those rules, and it kind of becomes this big spiraling thing. And then pretty soon, you’ve got 5,000-page bills getting introduced into Congress, right? So we live by a mission, a credo, and five core principles. And the idea is, that every man has been born and put on this earth to be a leader. That is his job. That is what he has been created to do. And so, what we try and do is help guys to recapture that. We want men to lean into that part of themselves, and to figure out how to not just lead a workout well or to even manage something well, but to truly influence others for good, in every place that they’re in.
Brett McKay: Okay. And so, it’s all volunteer?
Frank Schwartz: I feel like I didn’t answer the question very well.
Brett McKay: No.
Frank Schwartz: Right. So to decentralize it, right?
Brett McKay: Yeah.
Frank Schwartz: So since every man is a leader, we say, okay, then I can’t be in charge of where you are. Because Brett, you’re in where? Tulsa, right?
Brett McKay: Correct.
Frank Schwartz: Yeah. So I don’t know what’s happening in Tulsa. I can’t tell you what to do in Tulsa. I don’t have any idea of what the right thing to do will be where you are. So I have to teach you how to lead, and give you the power and the empowerment, I guess really, to say, hey, you make those decisions. I think that honestly, not to put too fine a point on it, but that’s been one of the best things I learned for myself from F3 is that, I don’t need permission to be a man. I don’t need permission to be a leader. I think that’s something that I think men and maybe people in general, kind of crave in our world anymore. We want someone else to tell us what to do. I don’t know whether it’s because we just don’t wanna make the decision, or because we want it to be their fault if it doesn’t go well or something. [laughter] I don’t know. But we don’t seem to wanna take the personal responsibility. And F3 teaches us that there isn’t anybody else responsible but you.
Brett McKay: And you’re the CEO, but again, this is volunteer. You’re not paid to be the CEO?
Frank Schwartz: Yeah, no.
Brett McKay: This is all voluntary?
Frank Schwartz: No salary here.
Brett McKay: Yeah. Well, tell us about your experience with F3. When did you join and why did you join?
Frank Schwartz: So I joined in late 2014. And the reason I joined is because I was overweight, and I had sleep apnea, I had high blood pressure. I had high cholesterol. And my doctor was like, “Hey, guess what? You’re a stroke waiting to happen.” So I’ve got to get you healthy somehow. We want you to live for your young kids. And I’ll send you the picture. You’ll love it. But essentially, I was like, I got to get in shape somehow. So I started going to the gym, but I kept hearing about this F3 thing. Kept hearing about it, kept hearing about it, kept hearing about it. And finally, I was like, fine, I’ll just go. And so, I showed up one Saturday, and I was hooked. I was absolutely hooked. There was just something very magical about the fact that it’s always outdoors no matter what. It was freezing cold. Like horrifyingly cold, ’cause it was November when I went out for my first one on a Saturday. And there was just something invigorating about like, we’re outside in the elements. And then at the end of every F3 workout, we have something called a COT, or a Circle of Trust.
And it’s a place for men to kind of lay down their burdens next to their brothers, where we can pick it up together. The old saying, a burden shared is half a burden, a joy shared is twice the joy, something along those lines. And so, it’s a place where you can kind of lay down your burden and say, hey, help. And I’ve heard everything in those things. But there was something about that end piece, laying my hand on another guy, ’cause you get in kind of a big circle and you kind of huddle up and then feeling that energy from other men, who were in the same spot I was trying to figure this out together. It was just magical. It was magical. So I kind of jumped all in, both feet and ended up finding myself in just weird coincidental places. [chuckle] If you’re a believer in coincidence, then it was coincidental. For me, it was providential. And I just would find myself bumping into the right kind of people, and just volunteering and jumping in to say, yeah, no, I can help with that or whatever it might be around sort of the F3 universe.
And then pretty soon, became really good friends with Dredd, Dave Redding, and we kind of figured out how we’re gonna do this together. So, there was a guy he handed it off to, and then that guy, stepped down and handed it off to me. And that’s the way it’ll always go forever. And I think, kind of to touch on both things, how I got involved and why I got involved is, A, how it was almost by accident, and how I became the leader of this whole deal, I think also was almost, again, coincidence or however you wanna look at it, but almost by accident. Where I just sort of right place, right time. And I think God put me where he wanted me to be. But I think that the nice thing or maybe the nice thing, but the beautiful thing about this is that, I will serve for a period of time, and then I will have accomplished what I need to, and I’ll hand it off to somebody else.
