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For years Rudi Riekstins left his faith, his marriage, and his two babies at the office door, and walked in every morning pretending to be a company man. Then he stopped pretending. Ali Jafarian sits down with Rudi, a leadership coach, father of two, and one of our guest leaders at FRD Live 2026. They get into what your family feels when you walk in the door, the day someone wrecked his wife's car in the middle of his son's big flag football day, what his father-in-law told him before he could ask to marry his daughter, the afternoon he came downstairs and told his kids he just needed a hug, and why the whole family voted on the move to Montana.   COMING TO FRD LIVE 2026 Rudi will be with us in person at FRD Live 2026, December 2 to 4 in Austin, Texas. Three days for family men with businesses, built around the man, the family, and the business. Find out more at https://frontrowdads.com/live   Follow Rudi: @rudiriekstins on Instagram, rudiriekstins.com, and the InPowered Life Podcast.

Jon has spent ten years telling men to put family first. For the last two months he's worked dawn to dinner, some weeks seven days straight, and he thinks that's okay. This is Walk With Jon. No studio, no script, no editing. Just Jon on an early morning walk by a pond in his neighborhood, talking to you the way he would if you were buddies and you asked him, "What's real in your world?" You'll hear wind and a few geese. That's part of it. His answer this morning: there are seasons when a man should go all in. When the bison come through, you go hunt. Tell your family it's coming, give it an end date, and keep brothers around who will bring you home when it's over. He also thinks your kids should see it: "I think it's great for the kids to see dad go do something, to go climb that mountain." Front Row Dads is a brotherhood of family men with businesses, not businessmen with families. Learn more at frontrowdads.com

Our biggest event of the year is now open to the public. Find out more and experience the best of FRD. Https://frontrowdads.com/live Ryan Levesque runs meeting rhythms for a living. So he installed one at home, and he knew that if he walked in announcing it, it would go badly.  He rolled it out the way he rolls out anything at the company. One piece a week for six or seven weeks, with his kids at four and seven and his wife the skeptic. What they ended up with is seven parts, every Sunday morning after breakfast, thirty to forty-five minutes. The date. Wins. Gratitude that has to be specific. A weekly challenge, which is how a seven-day vegan week happened at his son's suggestion. Family values the kids wrote, nineteen of them, cut down to five. Family goals that cannot come top down. And the week ahead. Stay for the last three minutes. He and Jon trade the dinner-table games their families use, question of the day and happy-crappy-healthy, and he finishes on the question that decides whether a ritual stays: but is it serving?   IN THIS EPISODE Rolling it out with micro-commitments so nobody revolts All seven parts, named and walked through one at a time The weekly challenge, and the seven-day vegan week his son proposed Letting the kids write the family values, and cutting nineteen down to five Family goals distilled from an annual vision down to pages read this week Why none of it works if it comes top down Structure as the banks of a river Question of the day, and "happy crappy healthy" Knowing when to add something, and when to stop it   FULL EPISODE https://frontrowdads.com/143   Looking for something to do as a family tonight? We crowdsourced a list of the best board games, card games, and everything in between from our own community — games that get the screens down and the family playing, laughing, and talking trash together after dinner or on a rainy Saturday. Some you can knock out in ten minutes. Some are a two-hour epic. Get the list at https://frontrowdads.com/games

Mark Groves is 46 years old, and the conversation he keeps coming back to happened in a car when he was in his twenties with his father.  He had gone to his father complaining about a girlfriend, and he had said something to her he is not proud of. His dad told him that a relationship is a separate entity. There is you, there is her, and there is the thing between you, and that third thing has to be cared for. Mark still remembers exactly where he was sitting.   That is the point of this one. A father's influence does not switch off when his kids leave the house.   IN THIS EPISODE The car conversation: a relationship is a separate entity Why a father's influence does not stop at eighteen "Nothing will ever divide this family," and what it did to hear it Learning to drive, the standard lines, and the egg under the gas pedal The construction site rule, and what happened when mom found out His father's first marriage, and "that's what I learned from it" Getting caught, and the grace his dad offered on the drive home   Want a taste of what Front Row Dads is all about? The Brotherhood Experience is a free, one-hour online session where you meet other like-minded men who are committed to being family men with businesses, not businessmen with families. You will hear the core ethos and values behind the community, and why this brotherhood is a strategy for connecting with your kids, building a thriving marriage, and winning in business. It runs every month. Pick a time that works for you: https://frontrowdads.com/experience

