The Beta Male Revolution Is Back!!

Is a niche necessary? How does taking a step back help to reinvigorate creativity and help you to see the broader picture more clearly? Where can people have genuine, open discussions without judgment? Billy and Brandy Eldridge are back from taking a break from the podcast. Today they chat about what’s happened during their break, […]

The post The Beta Male Revolution Is Back!! appeared first on Beta Male Revolution.

Is a niche necessary? How does taking a step back help to reinvigorate creativity and help you to see the broader picture more clearly? Where can people have genuine, open discussions without judgment?

Billy and Brandy Eldridge are back from taking a break from the podcast. Today they chat about what’s happened during their break, their thoughts and feelings about doing the podcast in the way they want to, and what you can expect from the Beta Male Revolution Podcast!

In This Podcast
Summary

Taking a step back to breathe
To niche or not to niche?
Loving people where they are at

Taking a step back to breathe

Life can get busy. So busy, that you begin to stuff things away with the hope of coming back to it later but you never do, so all the systems, garages, and relationships get clogged up with life.

I think that’s what happened when we took a break. We [then] had time to breathe a little bit and could see things that we had ignored with our kids, ignored with ourselves … they didn’t need to be band-aided, they needed to be worked through. (Brandy Eldridge)

Taking a step back from the podcast allowed Billy and Brandy to reexamine their life, clean out the metaphorical – and physical – garage, and get on track with what was important to them.

Remember that even though life can be, and will be, difficult, you have an abundance of blessings.

You do not need to berate yourself for your problems. You can deal with them while you are grateful for the blessings you have.

To niche or not to niche?

What we’re going to do is just to do this podcast the way we want to … we’re going to talk about things we want to talk about, and hopefully [they’re] things you want to listen to. (Billy Eldridge)

Billy and Brandy wanted to create great content, but they pressured themselves to make great content before they really knew what they wanted to make.

The direction now is to make the content that they want to and then embolden it with greatness.

Loving people where they are at

The Beta Male Revolution Podcast is a space where topics are spoken about without judgment.

Billy and Brandy welcome discussions around marriage, relationships, life, and faith deconstruction.

I want to love people where they are and not where I think they should be … I want to get rid of that timeline and belief system that people have to change to move towards me and my belief systems. (Billy Eldridge)

Are you ready to find the freedom to be yourself as a beta male? Do you want permission and tools to be your best beta? Are you ready to join the revolution to find strength as a beta? If you want to be comfortable in your skin and be the most authentic beta male, then our free beta revolution course is for you. Sign up for free.

Useful links:

Check out the Man Enough Podcast
Discover more at The Beta Male Revolution Website
Sign up here for the free Beta Male Course

Meet Billy Eldridge

Meet Billy, the resident beta male. For Billy, this is a place to hang out with other beta males and the people who love them. We’re redefining what beta males look like in the world. I have learned to embrace my best beta self, and I can help you to do the same. As a therapist, I understand the need to belong. You belong here. Join the REVOLUTION.

 

Meet Brandy Eldridge

Hello, Beta friends. I am an alpha personality who is embracing the beta way of life. I feel alive when connected with people, whether that is listening to their stories or learning about their passions. Forget small talk, let’s go deep together. Come to the table and let’s have some life-changing conversations.

 

Thanks for listening!

Did you enjoy this podcast? Feel free to leave a comment below or share this podcast on social media! You can also leave a review of the Beta Male Revolution Podcast on iTunes and subscribe!

Podcast Transcription

[BILLY ELDRIDGE]:

Beta Male Revolution is part of the Practice of the Practice podcast network, a family of podcasts seeking to change the world. To hear other podcasts like the Bomb Mom podcast, Imperfect Thriving or Empowered and Unapologetic, go to practiceofthepractice.com/network.

Hello, and welcome to Beta Male Revolution podcast, a podcast that started out by seeing the world through a different lens of masculinity, and now has become a place for people to deconstruct their shit in the second half of life. I’m Billy Eldridge.