And so, to kind of harken back to the how do you decentralize this thing is, first thing you have is a mission. Second thing you have is no ego. I can’t lead, the mission must lead. The mission must take us to the next level. The mission must take us where we wanna go. I’ll help make decisions along the way, to support that mission or to move us forward toward that mission. But ultimately, that’s how we decentralize it. Is we only commit ourselves to these very few things. We don’t try and run an organization. We try and keep a mission in men’s hearts, and they’ll run the organization. They’ll figure it out where they are. You guys will figure it out there in Tulsa.
Brett McKay: I’m curious, like how, your life has obviously changed because of your involvement with F3, but how have you seen other men’s lives change during your involvement with F3?
Frank Schwartz: Sure. There’s easy ways, obvious ways, guys lose weight, they get a little more fit, they start looking better in the mirror, their health gets better, their mindset gets better. That’s the easy stuff. We have seen things in F3 where, look, and one of our core principles is that it’s open to all men, no matter what. So number one is it’s always free, as you mentioned. Number two is that it’s open to all men. And when we say all men, we absolutely mean it, Brett. And so, we have convicted felons working out next to billionaires in the same workout. You’d never know. You’d never know. And so, the way that this changes men or the things that it does, is it turns a light on in their hearts again, because it doesn’t matter what your lifestyle has been or will be. It doesn’t matter where you’ve been, where you came from. What matters is that you’re a man. When you are a man, you have this need inside you. You have this desire inside you. And the world has a tendency to try and figure out a way to quiet that spark down.
To get that drive tamped down so that we can control you, and we can make sure that you become non-dangerous to the things that we’re trying to do. So F3 kind of wakes you up. And so, we hear stories of guys who beat alcoholism. We’ve saved marriages, and guys attribute it to F3. And people who have been steeped in addiction, who have come out of it because they say, “Hey, being around you guys has made me realize I got to do better in my life.” And turn their lives around. So it’s almost innumerable. The number of stories that we could tell, that are out there in guys that in a very acute way, “I changed my life today.” That’s almost innumerable. Probably in some ways, for every single guy, however many there are, we estimate something like 75,000, 80,000 guys. So there’s 80,000 different stories that we could tell of how it impacted a man’s life and made his life better.
Brett McKay: That’s awesome. So I wanted to bring you on the podcast today to talk about leading groups, like leading men’s groups or even just forming a group of guys who, you’re trying to get some friends going. So I know a lot of our listeners, that’s something that they’ve been trying to do. They struggle with, and they run into these issues and they just feel like it’s impossible. So I wanna tap into your expertise with your experience, establishing the culture in F3 of where guys get together. And you also have other leadership experience as well. And maybe you can find some insights from F3, that we can apply to other domains of our lives ’cause I think you can. So the first question is, you hear a lot about the male loneliness crisis. Men today, they seem incredibly lonely. They’re looking for friends. But at the same time, men, they seem resistant to joining a community group or even getting things going with another guy just to hang out. What do you think is going on there? What’s the tension going on there? What do you think’s behind that?
Frank Schwartz: I tell you, here’s what I think, and I could be wrong, but I think that the hesitancy on the part of men to do this kind of thing is, well, a number of things. One is fear. Terrifying. He’s afraid to fail. He’s afraid to fail, and he’s afraid to have people criticize him. He’s afraid to say, “I’m making a stand, because that’s not an easy thing to do.” And I think guys are afraid of that. And I don’t blame them. It ain’t fun, to have other people be like, you suck. So I think there’s some of that. I think there’s some fear and some trepidation around doing that kind of thing. But I think also, it’s kind of like we were alluding to before, the thing that I think keeps guys from doing this, is they really believe that there’s some right way to do it that they’ve been just kept out of the loop. They just don’t get to know what that right way is. And other people seem to be doing it just fine, but gosh, why won’t anyone write the book so I can just follow the program?