Jon asked a pediatrician of thirty-five years for the formula for influencing your kids. She gave him three words. Dr. Meg Meeker, author of Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters, says her job is to speak to dads on behalf of their children. So Jon asked the question every man here eventually asks, which is some version of just tell me what to do. She gave him a list. Attention, affection, acceptance. Whether your child is two or twenty-two or fifty, they want the same three things from you, and the third one is where most of us quietly fail. The part that will sting is the grocery store. You are listing what your daughter has done to someone you ran into, straight A's, varsity as a sophomore, and she is standing right behind you. "She doesn't feel accepted. She feels like a performer."   IN THIS EPISODE Why a pediatrician speaks to fathers on behalf of their kids The formula for influence, and why men want it as a checklist Attention: whether your child is 2 or 22 or 50, they want to be seen Affection, and how it changes shape without going away as a daughter grows Acceptance, and the grocery store conversation that turns a kid into a performer The elite swimmer whose whole relationship with her dad was built on the sport What acceptance means when your kid genuinely disappoints you "If our acceptance of them is predicated on them turning out the way we envision, we're cooked"    FULL EPISODE: https://frontrowdads.com/459   📚 Want to win at home and in business? These are the books that helped high-performing dads create deeper relationships and stronger lives—without sacrificing success. 👉 Get the list: https://frontrowdads.com/podcast-books

Every couple has a dance, and most men have never seen the steps written down. One of you closes the distance and gets louder. The other creates distance and shuts down. What makes it a loop rather than an argument is that each one's way of coping is precisely the thing the other cannot tolerate. Mark Groves names it, then takes it apart: Gottman's four horsemen, why men stonewall more than women do, and the single sentence that breaks a defensive pattern even though saying it feels awful. Then the harder half. Groves admits he spent years in a relationship with someone who needed exactly the skills he teaches, and asks the question underneath it: what if you need the problem to be there? What if the fixing is the point?     IN THIS EPISODE The dance: the distancer, the escalator, and why the loop holds Gottman's four horsemen, and why men stonewall "I can see some truth in what you're saying," and why it tastes terrible Behind every criticism is a desired behavior "Our defense strategies live beside our greatest wounds" The kitchen, the deal breaker that kept moving, and what he said instead What happens to the fixer when the addict gets sober Why nobody should be 100 percent in with someone who is 99 Unconscious commitments, and needing a battle to fight Jon on creating problems at home to have something to bring to the room   FULL EPISODE How to Co-Regulate: The Science Behind Relationship Harmony: https://frontrowdads.com/474   Want a taste of what Front Row Dads is all about? The Brotherhood Experience is a free, one-hour online session where you meet other like-minded men who are committed to being family men with businesses, not businessmen with families. You will hear the core ethos and values behind the community, and why this brotherhood is a strategy for connecting with your kids, building a thriving marriage, and winning in business. It runs every month. Pick a time that works for you at https://frontrowdads.com/experience

Jon walked into a band meeting with seven things to do and walked out with one. Episode 4 of Walk With Jon. No studio, no script, no guest, no editing. Jon Vroman walking the lake in downtown Austin on a Wednesday afternoon, thinking out loud. The audio is rough on purpose: traffic, wind, and footsteps are part of the deal. He recorded this straight out of his monthly band meeting, where he put business on the table. Two things he admits he hasn't always done well: saying his truth out loud instead of withholding it to spare feelings, and being humble enough to ask for counsel. He did both. Then his buddy Tim kept saying the same thing until it stuck: "there's only one thing you need to do after this meeting," and until it's done with excellence, don't do two.   IN THIS WALK: What a band is, if you're new here: four to six men, monthly, real conversations Withholding isn't lying, but it isn't the truth either Lead domino, five whys, communal drive: the FRD core values, and the one he wasn't living Ideation is his top strength, and why that means he needs editors around him The method in one breath: reveal, get curious, lean on your trusted advisors, pick one thing, execute, follow through   Front Row Dads is a brotherhood of family men with businesses, not businessmen with families. To learn more, go to frontrowdads.com.

