Neomasculinity is a global initiative aimed at reigniting human intuition, logic, and reason, and bringing common sense back into the world. U.S. Army veteran, visionary, and entrepreneur John Krotec harnesses the power of this ideology at NeoMasculinity Solutions, where he helps men and women reclaim purpose, live through truth, and lead with clarity. He joins Daniel Weinberg to discuss what it takes to become a deeply empowered man who lives with intention without becoming overcontrolling or dominating others. John also explains how to avoid the dark side of masculinity, the importance of cultivating patience in life, and the power that can be unlocked when bravely facing your wildest fears.
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Burnout To Breakthrough: Reclaiming Purpose With John Krotec
On this episode, we have John Krotec from NeoMasculinity Solutions as we deep dive into what neo-masculinity is. John, it is great to have you on the show.
Thank you. It is great to have your audience here as well. I just want to let you know before we get started that it is men like you who are on the tip of the spear and helping men like me share our stories with other men out there who can hopefully walk away with some useful tips. Anyhow, I am glad I am here. Thank you.
I am really excited for our discussion. We are going to go deep, particularly on the subject of neo-masculinity, which is one of the things you really platform. I want to ask you, you have been working on yourself as a man, and you have got your own platform, which we will get into later. Where would you say you are still getting it wrong as a man?
With me personally, I think we all have our issues, but with me, it is probably like millions of other guys, just patience. We want things done. We want them done now. I guess it was my father’s upbringing as an army officer that I was always running somewhere to get something done. I am still learning patience in the universe. You and I have smoked and joked about it, that it is always spinning. It always puts us where we need to be. I am good.
What Led John Towards The Path Of Neomasculinity
Tell me, I want to get into your whole story. You speak a lot about neo-masculinity. Where did it come from emotionally? What did you go through that led you on the path to a deep dive into this concept of neo-masculinity?
Thank you for that question. We all have stories, and mine probably started 50-something years ago. The whole masculinity-femininity concept, biology, and how it got me to where I am now. I had questions of masculinity early on. It was a secret for 50-plus years until I got involved in a traffic accident, drank a little bit too much, was gifted a traumatic brain injury, and I had to come to grips with the dirty dark secret that I had kept secret for a long time. It was on a neighborhood sleepover.
It was 90 seconds of pure fear and hell. It was not fun. I was violated while on a neighborhood sleepover. I was in third or fourth grade, I think that is like eight years old. One of my books, the cover of my book Fractals, which was one of my poetry books and an escape for me, shows me as a third grader. I am in a Cub Scout uniform. My ears are sticking out, and I am just a small child, really, and inquisitive. My eyes are alive.
The fourth-grade picture on the cover shows me with no feeling, no emotion, black eyes like a great white shark. I grew up really quickly that summer, and I had questions about masculinity. How did that happen? The reason why I kept my mouth shut was that I assumed at the time that if I were the kid who came clean with that, I would be the guy whom all the other boys would follow around and point fingers and snicker and go, “That is the kid.” My dad probably would have thought it was my fault, and I may have gotten my ass beat.
You never spoke about it with anyone at the time?
Nobody. I just zipped it, went about my business, and dealt with it until I got old enough to drink beer or alcohol. It was a way to relieve the pain. I was always getting to these places of success, and then somehow the alcohol would take away some of that success.
It is something that just keeps haunting you. It just keeps playing back, and you experience it physically on a very regular basis. How does it present itself?
The human brain is an amazing instrument. I like the way you asked that question. It can compartmentalize things that are not fun or nice to think about. We hear about post-traumatic stress from all these people coming back from these long wars. I probably was suffering from some of that shock that it really happened. For me personally, and listeners know, guys and gals out there, when you are going through these formative years, we are always jockeying for our social position.
The human brain is an amazing instrument. It can compartmentalize that which is not nice to think about. Share on XI was the kid who got along with everybody. I got along with the hippies of the day, the jocks, the boys, and the girls. The question for me was, what does that guy see in me that made him do that? Later on, I learned about ancestral trauma and how things repeat themselves. I thank the universe and God every day that I never did that to anybody else. At least the buck stopped with me there. These questions of masculinity, “Am I gay? Is there something wrong with me?” I always had those questions.
Was it someone you knew?