[BRANDY ELDRIDGE]:

And I’m Brandy Eldridge. As a married couple, we’ve had a ton of disagreements, tried to be honest about challenges and setbacks and hopes of becoming better versions of ourselves. So grab a cup of coffee, come hang out, let’s chat a little bit like we’ve known each other for 20 years.

[BILLY]:

That’s what I’m talking about. Let’s get jaggy with it.

[BRANDY]:

No.

[BILLY]:

What?

[BRANDY]:

No.

[BILLY]:

Hey Brandy, it’s been a while.

[BRANDY]:

We are back.

[BILLY]:

We’re back.

[BRANDY]:

Some of you may not have known we left.

[BILLY]:

We’re moving forward.

[BRANDY]:

Yes.

[BILLY]:

That’s what this little talk will be about, moving forward, with the podcast where we’re headed.

[BRANDY]:

We did a whole episode on how we were taking a break and refiguring everything, rebranding, letting the podcast take a different turn. So our listener —

[BILLY]:

Tens of listeners.

[BRANDY]:

Our listener has been wondering when we are going to come back and we’re back.

[BILLY]:

Here we are.

[BRANDY]:

With our whole rebranding, our whole new new outlook.

[BILLY]:

Ah, we talked about how we were going to slow down and take care of ourselves in the last episode and take a break and reprioritize some things that had gotten whack. So it’s been a handful of months. How do you feel like we did?

[BRANDY]:

Well, I remember somebody I used to work with would always say, if you pick up a rock, a lot of squiggles will come out. If you keep picking up rocks, more squiggles keep coming out. I feel like we picked up rocks. I felt like we’d been going so fast for so long. I think a lot of people have busy schedules, but I was working full time, you’re working full time in two different states, now three different states. Both have these long hours we work and then I come home and we’ve got school to do. We’ve got three kids and we’re both very involved or say very involved, involved in our community. So when all that stopped or we took a break, we started to notice all the cracks and all the squiggles. That’s how I feel, like, holy crap. We really screwed some stuff up. We really neglected some things. That’s how I felt.

[BILLY]:

Yes. I had high hopes of like healing and refreshing and there was going to be this time of peace and reconstructing things in an orderly, organized manner, but life doesn’t always happen that way.

[BRANDY]:

We did clean out the garage.

[BILLY]:

We did clean out the garage and I had a total mental shutdown breakdown during that where I could barely talk or function because I was so overwhelmed.

[BRANDY]:

The garage was bad. It was like, if you’ve seen that episode of friends and Monica opens up the closet that they had in their apartment and it’s just stacked with wall to wall stuff. She was known as this OCD clean person, but she had this closet where she threw everything. That had been our garage. Like, it has just, it was terrible. There was a point where, I’m I shouldn’t be admitting this, but I am here. It is. I’m laying it out there. I’m pretty OCD about keeping my house clean, but I throw everything in the garage just thinking if I put it in there, it’ll go away and it didn’t to the point where we could barely walk in there.

It was bad. It’s been like two years of just throwing stuff in there because I clean out the kids’ closets and their old clothes or our stuff and Amazon boxes, just things that were broken. We had the TV in there that didn’t work anymore and we just put it in the garage thinking, well, we’ll go and take it to the dump or get rid of it. It just never, it’s still there. Like, that’s the one thing we haven’t like, what do you do with a broken TV?

[BILLY]:

Put it in your garage.

[BRANDY]:

But, okay, so if we used our garage as a metaphor for life, for our life, I kind of feel like we did that with our life. Like we just didn’t have time to take care of stuff. So we’d start to see things and we’d just put it in the garage and say, we’ll get to it later.

[BILLY]:

So like when I’d leave the garage open and friends would come over and pull in our driveway, they would see our garage and we felt shame and embarrassment. You would get mad at me because I left the garage door open yes.

[BRANDY]:

Yes, don’t let people see our ugly.

[BILLY]:

Don’t let people see our garage.

[BRANDY]:

But let people see what we really are like.

[BILLY]:

Yes.