She calls it puberty in reverse. It can last a decade. And most husbands have no idea it's happening.   LIVE WITH DR. HIRSCH, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8TH.  She is joining the Front Row Dads community for a live session with Q&A on how men can support the women in their lives through menopause. Free for members, and a limited number of guest passes for everyone else. Details at frontrowdads.com/menopause   Dr. Heather Hirsch is board-certified in internal medicine, founded the Menopause and Midlife Clinic at Brigham and Women's Hospital, taught at Harvard Medical School, and has treated thousands of women through perimenopause and menopause. She flew to Austin for this one because, in her words, most of the conversation about menopause happens with women, and it's the men who share a bed, a marriage, and a family with them who never get the briefing. This is that briefing.   She defines the terms every husband should know, explains what actually happens as the hormones flicker out like a failing light bulb, and walks through what it does to sleep, mood, memory, weight, skin, and sex. Then the practical half: how to bring it up without saying "this explains everything," why tracking symptoms beats blood work, the bedroom at 65 degrees, why so many women see five to seven doctors before the right diagnosis, and what real treatment looks like.   Her story is the first 20 minutes. The practical breakdown starts at 19:56. Find a trained clinician: menopause.org or heatherhirschdirectory.com Her books: Unlock Your Menopause Type and The Perimenopause Survival Guide Follow her: @heatherhirschmd   Want a taste of what Front Row Dads is actually like? We run a live Brotherhood Experience most months. Jon and a few other dads, 60 minutes on Zoom, and a real conversation about how fatherhood is actually going. It's not a webinar, and you won't leave drained. On any given week, most dads give support and never get any. That's what this hour is for. It's free, and the next date and your seat are both at frontrowdads.com/experience

Most of us don't have a plan for our marriage. We have a repair schedule. Something breaks, we patch it, things are fine for a while, and then we sit there quietly waiting for it to break again. Lance Salazar lived in that loop. He describes a defeatist stretch where even when things were okay, he was just wondering when it was going to go bad. So he and his wife stopped fixing and started designing, borrowing the thing they already knew how to do in business: decide what you want, build a plan, commit to it, track it. What came out of that is a framework they call the four legendary relationship elements. You. The partnership. The friendship. The lovers. And Lance is insistent about the order, because a great partnership needs a great partner first, and it is very hard to feel like friends with someone you are arguing with about the garbage.   IN THIS EPISODE The cycle of patch, coast, break, repeat, and why it ends in mediocrity Designing a marriage instead of repairing it Applying goals, milestones, and actions to a marriage the way you would to a company Why you can't run a marathon you never trained for The four legendary relationship elements, and why the order is the point The partnership loop: finances, kids, the trash, and why couples get trapped there after kids Tracking it: ten minutes of talking a day, a planner, an actual checkbox "If you haven't been kissing your wife every day, then you need a reminder" Why it sounds unromantic and why he does it anyway How friendship becomes the foundation for intimacy   FULL EPISODE Legendary Couples with Kids: https://frontrowdads.com/39