Well, the problem is there’s no program. And if you believe there’s a program, that just means you’re following somebody else’s dream. You’re following somebody else’s way of doing it. And so, I think that to some degree, it’s like, why won’t a guy do this? Well, ’cause he thinks there’s a right way to do it, and he’s afraid to fail. I think that’s a lot of it. And I think guys get lonely because they have been convinced that somehow that that’s what they are, and that that’s the epidemic. And so, we just believe it. We’re like, well, I guess we’re lonely. If they say so, I guess we’re lonely. They’re the ones doing the research. Or maybe sometimes I think too, they’re like, I’m afraid of putting myself out there. I don’t really wanna get hurt. I don’t really wanna whatever. I don’t wanna lead. I don’t wanna have to take on all that responsibility and all that kind of stuff. But I also think, that one of the things that keeps a guy from feeling that connection or wanting that or whatever it might be, or to start a group like this is, he just thinks that, again, since he thinks there’s some way to do it right, that he shouldn’t start until he knows that exact way. When the fact of the matter is, and again, this probably as well or better than anyone, is you won’t know until you get out there and start.
Brett McKay: Right.
Frank Schwartz: You just got to start. You just got to do something. And I think the momentum will help carry you, but this alleged epidemic of loneliness, and I do think it exists. I think that people do feel lonely. I think it gets solved by doing things, by being out there and being with people.
Brett McKay: Yeah, I think you hear people talk about a lot like, oh, well, we no longer have any third places anymore to go to, et cetera. And it’s like, well, you can make a third place, like find a park and do a workout. Nothing’s stopping you from doing that.
Frank Schwartz: Nothing, it’s funny. And not that you and I frequent Starbucks as a whole lot necessarily, but I love that the new CEO brought mugs back.
Brett McKay: Yeah.
Frank Schwartz: Right?
Brett McKay: Yeah.
Frank Schwartz: I don’t know if he has the intention of turning it back into more of a gathering place or a third place or whatever you wanna call it. I don’t know. But nothing says, get out of here, like a paper cup with a sleeve, that they shove at the end of a counter and they just yell your name. They don’t want you to stay. They want you to get out. They got to turn tables, man, ’cause they got money to make. ‘Cause they got investors and shareholders to answer to. And so, you don’t have to wait for Starbucks to create a third place for you, although I do see it starting to trend more maybe back that way. You don’t have to wait for church. And you and I both know, theoretically, that should be a great third place to do that. It doesn’t end up that way sometimes. And so, sometimes you just have to take matters into your own hands. I was telling somebody this morning, actually, men look around people, look around a lot and go, somebody ought to do something about that.
The thing that we teach and that we talk about a ton in F3 for sure is, hey, if you think that thought, the instant you think that thought, the next thought ought to be looking in the mirror and going, wait, I just remembered, I’m that somebody.
Brett McKay: Yeah, totally agree. It’s that whole Tocquevillian ethos, Alexis de Tocqueville talked about in Democracy in America, talked about, when he came to America, he noticed how Americans at the time, if there was like a tree in the middle of a road, they would just form a group together and solve it. They wouldn’t wait around. He said, well, in Europe, they would like, wait, okay, who are we supposed to go to to get this thing?
Frank Schwartz: Which government agency is gonna fix this? Yeah.
Brett McKay: And I feel like we’ve kind of lost that. We’ve kind of become like Europeans in the 19th century that Tocqueville was criticizing.
Frank Schwartz: I think you’re right. I think you’re right. And I think that’s why I’m so grateful that, well, I say I found F3, but I think F3 found me, to a large degree. And I think that’s the way it always goes. If you want something good in your life, you’ll either find this or it’ll find you. But that’s been the best thing is it’s like, guys no longer, guys that I hang out with anyway, we don’t sit around going, somebody ought to do that. It’s done before anybody had the thought of whether or not it should get done. ‘Cause we knew it should get done.
Brett McKay: We’re going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. And now back to the show. Something I’ve seen in different organizations, whether it’s like a sort of informal group of individuals, just guys trying to get together to do a workout together, a poker night once a month, or even more structured organizations like at a church group, you’ll see this phenomenon, you’ll get it going and then you’ll have guys who enthusiastically show up once or twice, and then they just vanish. You’re like, man, what happened? What’s going on? So what do you think is going on there? Is it a failure of unmet expectations or something else going on?
Frank Schwartz: I think it’s a similar problem. You know what January 19th is? I think it’s the 19th.
Brett McKay: Yeah, it’s like Quitter’s Day or whatever?