[BRANDY]:

I think that’s what happened when we took a break like. We had a little bit of time to breathe a little bit and we could see things that we’d ignored, ignored with our kids, ignored with ourselves, tried to band-aid up that didn’t need to be band-aided. They needed to be worked through. We’re at a point in our lives, I’m sorry, where we can have that luxury. So I say that hesitantly because not everybody is there. There are people that work harder than us. They’re working three jobs to survive. They’re barely making it and they’re —

[BILLY]:

They don’t have a supportive partner like me.

[BRANDY]:

Yes, sure. But they don’t get to even have the luxury of self-care and in self-reflection.

[BILLY]:

Yes, and a garage full of crap collected over years. It makes me think to always reframe my garage through this lens. Every time I hated my messy garage, when I would open up the garage with my garage door opener, I work in Oklahoma, which is an economically depressed area. I remember one time I pulled up to a school there and a kid ran up to my window and was talking to me and he looked at my visor and he said, what’s that button? I said, that’s a garage door opener. He said, you have a garage and it opens the door? He was just baffled at this concept that he had no framework for, that there are houses with garages, with buttons that open the door that you throw your crap into, that you don’t use anymore.

[BRANDY]:

Then he went on to say like, I bet you live in one of those fancy houses with brick.

[BILLY]:

I have to come back to, we have a good life that gets overwhelming at times. Our frustration is our frustration, but I have to take things to perspective and have gratitude for the blessings that have been given and try to have awareness that the quality of my problems are pretty decent, but they’re still my problems. I don’t have to neglect them. I don’t have to feel shame about the frustration that they bring to me, but I do have to address them to move forward. I think that’s what we want to do here.

[BRANDY]:

So yes, getting back to like why we took this break, we felt that the Beta Male Revolution had just kind of, I don’t know —

[BILLY]:

Run its course.

[BRANDY]:

Yes. That we said in one of our episodes, it probably should have been like a series, like a six, seven episode series we did with the Enneagram or something else. So we really were coming back with like the second half of life. We want to look at our audience who tends to be, for the majority people our age, couples. But then we found people that weren’t our age that, and everyone keeps telling us niche, like you’ve got a niche, you’ve got to really find your ideal audience and then have a specialty. So that’s where we were heading. It was going to be couples in their forties with kids and jobs and that’s what we were niching. Then we just went, eh —

[BILLY]:

This is just kind of boring. I don’t want to do that. I don’t niche. So what we’re going to do is just do this podcast the way we want to. I really wanted to say, do this f*king podcast the way we want to and talk about things that we want to talk about and hopefully that you want to listen to and maybe we’ll bring some meaningful content. But when we started with the premise of, we have to create meaningful content, it puts this pressure on it and then it creates this, I believe an authenticity and this pressure to make something happen. So stepping away from that and just saying, all right, we’re going to step up to this mic. We’re going to talk about things that matter to us and hopefully throw some fun and humor in there with it. Because a lot of the things we talk about are serious and kind of wang, wang.

[BRANDY]:

Yes, I felt like I wasn’t able to have any fun on the podcast because it was very serious topics all the time. I don’t know, I’d interrupt people because I was like trying to get it over with like, can we get this guest off? Then some of our guests were amazing that I wanted to listen to forever, but I didn’t like being niched into this place where we had to take every guest and we had to pretend that what we found was interesting about them. And they are interesting guests. That sounds bad. I probably shouldn’t have said that.

[BILLY]:

Shit on our guests.

[BRANDY]:

No, but they weren’t what we wanted to talk about. So we had to find something interesting about it that intrigued us. I do feel that every one of the guests that we brought on brought something to us. So I would go in thinking I’m not going to like it, or I’m not going to learn anything. I always did learn something, but I wanted to get things that are interesting to us, but we couldn’t do it because we had to find this niche and we had to do it like everyone says. And there are smarter people out there that say, if you do a podcast this way, you’ll get numbers, you’ll get sponsors.