It was a much older child, a guy who had been in foster families for a long time. His dad was an American Air Force veteran who had married a German woman, and then they had come back to the States. He was an adopted child. I will not go into too much detail because I still have not had closure with him, and he is still alive, I am pretty sure. He was much bigger and had been held back several grades. I was all of 65 pounds.
I am not sure what it is in kilos. He was probably 40 more pounds bigger than that. Without going into too much detail, I was overpowered, and the rest is history. I will be graphic in one sense. When he was finished, I got pinned underneath him, and his face landed next to mine between my face and the wall, and the dude was foaming at the mouth. It was animalistic. It just was not right. I knew in the depths of my soul that this was not good.
It was always about proving manhood as a young man. I imbibed, which made it easier for me to talk to people. I would tell somebody I loved them, and then I was probably the door slammer or the one-night stand type of guy for a while. I probably broke too many hearts. It was not my intent. I had no idea what I was going through, really.
You prevented yourself from connecting with others?
The fear of intimacy. I always thought in the back of my head, “I really like this person, but I am going to have to tell her someday about that.” It was always this fear of being exposed. The world cannot do anything to me that has not already been done. It took me years and decades to learn that. What I learned was kind of interesting, Daniel. I learned what emotional pain is. What I realized, and it made me feel worse, was to see a young lady share with me and then to just be crushed because I would not answer the phone, or there was not a third or fourth date.
To see somebody’s heart broken like that made me feel worse. Hopefully, I can have closure with a few of those people someday. That is what happened. I really threw myself into school, made good grades, and I was a corporate manager for a while in a restaurant company. I got to work in the Virgin Islands, Southern California, Coconut Grove, and Miami Beach. I went on to work a little bit in Texas. I decided that the corporate lifestyle was not necessarily working for me.
I like solutions, and I like changing and improving things. As people who are in the corporate lifestyle know, there is nothing wrong with it, but it is hard for change to occur. I go into an operation, and I see things we can improve. It just did not work for me. What I decided to do was go back to law school, and at the time, I had no money to speak of.
I joined and enlisted in the United States Army, even with a college degree and years of marketing or management experience. I went in at that time in the army for a three-year stint. My dad wanted me to go in as an officer, and being the rebel that I was, I said, “No, I am going to go non-commissioned officer.” The army was phenomenal. They break you down. You are in there with a bunch of guys, and then they build you back up.
Is this post the EU?
Yes. This is after that for sure.
The big wakeup call.
No. This is a pre-wake-up call. Anyhow, I am not going to bore you too much longer. They broke me down, and then they built you up. What the Army gave me is that you hear about merit. We hear about being chosen for your merit. I was awarded because I did my job. They told you to do A, you did A. If A did not get done, B and C would fail, and then you would let the team down.
I was a machine gunner for a while. I was rewarded for doing my job, and I was rewarded handsomely. Some in my chain of command are professionals. They saw in me that the dude has what it takes to do the job right because he understands the commitment to his team. They wanted me to stay in, but I did the three years. I went into five years in the reserves, and great experience.
I recommend the service to anybody who wants to figure things out. I got reacquainted with the woman I am married to now. We had known each other for twelve years prior. During that time, she had been married, had two children, and had gone through a divorce. A lot had changed. She was married before without children, and now she was divorced with children. We got reconnected, and before long, we were in a relationship, and we opened a business together.
We opened up a backpacking store in Florida, and we sold all kinds of gear from A to Z. We outfitted people to go all over the world. We started to do climbing trips. We did those for twelve years. I led guided trips to the Andes, and we sold top-quality equipment and gear. In business for myself, we were profitable every single year but one. We made money.
The way we did that was we were integral to our customers. We never oversold. Every customer was a friend. I can count on two hands how many people we probably pissed off because we really bent over backwards to make sure our customers got what they needed for their adventures. They would come in with a long list of stuff, and we would sell them half of it. We would say, “You do not really need this.” That was a good experience.
In 2012, fast forward 23 years later, my wife is out of town in Virginia, which is where I live now, but we had our business in Florida, and her mom got hurt. She had to break away and go see her mom. I ended up drinking and driving one night. A buddy of mine who was married to a Peruvian woman was getting ready to leave the country, the US, to go to Peru. They were going to move to South Korea. He said, “Let us go out.” We did. On the way home, I was involved in an accident, and I woke up the next morning with a hellacious headache.