Frank Schwartz: Quitter’s Day, right. [laughter] Exactly. So I think some of it’s that. Everybody starts with great intentions, but boy, when the rubber meets the road and it starts to get hard, I don’t wanna show up for that. Someone’s supposed to… I’m supposed to be entertained, Brett. My phone taught me that. I’m supposed to be a consumer. The commercials, my YouTube pre-rolls taught me that. I’m supposed to just eat and drink and be merry. I’m not supposed to go do stuff. I’m not supposed to be something. And so, I think guys show up, and it happens in F3, as you might imagine. Some guys come out and they blaze out, and I always get nervous. The guys who are just a little too enthusiastic, and I want to be like, eh, you’re gonna need to save some for the fifth lap here, biggin’. You need to pump the brakes just a little bit because consistency, is gonna beat energy every time.
Brett McKay: Yeah.
Frank Schwartz: Forever and ever, amen. Right?
Brett McKay: Yeah.
Frank Schwartz: Simon Sinek talks about the infinite game. I don’t know if you read that one, but it’s a fantastic book. And essentially, he kind of says, most of us run around with this sort of finite mindset that there’s winners and there’s losers. And there are in sports, in places where there is a definite ending, a finite time period or whatever it might be, but there’s no winning in life. It is not a race. It never has been a race. It’s a journey that we’re all on together, theoretically. Or we should be. And I think it’s part of our culture where it’s like, well, I showed up to the gym three times, I’m not in shape. I can’t figure this out, I quit. And you go, well, no, you have to show up for months and years. And then you have to stay at it. There’s no arrival. Again, it’s this finite mindset of, well, I thought after three times it was gonna be perfect for me. And you go, well, the only way it was gonna get perfect for you brother, is if you stood up and made it perfect for you.
You have to do it. You have to be the one responsible. You have to be the one involved. And so, even if you showed up to church or to the poker night or whatever, and after a couple of times you were like, this was great, maybe something didn’t go your way and you’re like, well, screw that. I’m supposed to have everything I want all the time. Man, what a finite mindset. You’re just, you’re setting yourself up for failure. But if you recognize that everything you do has purpose, because it’s part of this long and infinite journey toward your ultimate self-actualization or whatever term you wanna put on it, but for you to become what it is that you were meant to become, if you recognize that, and you can kind of, I hate the term, but lean into that. Man, your life becomes infinitely better because you realize you’re playing a long game. You’re playing a very different game than other people are playing. And that’s what I think is the great thing about F3, and really Art of Manliness and a lot of the things that are out there, that we’re doing is because it isn’t a finite thing.
Everything that you see and encounter is a tool to help you on this journey, and to make you a better person as you go. And I think people forget that, and they think, well, I didn’t win after the third time, so I don’t wanna do that. I wanna go where I feel good and happy and get my dopamine hit all the time.
Brett McKay: Yeah. No, I’ve seen that in my experience with different groups, whether it’s a church or even just friend groups, or we even see this on The Strenuous Life within our geographic groups. I think some guys, they go into these, like, oh man, here’s a group of guys doing things. I want to be part of this community. And then I think they have what’s called, my wife, she wrote this great series on our Substack, Dying Breed, about Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s ideas on how to live in a spiritual community. And Bonhoeffer talked about one problem he sees, is that a lot of people have, he calls it the wish dream of community, this idealized version of what it should be. And then once they actually encounter the reality of it, it doesn’t meet that. And they’re like, this sucks. It’s not as great. I’m not getting what I thought I’d get out of this. I’m out of here. And I’ve seen that in so many groups, where people, I think they have too high expectations or they have this overly idealized version, it’s gonna be like a Norman Rockwell painting.
Everyone’s just in the barber shop, singing, playing the banjo, and it’s this community. And community can be that, but it’s also, you have to deal with just annoying people. You have to deal with friction. And it’s like, I tell people, if you want community, you have to want all of it. You have to want the good stuff and also the frustrating parts of it as well.
Frank Schwartz: Oh man. Preach as they would say.
Brett McKay: Yeah.
Frank Schwartz: Because that’s exactly it. We’ve been taught to think, and I don’t know, maybe this existed before and we just didn’t know, because it wasn’t as prevalent and it wasn’t in our face like it is now with social media. But certainly, social media has made it so that we look around and I look around and we go, well, but they’re in Italy again. We think that only the good parts get to exist and if there’s bad parts it’s because we did something wrong or the thing is wrong or whatever because the lie is that everything is, it’s utopia all the time. But the messy is what teaches you the things you need to know, so that you can refine and make it better as you go. So when you show up to the whatever it is or if you start the whatever it is, and I can’t tell you, and you probably did the same thing before AOM or Strenuous Life or any of those things came along too. I’ve started, I don’t even know how many things that have just gone out either in a nice blaze of glory failure or a slow whimper into the death in the corner failure.