At this point we’re just kind of like, I don’t, we don’t care about that so much. We care about growing ourselves as individuals and having a good time together. We did this so we could do something together. We did this to spend time with each other and figure things out in life and talk about the things that we were going through and hopefully connecting with other people that were going through them or other people that just were curious about how messed up we were, which a lot of people listen just for that reason. So we’re not rebranding. That’s what this whole thing is. We’re not rebranding.

[BILLY]:

It costs a lot of money to change your website and like get a new logo and that was creating more stress. It’s like, screw that. We’re going to talk about it. It may not even apply to Beta Male Revolution, but that’s the website and that’s the name. It may or may not. I mean, there’s another wonderful podcast out there, Justin —

[BRANDY]:

Baldini?

[BILLY]:

Baldini.

[BRANDY]:

The hot guy from Jane the Virgin.

[BILLY]:

God, talk about, I had some major issues with this podcast because he’s wrote this book about redefining masculinity. I was wondering why I was having such a hard time with it. Well, one it’s better quality, better guess. I think you said like Brené Brown, Glen, all the people I want to talk to and he’s talking about what I want to talk to from a platform I’ll never have, and it brought up all this insecurity and resentment and then I’m raging at this guy that’s talking about cool stuff. He was on freaky Kelly Clarkson, man.

[BRANDY]:

Well, we asked him to be a guest.

[BILLY]:

He said, no. Well, his assistant said —

[BRANDY]:

Before his book came out before he was doing this and he was like no —

[BILLY]:

In his book, Man Enough, I ordered it and I started to read it and pissed it me off so much because it was so good. I’m like this guy with his little man bun and his —

[BRANDY]:

Beautiful body.

[BILLY]:

Beautiful body, but then again, that’s like part of what he says, people objectify him. One day I saw him, he was talking on a podcast and the girls were like, take off your shirt, let me see your abs. He’s like, wait a minute. This is making me uncomfortable and objectifying me just because I was born a certain way. I mean, he can’t get around the fact that the guy’s a beautiful man, but, and sometimes we have to acknowledge that but he has a podcast.

[BRANDY]:

Would you like me to yell at you to take off your shirt?

[BILLY]:

Yes. We’ll do that when we have the video up. My body is a protest against toxic masculinity.

[BRANDY]:

You’re a beautiful man.

[BILLY]:

Thank you.

[BRANDY]:

So we’re not doing any of it?

[BILLY]:

We’re not doing any of that. Listen to Justin Baldini’s podcast. He interviews great people and says everything. I always wanted to say. Go check that out. But we’re going to talk about things that matter to us and hopefully matter to you. We were supposed to do like this big, like poll our audience to, well and we would pull and nobody would respond. We found out people listen. There’s a guy that stopped me in a gas station the other days and says we love your podcast. I’m like, why didn’t you ever send a message and say, this is what I want to hear.

[BRANDY]:

Well, we do have like two guests or two listeners that we know of.

[BILLY]:

We have.

[BRANDY]:

But I’m going to give a shout out to our friend, Adam Colvin, who wrote us a nice letter and encouraged us.

[BILLY]:

Oh gosh, that was so good. And he’s continued to reach out and have conversations. So we like that too. I mean, we’re reachable if you want to talk and if you want to hear about something, let us know. Because I was talking with my friend, Brent Sweitzer earlier today, we have a, he was on the podcast early on and we have a biweekly talk just to check in. He was talking about some conversations he had had with some people about going through a faith deconstruction and him moving through some old belief systems and coming into a new and he said, I know what I’m leaving, but I don’t know what I’m moving into. Man, it hit me. Like I know what I don’t want, but where are we going? What are we moving into? Yes, we deconstruct, but what do we rebuild in its place? I don’t know, that’s kind of where I am today.

[BRANDY]:

Oh, am I supposed to say something there?

[BILLY]:

Yes. I thought that was quite profound. I thought you would just chime in with how wonderful that was.

[BRANDY]:

That was so good. Well, I’m thinking while you’re saying that maybe we’re not supposed to construct anything. So I look back at like, we do talk about deconstruction of our faith, a lot on this podcast and hopefully we’ll get into a little bit more, but also just our general ideals, like how we view racism, how we view our political beliefs, how we view, how we raise our children and the more I learn and listen to other people’s stories, which I think is the key to it all is stories from other people that have experienced things we have not. Everything I think I know I don’t anymore. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe the problem is we all think we know what’s right. We all think we have the answer and none of us do. But when you take into account people that are different than you and have had different experiences and you listen to their stories, it changes everything.