The police knew me. They were trying to protect me, I think. I woke up in the hospital, had this traumatic brain injury, and that is when everything really started to unravel. Anger and demons started to surface. Before I knew it, I was in separate bedrooms from my wife. She could not understand why there was such anger. I was not physical, but I was verbally abusive and just a guy you did not want to be around. It was not too long before I told her, “I do not want to be married anymore. This is it. We are done.” Caught her by surprise. She knew something was wrong, but she did not really get it.
We were locked, stock, and barrel in a divorce, and we were spending lots of money. It is amazing how people choose sides. I was amazed that there was only one of my friends, a guy I know, a business partner, who said, “John, everybody else has picked sides.” They said, “Take her to the hill,” and did all this stuff. People really surprised me, but only one guy said, “Stick with it, make it work, see what happens.”
Anyhow, the universe interceded, and her mom slipped and fell. She had to go back to Virginia to take care of her mom. Now I think I am Joe super cool. We were separated for a month, and I said, “You know what, I am going to drive up there on Christmas day, and I am just going to tell her I do not want the divorce.” I made it all about me. Self-centered, her mom is injured, and here I am being such a dork. I drive up there, I knock on her door Christmas morning, 2015, and her jaw drops.
Rediscovering Hope Through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
She basically said she is not ready for this and told me to go home. I turned back around and drove all the way back to Florida. I spent the night in Jacksonville or somewhere on the way home. I was in a dark place, and I needed help. One of my friends said, “You need to find a counselor. You need to figure this thing out,” because I was thinking all kinds of crazy stuff. I did not want to be here. How am I going to do it? What am I going to do? I got in to see a therapist who started cognitive behavioral therapy with me. She was brilliant.
Do you want to explain a little bit what that is?
Yes, sir. It is cognitive behavioral therapy. We have these cognitive errors in the way we think about ourselves and about the world around us. I think they have identified like 23 different emotional issues. None of them is true. It is just what your brain thinks is true. The first thing she said to me was, “You are going to have to let your wife go. Let your wife deal with her stuff and her mom. You need to make yourself right now. If you do not, you are not going to have a marriage. You are not going to have any relationship. You are not going to have any quality of life.”
That is what I did. I started the work. I had chronic insomnia and mood swings off the charts. I was suicidal. I found plant medicines. One of the things she told me was cool. I asked her, “What can I do? I get up at 1:00 or 3:00 in the morning, and I turn on all the lights. I walk around, and I am just in a bad place. This chronic insomnia is driving me nuts.”
You can go crazy when you have such a lack of sleep. You are out of it.
My friends were falling away. They were wondering what was up with John. She said, “Do this next time you get up, whatever time it is. Go into the bathroom, forget turning on the lights in the rest of the house, just go in the bathroom, turn the light on, go up to the mirror, and look at the guy. In the mirror, you tell that guy that you love him.”
In the back of my mind, “Daniel, I am thinking this woman does not get it.” I do not talk that way to myself. The session ended. I went home that night, sure enough, at 2:00 in the morning. My eyes are wide open. I walk into the bathroom and turn on the light. I look at myself in the mirror, and I say, “Dude, I love you.” I was done. I went right back to sleep and slept pretty well the rest of the night. What started to happen was I was doing this every night, sometimes twice a night.
“Dude, I love you, you are cool.” It was not narcissism or arrogance. It was trying to develop self-love. I do not think my dad told me he loved me, but maybe five times. Men do not tell men enough that we love ourselves and that we love other people. It is some kind of taboo, I guess. It was three months into my therapy, and I came in, and my therapist was staring at me, and she was smiling.
Men do not tell men enough that we love ourselves and other people. Society considers it a kind of taboo. Share on XI said, “Did I do something wrong?” She said, “You make me happy. I have been doing this for a couple of decades plus, and you are doing the work. I see a human being doing the hard work, identifying his troubled areas and then having the courage to be integral, self-honest, but self-forgiveness and self-love.” It just blew my mind.
Have you revealed to her your trauma? The whole thing?