Jon's eleven-year-old had been more anxious than usual, and his wife told him why. You have been more stressed at work. He is a reflector. He picks up on your energy.  Bryan Post takes that and does something more useful than reassurance. Your son has his own part, formed long before this week. You have yours. And the moment you take his behavior personally, you lose the ability to be present for him, because you have made his stuff your stuff. He gives the actual words to use, and the reason they work: all behavior arises from stress; a stressed child regresses to a younger age, and between the stress and the behavior there is only ever love or fear. Then the part most parents get backward. When your kid's fear frightens you, what you do next is control, suppress, and correct, and you tell yourself that is good parenting. It isn't. He finishes with the child who goes quiet instead of acting out, what happens when you try to pry that child open, and the one thing that works instead.   IN THIS EPISODE What Jon's wife told him about his own energy Your part and their part, and why the difference matters "Every communication is energy" Why personalizing your kid's behavior costs you the ability to be present The script: "Dad's been really stressed lately, and I've noticed you have been too" All behavior arises from stress, and why a stressed eleven-year-old acts like a five-year-old Love or fear: what actually sits between the stress and the behavior "You're doing that because you're scared" Turtle children, and why you cannot dig them out with a stick The linchpin, the neuroscience behind it, and the Bruce Lee line that sums it up   FULL EPISODE This is a short cut from one of the best conversations on this feed. The whole thing is worth your time: Love-Based Parenting Is Firm, Honest, and Harder Than Yelling Ever Was — https://frontrowdads.com/531   Want a taste of what Front Row Dads is all about? The Brotherhood Experience is a free, one-hour online session where you meet other like-minded men who are committed to being family men with businesses, not businessmen with families. You will hear the core ethos and values behind the community, and why this brotherhood is a strategy for connecting with your kids, building a thriving marriage, and winning in business. It runs every month. Pick a time that works for you at https://frontrowdads.com/experience

Nobody got married hoping to work on it. That is where Ted Lowe starts. After a long day of working hard, the last thing anybody wants is to work some more, so telling a man his marriage needs more work tends to land like a chore. His alternative is a habit he calls serious fun, built on simple accounting: you cannot make withdrawals from a relational account you never deposited into. And the hard times come, and they require withdrawals. Then he asks the question that gives this episode its name. Jon takes the second half and gets honest about a six-month stretch where his own marriage went into a storm, and the realization that came out of it: he had become boring. Too routine, too practical. So he ran a thought experiment about what he would do if they split up, realized he would immediately become fun and kind and generous for someone else, and asked himself why he wasn't doing that for the person he loves most.   IN THIS EPISODE Why "work on your marriage" is the wrong pitch to a tired man The relational bank account: deposits before withdrawals "Would you want to be married to you? Are you funny? Are you fun?" "We don't date each other. We date each other's PR department" Your best self, and why chasing the perfect couple is a trap Scheduling it, and why the anticipation is half of it Jon on becoming the boring one, and what he did about it Planning to win: your calendar fills with whatever has a who, what, when, where, and how, including root canals Looking at the days around the day, and marriage in seasons "Do you want me to fix it or feel it," and the minivan on the side of the road The scuba diving skins   FULL EPISODE How to Not Make Marriage Complicated with Ted Lowe: https://frontrowdads.com/17

Geoff Woods set a goal of thirty-six date nights with his wife, tracked it all year, and then had to admit it wasn't working. What he found instead was the idea he spent years teaching at The ONE Thing: find the one domino that makes everything else easier or unnecessary, and knock that one over first. In his marriage it wasn't the date nights. It was a cup of coffee at 5:30 in the morning, before the kids were awake, on the couch, looking each other in the eye and asking How are you doing. This is from a training Geoff ran for the Front Row Dads brotherhood. He walks through how he goal-sets backward from twenty years out, why being the accountability guy with his wife on money backfired, and what he says to a spouse who has no interest in planning anything.   IN THIS EPISODE Why the purpose of a goal is not the result Writing down what an extraordinary marriage looks like twenty years out, then reverse engineering to this week The 411: year, month, week on one page "Me being the accountability man with my wife on money, surprisingly, did not make her love me more" The aha: getting a babysitter and going to a restaurant does not equal connection Why the coffee date turned out to be the lead domino What to say to a partner who resists planning, and why Geoff decided it was his own fault The Sunday rhythm: kids in the kids club, both 411s open, dating your goals Daphne, the private school, and why vacuuming the carpet does not matter   WANT MORE FROM GEOFF WOODS Goal Setting for Couples: https://frontrowdads.com/107 How Leaders Can Leverage AI for Strategic Thinking: https://frontrowdads.com/458