I’ve started all kinds of groups. I’ve tried all kinds of crazy things to try and get done what I wanna get done or to bring people together or whatever it might be. And then I just look and go, well, it’s kind of that Thomas Edison idea. I didn’t invent a light bulb. I invented 10,000 ways to not make a light bulb. [laughter] I didn’t discover the light bulb or whatever it was. And I feel similarly. I didn’t discover how to lead a men’s group. I discovered lots of ways to do it wrong. And then, I’ve tried to practice on the other end how to maybe not do it so wrong this time.
Brett McKay: No, that makes sense. Yeah, it’s continual learning, Kaizen, or whatever you wanna call it.
Frank Schwartz: Sure.
Brett McKay: Talking about your experiences forming communities, can it be intentionally engineered or does it have to be random or serendipity or is it a mixture of both?
Frank Schwartz: I’m gonna say, yeah, it’s probably a mixture of both to some degree. I don’t like the word engineered, just because I think it implies that there is something that you can build. I want my bridges engineered, ’cause I don’t want them to break. We don’t want a lot of failure when it comes to bridges. So I don’t mind failure when it comes to people, because that’s life. That’s just part of how we do it. So I think intentionally engineered, maybe not engineered, but does it have to be intentional? Boy, I tell you what, it better be. It better be. ‘Cause it can’t be complete chaos and just hope for the best. I think just like any good leader or any good leadership model, you’ve got to have a mission in mind. You’ve got to have an end state in mind. Where are we headed? What is it that we’re trying to accomplish here? And not just tasks, but what, again, going back to Cynic, what he might say is a just cause. What is that thing that is much bigger than all of us that we’re trying to get to?
And if we have a good sense of what that is, then we can be intentional toward that. And then what you have to do, I think is you have to allow for the chaos around you. So you be intentional about the things that are supposed to be controlled, which is adherence to mission maybe, or enforcing standards when it comes to like, hey, you’re not living the core principles or whatever. But that’s more of an arm around a guy and telling him in a one-on-one kind of thing. But then I think you have to allow for the chaos around you and the serendipitous accidents or whatever you wanna call them. And it’s actually a good example, in a way, to harken back to the early days and kind of the founding of F3. And I don’t remember, it’s been a while since I’ve listened to the original podcast that you were talking about from ’15 or ’17, whatever it was. But the guy, the group that this sort of broke off from, was a guy who wanted to control things.
He was capping the membership. He was the one leading every time, stuff like that. But what was recognized was, if I let go of control, and if I let go of the leadership and if I simply teach others to lead, rather than try and be the leader all the time and if I adapt to the circumstances that are in front of me and incorporate them, then I’ll come out with a better product. If it had only gone the way that Dave and Tim and even myself, if I was only willing to accept the things that I think are good ideas, we’d die. We’d die. I have some good ideas every once in a while, but that’s why the other thing I would people who are starting groups, don’t do it by yourself. Don’t do it by yourself. You can be the person that has most of the vision or you might be the good organizer or whatever, but by golly, you better find some people who have some complementary skill sets and mindsets and bring them in, and you’ve got to influence them and love them into buying into the dream and the mission of what you’re trying to get done.
‘Cause, there’s no way I could do this thing by myself. So I embrace the chaos, because either A, I’ll get stronger as a man or a leader, or B, I’ll learn some stuff that will actually make the group much stronger. There might be ideas that it’s like, oh, well that actually is a whole different direction we might take things that we hadn’t thought of before. If it was up to me or if it was just up to my vision or our initial thoughts, it would be engineered to failure.
Brett McKay: That makes sense. It makes total sense. I’m curious if you’ve seen this problem in groups or in F3, ’cause I’ve seen it in groups that I’ve belonged to. Everyone joins a group for different reasons. You think they’re all joining for the same reason, but oftentimes they’re not. I’m sure for F3, it’s the same thing. Some guys, they just want the workout. Others are there for the friends. Others are there for the leadership training. I’ve seen this in other groups where I belong to, where you think, oh, you’re here for this thing, and then you see them getting really persnickety about another issue. It’s like, oh, actually you’re not here for that thing. And then it causes all this conflict. So how do you balance competing ends in a group?