Yes, I had to. It was November. I had been in counseling for six months or so. I got this card in the mail. I had minimal contact with my wife at that time because I listened to her. I let her go. My wife sends me this Thanksgiving card, something to the effect of, “I just wanted to let you know that I called my attorney today and I have called off the divorce. I want to stay married to you because I have seen a change in you.”
Late in the afternoon, I fell to my knees, and I cried like a baby at 54 years old. That was the beginning of the next journey. For the first time in my life, with all the medals and all the accolades and the cool things that had happened in my life, I felt like I finally earned something of really great value. Never underestimate the power of self-love, commitment, self-integrity, valor, and honor. Those words are real. If you believe that and you live those words, you can overcome the greatest obstacles of your life. The foundation was planted by my dad with honor, family, and a hard work ethic. My wife showed me the power of love. That was pretty cool, and then we were in the neo-masculinity.
What Is Neomasculinity?
What is neo-masculinity? Define it for me.
Neo-masculinity is a global initiative to reignite human intuition, logic, and reason, and bring back some common sense into the world. Basically, it is a tool bag or toolbox of things that parents can use to protect their children from unreliable information. 4, 5, or 6 years ago, we were always hearing masculinity with the word toxic. The toxic masculinity.
The menace-sphere. Everyone talks about the manosphere and toxic masculinity.
One of my buddies is a Vietnam combat veteran. We were just talking. “What is this? Why are men being so pathetic and falling for that?” A man can be toxic. If masculinity were truly that toxic, the world would be a million times worse than it is. We can be toxic. We have to protect our honor or the people we love. We did a deep dive. What does all this mean? What we ended up doing was we ended up going into gender roles, not identities. Gender roles. What were the traditional gender roles of men and women throughout all the centuries?
There is a lot. For a man, it is to protect his family and his loved ones from threats. That is the basic gender role. It is done in a different way from a woman, but for a woman, the gender role is to protect her family and loved ones from threats. Amazingly, we saw this oneness. We have been raised with the battle of the sexes. There is a reason for that. Why do we not talk about collaboration?
We started thinking. That’s exactly what this is. You emasculate a man or make him feel that his masculinity is somehow a bad thing. What happens? You leave his family and his loved ones wide open for manipulation. Let me tell you, and you know this from the people you interviewed. A man without a purpose is toxic. He is angry. He will do the things they say toxic men do.
You put a man on purpose, and he has to have his masculinity. You cannot emasculate the guy. We saw this neo-masculinity word online. We looked up what neo-masculinity is. Google came back straight away and said, “Neo-masculinity is like the new masculine.” Here is the catch-all. A man cannot be masculine unless he supports changing social norms. Sounds great in theory. “Nouveau, new man.”
The question we had is what happens if the changing social norm is not based on fact, or maybe it is a radical ideology or something that is not true? Are you telling a man that he has to be untruthful to be masculine? We said, “We are going to play with that wordsmith.” We took neo-masculinity rather than going to dot-com, we went to dot-solutions. Neo-masculinity by name is that we have a solution for the BS, and this is the solution.
Here are the tools that you can use to wade through the real threats these days, which are unreliable information, not saber-toothed tigers. The threats are more pervasive and insidious every day. The greatest Psy-op in the world is that there is so much unreliable information that nobody really knows what the truth is.
Characteristics Of A Role Model Of A Man
What does a good man look like in your model? Tell me how you would describe a good example of another man in your model?
He is true to himself and honest with himself. He can look at himself in the mirror, and he knows who he is. Every foot he places, every step he takes, he knows where he is going. He exudes confidence, and he loves himself. We said earlier that he is not arrogant or narcissistic, and we can go into that place, but he’s neither of those. He totally and truthfully, and he’s not that creepy kind of love.
To be able to give love to others, you really need to love yourself first.
That is what a good man looks like. It is a guy who loves himself and is not so totally into himself that he is arrogant and treats others with disrespect. Another thing, too, he is an etiquette expert. A proper man understands manners. He treats people with dignity and respect. I used to love watching Sherlock Holmes, the old ones, and the way that those men treated each other, but also the way they interacted with the general public. There is some truth to the British proper way.
You know what? There is some truth to that. Etiquette should never be underestimated. I’m so glad that one of my female instructors in a marketing class in college made that required reading. At the time, I did not get it. I am eighteen years old, and I do not have to know etiquette. I read that book, and if you show proper etiquette, it will take you far.