Nobody claws their way out of rock bottom alone. Want a taste of what Front Row Dads is actually like? Come sit in on a live Brotherhood Experience. It's 60 minutes on Zoom with Jon and a few other dads, free, and it's the easiest way to find out whether a room like this is for you. You don't have to share, and you don't have to prepare. Dates and sign-up at frontrowdads.com/experience Matt Aitchison was expelled from high school, arrested in college, and facing real jail time. He is quick to say that might not be your story, but that every man has his own version of the bottom: the moment you realize the way you are living is not who you are, and you are not going to let it become who you are. What rebuilt it was not dramatic. One small decision at a time, over and over, for a long stretch, which only looks like a fork in the road looking backward. He also makes the case for why the men around you matter this much: the board of directors, the people who would not let him stay down. Short, practical, and worth a listen on a hard day.   IN THIS EPISODE Expelled, arrested, and facing jail time Why your rock bottom doesn't have to look like his to count The one-small-decision-at-a-time mechanism, and why it only makes sense later Broke, living at home, borrowing money, unable to make rent The board of directors: why you need real men around you Being rich in more than money

Five versions of you are already running your marriage. The work is building the sixth. Want a taste of what Front Row Dads is actually like? Come sit in on a live Brotherhood Experience. It's 60 minutes on Zoom with Jon and a few other dads, free, and it's the easiest way to find out whether a room like this is for you. You don't have to share, and you don't have to prepare. Dates and sign-up at frontrowdads.com/experience   Dr. Kelly Flanagan says we each carry five versions of ourselves: the lover, the loner, the hider, the fighter, and the ruler. They formed early, they never go away, and they surface uninvited in exactly the moments that matter most. You cannot uncreate them. What you can do is build a sixth version, the one he calls the welcomer, that greets those parts and guides them instead of being run by them. Recorded live at one of our online summits, this one moves from framework into three real stories, and the last one is the reason to stay to the end.   IN THIS EPISODE The five versions: the lover, the loner, the hider, the fighter, the ruler Why the lover is the original self, the one you arrived with Why you can't uncreate the selves you've created, and what to do instead The sixth version, the welcomer, and how you actually build it Will Smith, Chris Rock, and the twelve-year-old boy who finally got his chance The pastor who invited his six-year-old self up to preach, and gave the best sermon of his life The car charger fight, and the moment he realized the shaken little girl wasn't his daughter   WANT MORE? This was a members-only online summit, so there is no public episode to link. Learn more about the room where these happen at frontrowdads.com

Every marriage is sitting on one of five levels right now. Here is how to find yours and how to climb. Want a taste of what Front Row Dads is actually like? Come sit in on a live Brotherhood Experience. It's 60 minutes on Zoom with Jon and a few other dads, free, and it's the easiest way to find out whether a room like this is for you. You don't have to share, and you don't have to prepare. Dates and sign-up at frontrowdads.com/experience Recorded live at one of our online summits, Jayson Gaddis walks through the five levels of partnership, from survival at level one to the spiritual union at level five that most couples never reach. He is upfront that the model is his own, built from almost thirty years of sitting in circle with couples. Most long marriages, he says, stall at level three: stable, functional, and quietly unable to talk about the hard things. Then he gets practical about the one thing that actually moves a marriage up: repair. The conflict repair cycle, the two skills of speaking first and listening first, why a man's urge to fix his wife's pain backfires, and what to do when you feel you cannot bring your own feelings into your own marriage.   IN THIS EPISODE The five levels, and how to tell which one you are on Level one: mating and survival, and why people stay where they are hurt Why most long marriages stall at level three The conflict repair cycle, and what skipping repair hollows out The two repair skills almost nobody is taught Why fixing your wife's pain isn't love, and what to do instead How to work with a partner who won't own their part   WANT MORE This was a members-only online summit, so there is no public episode to link. It is the kind of room we build for dads who want to win at home the same way they win at work. Learn more at frontrowdads.com