That’s, to me the point. I go in to talk to people and I think I understand and I’m saying things and then I hear them tell their stories and I’m like, I’ve never looked at it like that before. I’ve never listened to that perspective. To me, that is deconstruction. It’s saying I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know everyone’s plight in life. I don’t know their story and their journey and when I listen to their stories, I realize I have to own their story in a sense, because their story is my story. Them telling me their story is me saying I don’t have all the pieces and that’s just another piece to it and I just begin to learn. Then I have a strong opinion about something and I really am like dogmatic about it and then I hear somebody else’s point of view and I think, well, crap, I don’t know anything. That’s where I want to be. I don’t want to know anything. I want to hear stories and learn

[BILLY]:

That’s so sexy. Oh, it was just fun listening to you share that and to take it all in and to know how much that openness in you has taught me so much and changed me as as a guy. I’m so grateful for that. I’m so grateful you came into my life and I didn’t willfully deconstruct. You came in like a wrecking ball with some things that really offended me in the beginning, offended my way of life, offended my belief systems from faith to race, to religion, to sexuality, and probably everybody that had a vested interest in me staying the way I was, was like, oh, you were corrupting my hard drive somehow.

[BRANDY]:

Yes.

[BILLY]:

But it’s so, it’s a better place. It’s freer, it’s open, it’s not closed off. We don’t have the answers, but it’s just so good to sit and listen to people’s experience and take it in.

[BRANDY]:

And disagree with them.

[BILLY]:

No.

[BRANDY]:

Or agree or not at all. I think that’s the point of deconstruction. I’d look at, I mean, I’m going to get probably a lot of hate for this, but I look at Jesus for example. He came in and he spoke a lot to the Pharisees. He spoke a lot to the people that had built systems that oppressed people or kept people out. Like he spoke to that. He spoke to the Pharisees, but he was friends with the prostitutes and —

[BILLY]:

The tax collectors.

[BRANDY]:

And the tax collectors and the doctors. But he was friends with everyone, but he spoke to the religious people. I think that’s where I am when it comes to faith right now. It’s like, I don’t want to be part of a system that is hurting people. I want to be part of that system that’s friends with the people and loves them and lets them have their journey and listens to their stories. Anything that is different from that right now, for me in my life I just don’t want a part of, I just don’t. I’m okay with that now.

[BILLY]:

I had a conversation with a guy the other day that said, told him I want to love people where they are not where I think they should be because I’m going to come to the table with all kind of bias about how they ought to live their life, the baseline that I have in my view of a good life; this is who you ought to be. This is how you ought to act. This is how you ought to operate in the world. If it’s different from that, I’ll accept you for who you are, but you need to eventually work your way up to changing towards what I think you ought to be. I’ve got a timeline on that. I want to get rid of that timeline.

I want to get rid of that belief system that people have to change to move towards me and my belief systems that I can love them where they are and appreciate it and value it and accept it wholly and completely. So many places do not come as you are, but don’t stay as you are. We got a time stamp on that, depending on what you are. If you’re an alcoholic, you need to clean that up within the year. If you struggle with problems with sexuality, you need to fix that pretty quick. You probably got about a 30-day time limit on that and problems for them. Like, but life is a process. Life is, and maybe a problem like alcoholism is a problem you need to change, but maybe a problem with your sexuality is not a problem. Maybe it’s just who and what you are in the world and that’s okay. Just because some people in systems see it as a problem and something that needs to be changed doesn’t necessarily mean it needs to. So that’s part of the stuff I’ve worked at and are a part of me, is love people, learn from them. And that’s the only way I’ve changed by listening, listening to folks.

[BRANDY]:

It also includes loving the Pharisees, tolerating them.