Frank Schwartz: Well, I often say if it was easy, we wouldn’t need leaders. You got to recognize that any time you do one thing, you’re gonna get dynamically more of it, and dynamically less of something else. And so, there is always this eternal tension in leadership of figuring out all the different competing factors. So one thing I would say is, yes, everyone joins a group for their own reason, but they stay typically for a very similar reason. And I think ultimately for a successful group, I think they have to stay for the mission. If they’re dedicated to the mission, if they see those things and if they’ve experienced something in that group where they go, no, no, but I understand what we’re really trying to get done here, then you can look past a lot of the other stuff. Dave introduced me to something he called the Augustinian Code, although apparently it’s dubious as to whether or not St. Augustine actually said it. And that is in essentials, we will have unity. In non-essentials, we will have liberty. But in all things, we will have charity. And so, I think you have a desire and a dedication and a focus on a mission, and then a guy joins for whatever reason he joins for.
But I think he stays because he says, no, I understand that there’s stuff that is greater than me, these things that are bigger than me. Those are things that I serve. I take myself out of it. And then he stays because he wants the same thing we want, which is, in our case, to help build leaders and to unlock men’s hearts and minds so that they can be maximally effective in their areas of influence, whatever that might be. So I think that’s the answer.
Brett McKay: Yeah, I think the key there is just communicate the mission constantly. And…
Frank Schwartz: That’s all I do.
0:32:36.2 Brett McKay: Yeah, and if you think you’ve communicated it enough, you probably haven’t. So in a traditional leadership setting, say like a company or even a church, there’s typically a clear hierarchy, like president, vice presidents, et cetera. F3 doesn’t have that in these groups. So what does leadership look like in a decentralized volunteer community like F3? ‘Cause I’m sure, there’s lessons we can take from F3 to any other voluntary group that you might belong to.
Frank Schwartz: Well, that is our hope. In fact, we would like you to take it to the non-voluntary groups that you belong to as well. ‘Cause I think there’s things that we can teach about leadership that are definitely applicable in every area of life, even those that are non-voluntary. But to your point, I think the number one thing to remember is, you said, what is decentralized leadership? It looks messy. That’s what it looks like. [laughter] To have no leader, set person that you’re like, well, he just told me, I guess I have to do it, is messy. And it’s funny because this is something that came up early on in my sort of serving at a national level in F3 was, one of the guys got really frustrated and he was like, “What are the men thinking? Why can’t they just do the thing that I want them to do? What are they thinking?” And I had to say, I was like, well, I think they think that they’re free to lead. [laughter] I think this is your fault. You taught them, that they’re leaders and then when they do the thing, they’re trying to lead, you get mad at them.
So it’s kind of funny. But I think that we want you to recognize in a decentralized situation, that every person ultimately is responsible for the outcome of their own lives. And so, if they’re leading a workout that day, yeah, they might be responsible for the individual outcome of that workout. And they may have sort of positions or kind of different areas of responsibility or something within a region or group of F3 or whatever. I have a different job, I guess, technically, than maybe some others. But ultimately, it isn’t that one job is more important than another. It’s understanding that A, if I called the guys in Tulsa and said, hey, you’re gonna do this for your workout tomorrow. When they stopped laughing, we could probably have a discussion about it. Right?
Brett McKay: Right.
Frank Schwartz: I can’t tell anyone what to do. I wouldn’t even pretend to. I wouldn’t attempt it, because number one, it’s not my job. Number two, they understand now, that they’re the ones with the responsibility. And coming from me, it would be comical, because they ask me questions all the time. Guys ask questions like, well, how old should a kid be before we let him come to an F3 workout? Man, you’re looking for a rule and I get that and I understand why you want it. But ultimately, you have to make that decision. You’re the one responsible. And I know that frustrates you, but that’s just the way that it is. I can’t tell you what to do. So my job is not to tell you what to do. My job is to stand and to help you discover the right answer that you already know or that you have in your heart. Or what is the answer that aligns most with the mission that we theoretically all believe in? That kind of a thing. And so, I think it looks messy, but it also looks like just a lot of love, a lot of influence. I don’t remember how many times I’ve not answered a question to a guy, but suddenly at the end of our conversation, he seems to know what to do.