Tell me what you see as the three non-negotiables for being a good man.
Integrity. The guy has got to be honest. You have got to be able to trust that guy. Perseverance. A good man never gives up. He will never quit on you. It is a guy you can count on. If he says he is going to do it, he is going to do it. The last one is love. A good man has to know how to love others. Some people get all gushy over that word, but love overcomes everything. I am living proof that self-love and the love of the people you care about will overcome any challenge that you might face, not only singly but also as a couple.
How To Set Aside Dominance And Embrace Humility
I want to go a bit deeper into the philosophy of your platform. When we talk about masculinity, how do you stop the protector masculinity from becoming control or dominance? The man has that protective role, but how do you stop from being perceived as overcontrolling?
People say, “What do we do with guys like Andrew Tate?” We all know who Andrew Tate is. Some people say he is a misogynist. Dignity and respect will have a payoff. How do we overcome it? We cannot, as individuals, force anybody to overcome anything. We can only help them along the way. They are going to have to make it happen. Whatever changes take place, the guy is going to have to do it himself.
It begins with humility. Humility means you do not know it all. If we can somehow stroke ourselves to be humble and really hit our knees, maybe you do it in the privacy of your home and tell yourself, “Maybe I need to have an open mind.” How are we going to stop a man from being overly aggressive, stupid, and overpowering?
He is going to have to do it. We cannot personally stop him, but it has to come from inside. If he wants it, he will find it. If you have been divorced four times, you are always getting into fights with people, and you are drinking too much. Sooner or later, it’s just like these books in the bookshelf behind you. You cannot see them now, but you go get a help-self book. There are a lot of good self-help books, and all the people, men and women, who have written them are trying to help.
Sooner or later, the buck stops with you. You are going to have to have the desire to change. If stuff is not working out for you, you’d better hit your knees. I am not saying you have to pray to a God, but you have to find a way to tell the universe that you need help and that you do not know everything, and then they send you the help. The help will come.
What It Takes To Sift Through Misinformation
You speak a lot about truth and misinformation. Who decides what truth is?
You might like Liverpool’s soccer team. I like Manchester.
How did you know that? I am a fan.
I am a Manchester guy. You and I can go to fisticuffs about certain games, penalties, or players. We lose in that battle of the wills and egos, the truth about us that we both love the sport of football. How do we find the truth? It takes due diligence, open-mindedness, and humility because it is a tough job.
In today’s world, when we think about my kids and what they are going to have to deal with in the future with regard to what truth is, it is going to become more difficult for them to truly understand what is real and what is not.
My heart goes out to you. That is one of the reasons why we are doing Neomasculinity.Solutions for the families, because our children are the future. If they cannot discern facts from fiction, truth from lies, or reality from fantasies, then we have failed somehow. It is tough because we have identified six types of information. Five of them are unreliable, and one of them is the absolute truth.
If your children cannot discern facts from fiction, truth from lies, or reality from fantasies, parents have failed somehow. Share on XBecause of what you just pointed out, Daniel, the intellectual laziness, “I’ll just ask ChatGPT. I heard it on social media. It’s got to be correct.” Even though your intuition is telling you there’s no way that person can be a woman because they’re not. I’m just using that as an example. We can’t walk away from the intuition. You, as a father, have a hell of a responsibility, man, because you’re not going to be around forever.
The way it goes is that those kids are supposed to live after us. We have a commission to make sure we are the best that we can be and show our parents. We’re not always, we make mistakes. We’re not perfect. I don’t claim sainthood by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m always trying to be the best I can be. It’s like that Army commercial. How do we know what’s true?
Do diligence, open-mindedness, the willingness to be humble and say that we’re wrong when something we believed has been proven that it’s not true, and then to just never give up on the truth. Let it persist. Let you bring out your perseverance. We’ve heard this long suffering because the world information-wise right now is a freaking minefield. There are deeper issues of ideologies and economic systems, and what’s best for this and what’s best for that.
The white-black thing, racial tensions, religion, which has been hijacked. A lot is going on with these kids today. They didn’t have it like you and me, where I grew up listening to Led Zeppelin, and everything was a joy. Not always, but now it’s so complicated. I would even say limit your child’s interaction with social media or some of those platforms.