[BILLY]:

What about the rage against the machine? Oh, when we talked early on that beta males don’t really do that. We’re passive aggressive against the message that I get real snarky towards religious institutions I don’t agree with with, but —

[BRANDY]:

We got to work through it.

[BILLY]:

There’s compassion that needs to be there. We got to listen to them sometimes too, not if they’re actively harming people though. I think we can say, no, that’s bullshit. You’re hurting people in the name of love and that’s not okay.

[BRANDY]:

But I also think if we are not listening to the language they use, then we don’t know how to speak their language either. So not in listening to agree, but listening to understand their viewpoint so that we can use that language so maybe if given the opportunity. We can use the words that they understand, the language they understand but yes, I’m working through that. It’s just that tolerating for me may just be enabled that I don’t cuss at them. Maybe that’s all I can do, but trying to use their language to show them that, hey, maybe there’s another perspective you haven’t taken into account.

[BILLY]:

Yes, and also coming to the table and are they going to afford me that same courtesy? Like if it is, can we agree to disagree and can we have a civil discourse around our disagreements and walk away and —

[BRANDY]:

Probably not.

[BILLY]:

And so, I think it’s okay to have boundaries with some of those people in places and say, I mean, like you would say, and like we got from another fellow, that’s just not interesting. Those arguments are not interesting anymore. I don’t even have to sit down and have them. Are they even those disagreements? They’re just boring. You’re going to go around the same old topic and they’re not going to change and I’m not going to change. So why are we even having this discussion?

[BRANDY]:

Yes. But we have changed. So there’s something there. Because we used to be dogmatic about a lot of issues that we grew up thinking around different areas and we’ve changed. I will say that I didn’t change because people told me I was wrong. I didn’t change because they said, well, this is what it says, or this is how it should be or this is how the world has always been. It’s how that didn’t change me. What changed me again was getting to know people and hearing stories and letting myself think I may not have all the answers. I think in my twenties, I thought I did. Sometimes I still think I have all the answers and then I’m quickly humbled and reminded you don’t. and people’s stories matter.

[BILLY]:

That’s what changed me with you. You love me into a different way of understanding the world. You didn’t argue, some days you argued, there are days you argued, but it was really through your story and the way it wasn’t through your words, it was through your actions, the way you were with people, the way you love people. The way you are with people in the world changed me as a human being, because it wasn’t just words. There were actions behind and I saw your love. I saw your compassion and it was contagious. It was so attractive that it was irresistible and I couldn’t help, but change as a human being. I have to remember that.

In another program I’m in, The 12-Step Program they say we’re, their whole motto, their whole marketing is based on attraction, not promotion. If what you’re selling is good enough, you don’t have to put it up in bright lights. People will be drawn to truth. People will be drawn to authenticity. Even if you’re struggling and you’re not even sure about it, if you’re trying to do the right thing, there’s an attractiveness that, that puts off in the world that I believe people are looking for, that I’m looking for. When I talk to people that their truth resonates with me, I can’t help but resist it.

[BRANDY]:

Well, that’s how I feel about you. You challenge me every day and you are the string that pulls the helium balloon down and brings me back and grounds me. You always have a way of playing the devil’s advocate that makes sense to me. I like that about you. I love that about you. So let’s keep moving forward.

[BILLY]:

Yes, let’s keep moving forward.

Are you ready to find freedom to be yourself as a beta male. Do you want permission and tools to be your best beta? Are you ready to join the revolution and define your strength as a beta? If you want to be comfortable in your own skin and be the most authentic beta male, then our free Beta Male Revolution course is for you. Sign up for free at betamalerevolution.com/course.

This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. This is given with the understanding that neither the host, Practice of the Practice, or the guests are providing legal, mental health, or other professional information. If you need a professional, you should find one.

Beta Male Revolution is part of the Practice of the Practice Podcast Network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you thrive, imperfectly. To hear other podcasts like the Bomb Mom Podcast, Imperfect Thriving, or Empowered and Unapologetic, go to practiceofthepractice.com/network.

The post The Beta Male Revolution Is Back!! appeared first on Beta Male Revolution.