Brett McKay: No, I’ve had that experience too with The Strenuous Life.
Frank Schwartz: Yeah, right.
Brett McKay: I’ll get questions from guys like, well, does this count for this requirement? Or if I do this, will it count? Or how about if I do this for our group? Is that okay? And we have this guiding principle in The Strenuous Life. I’m sure Strenuous Life listeners know what I’m about to say. Phronesis, which comes from the Greek, ancient Greeks, and it’s basically practical wisdom. It’s like knowing what the right thing to do for the right reason, the right time, for the right purpose. And I just tell people, use your phronesis, man. Use your brain. You’ve got it. I trust you. You can make that decision.
Frank Schwartz: It’s in there.
Brett McKay: And a lot of guys, they get frustrated with that, ’cause they just wanna be told exactly what to do. I’m like, I’m not gonna do that. I want you to develop this capacity to make decisions and use your judgment.
Frank Schwartz: Yeah. I think that fundamentally, and this is something that I think is so critical to leadership of any kind, certainly of any small group, and very, very certainly of any sort of volunteer-type organization, like what we’re doing out here. It’s a different one when you got a boss and a boss can just tell you what to do or they can threaten you to get fired or whatever. That’s not leadership. That’s just management. And so, if you’re gonna be in real leadership, I think another thing that we forget amongst the many, is that this is a love endeavor. This is a love endeavor. And our world has taught us that, if I love you, that I will kind of plow the road ahead of you and you never have to worry about anything. I will accept you exactly as you are, and I will let you do whatever you want because that’s love. But it’s not, it’s permissiveness. And permissiveness actually is it’s own kind of sin in my estimation. And so, I think that what you’re talking about there, that’s real love.
Real love is loving you enough to let you fail. It’s loving you enough to let you figure it out and struggle through it and make your own decision. Dude, if I could just tell my kids exactly what to do, and have them do it, my life would be infinitely easier. Infinitely easier. It is messy and horrifying, that I send them on their way and I’m like, and they come to me and they’re like, dad, what should I do? And I look at them and I go, you’ve been taught how to make decisions. I think you should do that. They don’t love that. [laughter]
Brett McKay: Yeah.
Frank Schwartz: As you might imagine. But that’s how I answer the things to the guys in F3 too. They’re like, well, what should we do? I think you should employ those tactics and those techniques that you’ve learned along the way on how to make decisions, and you should do that. Because I can’t tell you and I should not tell you. In fact, I love you too much to tell you. You have to know for yourself. If I tell you, it’s what I think, if it goes wrong, then it’s my fault, if it goes right, then it was my success somehow, and I love you too much. You get to do this. This is your deal.
Brett McKay: How should leaders of small groups of men, whether it’s a church or you got a book club or whatever, how should they define success?
Frank Schwartz: That’s a good question. Every group is gonna have it’s own definition, I’m sure. And so, I would say, success looks like adherence to whatever that mission is. So for me, how about this? How about I answer it this way? For F3, here’s what I think success looks like. And guys all over the country and even our board sometimes and certainly from outside organizations, look and they’re like, well, how are you measuring success? And I’m like, well, that’s a good question. It sounds like you probably have an opinion about that. Why don’t you tell me what you think? And they’re like, well, growth numbers. Like how many men are in F3? You should be tracking that. You should know. And I’m like, okay, but what if every guy in F3 is an idiot? But we have 500,000 of them, but they’re idiots. And they’re like, oh, I hadn’t thought about that. Exactly. So that can’t be it. Okay, well, what if we have only 10 guys that are in it, but they’re really dedicated to the mission? Is that success? Again, I go, well maybe. I don’t know. Here’s what I know.
For me, success looks like, I wore myself out, my personal success. I wore myself out in the service of the mission. And I think success across the organization, for us anyway, is largely anecdotal. It’s the stories I hear about men saying, I recaptured my life. My wife and I get along now. We snatched our marriage from the jaws of divorce. Or it looks like I quit drugs and alcohol. Or I lost 100 pounds or whatever it is. The individual results of “success” I think you’re gonna have as many, as there are individual guys. So I think success for us, is knowing that we did the best we could to adhere to the mission and serve the thing that is greater than us. That’s the best I can answer on that one.
Brett McKay: Something I’ve had to struggle with as a leader of different groups I belong to, is cultivating the patience that’s often required to lead whenever it seems like things are just going slower than you want. Have you had that struggle as well? And if so, what have you done to overcome it?