Somewhat of a tsunami that you’re swimming against. When you say limit, yeah, you can, but you do the best you can to put those guard rails in place. At the end of the day, they are in the world, and they are exposed to friends and people around them. Unless you literally go off the grid and live an isolated life, they’re going to be exposed to it regardless. Is it a very challenging role for parents of today to manage that situation?
It’s totally understated, too, brother, because it is. I tell guys, and every man’s a David. We talk about the tsunami as the Goliath. Right now, we’re probably challenged with the most pervasive Psyop in global history because these mass communication tools, we’re using them in a very good way, but it’s also used in ways that aren’t so good, it’s a way that you know anything, and I’m saying this rhetorically about propaganda and how it works. The more aware I become, I’ve got to tell you, Daniel, it’s eye-opening. I’m not going to say I’m scared. I’m not scared of anything, but you’re concerned. Stay alert, stay alive.
Delving Into The Dark Side Of Neomasculinity
A question on the neomasculinity. I want to look at the flip side of it. What would you say is the darkest version of neomasculinity? The shadow side, tell me what you would say is the dark side?
The shadow side of the world’s definition is believing in something and supporting something that’s not true. What we try to do is we try to bring light. All that means is we try to actually be in everything that we do, the whole team, men and women, and we try to take an integral approach to all the miss, to all the information that we put out there.
As a matter of fact, we’re working on a tool right now. I’m working with a buddy, he’s a business consultant, but he was a friend. He’s an Irish guy. He’s my AI guy. We’re working on a cartoon for grade scores called the Journey to Clear Haven. It’s a family of four, family of five, actually, man and wife, husband and wife, three children, the girls in the middle. We have the superheroes of intuition, critical thinking, and common sense. It’s Tolkien-ish.
The 30-minute cartoon we’re working on they’re taking the family on a journey to clear Haven. The nemesis characters are propaganda misinformation. We’re going to teach the family skills as they move along the clear haven where things are based in integrity, honor, and truth. That’s cool. We have tools that we’ve spent a lot of time with AI-generated, but it’s all of our information. We have a college course. We have a high school course that will come online in May, maybe early June. It’s called the brainery.
It’s a curriculum, and the cartoon will start it. We’ll have high school. They’re basically interlinked with intuition, logic, reason, common sense, and even courage. We get into some vibrational state stuff. That’s coming out. We also have a mini course called Brain Freeze, Breaking the Ice on Critical Thinking. It’s a three-part course. We charged for it, but it took a lot of development.
I suggest that every parent in the world, whether they’re a married couple or single parents, buy it and watch it with their children. It’s a primer. The dark side of neomasculinity is the belief in lies, and the bright side is the belief in the truth. You have the choice. The greatest gift we have is the freedom of choice and critical thinking. If you’re not using it, then you’re not taking advantage of something that could make your life so much better.
How To Become More Patient In Life
Now, I want to come back to you. If I were to ask your wife, “What does John still need to work on when it comes to being a partner, being a man?” What do you think she would say?
Probably the same thing I said at the beginning, patience. He needs to be patient with me. The anger thing’s pretty much it’s there, but it’s not like it used to be. She would probably say, “The patience. John just needs to be patient with me and with things because I want to get things done.” I’m 67 years old, and I do not know how much time I’ve got. Hopefully, I’ve got 50 or 60 years, but I’d like to leave a footprint and leave something of great value that can be used long after I’m gone.
We talked about that earlier. I do not have a death doomsday personality or any of that. I’m not looking to die, but I would like to get these things built in this global movement going. We have that Sentinel handbook that we wrote for eighth graders. It’s in nine languages. It’s a primer. It’s $10. Get a copy of it. We wanted people all around the world to at least be introduced to the subject of critical thinking and what it all means. That’s what you would say, “John needs to be patient.”
Stop Battling The Opposite Sex
I want to ask you to speak to the men tuning in. I’ll first ask you, what should men stop doing immediately? What should they stop doing immediately?
Battling with the opposite sex. We’re indoctrinated. Boys and girls are indoctrinated that, you we all know that boys and girls are different. From a social standpoint, we’re indoctrinated into conflict with women before we even reach a certain age. We hear about the battle of sex as they make light of it, but deep down, it’s a divisive type of narrative. Why not stop all that stuff now? Look at women as someone we need to get along with, or people we need to get along with. Why not collaborate?