Frank Schwartz: Yeah, no, I struggle from a condition known as perpetual dissatisfaction. [laughter]
Brett McKay: Yeah.
Frank Schwartz: I don’t know if you’ve said something similar, but no, patience is not my jam. I tend to move fast. I decide things fast. I live fast. In fact, a guy, CEO of a very large fitness company just yesterday was like, “You have an intensity issue.” And I was like, do I? That’s interesting coming from you, but okay. So I recognize that that’s my bias. I say that to say, I have tons of biases, Brett. And I’m always gonna be slightly dissatisfied. I’m always gonna think that it’s not moving fast enough. I’m always gonna be unhappy with the result of something. I’m happy with a lot of results too. Don’t get the impression that I walk around sad all the time going like, why can’t everything be wonderful? It’s not that at all. But I know that I have biases. So the advice that I would give to someone starting a thing or who’s looking to lead in any way, the way to cultivate that patience, is to segment your life a little bit. So exhibit patience where in those environments where it’s appropriate. And then by golly, get yourself a mentor and get yourself a small group.
In F3, we call them shield locks. You lock shields with two, three other guys. And those are the guys that hear the best and the worst and the hardest and the whatever. And I unload it to those guys and they get to hear it. And then they get to tell me that my head is in my rear end, or they get to tell me where I might be choosing poorly or where I might be choosing well. So, okay, it’s not moving as fast as I want. Fine. Too bad. It’s moving as fast as it can. It’s moving as fast as it’s supposed to. The analogy I give a lot of times to guys, is I go, all right, ’cause I’ll say it in their marriage. Something went wrong in their marriage, and they’re struggling. And then, they’re trying to make good on it, but they can’t seem to get their wife to forgive them and to move forward or whatever. And I said, well, here’s the thing.
You think of it like a seed that you put in the ground, and you can put all the nutrients you want in that soil and you can cover it up at the perfect depth, and you can measure the pH and the moisture content and you can make this thing just as optimal, the perfect amount of sunshine, keep the temperature, whatever it is. But that seed, is gonna sprout above the edge of that soil, when it is darn good and ready. And the only thing you can do, is to consistently try and create a perfect environment or as optimal an environment as you possibly can. That’s your job as the leader in the group or in the organization or whatever it might be. That’s your job, is to consistently try and create optimal conditions so that when growth is ready to happen, it happens. So again, we get our minds caught in this finite game of, well, but I didn’t get this done by X date. And so, it must be not going well, or it must be a failure or any number of things. And I just say, no man, again, I think you’re just, you’re playing the wrong game as a leader, particularly of a volunteer organization.
But I think as a leader in general, it only serves us to remember, that this is an infinite game, that goes on forever and ever and ever. And so, patience is all you have. Time is all you have. You can’t control any of the other factors. I can do what I can to maintain an optimal environment. And then when that seed is ready, it’ll come up.
Brett McKay: Well, Frank, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about F3?
Frank Schwartz: Just go outside and whether you hear some crazy guys in a parking lot somewhere barking in cadence, then you’ll know. That’s where we, no, I’m just kidding. Yeah, go to f3nation.com. There’s a place like if you’ve never heard of F3 before, and you think to yourself, man, that sounds like a thing I might wanna try. Go to f3nation.com. You’ll see a link in there up at the top that says locations. I think it’s under new or get started or something, I don’t remember now. But you find the map, find the locations, find one near you. And men, just show up. Just show up. And then we’ll help you through the rest. Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about it. We’ll guide you. We’ll get you moving. But yeah, go someplace. Just find one near you, and show up. And you can read all about us on the website there.
Brett McKay: Fantastic. Well, Frank Schwartz, thanks for your time. It’s been a pleasure.
Frank Schwartz: Brett, I appreciate the time, my friend. Take care.
Brett McKay: My guest today was Frank Schwartz. He’s the CEO of F3. You can find more information about F3 at f3nation.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is/mensgroups. We find links to resources and we delve deeper into this topic.
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast. Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com. Where you can find our podcast archives. And make sure to sign up for a new newsletter. It’s called Dying Breed. You can sign up at dyingbreed.net. It’s a great way to support the show directly. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, it’s Brett McKay. Reminding you not just to listen to the AOM Podcast, but put what you’ve heard into action.