Imagine if we were raised with the concept or the narrative collaboration of the sexes. Imagine where we would be. There’d be less divorced. There’d be less this, less that of the bad things and a lot more good things. Stop battling with the opposite sex. You do not need to. It doesn’t make you a bigger man because you can overpower and drown out a woman. It isn’t a big deal. It’s a stronger man to stay quiet and to work with that woman. Maybe by example, just maybe things will change.
Do Not Be Afraid To Talk About Your Weaknesses
Another one. What’s one uncomfortable conversation every man should have this year, for you to give some advice to the audience?
They should take a piece of paper and write down their weaknesses. We all know our weaknesses, and it’s different for all of us. Pick out your top weakness and talk to somebody about it. You do not have to talk to a therapist or a counselor. Talk to your best friend. Maybe your wife’s your best friend. Maybe you show a little bit of courage. It’s a good question because when we look at human vibrational states, these frequencies that we all live by, the one that’s the jump off before when we get out of all the guilt, shame, and blame, and anger and hate and all those things.
Pick your top weakness and talk to somebody about it. Share on XWe get into a higher consciousness, love, and collaboration. It’s the emotion of courage, and courage is not false bravado. It takes real courage to look at yourself in the mirror to identify that weak spot. Find your weak spot. Do not dwell on it too long, but just talk about it and then find your four good spots and dwell on those.
Final question before we go into my final round, which is, what does a man mean to you now versus 10 or 15 years ago?
Being 10 or 15 years ago was all about muscles and lifting weights, and we can do it. Now it’s not really about any of that. It’s about using your brain. Most men have a little bit of brawn. We’re certainly biologically stronger than the opposite sex. So what? Listen, I’ve been on some high altitude climbing trips, 6,000-meter peaks.
At high camp, we’re at 5,000 meters. I’ve seen guys on summit morning, when you get up at 11:00, you get ready for a sixteen-hour day, and stay inside the tent. Some of the women on some of those trips have gotten out there and put the crampons on and face their fears. Have the cojones. You were born with them to face your fears. It’s that simple. Men and women can do that. It’s not easy because it takes courage, and it takes some humility at times.
Answering Five Rapid-Fire Questions
John, I really appreciate you being open and vulnerable with us. You’ve got quite the story, and you really own it. I really appreciate that sharing. I’ve got five questions I ask my guests at the end of every show. I’m going to go for it. I’m curious to hear what you have to say. Who would you like to say sorry to, given the chance?
I can’t say it out loud, but she lives in Wales. I would just like to tell her I’m sorry. Just one person.
What are you proud of being or doing in your life?
I’m proud of saving my marriage and doing what I’m doing now, which is building tools to help families, men, and women to protect their families from threats. Proud of that.
When did you receive kindness while needing it most and expecting at least?
When my wife decided to take me back. I did not expect that. I mentioned that the crowd liked a baby, and it was not fake. There’s nobody around to fake it. It was real.
What did your mother or father teach you that you frequently remind yourself of?
On the light side, family, and on the dark side, dear, I’ll leave it at that. It was a fearful childhood, but at the same time was a dichotomy. Family was everything.
Tap into that gift of love. It can take you to places. Share on XFinally, what’s your superpower?
Loving people. I really do. I do not know how to explain it, but it comes from a place that’s out of the universe. It’s just a gift I’ve got, and a lot of people have it. They just have not tapped into it. Tap into that gift of love, and boy, it can take you to places.
I concur. John, thank you again. I really appreciate it, and I hope the audience enjoyed it as much as I did.
You’re welcome, Daniel. I appreciate the time and the opportunity to share some interesting things and keep doing what you’re doing, man, because you are on the tip of the spear. If we do not have authentic guys like you out there, the guys like me stay up at night, and I want to sleep tonight. Keep doing what you’re doing, man.
Thank you, brother.
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About John Krotec
John Krotec is a U.S. Army veteran, visionary entrepreneur, and founder of NeoMasculinity Solutions—a global movement helping men and women reclaim purpose, live through truth, andlead with clarity.With over 40 years in business, John’s journey spans high-altitude expeditions in the Andes, building an $11 million retail company pre-internet, and hosting influential conversations with leaders like General Flynn and Ron DeSantis.
